Beyond Federation

This book looks beyond political projects of federation to recover ideas and practices of East African regionalism in the social, cultural, and intellectual realm. In doing so, it tells a different story about the fate of the idea of East Africa, building on a body of scholarship about the imagined political communities of decolonizing Africa and rejecting a narrative of failed regional integration as a product of postcolonial authoritarianism or global economic crisis. Instead of focusing on governance, we approach the theme through the lens of regional institutions, from universities to trade unions, with a particular emphasis on the East Africa that came into existence on the pages of East African publications. In doing so, this book brings to light a different cast of actors, different relationships with external funders or supporters, and alternative chronologies for the narrowing understandings and possibilities of nation and globe in the period of decolonization. In particular, Beyond Federation revisits discourses situated in a broadly liberal tradition which were strongly critiqued at the time and since, but never squeezed out entirely.