Studies in the Social History of Global South56/5 African Thresholds: Borders and Places Passage Africa, c.1450 to Present

What is a border, and why does it exist? Through a discussion of selected cases of borders in African history, this book argues that borders are places of passage and that they are made to be crossed: they are thresholds. The Open Access publication of this book has been made possible by the Swiss National Science Foundation. What is a border, and why does it exist? Reappraising a key idea from Arnold van Gennep’s Les rites de passage, this book argues that a border is a threshold, a limen, made to be crossed. African Thresholds studies places of passage spanning from the riverine networks of Senegambia to border-making in colonial Gold Coast and Côte d’Ivoire; from the desert roads of central southern Africa to river heartlands in colonial Togo; from flows of cowrie shells across the Volta River to insurgent borderities in the Lake Chad. In a time when state borders are increasingly shut, this book aims to show us that a border is made by those who cross it as much as by those who stand by it. Contributors are: Ettore Morelli, Fernando Mouta, Pierluigi Valsecchi, María José Pont Cháfer, Giulia Casentini, and Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo.