I have to say that Ferguson is not a particularly good guide to the honest use of historical analogies, overall.
But I am fond of the position you craft here, which is that the use of African histories in analogies would be one useful strategy for "provincializing the West", and it's up to experts in African history to play a role in incubating those analogies, essentially trying to seed popular and policy-making conversations with analogies from African history that do not relentlessly use African societies and individuals as either the non-comparable other or as a figment of the Western imperial imagination. When someone talks about issues with dynastic politics in large imperial states, for once have them mention the succession issues in the early history of Mali rather than the history of Julio-Claudian Roman emperors. When someone talks about cosmopolitan trading communities and trading diasporas, have the Swahili towns of East Africa be the point of reference.
The 1948 election in South Africa is a fantastic analogy for the problems of many liberal democracies right now, that is, the consequences of voting systems that artificially weight rural populations and aggrieved reactionary populisms slightly more heavily and allow a minoritarian party to win a general election, after which that party uses its control of government to lock in an electoral advantage, persecute its electoral opposition, and create a permanent emergency that keeps it in power in perpetuity while still technically being 'democratic' on paper. People should be talking less about late Weimar and more about 1948.
I think part of the trick is precisely that good analogies require skill at storytelling--it's not the same as finding a good but formalized comparative framework in the style of political science or economics. (Skill at storytelling in turn is what makes some people wary of analogies, in that it's possible to insidiously distort the subject of the story to fit the requirements of the analogy.)
I like this idea of telling Africa stories that "provide simplified explanations that cater to our biases and beliefs rather than detailing all facts!"
Maybe you would like my African econ history articles:
I have to say that Ferguson is not a particularly good guide to the honest use of historical analogies, overall.
But I am fond of the position you craft here, which is that the use of African histories in analogies would be one useful strategy for "provincializing the West", and it's up to experts in African history to play a role in incubating those analogies, essentially trying to seed popular and policy-making conversations with analogies from African history that do not relentlessly use African societies and individuals as either the non-comparable other or as a figment of the Western imperial imagination. When someone talks about issues with dynastic politics in large imperial states, for once have them mention the succession issues in the early history of Mali rather than the history of Julio-Claudian Roman emperors. When someone talks about cosmopolitan trading communities and trading diasporas, have the Swahili towns of East Africa be the point of reference.
The 1948 election in South Africa is a fantastic analogy for the problems of many liberal democracies right now, that is, the consequences of voting systems that artificially weight rural populations and aggrieved reactionary populisms slightly more heavily and allow a minoritarian party to win a general election, after which that party uses its control of government to lock in an electoral advantage, persecute its electoral opposition, and create a permanent emergency that keeps it in power in perpetuity while still technically being 'democratic' on paper. People should be talking less about late Weimar and more about 1948.
I think part of the trick is precisely that good analogies require skill at storytelling--it's not the same as finding a good but formalized comparative framework in the style of political science or economics. (Skill at storytelling in turn is what makes some people wary of analogies, in that it's possible to insidiously distort the subject of the story to fit the requirements of the analogy.)
Congratulations on your new positions..
I like this idea of telling Africa stories that "provide simplified explanations that cater to our biases and beliefs rather than detailing all facts!"
Maybe you would like my African econ history articles:
Here's mine on Ivory Coast:
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/history-of-cote-divoireivory-coast?r=garki&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Another on Ghana's currency crisis:
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/how-countries-get-into-currency-crises?r=garki&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web