Urban Public Space in Colonial Transformations (eBook)

This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the precolonial to colonial transition in an urban context, by focusing on the changing distribution, character and role of public spaces and buildings. The volume focuses on three case study regions: East African coast, North-West Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula. The regions are selected to provide a novel perspective on the socio-spatial impact of colonialism on the public life of urban settlements, driven by different political forces, in different geographical contexts and time periods. The three study areas are also linked by sharing several features of urban lifestyle such as the role of trade and the influence of religion, Islam in particular.

Monika Baumanova is a Lecturer at the Center for African Studies of the University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic. She is a historical archaeologist specializing on the built environment and urbanism, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa of the last millennium, and on approaches derived from urban studies and sensory archaeology. She is a former Marie Curie Individual Fellow and current Principal Investigator of a comparative urban morphology project funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic.