Abstract
AbstractThis chapter considers the connections between histories of the earth sciences (and knowledges of the earth more generally) and African history. It argues there is great potential synergy between them, both fields providing cross-disciplinary and long-durational means of considering the history of knowledge and engagement with the earth, especially through different forms of conceptual, political, and economic power. This is followed across two sections. The first is the history of mining and use of mineral resources in Africa, which has been a dynamic field, aiming to recover the agency and importance of African actors, processes, and institutions, while engaging with the importance of mineral extraction for the formation of colonial systems and maintenance of global inequalities. And secondly, the chapter examines the historiography of the sciences of ancient life as related to Africa, especially palaeontology and palaeoanthropology, and how these more conceptual fields have been entangled with values and engagements with African nature, and citations of the importance of the continent to the whole of humanity.
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
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