Frederick Cooper (historian)

Frederick Cooper is an American historian who specializes in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history. Cooper received his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University in 1974 and is currently professor of history at New York University.

Cooper initially studied the labor movement in East Africa, but later moved on the a broader consideration of colonialism. One of his best known conceptual contributions is the concept of the gatekeeper state.

Awards and honors

• 2010: World History Association Book Prize, Empires in World History
• 1982: Melville Herskovits Prize, African Studies Association, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925

Selected publications

Books

• Cooper, F. (1977) Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press)
• Cooper, F. (1980) From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya , 1890-1925 (New Haven: Yale University Press)
• Cooper, F. (1996) Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
• Cooper, F. (2002) Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) ; French translation: L'Afrique depuis 1940 (Paris, Payot, 2008)
• Cooper, F. (2005) Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge History (Berkeley: University of California Press) ; French translation: Le Colonialisme en question. Théorie, connaissance, histoire (Paris, Payot, 2010)
• in co-operation with Jane Burbank: Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2010
• Africa in the World: Capitalism, Empire, Nation-State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)
• Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945-60 (Winner of George Louis Beer Prize, 2015)

Articles

• Cooper, F. (1996) "'Our Strike': Equality, Anticolonial Politics, and the French West African Railway Strike of 1947-48," Journal of African History, 37: 81-118.
• Cooper, F. (2000) "Africa's Pasts and Africa's Historians," Canadian Journal of African Studies, 34: 298-336.
• Cooper, F. (2001) "What Is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian's Perspective," African Affairs, 100: 189-213.
• Cooper, F. (2004) "Empire Multiplied," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46: 247-72.
• Cooper, F. & Brubaker, R. (2000) "Beyond Identity," Theory and Society, 29: 1-47.

External links

• Frederick Cooper's web page at Department of History, New York University