The dominant historical narrative about Africans and technology in the twentieth-century is one of backwardness and underdevelopment. Though African contributions to technology or scientific knowledge are acknowledged during the pre-colonial era, they are rarely mentioned after European industrialization or the onset of colonialism. My research challenges this metanarrative by examining the manner in which Africans transformed motor vehicles and roads from European tools of empire into African technologies that could be used for different social, political, and economic goals. It focuses on five main themes: (1) Racial and gendered hierarchies of technology; (2) African histories of innovation and development; (3) The global politics of expertise; (4) The importance of technology and mobility to African identities; (5) The relationship between technology and economic liberation.Modernization is most often analyzed as a Western imposition upon passive African societies in need of technological assistance. My dissertation departs from this assumption by presenting modernization as a global process that was given shape and meaning by the knowledge and technological practices of local actors. In colonial repair garages, young men used access to automotive knowledge to create new forms of colonial personhood and challenge racial hierarchies of knowledge; after independence, they staked their careers and lives upon their creativity and ability to make a global machine commensurate with local economies of repair. On Tanzanian roads, African men and women upset ideologies of social and economic health by turning tools of social and economic engineering into vehicles for personal development. Instead of passive targets of technologically based interventions, this project reveals Africans as flexible and innovative technologists whose labor and ideas are crucial to understanding larger processes of modernization and development.My work makes at least three contributions to historical literature. (1) It replaces Eurocentric histories of development with the views and experiences of Africans who built personal and collective futures through car expertise or road travel. Instead of being targets of development schemes, my project analyses Africans as agents of development whose knowledge and labor are critical for understanding modernization in colonial and post-colonial periods. In particular, this research provides an alternative to state-based narratives of technology, governance, and development by using oral history, personal archives, and historical ethnographic methods. (2) My work shows the significance of technology to African identities in the twentieth-century. In contrast to colonial and post-colonial narratives that portray Africans as racially incompatible with modern technology, this research shows how cars, roads, and automobility became an integral part of African personhood. In particular, it reveals the importance of technology for contesting racial and gender social orders throughout the twentieth-century. (3) This research provides a new approach to modernity, technology, and expertise in World History by highlighting the contributions and achievements of African historical actors. In contrast to global historical narratives that describe Africa's twentieth-century through dominance and decline, this research reveals spaces of technological innovation and creativity that are critical for reevaluating World History from the perspective of historical actors in the Global South.
Read
