Awards

• Short-listed for Hagley Prize in Business History 2025 (United States)
• Winner of Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot Award 2025 (United States)

Overview

In Automotive Empire, Andrew Denning uncovers how roads and vehicles began to transform colonial societies across Africa, but rarely in the manner Europeans expected. Like seafaring ships and railroads, automobiles and roads were more than a mode of transport-they organized colonial spaces and structured the political, economic, and social relations of empire, both within African colonies and between colonies and the European metropole. European officials in French, Italian, British, German, Belgian, and Portuguese territories in Africa shared a common challenge-the ""transport problem."" While they imagined that roads would radiate commerce and political hegemony by collapsing space, the pressures of constructing and maintaining roads rendered colonial administration thin, ineffective, and capricious. Automotive empire emerged as the European solution to the ""transport problem,"" but revealed weakness as much as it extended power. As Automotive Empire reveals, motor vehicles and roads seemed the ideal solution to the colonial ""transport problem."" They were cheaper and quicker to construct than railroads, overcame the environmental limitations of rivers, and did not depend on the recruitment and supervision of African porters. At this pivotal moment of African colonialism, when European powers transitioned from claiming territories to administering and exploiting them, automotive empire defined colonial states and societies, along with the brutal and capricious nature of European colonialism itself.

Full Product Details

9781501775369

Table of Contents

Reviews

Andrew Denning's Automotive Empire is a rich and significant contribution to the comparative history of how colonial regimes conceived and implemented their policies on road construction in Africa... Denning compellingly examines the intersection between colonial ambitions and the practical realities of roadbuilding, offering valuable insights into the technopolitical dimensions of European imperialism. * American Historical Review *

Author Information

Andrew Denning is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Kansas. He is author of Skiing into Modernity and coeditor of The Interwar World. His work has also appeared in The Journal of Modern History, American Historical Review, Technology and Culture, and Environmental History.

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