African nationalisms

In the early twenty-first century, nations across Africa celebrated their fiftieth birthdays. The symbols employed to mark the occasion and the memories evoked bore witness to the joys as well as the trials and tribulations of a fifty-year history. For many, fifty years of independent nationhood was an occasion for celebration.1 But at the same time, the history of nationalism and nationhood is not purely a celebratory story. The politics of the early twenty-first century, in African countries as elsewhere in the world, served as a reminder that modern nationalism also has a dark side, and that violence and dispossession can follow when dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are drawn along national lines.