Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 1995
Rights
Abstract
This article questions the legitimacy of the African state and the imperial cartography on which it is based. It argues that African states are conceptually faulty because they are the crude and thoughtless handiworks of European colonial powers. It is the artificiality of the African state that has been responsible for its failure to cohere into a nation that is viable. The piece argues for geographic and normative re-articulation of the African state - by smashing the current states - to endow them with moral, political, and legal legitimacy. It concludes that democratic entities are unlikely to develop where pre-colonial nations and peoples find no rationale in the imposed state.
Publication Title
Michigan Journal of International Law
First Page
1113
Last Page
1176
Recommended Citation
Makau w. Mutua,
Why Redraw the Map of Africa: A Legal and Moral Inquiry,
16
Mich. J. Int'l L.
1113
(1995).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/journal_articles/575