Explores the history of Britain's colonial army in West Africa, especially the experiences of ordinary soldiers recruited in the region. West African Soldiers in Britain's Colonial Army explores the complex and constantly changing experience of West African soldiers under British command in Nigeria, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. Since cost and tropical disease limited the deployment of British metropolitan troops to the region, British colonial rule in West Africa depended heavily on locally recruited soldiers and their families. This force became Britain's largest colonial army in Sub-Saharan Africa. West African Soldiers looks at the development of this colonial military from the conquest era of the late nineteenth century to decolonization in the 1950s. Rather than describing the many battles fought by this army both regionally and overseas, and informed by the concept of military culture, the book looks at the broad and overlapping themes of identity, culture, daily life, and violence. Chapter topics include the enslaved origins of the force, military identities including the myth of martial races, religious life, visual symbols like uniforms and insignia, health care related to tropical and sexually transmitted diseases, the experience of army wives, disciplinary flogging, mutiny, day-to-day violence committed by troops, and the employment of former soldiers by the colonial state. Based on archival research in five countries, the book derives inspiration from previous work on ordinary African soldiers in the British and German colonies of East Africa and in French West Africa.

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

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.

Recent studies on Dutch encounters with indigenous peoples in the Americas and West Africa have taken a narrow regional approach rather than a comparative Atlantic perspective. This book, based on Dutch archival records and primary and secondary sources in multiple languages, integrates indigenous peoples more fully in the Dutch Atlantic by examining the development of formal relations between the Dutch and non-Europeans in Brazil, the Gold Coast, West Central Africa, and New Netherland from the first Dutch overseas voyages in the 1590s until the dissolution of the West India Company in 1674. By taking an Atlantic perspective this study of Dutch-indigenous alliances shows that the support and cooperation of indigenous peoples was central to Dutch overseas expansion in the Atlantic.

Applies new approaches to the study of a small, densely populated region of West Africa, integrating them into a regional history that analyzes interactions between localities and the modern state. Constructions of Belonging provides a history of local communities living in Southeastern Nigeria since the late nineteenth century, examining the processes that have defined, changed, and re-produced these communities. Harneit-Sievers explores both the meanings and the uses that the community members have given to their particular areas, while also looking at the processes that have shaped local communities, and have made them work and continue tobe relevant, in a world dominated by the modern territorial state and by worldwide flows of people, goods, and ideas. Axel Harneit-Sievers is a Research Fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies, and Director ofthe Nigeria Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Lagos.

In the global context of the Cold War, the relationship between liberation movements and Eastern European states obviously changed and transformed. Similarly, forms of (material) aid and (ideological) encouragement underwent changes over time. The articles assembled in this volume argue that the traditional Cold War geography of bi-polar competition with the United States is not sufficient to fully grasp these transformations. The question of which side of the ideological divide was more successful (or lucky) in impacting actors and societies in the global south is still relevant, yet the Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that exists until today. Acknowledging the complexities of liberation movements in globalization processes, the papers thus argue that activities need to be understood in their local context, including personal agendas and internal conflicts, rather than relying primarily on the traditional frame of Cold War competition. They point to the agency of individual activists in both "Africa" and "Eastern Europe" and the lessons, practices and languages that were derived from their often contradictory encounters. In Southern African Liberation Movements, authors from South Africa, Portugal, Austria and Germany ask: What role did actors in both Southern Africa and Eastern Europe play? What can we learn by looking at biographies in a time of increasing racial and international conflict? And which "creative solutions" need to be found, to combine efforts of actors from various ideological camps? Building on archival sources from various regions in different languages, case studies presented in the edition try to encounter the lack of a coherent state of the art. They aim at combining the sometimes scarce sources with qualitative interviews to give answers to the many open questions regarding Southern African liberation movements and their connections to the "East".

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.

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

This book provides fresh insights into how the British press affected both British perceptions of decolonisation in Africa and British policy towards it during the 'wind of change' period. It also reveals, for the first time, the extent to which British newspaper coverage was of relevance to African and white settler readerships. British newspapers informed the political strategies and civic cultures of African activists, nationalists, liberal whites in Africa, the staunchest of white settler communities, and the first governments of independent African states and their opponents. The British press, British public opinion and British journalists became etched into the lived experiences of the end of empire affecting Anglo-African and Anglo-settler relations to this day. Arguing that the press cast a transnational web of influence over the decolonisation process in Africa, the author explores the relationships between the British, African and settler public and political spheres, and highlights the mediating power of the British press during the late 1950s. The book draws from a range of British newspapers, official government documents, newspaper archives, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies and articles printed in African and white settler papers. It will be of interest to historians of decolonisation, Africa, the media and the British Empire.

The earliest development of Arabic historical writing remains shrouded in uncertainty until the 9th century CE, when our first extant texts were composed. This book demonstrates a new method, termed riwaya-cum-matn, which allows us to identify citation-markers that securely indicate the quotation of earlier Arabic historical works, proto-books first circulated in the eighth century. As a case study it reconstructs, with an edition and translation, around half of an annalistic history written by al-Layth b. Sa'd in the 740s. In doing so it shows that annalistic history-writing, comparable to contemporary Syriac or Greek models, was a part of the first development of Arabic historiography in the Marwanid period, providing a chronological framework for more ambitious later Abbasid history-writing. Reconstructing the original production-contexts and larger narrative frames of now-atomised quotations not only lets us judge their likely accuracy, but to consider the political and social relations underpinning the first production of authoritative historical knowledge in Islam. It also enables us to assess how Abbasid compilers combined and augmented the base texts from which they constructed their histories.

The history of globalisation is usually told as a history of shortening distances and acceleration of the flows of people, goods and ideas. Channelling Mobilities refines this picture by looking at a wide variety of mobile people passing through the region of the Suez Canal, a global shortcut opened in 1869. As an empirical contribution to global history, the book asks how the passage between Europe and Asia and Africa was perceived, staged and controlled from the opening of the Canal to the First World War, arguing that this period was neither an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Instead, it was characterised by the channelling of mobilities through the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of movement. Telling the stories of tourists, troops, workers, pilgrims, stowaways, caravans, dhow skippers and others, the book reveals the complicated entanglements of empires, internationalist initiatives and private companies.

The author, interviews some South Africans of different hues, about the idea of race, what it has meant to them and how they envision a future South Africa, steeped as the country and its people are in a highly charged and often unacknowledged world of racial sensitivity. Amongst the interviewees are Naledi Pandor, Minister of Education; Wilmot James, executive director of the African Genome Education Institute; Rhoda Kadalie, journalist and human rights activist; Melanie Verwoerd, former South African ambassador to Ireland; Phatekile Holomisa, president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa); and Carel Boshoff, the founder of Orania, an Afrikaner homeland established in 1991 in the Northern Cape.

First published to mark the centenary of Nelson Mandela's birth, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela sparked celebrations around the globe. Featuring 94 letters selected from that landmark collection, as well as new introductory material and six new letters that have never been published, this historic paperback provides an essential political history of the late twentieth century and illustrates how Mandela maintained his inner spirit while imprisoned. Whether they are longing love letters to his wife, Winnie; heartrending notes to his beloved children; or articulations of a human-rights philosophy that resonates today, these letters reveal the heroism of a man who refused to compromise his moral values in the face of extraordinary human punishment, invoking a "story beyond their own words" (The New York Times). This new paperback edition-essential for any literature lover, political activist and student-positions Mandela amongst the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century.

In the midst of apartheid in South Africa, journalist Maurice Hommel documented the cruel injustices and tensions running rampant within the country. What he saw forever impacted his life.

"Conversations and Soliloquies" presents a collection of Hommel's essays and articles from the last fifty-five years, documenting and analyzing South African history during and after apartheid. Over time, the essays illuminate, in sometimes graphic detail, the anti-apartheid struggle that defined South Africa for decades.

Beginning with the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, Hommel delves into the bloody history of apartheid and traces how it pervaded every segment of society. His interviews with prominent South Africans, including Desmond Tutu and Neville Alexander, offer intimate glimpses into the thoughts of those working for change. In addition, stark photographs capture the emotions of the time.

In its breadth of historical perspectives, this collection is a significant contribution to an understanding of South Africa's evolution to a nonracial, nonsexist, democratic country. Although lingering prejudices and smoldering resentments remain, Hommel carries an unshakable optimism of South Africa's enormous potential. "Conversations and Soliloquies" captures that hope.

An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migrationin the context of the Euro-African encounter. HONORABLE MENTION FOR AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW BEST AFRICA-FOCUSED ANTHOLOGY OR EDITED COLLECTION, 2019 While there have been studies of women's roles in African societies and of Atlantic history, the role of women in Westand West Central Africa during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition remains relatively unexamined. This book brings together scholars from Africa, North and South America and Europe to show, for the first time,the ways in which African women participated in economic, social and political spaces in Atlantic coast societies. Focusing on diversity and change, and going beyond the study of wealthy merchant women, the contributors examine the role of petty traders and enslaved women in communities from Sierra Leone to Benguela. They analyse how women in Africa used the opportunities offered by relationships with European men, Christianity and Atlantic commerce to negotiate their social and economic positions; consider the limitations which early colonialism sought to impose on women and the strategies they employed to overcome them; the factors which fostered or restricted women's mobility,both spatially and socially; and women's economic power and its curtailment. Mariana P. Candido is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame; Adam Jones recently retired as Professor of African History and Culture History at the University of Leipzig. In association with The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame

This edited volume systematically analyzes the connection between xenophobia, nativism, and Pan-Africanism. It situates attacks on black Africans by fellow black Africans within the context of ideals such as Pan-Africanism and Ubuntu, which emphasize unity. The book straddles a range of social science perspectives to explain why attacks on foreign nationals in Africa usually entail attacks on black foreign nationals. Written by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars, the book is divided into four sections that each explain a different facet of this complicated relationship. Section One discusses the history of colonialism and apartheid and their relationship to xenophobia. Section Two critically evaluates Pan-Africanism as a concept and as a practice in 21st century Africa. Section Three presents case studies on xenophobia in contemporary Africa. Section Four similarly discusses cases of nativism. Addressing a complex issue in contemporary African politics, this volume will be of use to students and scholars interested in African studies, African politics, human rights, migration, history, law, and development economics.

A reinterpretation of the history of Sokoto that provides a new assessment of its leaders and their visions for the Muslim state. Sokoto was the largest and longest lasting of West Africa's nineteenth-century Muslim empires. Its intellectual and political elite left behind a vast written record, including over 300 Arabic texts authored by the jihad's leaders: Usman dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahi and his son, Muhammad Bello (known collectively as the Fodiawa). Sokoto's early years are one of the most documented periods of pre-colonial African history, yet current narratives pay little attention to the formative role these texts played in the creation of Sokoto, and the complex scholarly world from which they originated. Far from being unified around a single concept of Muslim statecraft, this book demonstrates how divided the Fodiawa were about what Sokoto could and should be, and the various discursive strategies they used to enrol local societies into their vision. Based on a close analysis of the sources (some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. More generally, it shows how revolutionary religious movements gain legitimacy, and how the kind of legitimacy they claim changes as they move from rebels to rulers.

From 1927-1948, the Universal Ethiopian Students' Association (UESA) mobilized the African diaspora to fight against imperialism and fascist Italy. Formed by a group of educated Africans, African-Americans, and West Indians based in Harlem and shaped by the ideals of Ethiopianism, communism, Pan-Africanism, Black Nationalism, Garveyism, and the New Negro Movement, the UESA sought to educate the diaspora about its glorious African past and advocate for anti-imperialism and independence. This book focuses on the UESA's literary organ, The African, mapping a constellation of understudied activists and their contributions to the fight for Black liberation in the twentieth century.

After serving in the Royal Navy in Canada, Hugh Clapperton (1788-1827) participated in two expeditions to the interior of Africa. Richard Lander (1804-34), a young Cornishman who had travelled widely in the service of previous employers, applied to accompany him on the second expedition, during which Clapperton died. Lander published this edition of Clapperton's journal in 1829; an expanded version (also available in this series) appeared the following year. Clapperton's account of his experiences is informal, lively and vivid, describing hospitality and annoyances, discomforts and pleasures. Although its language and attitudes are typical of the early colonial period, it remains a valuable source for West African history. The book also contains a short biography of Clapperton, Lander's emotional account of his master's illness and death, and his journal of his lonely return journey. The appendix includes meteorological observations, notes on Arabic documents, and Yoruba vocabulary.

Kwame Nkrumah's Political Kingdom and Pan-Africanism ReInterpreted, 1909-1972 provides an in-depth study of the life of the late Pan-African leader from the former Gold Coast, Kwame Nkrumah. Authors A.B. Assensoh and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh analyze Nkrumah's life from his birth on the Gold Coast through his studies in the United Kingdom and the United States, his activism and political life, and his exile and death. Throughout, Assensoh and Alex-Assensoh present a twenty-first-century reinterpretation of Nkrumah's Pan-Africanist views in the context of Black unity as well as Black liberation within the African continent and the United States and Caribbean diaspora.