Front cover image for Imperialism and human rights : colonial discourses of rights and liberties in African history

Imperialism and human rights : colonial discourses of rights and liberties in African history

"In this seminal study, Bonny Ibhawoh investigates the links between European imperialism and human rights discourses in African history. Using British-colonized Nigeria as a case study, he examines how diverse interest groups within colonial society deployed the language of rights and liberties to serve varied socioeconomic and political ends. Ibhawoh challenges the linear progressivism that dominates human rights scholarship by arguing that, in the colonial African context, rights discourses were not simple monolithic or progressive narratives. They served both to insulate and legitimize power just as much as they facilitated transformative processes. Drawing extensively on archival material, this book shows how the language of rights, like that of "civilization" and "modernity," became an important part of the discourses deployed to rationalize and legitimize empire."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2007
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, ©2007
History
xv, 226 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780791469231, 9780791469248, 0791469239, 0791469247
62741424
The subject of rights and the rights of subjects
Rights, liberties and the imperial world order
Stronger than the maxim gun: law, rights and justice
Confronting state trusteeship: land rights discourses
Negotiating inclusion: social rights discourses
Citizens of the world's republic: political and civil rights discourses
The paradox of rights talk