Classics and Colonialism in West Africa, with Barbara Goff

Abstract

In this episode Shivaike talks to Professor Barbara Goff, from the University of Reading, about the many roles of classical education in colonial West Africa. The teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek (and Hebrew) to West African boys was first undertaken by European missionaries as a way to prepare Africans to staff their Christian churches. But it then became a hallmark of professional status, and classically-educated early nationalists, who vigorously opposed the British colonial occupation, could use the colonisers’ tools of Latin and Greek against them. African success with and fluency in classical languages then became a problem for the British, who started to condemn the whole idea of the ‘educated African’. Antiquity became one more counter in a long-drawn-out game of power and resistance between colonisers and colonised.

bibliography

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Transcript

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.