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By 2050, over half the world’s population growth will come from nine countries, five of which are African, including Nigeria. The inputs for green technology, the biggest cities on the planet, and the culture that captures the global imagination will increasingly be African. Yet the dominant scholarly paradigm for African politics is one that emphasizes how states have failed. Debate centres on apportioning responsibility among precolonial institutions, European colonialism, extractive industries, and postcolonial misgovernment. As many scholars have observed, this paradigm is Eurocentric because it ignores the diversity of successful African institutional forms beyond the state. Through a longue durée case study, this project provides greater historical depth to the study of governance that transcends the nation-state as the normative ideal.
This project offers a new perspective on alternative institutional paradigms to the nation-state, contributing to this area of research in African Studies, Anthropology, History, Law, and Political Science.
Recommended Reading
Avery, Victoria, and Jake Subryan Richards, eds. Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.
Richards, Jake Subryan. The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade. Yale University Press, 2025.
–. “Ecologies in Flight: Black Environmental Knowledge and Human-Bird Interactions between the Caribbean and Britain.” Environmental History 31, no. 2 (2026): 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1086/740165.
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2026/2027
Jake Subryan Richards, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History
London School of Economics and Political Science
Born in 1992 in London
BA (Hons.) in History, University of Cambridge, MSt in History, University of Oxford, PhD in History, University of Cambridge
Arbeitsvorhaben
Refuge in Africa: Abeokuta and the Unmaking of Empire
How did people create a political community that responded to regional disaster, and with what consequences? This project answers these questions through the case study of Abeokuta, whose name in the Yoruba language means “refuge under the rock.” Abeokuta is now a city in present-day Nigeria, but it began as a settlement for people escaping from war and enslavement in the early nineteenth century. Archival records, published sources, and material culture reveal how people developed a culture of constitutional rule and global connection to build a political community that retained its independence for almost one hundred years. After colonial annexation by Britain in 1918, Abeokuta became an important site of anticolonial resistance in the twentieth century.By 2050, over half the world’s population growth will come from nine countries, five of which are African, including Nigeria. The inputs for green technology, the biggest cities on the planet, and the culture that captures the global imagination will increasingly be African. Yet the dominant scholarly paradigm for African politics is one that emphasizes how states have failed. Debate centres on apportioning responsibility among precolonial institutions, European colonialism, extractive industries, and postcolonial misgovernment. As many scholars have observed, this paradigm is Eurocentric because it ignores the diversity of successful African institutional forms beyond the state. Through a longue durée case study, this project provides greater historical depth to the study of governance that transcends the nation-state as the normative ideal.
This project offers a new perspective on alternative institutional paradigms to the nation-state, contributing to this area of research in African Studies, Anthropology, History, Law, and Political Science.
Recommended Reading
Avery, Victoria, and Jake Subryan Richards, eds. Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.
Richards, Jake Subryan. The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade. Yale University Press, 2025.
–. “Ecologies in Flight: Black Environmental Knowledge and Human-Bird Interactions between the Caribbean and Britain.” Environmental History 31, no. 2 (2026): 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1086/740165.
Publikationen aus der Fellowbibliothek
Richards, Jake Subryan (Chicago, Ill., 2026)
Richards, Jake Subryan (New Haven, 2025)
The bonds of freedom : liberated Africans and the end of the slave trade