A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world history.

This book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era.

Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies—from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting—highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators. He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa.

A monumental achievement by one of today’s eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.

William Balfour Baikie was a surgeon, naturalist, linguist, writer, explorer and government consul who played a key role in opening Africa to the Europeans. As an explorer he mapped and charted large sections of the Niger River system as well as the overland routes from Lagos and Lokoja to the major trading centres of Kano, Timbuctu and Sokoto. As a naturalist, major beneficiaries of his work included Kew Gardens and the British Museum for the rare and undiscovered plant and animal species and yet today he remains largely unknown. On 10th December, 1864 Baikie was on his way back to London and was living in his temporary quarters in Sierra Leone. There he worked to regain his health and to complete the various reports and publications expected by the Colonial and Foreign Offices. He had been away from England for seven years and living conditions in West Africa had caused his health to suffer. While his wife and children waited for his return 600 miles away in Lokoja, the city in Nige-ria he had founded, his father waited for his return to Kirkwall, Orkney. Baikie would never return to his wife, nor ever see his father again. In two days, he would be dead and buried at Sierra Leone before his fortieth birthday. In his short life Baikie became such a hero among the Nigerian people 150 years ago that white visitors to the region today are still greeted warmly as 'Baikie'. After studying at University of Edinburgh he was assigned to the Royal Hospital Haslar where he worked with the noted explorers Sir John Richardson and Sir Edward Perry. Baikie's reputation as a naturalist, and the sphere of influence provided by Richardson and Perry, allowed him to enter the elite British scientific community where he also worked alongside the most famous naturalist of the time, Charles Darwin. During his time at Haslar, Baikie made two voyages exploring the Niger and Benue Rivers to establish trading centres for the Liverpool merchant Macgregor Laird. The first was a resounding success. He conducted the first clinical trial using quinine as a preventative for malaria. For the first time in history, his initial exploration of these rivers was conducted without the loss of a single life to fever. Returning to London to a hero's welcome, he was nominated for one of the Royal Geographic Society's prestigious awards. His second voyage was a pure disaster. His ship was wrecked; members of the expedition died and he was stranded for over a year in the vast remote territory known as the Sokoto Caliphate. Following his rescue, he elected to remain alone in Africa for what would be his final years in order to complete his personal mission. Although he was born 4,000 miles away in Orkney, Baikie was designated the King of Lokoja by the ruler of the Sokoto Caliphate. This book defines the man and his accomplishments and reveals how he is so fondly remembered by the Nigerians and yet apparently so totally forgotten by the rest of the world.

The major focus of the book is an examination of the efforts being made by democratizing states in Africa to reconstitute the postcolonial state, so that it can become relevant to the needs and aspirations of the majority of the peoples of Africa. Using seven democratizing states in Africa as case studies, the book specifically examines three major interrelated issues: the multifaceted crises of state building in Africa; the efforts to democratically reconstitute the postcolonial state in Africa; and the proffering of suggestions to help address the challenges posed by the state reconstitution project.

First published in 1972. This volume includes a personal recounting of events during the Nigerian Civil War, by the author who was the Chief Secretary of the Government in Biafra 1967. The second edition includes a preface that answers questions about the author's warnings and lessons for the future Africa and his reflections on the disappearance of Nigeria from news and media since the war.

Touts is a historical account of the troubled formation of a colonial labor market in the Gulf of Guinea and a major contribution to the historiography of indentured labor, which has relatively few reference points in Africa. The setting is West Africa's largest island, Fernando Po or Bioko in today's Equatorial Guinea, 100 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria. The Spanish ruled this often-ignored island from the mid-nineteenth century until 1968. A booming plantation economy led to the arrival of several hundred thousand West African, principally Nigerian, contract workers on steamships and canoes. In Touts, Enrique Martino traces the confusing transition from slavery to other labor regimes, paying particular attention to the labor brokers and their financial, logistical, and clandestine techniques for bringing workers to the island. Martino combines multi-sited archival research with the concept of touts as "lumpen-brokers" to offer a detailed study of how commercial labor relations could develop, shift and collapse through the recruiters' own techniques, such as large wage advances and elaborate deceptions. The result is a pathbreaking reconnection of labor mobility, contract law, informal credit structures and exchange practices in African history.

This work explores the lives of people of sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants, how they were shaped by empire, and how they in turn influenced the empire in everything from material goods to cultural style. The black experience varied greatly across space and over time. Accordingly, thirteen substantive essays and a scene-setting introduction range from West Africa in the sixteenth century, through the history of the slave trade and slavery down to the 1830s, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century participation of blacks in the empire as workers, soldiers, members of colonial elites, intellectuals, athletes, and musicians. No people were more uprooted and dislocated; or traveled more within the empire; or created more of a trans-imperial culture. In the crucible of the British empire, blacks invented cultural mixes that were precursors to our modern selves - hybrid, fluid, ambiguous, and constantly in motion. SERIES DESCRIPTION The purpose of the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire was to provide a comprehensive study of the Empire from its beginning to end, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. The volumes in the Companion Series carry forward this purpose by exploring themes that were not possible to cover adequately in the main series, and to provide fresh interpretations of significant topics.

Traces the dynamics of state-building in Juba, Southern Sudan 2005-2011, revealing how underlying ties of ethnicity and land dominated the actions of the various parties in post-conflict reconstruction and how these may continue to influence power and resource-sharing in the newly independent state of South Sudan. Naseem Badiey examines the local dynamics of the emerging capital city of Juba, Southern Sudan, during the historically pivotal transition period following the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Focusing on the intersections of land tenure reform and urban development, she challenges the dominant paradigm of 'post-conflict reconstruction' and re-conceptualizes state-building as a social process underpinned by negotiation. Badiey explores local resistance to reconstruction programmes, debates over the interpretation of peace settlements, and competing claims to land and resources not as problems to be solved through interventions but as negotiations of authority which are fundamental to shaping the character of the 'state'. While donors and aid agency officials anticipated clashes between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) following the CPA, they did not foresee internal divisions that impeded reconstruction in Southern Sudan, raising serious questions about the viability of an independent state. In Juba local elites interpreted the CPA in line with their economic and political interests, using claims to land, authority and political power to challenge the SPLM's agenda for urban reconstruction. In revealing how local actors strategically interpreted the framework of land rights in Southern Sudan, the book offers a basis for understanding the challenges that confront the nascent South Sudan's state-builders and their international partners in the future. NASEEM BADIEY is Assistant Professor of International Development andHumanitarian Action at California State University Monterey Bay.

First published in 1906, this archaeological examination of the ruins of Zimbabwe, Rhodesia's pre-historic monument, asserted that it was African in origin, belonging to the medieval period. The academic controversy still has echoes in the 21st century.

Nicol Stassen is die voorste kenner op die Dorslandtrekkers en hul merkwaardige swerftogte aan die binneland van Suider-Afrika. In Van Humpata tot Upingtonia vertel hy op boeiende wyse hoe dit gebeur het dat ’n aantal trekkers in 1885 die republiek Upingtonia in die noorde van Damaraland gestig het.

Die Kaapse bruin man William Worthington Jordan, een van die merkwaardigste persone wat gedurende hierdie jare in Suider-Afrika geleef het, het ’n belangrike rol gespeel in die stigting hiervan. Sy tragiese dood en die ondergang van die vergete republiek Upingtonia word van naderby belig.

Enemy Of The People is the first definitive account of Zuma’s catastrophic misrule, offering eyewitness descriptions and cogent analysis of how South Africa was brought to its knees – and how a nation fought back.

When Jacob Zuma took over the leadership of the ANC one muggy Polokwane evening in December 2007, he inherited a country where GDP was growing by more than 6% per annum, a party enjoying the support of two-thirds of the electorate, and a unified tripartite alliance. Today, South Africa is caught in the grip of a patronage network, the economy is floundering and the ANC is staring down the barrel of a defeat at the 2019 general elections. How did we get here?

Zuma first brought to heel his party, Africa’s oldest and most revered liberation movement, subduing and isolating dissidents associated with his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. Then saw the emergence of the tenderpreneur and those attempting to capture the state, as well as a network of family, friends and business associates that has become so deeply embedded that it has, in effect, replaced many parts of government. Zuma opened up the state to industrial-scale levels of corruption, causing irreparable damage to state enterprises, institutions of democracy, and the ANC itself.

But it hasn’t all gone Zuma’s way. Former allies have peeled away. A new era of activism has arisen and outspoken civil servants have stepped forward to join a cross-section of civil society and a robust media. As a divided ANC square off for the elective conference in December, where there is everything to gain or to lose, award-winning journalists Adriaan Basson and Pieter du Toit offer a brilliant and up-to-date account of the Zuma era.

Between the late 1880s and the onset of the Second World War, anti-slavery activism experienced a revival in Europe. Anti-slavery organizations in Britain, Italy, France, and Switzerland forged an informal international network to fight the continued existence of slavery and slave trading in Africa. Humanitarian Imperialism explores the scope and outreach of these antislavery groups along with their organisational efforts and campaigning strategies. The account focuses on the interwar years, when slavery in Africa became a focal point of humanitarian and imperial interest, linking Catholic and Protestant philanthropists, missionaries of different faiths, colonial officials, diplomats, and political leaders in Africa and Europe. At the centre of the narrative is the campaign against slavery in Ethiopia, an issue which served as a catalyst for the articulation of international humanitarian standards within the League of Nations in Geneva. By looking at the interplay between British and Italian advocates of abolition, Humanitarian Imperialism shows how in the 1930s anti-slavery campaigning evolved in close association with Fascist imperialism. Thus, during the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935, the anti-slavery argument became a propaganda tool to placate public opinion in Britain and elsewhere. Because of its global echoes, however, the conflict also generated worldwide protest that undermined the beliefs and certainties of anti-slavery campaigners, resulting in a crisis of humanitarian imperialism. By following the story of anti-slavery activism into the post-1945 period, this volume illuminates the continuities and discontinuities in the international history of humanitarian organizations as well as the history of imperial humanitarianism.

First Published in 1971. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

As khat chewing has become a popular Ugandan pastime, it is seen as a threat to law and order. Traders and consumers are harassed by the police, and one district authority has banned khat. New production areas, such as Uganda, share many common features with established khat production in Ethiopia and Kenya. By telling of the story of khat, the book will serve as a vehicle for the analysis of social change, development priorities and shifting ethnic identities in Uganda over the last 80 years.

First published in 1914, this is a systematic treatment of the people whose contribution to civilization of the Nile Valley was for so long a source of controversy.

The Black Handbook is the authoritative guide to the people, history and politics of Africa and the African Diaspora up until the end of the 20th century. Who were Black Moses, the Black Seminoles, the Black shots and the Black Pimpernel? Which Pope gave the King of Portugal permission to invade, conquer and submit to perpetual slavery the people of Africa? What was the African Blood Brotherhood? Why was a Jamaican the last man to be beheaded in Britain? Who were the Talented Tenth? Why did Egypt invade Ethiopia in 1875? Who was the first black American woman to become a millionaire? Who were the Mangrove Nine? Spanning three continents, The Black Handbook describes and analyses, in an accessible way, the essential events, ideas and personalities of the African world.

First Published in 1970. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this single square mile hemmed in by White areas, residents engaged in what is arguably the most multi-faceted, inventive, and versatile strategy of resistance during the 1970s. Apartheid on a Black Isle brings to the fore the definitive but underappreciated role that Alexandra played in advancing human rights. Using their manufactured space, Alexandrans revolutionized the South African freedom struggle by fertilizing the underground movement, by joining in solidarity with Soweto during the student uprising and by finding unique ways to grieve. This book explores and introduces ordinary Alexandrans whose narratives challenged preconceived notions of resistance, identity, gender and space.

First Published in 1970. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume deals mainly with Swann's life on and around Lake Tanganyika, a life that brought him knowledge of many African peoples living on the lake's shores. First published in 1910.