Mohamed Kamara unleashes an inventory of terms—assimilation, cultural erasure, formation, mission, training—on a library of African literary works in order to explore the symbiotic relationship between the colonial school and the emergence of a postcolonial bourgeois class. This culminates in a transcolonial analysis that sheds light on the impact of the French civilizing mission, a complex apparatus that provided the scaffolding upon which France’s empire was built. The historical legacies are relevant to contemporary debates on education and the imperative of decolonizing the curriculum, and underscore our collective responsibility when it comes to reassessing how institutions continue to shape mindsets, prevailing ideologies, and theories of race.

Dominic Thomas, University of California, Los Angeles

Kamara presents a sophisticated analysis of the longue durée structured by the intersection between colonial education and class formation regarding its impact on the postcolonial West African nation-state. This book shows how the persistence of the colonial education system maintains a debilitating comprador bourgeoisie in power throughout West Africa that militates against sovereign national development and true independence. It is a long overdue examination of a critical aspect of imperialist legacies in Africa.

James E. Genova, The Ohio State University

Making the case that colonial education was in many ways responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa, Kamara traces its history from the earliest ideologies of education through their implementation in colonial and postcolonial West Africa. This book traces the invention of the postcolonial bourgeois class and the specific attempts made to differentiate men’s and women’s education to mold colonial subjects intended to cater to different colonial needs. Meticulously reading the institution of the school in eighteen Francophone texts spanning over eight decades, this is a masterful work that ends with a passionate plea for school reform in Africa. A must read not only for literary scholars but also those invested in education in contemporary Africa in all its various forms.

Gaurav Desai, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor