“African Motors is an exhilarating contribution to recent African-centric histories of development shedding new light on the significance of automobility—meaning the entire ‘machinic complex’ of driving, roads, garage work, urban transport, and oil trading. Joshua Grace emphasizes the creativity and agency involved in vernacular invention, maintenance, and repair as part of urban mobility and ‘technological citizenship’ in Tanzania. This book is a welcome addition to the growing field of postcolonial mobility studies, decolonial mobility history, and African studies of technology and innovation.”
~Mimi Sheller, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, Drexel University
“In vivid prose, African Motors shows how motor vehicles became African technologies. Joshua Grace sets new standards for research and engagement, weaving tales of African technological expertise into an analysis whose import extends well beyond Tanzania. You will never see cars and drivers the same way again.”
~Gabrielle Hecht, author of, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade
“African Motors stands as an excellent contribution to both the history of science and African history fields. . . . AfricanMotors handily illustrates the effects that the automobile has had on both Tanzanian states and societies, as well as the technological agency Tanzanians have sought to work through the car in turn.”
~Kyle Harmse, H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews
“Tanzania’s automobility takes center stage in this scholarly work by Grace. . . . The book's five main chapters cover mobility in the region and infrastructure from the 1860s to 1960, masculinity, gender relations, and notions of citizenship tied to technological objects. Recommended.”
“African Motors is wide-ranging in its scope, taking the reader on a journey that provides needed insight into the layered and overlapping social and technological systems that have produced modern African systems of motor transport. . . . While set in Tanzania, this text provides insights that will doubtless resonate with scholars of other African and world regions.”
~Jonathan T. Reynolds, International Journal of African Historical Studies
“Joshua Grace’s African Motors offers a fascinating, wide-ranging historical account of automobility in what is now Tanzania. . . . Grace is an intrepid researcher, not only plumbing novel archives but also conducting extensive oral histories and even getting his hands dirty at local garages. The result is a welcome emphasis on the way automobility coevolved with local concepts and logics.”
~Michael Degani, Journal of African History
“Put simply, African Motors is a testament to how historians should practice their craft. … [It] constitutes a foundational study that should, in this reviewer’s opinion, remain a mainstay in methodological postgraduate history seminars for years to come.”
