This chapter makes the case for a genealogical, periodical-centred approach to the study of African literature. It argues that the overlooked genre of the newspaper column provided a convivial space for literary experimentation and the generation of alternative literary forms in colonial African contexts. In particular, it highlights the emergence in the periodical press of satirical street literature, a genre that takes African street life as its subject matter and registers its unique dynamics in aesthetic form. Reading two influential examples – R. R. R. Dhlomo’s ‘Roamer’ column and Alex La Guma’s ‘Up my Alley’ – this chapter argues that periodical street literature can be understood as an alternative mode of literary world-making in relation to dominant teleologies and narrative templates. The chapter asks how the inclusion of this ephemeral literary archive reframes understandings of Black city writing in colonial contexts and traces a possible genealogy of afterlives and echoes in the wider world of letters

To understand the place and role of Gakaara Wanjaũ in the development of a print culture in Central Kenya, it is useful to start with a contrast between the story of the small press that he set up in the provincial town of Karatina in 1971 and the familiar, sometimes apocryphal stories of how the printing press arrived in Africa and the aura that surrounded it. In general, the arrival of the missionary printing press in Africa was seen as the triumphant arrival of a technology which, to borrow the words of Michel de Certeau, writing in a different context, was capable of ‘reforming society’, transforming ‘manners and customs’ and ‘remodeling whole cultures and nations’ (1984: 166). For example, when the missionary John Ross conveyed a printing press to the Lovedale Mission in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 1823, he had no doubt that the machine would create new Christian subjects – it was God’s gift to ‘the world of readers, who become the men of action, for evil as much as for good’ (Shepherd 1940: 400).

In January 1950, the missionaries reported a vicious attack and an attempted stoning while preaching in the town of Castel Gandolfo, home to the Papal Palace and the Pope’s summer residence. The missionaries’ efforts to preach and proselytize in the town sparked outrage among the local population, with violent reactions allegedly incited by the local clergy. Accounts of the incident varied. In Italy, the police and pro-Vatican press sought to downplay the event, framing it as a reaction to the missionaries’ perceived insensitive and aggressive behavior, and accusing them of aiding the spread of Communism. The missionaries seized the opportunity to raise awareness of their challenges and promote their mission. The crisis garnered headlines in the United States, leading to a significant mobilization in Congress, where senators and representatives urged the Truman administration to pressure the Italian government to allow the missionaries to preach and proselytize. The Italian Foreign Ministry and the State Department entered into protracted negotiations, which lasted several years, as they sought a practical solution that could accommodate the many actors involved. The Castel Gandolfo incident thus became a flashpoint in the broader struggle over religious freedom, sovereignty, and Cold War geopolitics.

One of the main challenges faced by the missionaries and their US supporters was the renewal of their short-term visas. The State Department repeatedly urged its Italian counterparts to consider issuing permanent or long-term residence permits, hoping to eliminate one of the most contentious points of the ongoing dispute. While the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was generally sympathetic to these proposals and sought to accommodate Washington’s requests, it faced significant resistance from Mario Scelba, the inflexible interior minister, as well as repeated pressures from the Vatican. The Vatican followed the matter with interest and concern, viewing the presence of Protestant missionaries as a potential threat to Italy’s Catholic identity and spiritual unity. Catholic propaganda leaned heavily on familiar anti-Protestant tropes, portraying Protestantism as a foreign import, threatening the country’s cohesion and spiritual unity, which, it was argued, was essential to counter the Communist threat. The visa issue became a constant point of contention, resolved only through temporary solutions and case-by-case renewals. Meanwhile, the missionaries frequently clashed with Italian authorities, who sporadically (and inconsistently) harassed them by shutting down preaching halls or preventing access to their facilities.

This introductory chapter begins by considering two general features of the politics of territory in modernity: the expectation that borders should be precisely defined as lines, and the central role of colonial legacies. The book centres on the relation between these two features. Four narratives about the global history of borders that the book seeks to engage with and modify are elaborated: first, colonial-inherited borders are generally remarkable for their vagueness; second, linear borders are originally and most properly a practice of sovereign states or nation-states; third, lines on maps determine politics; and fourth, linear borders were first practiced in Europe, then exported to the rest of the world through colonialism. The chapter outlines the argument and the rest of the book. At its most general level, the argument is that modern borders are distinct not because they express sovereignty but because of certain technical, apolitical practices.

The first half of this chapter surveys some of the tangible economic consequences of wardship – it increased the incidence of waste (that is asset-stripping of wards’ estate), increased the barriers to agricultural improvement and obstructed land transactions. The difficulty lies in presenting systematic evidence concerning this – ideally it would be possible to identify and attribute differences in agricultural productivity according to freehold tenure – some of which did entail wardship for underage heirs, namely ‘knight service’ and some of which did not, namely ‘socage’. But beyond a massive data collection exercise it is unclear how this could be achieved. Instead, as a proxy for productivity, the second half of this chapter presents evidence concerning land values. As one would expect, land held by socage sold at a 10% premium compared with land held by knight service.

This introduction argues against analyzing the Democrat Party in terms of strict binaries such as liberal–illiberal, center–periphery, secular–reactionary, or victim–perpetrator. While the divisions that scholars emphasize are real enough to affect the lives of people in Turkey, these divides are multiple and cross-cutting. Instead, I present an account of the Democrat Party, its role in Turkey’s democratization, and its engagement with the emerging Cold War order that is mindful of the divides in Turkey but that also acknowledges the party’s ability to transcend those divides – or, at least, embody their multiple contradictions. This book presents a portrait of the Democrat Party that encompasses these contradictions while also emphasizing Democrat Party leaders’ connections to the domestic political order that preceded them and to the international order of the 1950s.

Represented by the same lawyer of other Protestant groups, the missionaries began using legal avenues to challenge the Italian government in court, arguing that Italy’s constitution had superseded older statutes, including Fascist-era laws being used against them. While this strategy would eventually prove successful, the mission found itself in an increasingly precarious situation. Despite its efforts and the establishment of various branches across the Italian peninsula, it managed to attract only a few hundred members. Funds began to dwindle, forcing the mission to sell some of its most prized properties. The US State Department grew increasingly critical of the mission’s aggressive tactics, viewing them as unnecessarily provocative and ultimately counterproductive. Meanwhile, the mission’s leaders continued to clash with Italian authorities, who at times fined or briefly arrested them, while using visa renewals as leverage to exert pressure on the missionaries. In the United States, the initial enthusiasm of many coreligionists for the Church’s mission in Italy gradually faded, giving way to disillusionment or a shift of focus toward other missionary activities, particularly in the Third World.