Mali

Exiting the Fragility Trap
Rethinking Our Approach to the World’s Most Fragile States
By David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy

Carment and Samy investigate the dynamics of state transitions in fragile contexts, with a focus on states trapped in fragility. They consider fragility’s evolution in trapped countries; in those that move in and out of it; and in those that have exited it, thus taking a major step toward a new theory of the so-called fragility trap.

States of Marriage
Gender, Justice, and Rights in Colonial Mali
By Emily S. Burrill

States of Marriage shows how throughout the colonial period in French Sudan (present-day Mali) the institution of marriage played a central role in how the empire defined its colonial subjects as gendered persons with certain attendant rights and privileges. The book is a modern history of the ideological debates surrounding the meaning of marriage, as well as the associated legal and sociopolitical practices in colonial and postcolonial Mali.

West African Challenge to Empire
Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War
By Mahir Şaul and Patrick Royer

West African Challenge to Empire examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915–16. It was the largest challenge that the French ever faced in their West African colonial empire, and one of the largest armed oppositions to colonialism anywhere in Africa. How such a movement could be organized in the face of European technological superiority despite the fact that this region is generally described as having consisted of rival villages and descent groups is a puzzle.