New book reveals how roads and vehicles transformed colonial societies across Africa
LAWRENCE — Shakespeare wrote, “Kingdoms are clay.” But a new book suggests kingdoms are actually more asphalt.
“European empires of the 20th century were in many ways defined by their projects of motorization and road construction. Through these, colonial officials hoped to develop more efficient ways to exploit and control lands and peoples,” said Andrew Denning, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.
His latest book. “Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa,” uncovers how vehicles and the roads they traveled upon began to transform colonial societies across Africa … but rarely in the manner Europeans expected. It’s published by Cornell University Press.
When Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Portugal started colonizing Africa, they faced a shared “transport problem.” They believed roads would radiate commerce and political dominion, but the colossal scale of Africa introduced challenges.
“These countries encountered a continent that’s far larger than Europe, and they only had a few thousand European officials on the ground to administer their colonies,” Denning said. “So they’re trying to overcome this transport problem to develop and exploit the various kinds of resources — human resources, natural resources — that they desired on the continent, while also connecting their economies and administrations to African settlements.”
Motor vehicles traveling on roads became the solution. Roads were cheaper and easier to construct than railroads and weren’t hampered by the environmental limitations of rivers.
“Roads can really vary in terms of technological complexity. They can be simple: dirt, gravel or packed mud that require little technical input in terms of machinery. Yet they can also be incredibly modern, necessitating heavy input of capital and engineering expertise,” Denning said.
“Oftentimes, we found imperial regimes trying to do this on the cheap. They took what had been paths for porters or animals and tried to quickly retrofit them into something that could be used by automobiles.”
Denning considers the automobile as the representative epitome of 20th century modern society.
“This ‘Fordist’ form of mass consumerism and mass production was pivotal,” he said. “Putting colonialism and the automobile together provoked such interesting issues and questions about who automobiles served and what roles they could play. Motor vehicles really helped to define how empires worked.”
The so-called “scramble for Africa” produced a checkerboard of different European colonies beginning in the 1880s. European powers claimed large swaths of territory through technological advantages including firearms and steamships, among other things.
“This was also a moment of competition between imperial powers in which they realized that if they didn’t claim as much territory as possible as quickly as possible, they might get boxed out,” Denning said. “Suddenly, they’ve claimed all of these lands — which are essentially parceled out on maps in Europe — with very little knowledge of what’s there.”
How did the Indigenous peoples react to such a scramble?
“It’s obviously a matter of hubris to make these claims. Africa is a massive continent, and the Europeans did this under the imagination that these were largely empty lands,” he said. “Indigenous peoples of Africa had all kinds of responses. Many engaged militarily. The Italians were latecomers to the scramble, and when they attempted to conquer Ethiopia in 1896, they lost.”
A KU faculty member since 2015, Denning focuses on 20th century European imperial history. He is also the director of KU’s Museum Studies Program. His previous book, “The Interwar World” (Routledge, 2023), focuses on the turbulent period of 1918-1939.
“The thing that has tied my work together in the last decade is an interest in mobility — how people move, why they move and the ways this mobility is more than just a means to an end. The ways people move really come to affect the way history develops,” he said.
Denning stressed that contemporary society assumes forms of technological and infrastructural development will naturally accrue benefits to states and regimes that control them. However, despite the power and wealth of these developers, what often happens instead is the ground-level people who use roads, ports and railroads affect and frequently undermine a lot of their plans.
“This book makes an important point about the way imperialism worked between the late 19th century through World War II, but it also has a lot to say about how we see these dynamics in the 21st century as well,” Denning said.
“It teaches us about how investments are made and how economic development is fostered by states, while revealing some of the unforeseen consequences those states deal with after they’ve made these investments.”