Hausaland divided

How have different forms of colonialism shaped societies and their politics? What can borderland communities teach us about nation building and group identity? William F. S. Miles focuses on the Hausa-speaking people of West Africa, whose land is still split by an arbitrary boundary established by Great Britain and France at the turn of the century. In 1983 Miles returned as a Fulbright scholar to the region where he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1970s. Already fluent in the Hausa language, he established residence in carefully selected twin villages on either side of the…