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

During the heyday of camel caravan traffic-from the eighth century CE arrival of Islam in North Africa to the early twentieth-century building of European colonial railroads that linked the Sudan with the Atlantic-the Sahara was one of the world's great commercial highways, bringing gold, slaves, and other commodities northward and sending both manufactured goods and Mediterranean culture southward into the Sudan. Historian Ralph A. Austen here tells the remarkable story of an African world that grew out of more than one thousand years of trans-Saharan trading. Perhaps the most enduring impact of this trade and the common cultural reference point of trans-Saharan Africa was Islam. Austen traces this faith in its various forms-as a legal system for regulating trade, an inspiration for reformist movements, and a vehicle of literacy and cosmopolitan knowledge. He also analyzes the impact of European overseas expansion, which marginalized trans-Saharan commerce in global terms but stimulated its local growth. Indeed, trans-Saharan culture not only adapted to colonial changes, but often thrived upon them, remaining a potent force into the twenty-first century.

Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and even cooperation between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority? Addressing the question of how the risk of genocide develops over time, On the Path to Genocide contributes to a better understand why genocide occurs when it does. It provides a comprehensive and comparative historical analysis of the factors that led to the 1915 Armenian genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using fresh sources and perspectives that yield new insights into the history of the Armenian and Rwandan peoples. Finally, it also presents new research into constraints that inhibit genocide, and how they can be utilized to attempt the prevention of genocide in the future.

Examines the making and remaking of Nairobi, one of Africa's most fragmented, vibrant cities, contributing to debates on urban anthropology, the politics of the past and postcolonial materialities. What does it mean to make a life in an African city today? How do ordinary Africans, surrounded by collapsing urban infrastructures and amid fantastical promises of hypermodern, globalised futures, try to ensure a place for themselves in the city's future? Exploring the relationship between the remains of empire and the global city, and themes of urban belonging and exclusion, housing and security, Constance Smith examines the making and remaking of one ofAfrica's most fragmented, vibrant cities. Nairobi is on the cusp of radical urban change. As in other capital cities across Africa, the Kenyan government has launched "Vision 2030", an urban megaproject that envisions the capital as a "world class metropolis", a spectacular new node in a network of global cities. Yet as a city born of British colonialism, Nairobians also live amongst the dilapidated vestiges of imperial urban planning; spaces designed to regulate urban subjects. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a dilapidated, colonial-era public housing project built as a model urban neighbourhood but which is now slated for demolition, Smith explores how projects of self-making and city-making are entwined. She traces how it is through residents' everyday lives - in the mundane, incremental work of home maintenance, in the accumulation of stories about the past, in ordinary people's aspirations for the future - that urban landscapes are formed, imaginatively, materially and unpredictably, across time. Nairobi emerges as a place of pathways and plans, obstructions and aspirations, residues and endurances, thatinflect the way that ordinary people produce the city, generating practices of historymaking, ideas about urban belonging and attempts to refashion "Vision 2030" into a future more meaningful and inclusive to ordinary city dwellers. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,Rwanda: Twaweza Communications

""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.

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 charts in detail the West's response, particularly that of the US, to Libya's possible involvement in the bombing of the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in 1988. It suggests that this response cannot be fully understood without consideration of the United States as sole military superpower in the New World Order. Geoff Simons argues that the US decision to target Libya, and to involve the UN in this policy, has more to do with the realpolitik objectives of a hegemonic power than with the disinterested use of international law to combat terrorism. The Lockerbie issue is set against a detailed history of Libya from the earliest times to the present, with emphasis on Libya's colonial past, the pivotal significance of Libya's oil resources, the character of the Gaddafi revolution, and the consequent impact on relations with the United States.

Much of the work in the field of African studies still relies on rigid distinctions of 'tradition' and 'modernity', 'collaboration' and 'resistance', 'indigenous' and 'foreign'. This book moves well beyond these frameworks to probe the complex entanglements of different intellectual traditions in the South African context, by examining two case studies.

The case studies constitute the core around which is woven this intriguing story of the development of black theatre in South Africa in the early years of the century. It also highlights the dialogue between African and African-American intellectuals, and the intellectual formation of the early African elite in relation to colonial authority and how each affected the other in complicated ways.

The first case study centres on Mariannhill Mission in KwaZulu-Natal. Here the evangelical and pedagogical drama pioneered by the Rev Bernard Huss, is considered alongside the work of one of the mission's most eminent alumni, the poet and scholar, B.W. Vilakazi. The second moves to Johannesburg and gives a detailed insight into the working of the Bantu Dramatic Society and the drama of H.I.E. Dhlomo in relation to the British Drama League and other white liberal cultural activities.

Trouble in the West provides the first full and continuous account of the Persian-Egyptian War, a conflict that continued for nearly the two-hundred-year duration of the Persian Empire. Despite its status as the largest of all ancient Persian military enterprises--including any aimed at Greece--this conflict has never been reconstructed in any detailed and comprehensive way. Thus, Trouble in the West adds tremendously to our understanding of Persian imperial affairs. At the same time, it dramatically revises our understanding of eastern Mediterranean and Aegean affairs by linking Persian dealings with Greeks and other peoples in the west to Persia's fundamental, ongoing Egyptian concerns. In this study, Stephen Ruzicka argues that Persia's Egyptian problem and, conversely, Egypt's Persian problem, were much more important in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean worlds than our conventional Greek-centered perspective and sources have allowed us to see. In looking at this conflict as one stage in an enduring east-west conflict between successive Near Eastern imperial powers and Egypt--one which stretched across nearly the whole of ancient history--it represents an important turning point: by pulling in remote western states and peoples, who subsequently became masters of Egypt, western opposition to Near Eastern power was sustained right up to the 7th century Arab conquests. For classicists and historians of the ancient Near East, Trouble in the West will serve as a valuable, and long-overdue, resource.

In northwest Namibia, peopleOCOs political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State. By elucidating the State through a focus on the social, historical and cultural processes that help constitute it, this study helps chart new territory for anthropology, and it contributes an ethnographic perspective to a wider set of interdisciplinary debates on the State and state processes."

The book examines, compares, and contrasts the African American and Oromo movements by locating them in the global context, and by showing how life chances changed for the two peoples and their descendants as the modern world system became more complex and developed. Since the same global system that created racialized and exploitative structures in African American and Oromo societies also facilitated the struggles of these two peoples, this book demonstrates the dynamic interplay between social structures and human agencies in the system. African Americans in the US and Oromos in the Ethiopian Empire developed their respective liberation movements in opposition to racial/ethnonational oppression, cultural and colonial domination, exploitation, and underdevelopment. By going beyond its focal point, the book also explores the structural limit of nationalism, and the potential of revolutionary nationalism in promoting a genuine multicultural democracy.

A largely untold story of an extraordinary historical figure, this biography sheds light on the life of William Sheppard, a 19th-century African American who, for more than 20 years, defied segregation and operated a missionary run by black Americans in the Belgian Congo. This work shows how Sheppard returned to United States periodically, and traveled the country telling tales of his adventures to packed auditoriums. An anthropologist, photographer, big-game hunter, and art collector, the man billed as the "Black Livingstone" helped expose the atrocities that occurred under the reign of King Leopold, and this stirring work tells how he eventually helped to break Belgium's hold on the Congo.

This book examines conflicting historical interpretations of the origins, evolution, and ending of apartheid. Lipton argues & provides detailed supporting evidence that apartheid was ended by a relatively non-violent process of reform that began around 1970, and culminated in the negotiations following President de Klerk's release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and his reinstatement of the African National Congress and other organizations, in February 1990.

Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of putting pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.

A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela’s personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written on Robben Island and in other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the post-apartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency – a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power.

One night in the year 411/1021, the powerful ruler of the Fatimid empire, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, rode out of the southern gates of Cairo and was never seen again. Was the caliph murdered, or could he have decided to abandon his royal life, wandering off to live alone and anonymous? Whatever the truth, the fact was that al-Hakim had literally vanished into the desert. Yet al-Hakim, though shrouded in mystery, has never been forgotten. To the Druze, he was (and is) God, and his disappearance merely indicated his reversion to non-human form. For Ismailis, al-Hakim was the sixteenth imam, descended from the Prophet, and infallible. Jews and Christians, by contrast, long remembered him as their persecutor, who ordered the destruction of many of their synagogues and churches. Using all the tools of modern scholarship, Paul Walker offers the most balanced and engaging biography yet to be published of this endlessly fascinating individual.
To some, al-Hakim was God incarnate, to others an infallible imam, to still others he was a capricious tyrant. This book examines myth and fact, document and opinion, to present the most complete and detailed history yet written of the life and times of one of the medieval Islamic world's most controversial figures.

For the first time, the 92-metre frieze of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, one of the largest historical narratives in marble, has been made the subject of a book.

The pictorial narrative of the Boer pioneers who conquered South Africa’s interior during the ‘Great Trek’ (1835-1852) represents a crucial period of South Africa’s past. Forming the concept of the frieze both reflected on and contributed to the country’s socio-political debates in the 1930s and 1940s when it was made. The frieze is unique in that it provides rare evidence of the complex processes followed in creating a major monument.

Based on unpublished documents, drawings and models, these processes are unfolded step by step, from the earliest discussions of the purpose and content of the frieze through all the stages of its design to its shipping to post-war Italy to be copied into marble and final installation in the Monument. The book examines how visual representation transforms historical memory in what it chooses to recount, and the forms in which it depicts this. It also investigates the active role the Monument played in the development of apartheid, and its place in post-apartheid heritage.

The second volume, to be published later this year, expands on the first, considering each of the twenty-seven scenes in depth, providing new insights into not only the frieze, but also South Africa’s history.

In "Moving the Maasai" Lotte Hughes tells the scandalous story of how the Maasai people of Kenya lost the best part of their land to the British in the 1900s. Drawing upon unique oral testimony and extensive archival research, she describes the many intrigues surrounding two enforced moves that cleared the highlands for European settlers, and a 1913 lawsuit in which the Maasai attempted to reclaim their former territory, and explains why recent events have brought the story full circle.