This talk by Britta Schilling will delve into the private dimensions of European empire in Africa through a comparative analysis of colonial homes using three case studies in sub-Saharan Africa. Following recent historiography on domesticity, ‘home’ here is understood in both its ideological and material dimensions. What can architecture, interior spatial arrangements and domestic objects tell us about everyday life in the colonial home? How might a study of the colonial home lead to a better understanding of interactions between coloniser and colonised? And, finally, what legacies have colonial homes left in sub-Saharan Africa today?

Britta Schilling is Assistant Professor in Cultural History at Utrecht University. She is the author of Postcolonial Germany: Memories of Empire in a Decolonized Nation (Oxford, 2014) and is currently working on a comparative history of colonial homes in British, French and German territories in sub-Saharan Africa.

This talk is part of the research seminar African History, organised by the BAB and the History Department of the University of Basel.