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Books > History > African history
Moroccan Jewry has a long tradition, harking back to the area's
earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and
associations with the historic peoples of the region. In Jews and
Muslims of Morocco historians, anthropologists, musicologists,
Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists examine the complex and
hybrid history of intercultural exchange between Moroccan Jewry and
the Arab and Berber cultures through analyses of the Jews' use of
Morocco's multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry,
and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular
texts and proverbs. The essays in this collection span political
and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities,
traditions, and halakhic developments. Acknowledging that Jewish
life in Morocco has dwindled and continues to exist primarily in
the memories of Moroccan Jewish diaspora communities, the volume
concludes with personal memories an analysis of a visual memoir,
and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.
This book argues that capitalism has practically failed to deliver
the long-desired economic transformation and inclusive development
in postcolonial Africa. The principal factor that accounts for this
failure is the prolific non-productive forms of capitalism that
tend to be dominant in the African continent and their governance
dimensions. The research explores how and why capitalism has failed
in the African context and the feasibility of turning it around.
The book meets the demands of diverse audiences in the fields of
International Political Economy, Development Economics, Political
Science, and African Studies. The author adopts an unconventional
narrativist approach that makes the book amenable to general
readership.
For thirty years Sudan has been a country in crisis, wracked by
near-constant warfare between the north and the south. But on July
9, 2011, South Sudan became an independent nation. As Sudan once
again finds itself the focus of international attention, former
special envoy to Sudan and director of USAID Andrew Natsios
provides a timely introduction to the country at this pivotal
moment in its history. Focusing on the events of the last 25 years,
Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
sheds light on the origins of the conflict between northern and
southern Sudan and the complicated politics of this volatile
nation. Natsios gives readers a first-hand view of Sudan's past as
well as an honest appraisal of its future. In the wake of South
Sudan's independence, Natsios explores the tensions that remain on
both sides. Issues of citizenship, security, oil management, and
wealth-sharing all remain unresolved. Human rights issues,
particularly surrounding the ongoing violence in Darfur, likewise
still clamor for solutions. Informative and accessible, this book
introduces readers to the most central issues facing Sudan as it
stands on the brink of historic change.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford
University Press
Imperialism, Decolonization and Africa honours John Hargreaves and
reflects his academic interests. Three studies concern imperial
questions in Africa in the nineteenth century (the Krio and the
British, the kingdom of Asante and the prelude to the partition of
East Africa) and two more discuss international aspects of
decolonization in the twentieth century in relation to the French
in Africa and the British in the Middle East. There is also a note
on John Hargreaves and a bibliography of his publications.
A stunning work of popular history-the story of how a crop
transformed the history of slavery Americans consume over 1.5
billion pounds of peanut products every year. But few of us know
the peanut's tumultuous history, or its intimate connection to
slavery and freedom. Lyrical and powerful, Slaves for Peanuts
deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that
transformed the lives of millions. Author Jori Lewis reveals how
demand for peanut oil in Europe ensured that slavery in Africa
would persist well into the twentieth century, long after the
European powers had officially banned it in the territories they
controlled. Delving deep into West African and European archives,
Lewis recreates a world on the coast of Africa that is
breathtakingly real and unlike anything modern readers have
experienced. Slaves for Peanuts is told through the eyes of a set
of richly detailed characters-from an African-born French
missionary harboring runaway slaves, to the leader of a Wolof state
navigating the politics of French imperialism-who challenge our
most basic assumptions of the motives and people who supported
human bondage. At a time when Americans are grappling with the
enduring consequences of slavery, here is a new and revealing
chapter in its global history.
This book offers the first comprehensive history of white workers
from the end of the First World War to Zimbabwean independence in
1980. It reveals how white worker identity was constituted,
examines the white labouring class as an ethnically and nationally
heterogeneous formation comprised of both men and women, and
emphasises the active participation of white workers in the ongoing
and contested production of race. White wage labourers'
experiences, both as exploited workers and as part of the
privileged white minority, offer insight into how race and class
co-produced one another and how boundaries fundamental to settler
colonialism were regulated and policed. Based on original research
conducted in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK, this book offers a
unique theoretical synthesis of work on gender, whiteness studies,
labour histories, settler colonialism, Marxism, emotions and the
New African Economic History. -- .
Carl Peters (1856-1918) ranked among Germany's most prominent imperialists in the nineteenth century. He became known as the founder of Deutsch-Ostafrika, a region many Germans saw as the pearl of their overseas possessions, and his memory was revered in Nazi Germany. This biography reveals his role in Germany's colonial expansion.
This second volume of research emanating from Drama for Life,
University of the Witwatersrand, explores the transformative and
healing qualities of the arts in South Africa, Botswana, Cameroon,
Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. Essays on arts for social change
illuminate the difficulties of conflict-resolution (in war-scarred
countries, tertiary institutions, and child-offender programmes) to
promote broader understanding of diversity and difference. Further
essays focus on arts and healing, in which music therapy diagnoses,
repairs, sustains, and enhances collective health. Intervention
theatre - in prisons, fieldwork, and the ethics and politics of
storytelling - is examined as a basis for collaboration with
children and youth. The musical theatre traditions of Botswana's
San people are investigated, as well as the benefits of arts
counselling with educators to alleviate psycho-social stress in
classrooms. Important insights are provided into ways of applying
the arts and raise questions of ethics, effectiveness, and apposite
usage. Also treated is the role of aesthetics in the effectiveness
of art, particularly in social contexts. Included are overviews of
the ways in which the aesthetics of drama have changed over the
past four decades and of the cohesive potential of the arts. How
can arts practitioners engage in inter-cultural dialogue to
facilitate healing? The energy and inventiveness of the playful
mode engender new ways of contending with social issues, whereby
the focus is on how theatre affects an audience and on how
communication in applied theatre and drama can reach audiences more
effectively. These essays provide an insight into the application
of the arts for transformation across Africa. Through their
juxtaposition in this volume they speak to the variety and purposes
of arts approaches and offer fresh perspectives on and to the
field.
Through in-depth, qualitative analysis of data from archives and
research sites in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, The Making of Mbano: British Colonialism, Resistance, and
Diplomatic Engagements in Southeastern Nigeria, 1906-1960 argues
that African people in Mbano consistently and fearlessly invoked
their pre-colonial socio-cultural, political, and economic values
in resisting, scrutinizing, and ultimately negotiating with the
British colonial government. In investigating Africa's complex and
diverse engagements with the British through the lens of the Mbano
colonial experience, Ogechi E. Anyanwu highlights the fascinating
intersection of foreign and indigenous notions of community,
culture, political economy, religion, and gender in shaping the
Mbano colonial identity. Anyanwu carefully introduces readers to a
wider variety of people in colonial Mbano who contributed to the
historical experience of Southeastern Nigeria and whose names do
not appear in history books.
This book provides the first comprehensive study of the 'special
relationship' between Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. While
most studies approach this from the history of British and South
African relations or the history of South African territorial
expansion, this book offers new insights by examining Southern
Rhodesia's relations with South Africa from the former's
perspective. Exploring relations through the lens of settler
colonialism, the book argues that settler colonialism in the region
was marked by a competitive and antagonistic relationship between
settler communities, particularly Afrikaner and English
communities. The book explores the connections between these
countries by examining (high) politics, economic links, and social
and cultural ties, highlighting both instances of competition and
cooperation. Above all, it argues that economic ties were the
cornerstone of the relationship and that these shaped the rest of
the ties between the two countries. Drawing on archival records
from Britain, South Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as a number of
secondary sources, it offers a much more nuanced perspective of
this relationship than has been previously offered.
Uganda is one of the most fascinating countries in Africa. Situated
in the middle of the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa, it is
home to diverse flora and fauna. Little wonder Winston Churchill
famously named it "the Pearl of Africa". Neighbored by South Sudan,
DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda, Uganda claims the source of the
River Nile and a larger share of Victoria, Africa's largest lake.
Uganda's capital, Kampala is famous for hosting many international
conferences and summits including the 2007 Commonwealth Head of
Government Meeting. Uganda is witnessing rapid development,
overseen by Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni who has served as president
since 1986, making him the longest serving leader in Uganda.
Museveni came to power on the backdrop of a 5-year guerilla
struggle that toppled the regimes of Milton Obote and the military
junta of Tito Okello Lutwa. Historical Dictionary of Uganda, Second
Edition, covers the history of Uganda using a chronology, an
introductory essay, appendixes, and a bibliography. The dictionary
section covers many entries on politics, economy, foreign affairs,
religion, society, culture, and important personalities. The book
provides a quick access for researchers, students, tourists, and
anyone interesting in learning about Uganda.
Pioneering study of the role of the Christian churches in the
Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi; a key work for historians, memory
studies scholars, religion scholars and Africanists. Why did some
sectors of the Rwandan churches adopt an ambiguous attitude towards
the genocide against the Tutsi which claimed the lives of around
800,000 people in three months between April and July 1994? What
prevented the churches' acceptance that they may have had some
responsibility? And how should we account for the efforts made by
other sectors of the churches to remember and commemorate the
genocide and rebuild pastoral programmes? Drawing on interviews
with genocide survivors, Rwandans in exile, missionaries and
government officials, as well as Church archives and other sources,
this book is the first academic study on Christianity and the
genocide against the Tutsi to explore these contentious questions
in depth, and reveals more internal diversity within the Christian
churches than is often assumed. While some Christians, Protestant
as well as Catholic, took risks to shelter Tutsi people, others
uncritically embraced the interim government's view that the Tutsi
were enemies of the people and some, even priests and pastors,
assisted the killers. The church leaders only condemned the war:
they never actually denounced the genocide against the Tutsi.
Focusing on the period of the genocide in 1994 and the subsequent
years (up to 2000), Denis examines in detail the responses of two
churches, the Catholic Church, the biggest and the most complex,
and the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, which made an unconditional
confession of guilt in December 1996. A case study is devoted to
the Catholic parish La Crete Congo-Nil in western Rwanda, led at
the time by the French priest Gabriel Maindron, a man whom genocide
survivors accuse of having failed publicly to oppose the genocide
and of having close links with the authorities and some of the
perpetrators. By 1997, the defensive attitude adopted by many
Catholics had started to change. The Extraordinary Synod on
Ethnocentricity in 1999-2000 was a milestone. Yet, especially in
the immediate aftermath of the genocide, tension and suspicion
persist. Fountain: Rwanda, Uganda
What were the origins of British ideas on rural poverty, and how
did they shape development practice in Malawi? How did the
international development narrative influence the poverty discourse
in postcolonial Malawi from the 1960s onwards? In The State and the
Legacies of British Colonial Development in Malawi: Confronting
Poverty, 1939-1983, Gift Wasambo Kayira addresses these questions.
Although by no means rehabilitating colonialism, the book argues
that the intentions of officials and agencies charged with
delivering economic development programs were never as ill-informed
or wicked as some theorists have contended. Raising rural
populations from poverty was on the agenda before and after
independence. How to reconcile the pressing demand of stabilizing
the country's economy and alleviating rural poverty within the
context of limited resources proved an impossible task to achieve.
Also difficult was how to reconcile the interests of outside
experts influenced by international geopolitics and theories of
economic development and those of local personnel and politicians,.
As a result, development efforts always fell short of their goals.
Through a meticulous search of the archive on rural and industrial
development projects, Kayira presents a development history that
displays the shortfalls of existing works on development
inadequately grounded in historical study.
Enjoy a rich collection of folktales, myths and legends from all
over Africa and the Caribbean, re-told for young readers. From the
trickster tales of Anansi the spider, to the story of how the
leopard got his spots; from the tale of the king who wanted to
touch the moon, to Aunt Misery's magical starfruit tree. This book
includes traditional favourites and classic folktales and
mythology.
Innovative study of the role of sports in modernity in Africa.
Sports in Ethiopia was always more than a means of useful
recreation. It was also a way to enjoy and define fun, as new modes
of behaviour emerged that showed what it meant to be a modern man
or woman. This book is the first academic study of the history of
modern sports in Ethiopia during the imperial rule of the twentieth
century. Showing how agents, ideas and practices linked societal
improvement and bodily improvement, this innovative study argues
thatmodern sports offers new possibilities to explore the meanings
of modernity in Africa. Drawing on written and oral sources in
Amharic, Tigrinya, English, French, German and Italian, Bromber
provides an in-depth analysis of the role of sports in modern
educational institutions, volunteer organizations and urbanization
processes. She examines sports' function as a political propaganda
tool during the Italian fascist occupation (1935 - 1941), as well
as in representations of successful modernization under Haile
Selassie (1930 - 1974). The integration into global networks of
ideas about the fit colonized body linked Ethiopia, which was never
colonized, to the legacy of colonialism. Institutions such as
schools, civilian sports clubs, and volunteer organizations were
not only loaded with coercive procedures, but instituted modes of
behaviour that developed into certain styles and affirmation of the
self as well as their contestation. Examining the locations for
practising sports in organized forms, informal leisure and
practices consumption in Ethiopia, this book contributes to recent
debates on the role of sports in the history of urbanization in
Africa, as well as those on global modernity. Ethiopia: AAUP
Longlisted for South Africa's 2022 Sunday Times Non-fiction Award
Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of
South Africa. Renowned historian Tom Lodge has written an immensely
readable and compelling sweep of history, spanning continents and
the last hundred years, producing the first comprehensive account
of the South African Communist Party in all its intricacies. Taking
the story back to the party's pre-history in the early 20th century
reveals that it was shaped by a range of socialist traditions and
that their influence persisted and were decisive. The party's
engagement in popular front politics after 1935 has been largely
uncharted: this book supplies fresh detail. In the 1940s the author
shows how the party became a key actor in the formation of black
working-class politics, and hitherto unused archival materials as
well as the insights from an increasingly candid genre of
autobiographies make possible a much fuller picture of the secret
party of 1952 to 1965. Despite its concealment and tiny numbers,
its intellectual impact on black South African mainstream politics
was considerable. On the exile period, the author examines the
activities of the party's recruits and more informal following
inside South Africa, as well as the scope and nature of its broader
influence. In 1990, a year in which global politics would change
fundamentally, South African communists would return to South
Africa to begin the work of reconstructing their party as a legal
organisation. Throughout its history, the party had been inspired
and supported by the reality of existing socialism, state systems
embracing half of Europe and Asia, in which the ruling group was at
least notionally committed to the building of communist societies.
With the fall of Eastern European regimes and the fragmentation of
the Soviet Union, one key set of material foundations for the
party's programmatic beliefs crumbled and its most important
international alliances in the global socialist community in
Eastern Europe and Russia would end. Finally, Lodge brings the
story up to date, assessing the degree to which communists both
inside and outside government have shaped and influenced policy in
successive ANC-led administrations, particularly during the popular
resistance to apartheid during the 1950s, which was underpinned by
the party's systematic organisation in the localities that supplied
the ANC with its strongest bases. Jacana: Africa, India
This book, written by a strong advocate of colonization, is
critical of the efforts of the abolitionists.
Capturing the history of thousands of German women recruited to
colonize Southwest Africa between the 1890s and 1940s, The Servants
of Empire engages a radical nationalist history of German efforts
to prevent interracial unions and establish permanent white
settlement. As colonists, sponsored women often supported or even
helped perpetrate extreme patterns of racist violence and
vigilantism in Namibia, which linked them inextricably to marked
atrocities such as the Herero and Nama Genocides. Navigating the
intersections of German attitudes toward race, class, ethnicity,
gender, and nation, this revealing study traces the German settler
community's gossip and rumors to uncover how the many poor white
female settlers in Southwest Africa disrupted bourgeois race and
gender relations and contributed to the trenchant sexual and racial
violence in the territory.
As a boy growing up in 1970s Johannesburg Mark Gevisser would play
'Dispatcher', a game that involved sitting in his father's parked
car (or in the study) and sending imaginary couriers on routes
across the city, mapped out from Holmden's Register of
Johannesburg. As the imaginary fleet made its way across the
troubled city and its tightly bound geographies, so too did the
young dispatcher begin to figure out his own place in the world. At
the centre of Lost and Found in Johannesburg is the account of a
young boy who is obsessed with maps and books, and other boys. Mark
Gevisser's account of growing up as the gay son of Jewish
immigrants, in a society deeply affected - on a daily basis - by
apartheid and its legacy, provides a uniquely layered understanding
of place and history. It explores a young man's maturation into a
fully engaged and self-aware citizen, first of his city, then of
his country and the world beyond. This is a story of memory,
identity and an intensely personal relationship with the City of
Gold. It is also the story of a violent home invasion and its
aftermath, and of a man's determination to reclaim his home town.
'The most powerful indictment of Mugabe's regime yet written' The
Economist 'A brave, sensitive and observant account of Zimbabwe's
tragedy, exposing the cruelty of Mugabe's regime and the remarkable
courage of those who have defied it' Financial Times In mid-2008,
after thirty years of increasingly tyrannical rule, Robert Mugabe
lost an election. Instead of conceding defeat, his supporters
launched a brutal campaign of terror - Zimbabweans called it,
simply, The Fear. Peter Godwin travels, at considerable risk, to
see the havoc raging at the heart of his country, but what emerges
from the brutality are the heartbreaking tales of resistance and
survival, the astonishing moments of humour and goodwill, and the
unforgettable characters who will not be subdued. 'A beautifully
written chronicle of his journey through his ravaged but still
achingly beautiful homeland' Independent 'An important book
detailing the violent realities, the grotesque injustices, the
hunger, the sadness, and a portrait of Mugabe, the tyrant who is
the cause of it all' Paul Theroux
This book uses money as a lens through which to analyze the social
and economic impact of colonialism on African societies and
institutions. It is the first book to address the monetary history
of the colonial period in a comprehensive way, covering several
areas of the continent and different periods, with the ultimate aim
of understanding the long-term impact of colonial monetary policies
on African societies. While grounding an understanding of money in
terms of its circulation, acceptance and impact, this book shows
first and foremost how the monetary systems that resulted from the
imposition of colonial rule on African societies were not a
replacement of the old currency systems with entirely new ones, but
were rather the result of the convergence of different orders of
value and monetary practices. By putting histories of people using
money at the heart of the story, and connecting them to larger
imperial policies, the volume provides a new and fresh perspective
on the history of the establishment of colonial rule in Africa.
This book is the result of a collaborative and interdisciplinary
research project that has received funding by the Gerda Henkel
Foundation. The contributors are both junior and senior scholars,
based at universities in Europe, Africa, Asia and the US, who are
all specialists on the history of money in Africa. It will appeal
to an international audience of scholars and educators interested
in African Studies and History, Economic History, Imperial and
Colonial History, Development Studies, Monetary Studies.
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