Lecture in Modern Europe

with Professor Andrew Denning, University of Kansas

By 1940, 750,000 motor vehicles crisscrossed Africa, and the colonial road network measured over 300,000 miles in length. This talk examines the shared European perception of a colonial “transport problem” in Africa and how cars and roads became a shared, transimperial solution over the course of half a century. Drawing French, German, Italian, British, Belgian, and Portuguese empires into a common interpretive framework reveals their pursuit of “automotive empire,” a model of colonial rule and economic development that defined an imperial era and the experiences of Europeans and Africans alike.

Andrew Denning is Professor of History and Director of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa (Cornell, 2024) and Skiing Into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History (California, 2015), as well as co-editor of the forty-chapter The Interwar World (Routledge, 2024). His writing has also appeared in American Historical Review, Past & Present, Journal of Modern History, and The Atlantic.