Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana

Description

In the 1950s, Ghana, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party, drew the world’s attention as anticolonial activists, intellectuals, and politicians looked to it as a model for Africa’s postcolonial future. Nkrumah was a visionary, a statesman, and one of the key makers of contemporary Africa. In Living with Nkrumahism, Jeffrey S. Ahlman reexamines the infrastructure that organized and consolidated Nkrumah’s philosophy into a political program. Ahlman draws on newly available source material to portray an organizational and cultural history of Nkrumahism. Taking us inside bureaucracies, offices, salary structures, and working routines, he painstakingly reconstructs the political and social milieu of the time and portrays a range of Ghanaians’ relationships to their country’s unique position in the decolonization process. Through fine attunement to the nuances of statecraft, he demonstrates how political and philosophical ideas shape lived experience. Living with Nkrumahism stands at the crossroads of the rapidly growing fields of African decolonization, postcolonial history, and Cold War studies. It provides a much-needed scholarly model through which to reflect on the changing nature of citizenship and political and social participation in Africa and the broader postcolonial world. Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Decolonization and the Pan-African Nation 1 The World of Kwame Nkrumah: Pan-Africanism, Empire, and the Gold Coast in Global Perspective 2 From the Gold Coast to Ghana: Modernization and the Politics of Pan-African Nation-Building 3 A New Type of Citizen: Youth and the Making of Pan-African Citizenship 4 “Work and Happiness for All”: Productivity and the Political Economy of Pan-African Revolution 5 Working for the Revolution: Gender, Secrecy, and Security in the Pan-African State 6 Negotiating Nkrumahism: Belonging, Uncertainty, and the Pan-African One-Party State Conclusion: “Forward Ever, Backward Never” Notes Bibliography Index