The archive

Primary-source documents

Texts the dominant story under-stocked. Filterable by region, era, and theme. Public-domain works are reproduced in full; in-copyright works are excerpted with source links.

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Africa 1950–1980 (independence era) Reserved (not yet available)

Neo-Colonialism — Introduction

Kwame Nkrumah, 1965

Nkrumah's 1965 thesis that political independence in Africa, without economic sovereignty, produces a new form of imperial control — exercised through capital, debt, and…

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Africa 1980–2000

Speech at the United Nations — The Right to Comfort

Thomas Sankara, 1984

Sankara's October 4, 1984 address to the U.N. General Assembly, given two months after he renamed Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (Land of Upright People). A young president…

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