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Olufemi Taiwo. How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. xii, 352 pp.
This book is about the nature of the relation between colonialism and modernity. It addresses the key issue of how and why colonialism was a bulwark against any transition to modernity in the continent. Olufemi Taiwo selected three West African countries and former British colonies, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania, as case studies in the post-independence decade, to answer those thorny questions.
Taiwo's major assumption is that the legal system inherited from colonialism was not fair and this explains why liberal democracy and the rule of law failed to take root in Africa. He challenges what has become conventional wisdom in studies pertaining to colonialism and modernity: the belief that colonialism was a uniform phenomenon affecting the whole continent in the same way and that colonialism and modernity are twins.
A great deal of care should be taken to differentiate between colonialism and modernity, because historically they are separate and should also be separated for analytical purposes. They do not, in fact, belong to the same discourse. African colonialism is different and specific. Former colonies like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa have, by every accord, reached the highest steps of modernity. This is not the case with the "dark continent.. What Africa has achieved are superficial markers, Taiwo insists: rapid urbanization, limited industrialization, mass consumption, more schooling, and a road infrastructure. The distinctive marker of modernity...