Publication: Social Class, Kingsway Stores, Archival Fictions

Essay titled “Social Class, Kingsway Stores, Archival Fictions” in th book “Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company” by Iain Jackson, Ewan Harrison, Michele Tenzon, Rixt Woudstra, and Claire Tunstall

About the book: This open access book tells a new and untold history of the architecture of West Africa in the colonial era, as revealed for the first time through the archives of the United Africa Company (UAC).

About my essay: Much has been said about the fiction and fictions of ‘the archive’, and it is well-established that archives often function as institutions of power which both reinforce hegemonies and are marked by silences. This is certainly true of the UAC archive, which is maintained as a repository of historical material around one of the largest, most powerful, and most extractive Western companies that has operated in West Africa. Yet the archive looms large as a historical source, and historians no matter how intent on reading along or across the archival grain,[1] still thrill at the (re)discovery of long-forgotten fragments, obscure data that connects seemingly unrelated ideas, and chance encounters with ephemera that invoke curiosity and wonder. The contributions in this volume begin the task of drawing out historical moments from the vast and rich UAC archive