That Africans are structurally and historically moved by an uncontrollable lust for material objects remains a powerful component of Western knowledge.  Surging in the 16th century on the coast of Guinea, diffused by merchants' narratives back in Europe, theorized in the 17th and 18th century by philosophers, and hardened in the 19th century as a commonplace stereotype, the idea that Africans are possessed by a misguided hunger for imported commodities and material riches, has a genealogy as ancient as the first contacts between West Africa and foreign sailors. These Western fabrications have obscured many of the complex, real strategies of local societies to engage with material and immaterial wealth.

To critically examine these propositions Bernault proposes to group them together under the term of "double material curse." Belonging to different periods and to various disciplines and social spheres, the double material curse, she argues, has worked, and still works, as a complex cluster of theories, opinions, and decisions, historically fluid yet enduring, to placate the relationships that Africans supposedly nurture with various forms of assets. 

Florence Bernault is professor of history at Science Po in Paris and specializes in the political and cultural history of Central Africa. Her research focuses on historical dynamics that crossed over African and European societies. Her latest monograph, Colonial Transactions (Duke University Press 2019) historicizes the notion of witchcraft, power and puissance in Gabon.

Organized by

Global Political Thought research group

Lecture series 2025-26

Amsterdam School of Historical Studies

Supported by

• Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture
• Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area