Networks into Nation: Innovation and consolidation in the emergence of African nationalist organizing, South Africa (1880-1890).

This paper turns to the earliest organizational emergence of African nationalist politics in South Africa in order to explore the early moments of a wide scale transformation the paradigm of African political thought and action. The paper studies this emerging field of interconnected political organizations in order to explore organizational and relational conditions which facilitated this political paradigm transformation. The paper combines a network analysis of organizations and leaders in the first decade of African nationalist organizing with historical analysis to better account for the structural conditions which enabled this transformation. I consider two required stages of transformation: innovation and consolidation. The paper develops two models of political innovation and examines these models in the emerging field of African nationalist organizing. The paper then explores how it was possible for this innovation to consolidate and produce a unified political movement in the face of significant social divides which might have created political schisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]