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Books > Humanities > History > African history
This edited volume provides the first fully comprehensive evaluation of Libya since the Qadhafi coup in 1969. Throughout the different chapters the authors explore the rise of the military in Libya, the impact of its self-styled revolution on Libyan society and economy.
The political, social, and economic problems of southern Africa cannot be resolved until nations of this critical region effect educational reform. But this process requires more than change in the educational system; it involves the thrust for social transformation in national institutions. This unique study addresses key issues relative to both educational reform and social change in southern Africa. Topics discussed include the need for educational reform; approaches to educational reform; and the results of such reform on the individual and society. A bibliography and an index complete the text.
This text analyses the political and ethnical tensions that characterize Nigeria, which derive both from colonial and contemporary conflicts. It points out three major factors why Nigeria has not yet collapsed like many other African states: ethnic power sharing amongst the political elite, the military with its national outlook, and oil wealth.
Possidius, the bishop of Calama, was a life-long friend of St. Augustine's and best known for writing a biography of the bishop of Hippo, the Vita Augustini. Hermanowicz analyzes both the biography and the legally-oriented career of Possidius to illustrate how active Augustine's colleagues were in soliciting imperial support against their religious competitors and to show just how often Augustine's close friends disagreed with him on important matters of law, coercion and diplomacy. It is still widely asserted by scholars that St. Augustine dominated the theological landscape of North Africa, but this engaging study demonstrates how often he was, in fact, singular and isolated in his beliefs.
Uncertain Safari deals with the contours and complexities of African life today. Based on author Allan Winkler's personal experiences living and working in Kenya and traveling to many other parts of the continent, the book focuses primarily on East Africa and concentrates on Kenya in particular. It examines one of the most beautiful, and troubled, parts of Africa through a personal lens, highlighting issues of marriage and divorce, education and AIDS, politics, and evolving traditions. The African story warrants our attention. An examination of Kenya, one of the best-known and most-visited African countries, provides an effective means of exploring issues that affect all Africans. Kenya, traditionally more stable than other African nations, now faces many grave problems as its own stability has begun to erode. This book, based on observations, interviews, and personal reflections, highlights the serious issues behind the seemingly idyllic view millions of visitors witness on safari.
The two main arguments in the book are to contest the reduction of African civil wars to ethnic conflicts, and to point out the emergence of civil wars as the result of political struggles. The construction of Africa as the "other" has entailed that factors commonly used to explain war elsewhere have been neglected in Sub-Saharan Africa. The book aims at bringing the political power struggle as it evolves around the state to the forefront in analyses of civil wars and societal conflict.
One of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century, and one with huge political resonance, is the death of Dag Hammarskjold and his UN team in a plane crash in central Africa in 1961. Just minutes after midnight, his aircraft plunged into thick forest in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), abruptly ending his mission to bring peace to the Congo. Across the world, many suspected sabotage, accusing the multi-nationals and the governments of Britain, Belgium, the USA and South Africa of involvement in the disaster. These suspicions have never gone away. British High Commissioner Lord Alport was waiting at the airport when the aircraft crashed nearby. He bizarrely insisted to the airport management that Hammarskjold had flown elsewhere - even though his aircraft was reported overhead. This postponed a search for so long that the wreckage of the plane was not found for fifteen hours. White mercenaries were at the airport that night too, including the South African pilot Jerry Puren, whose bombing of Congolese villages led, in his own words, to 'flaming huts . . . destruction and death'. These soldiers of fortune were backed by Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the Rhodesian Federation, who was ready to stop at nothing to maintain white rule and thought the United Nations was synonymous with the Nazis. The Rhodesian government conducted an official inquiry, which blamed pilot error. But as this book will show, it was a massive cover-up that suppressed and dismissed a mass of crucial evidence, especially that of African eyewitnesses. A subsequent UN inquiry was unable to rule out foul play - but had no access to the evidence to show how and why. Now, for the first time, this story can be told. Who Killed Hammarskjoeld? follows the author on her intriguing and often frightening journey of research to Zambia, South Africa, the USA, Sweden, Norway, Britain, France and Belgium, where she unearthed a mass of new and hitherto secret documentary and photographic evidence.
This book tells the story of Kwame Nkrumah, the first post-colonial president of an independent African country. The book utilizes previously unpublished and recently declassified IS State Department documents to give an analysis and a chronology of Nkrumah's fall. The book is written for a general audience and for academic historians and students.
The coming of colonialism to Subsaharan Africa generated many forces that historians often describe in abstract terms: peasantization, leadership, nationalism and even colonialism. Such terms often hide or overwhelm the individual experiences of those who, in some way, contributed to the development and demise of colonial Africa. These 'agents' of empire - intellectuals and peasants, chiefs and ex-slaves, nationalists and colonial officials - symbolise the ambiguities of and limitations on colonial power. Agency and Action in Colonial Africa attempts to capture their role.
The only comprehensive encyclopedia on the Boer War available, this volume offers A-Z entries on the war's origins, military strategy and tactics, main battles and sieges, major political and military figures, weaponry, and other related topics. Comprehensive introduction Maps Chronology, bibliography, and illustrations
The Sixties were a heady time for Africans. All over the continent colonial flags were being lowered and Africans looked forward to freedom and a glittering future. But for most of the continent the last forty years have been a shattering experience. Since independence Africans have been terribly betrayed by the Europeans, the superpowers, and tragically, by their own leaders. Can a new generation of leaders turn the tide? Will they learn from their predecessors' mistakes and fuel a new African renaissance? Or is Africa doomed to further decades of turmoil? In this witty and informative book, Alec Russell answers these questions by telling the stories of his encounters with Africa's Big Men. Each one represents a theme which has shaped the continent: Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, the "King of Kleptocracy" whose staggering corruption crippled Zaire; Jonas Savimbi, the life-long guerrilla and symbol of the Cold War's destructive legacy on the continent; the quixotic Hastings Banda, the ultimate product of colonialism; and, of course, Nelson Mandela, symbol of reconciliation and hope for an entire continent. By any measure, this has been a terrible century for Africa. However Russell detects signs of hope in the fledgling human rights troupe he encounters deep in the steamy heart of the Congolese jungle and in the group of journalists keeping Moi's tottering regime in Kenya on its toes. Big Men, Little People is a vividly written portrait of a continent, which avoids the usual stereotypes and dire prophecies and entertains from start to finish.
This book mediates a dialectics between power and subjectivity versus history and politics. The invention of Africa is not merely a residue of Africa's encounter with Europe but a project in continuity in contemporary history of Africa, where history has become a location of struggle and meaning, a location of power and domination. Eze contends that postcolonial African studies that thrive by way of unanimity, analogy, or homogenenity are merely advancing a "defeatist" historicism. It attempts to gain essence by inverting the terms of colonial discourse and is decisively implicated in the very logic of coloniality. This method of historiography not only stifles the overall socio-political imagination of contemporary Africa but offers a dogmatic blueprint for politics of domination. Eze argues that a chance for an African Renaissance is dependent on review mechanisms of African historiography
Bringing together a distinguished cast of contributors, this book provides an authoritative and definitive analysis of the theory, practice, and development impact of corruption in Africa. The book offers a wide range of country case studies outlining the deleterious effects of corruption, the factors which have combined to hamper past efforts to combat it, and the required future solutions and the context of their application in Africa. Combating corruption is demonstrated to require greater priority in the quest for African development.
Cape Town's iconic Table Mountain and the surrounding peninsula has been a crucible for attempts to integrate the social and ecological dimensions of wild fire. This environmental history of humans and wildfire outlines these interactions from the practices of Khoikhoi herders to the conflagrations of January 2000. The region's unique, famously diverse fynbos vegetation has been transformed since European colonial settlement, through urbanisation and biological modifications, both intentional (forestry) and unintentional (biological invasions). In all the diverse visions people have formed for Table Mountain, aesthetic and utilitarian, fire has been regarded as a central problem. This book shows how scientific understandings of fire in fynbos developed slowly in the face of strong prejudices. Human impacts were intensified in the twentieth century, which provides the temporal focus for the book. The disjunctures between popular perception, expert knowledge, policy and management are explored, and the book supplements existing short-term scientific data with proxies on fire incidence trends recovered from historical records.
South Africa's history stretches back to the beginnings of human existence. This book provides an overview to South Africa's multiple millennia of history, covering its long and often troubled past to its current status in the 21st century. A newly revised and thoroughly updated version of a popular Greenwood publication, The History of South Africa: Second Edition provides readers with readable, accessible information on the nation's prehistory, early history and colonial past, its unfortunate apartheid era, as well as new coverage of South Africa's more recent events in the 20th and 21st centuries. This work presents unique, extended coverage of South Africa's prehistory, beginning 3.5 million years ago and incorporating information gleaned from the most recent archaeological finds. The text reflects the most current historiography on African settlement and life before the arrival of Europeans, accurately describes the colonial era as a period of European hegemony and intense African resistance, and discusses in great detail the apartheid years and the events leading up to majority rule in 1994. This second edition also includes an updated timeline, new biographical sketches of notable people, and supplies recent print and electronic resources in the bibliography. Provides an easily accessible and highly readable general introduction to the history of South Africa that includes extensive coverage of its prehistory and early history Supplies a detailed examination of the last years of apartheid and the events leading up to majority rule in 1994 Includes an extensive discussion of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its effect on the country
This book explores the traces of the passage of time on the protracted and intractable conflict of Western Sahara. The authors offer a multilevel analysis of recent developments from the global to the local scenes, including the collapse of the architecture of the UN-led conflict resolution process, the advent of the War on Terror to the the Sahara-Sahel area and the impact of the 'Arab Spring' and growing regional security instability. Special attention is devoted to changes in the Western Sahara territory annexed by Morocco and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco has adapted its governance and public policies to profound socio-demographic transformations in the territory under its control and has attempted to obtain international recognition for this annexation by proposing an Autonomy Plan. The Polisario Front and Sahrawi nationalists have shifted their strategy and pushed the centre of gravity of the conflict back inwards by focusing on pro-independence activism inside the disputed territory.
This book is about African Pentecostalism and its relationship to religious beliefs about a pervading spirit world. It argues that Pentecostalism keeps both a continuous and a discontinuous relationship in tension. Based on field research in a South African township, including qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, the study explores the context of African Pentecostalism as a whole and how it interacts with the concepts of ancestors, divination, and various types of spirit. Themes discussed include the reasons for the popularity of healing, exorcism, the "prosperity gospel," the experience of the Holy Spirit, Spirit manifestations and practices resembling both traditional and biblical precedents, as well as scholarly discussions on African Pentecostalism from theological and social scientific disciplines. The book suggests that the focus on a spirit-filled world affects all kinds of events and explains the rapid growth of Pentecostalism outside the western world.
""A fascinating read ... history that has never before been
revealed. I highly recommend this book to the young and old who
thirst for true knowledge of African ancestry.""-Lisa Haywood "The Saga of the Early Warri Princes" narrates the circumstances and time of Prince Iginua's exile from the Edo Kingdom in West Africa in the late fifteenth century and the establishment of the Iginua Dynasty. With vivid details, author Chris O'mone delivers the intriguing story of this little-known piece of African history. By the order of the Oba, young Prince Iginua was sent to establish a subordinate kingdom in the riverine settlements of Itsekiri near the Edo Kingdom. He was also charged with controlling and supervising the Portuguese trade. Effectively banished from his country in the midst of an economic upheaval caused by European trade, Prince Iginua nevertheless took his loyal followers with him to the settlements. Here, he established a dynasty that survived and prospered in adverse environmental circumstances. Remarkably, the Iginua Dynasty rivaled the Edo Kingdom by embracing the same European trade, religion, and education that had so disrupted the Edo Kingdom. But perhaps even more remarkable was how Prince Iginua's descendants came to be related to the Royal House of Braganza, which ruled Portugal and Brazil for centuries. "The Saga of the Early Warri Princes" offers a detailed historical account, ideal for general readers and scholars alike.
Based on archival sources and oral history, this book reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre fence divides northern from central Namibia even today. The book combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European and African. |
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