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Books > History > African history
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.
This book contributes to the discourse on post-colonial and globalization theories, focusing on Nigeria's transition to a federal system of government. The project analyzes 10 years of civil rule in Nigeria, between 1999 and 2009, and its constitutional arrangements while also engaging in comparative studies of other socio-political developments in Sub-Saharan Africa. The collective influences of the judiciary on the polity was improved and strengthened through globalization. In addition, organized pressure groups, non-governmental organizations, as well as the Civil Society Organization, have played significant roles as vehicles of socio-political change and transformation. They continue to act as buffers for the sustenance of democratic rule, well beyond the period in question.
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
"Empire forestry"-the broadly shared forest management practice that emerged in the West in the nineteenth century-may have originated in Europe, but it would eventually reshape the landscapes of colonies around the world. Melding the approaches of environmental history and political ecology, Colonial Seeds in African Soil unravels the complex ways this dynamic played out in twentieth-century colonial Sierra Leone. While giving careful attention to topics such as forest reservation and exploitation, the volume moves beyond conservation practices and discourses, attending to the overlapping social, economic, and political contexts that have shaped approaches to forest management over time.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Founded by MK Gandhi early in his career, the Natal Indian Congress is one of the oldest political organizations in South Africa. This book traces its course through colonial anti-Asiatic feeling, past apartheid, and into the new democracy.
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.
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
""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.
As far too many intellectual histories and theoretical contributions from the 'global South' remain under-explored, this volume works towards redressing such imbalance. Experienced authors, from the regions concerned, along different disciplinary lines, and with a focus on different historical timeframes, sketch out their perspectives of envisaged transformations. This includes specific case studies and reflexive accounts from African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. Taking a critical stance on the ongoing dominance of Eurocentrism in academia, the authors present their contributions in relation to current decolonial challenges. Hereby, they consider intellectual, practical and structural aspects and dimensions, to mark and build their respective positions. From their particular vantage points of (trans)disciplinary and transregional engagement, they sketch out potential pathways for addressing the unfinished business of conceptual decolonization. The specific individual positionalities of the contributors, which are shaped by location and regional perspective as much as in disciplinary, biographical, linguistic, religious, and other terms, are hereby kept in view. Drawing on their significant experiences and insights gained in both the global north and global south, the contributors offer original and innovative models of engagement and theorizing frames that seek to restore and critically engage with intellectual practices from particular regions and transregional contexts in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. This volume builds on a lecture series held at ZMO in the winter 2019-2020
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 scholarly debate around the "Afropolitan"-the image of mobility, cultural production, and consumerism in Africa and the African diaspora-has focused on the elitism associated with the concept. Most critiques object to how the ideals of transnationalism and mobility inevitably refer to Western models of leisure and style, and Afropolitanism has rarely been contextualized in global African diaspora histories. This volume of written and photographic essays is one of the first sustained historical treatments of the Afropolitan. Contributors analyze the concept in a variety of contexts: itinerant artisans in fourteenth-century southern Africa, sixteenth-century African diaspora communities in Latin America, West African kingdoms and port cities in the waning decades of the Atlantic slave trade, a hair salon in twenty-first-century Paris, a road trip through Bangladesh. By engaging with the Afropolitan as a historical phenomenon, the authors highlight new methods and theories for analyzing global diasporas. Contributors. Paulina L. Alberto, Antonia Carcelen-Estrada, Rosa Carrasquillo, Elizabeth Fretwell, Dawn Fulton, Mathangi Krishnamurthy, Patricia Martins Marcos, Ndubueze Mbah, Hector Mediavilla, Emeka Okereke, Melina Pappademos, Aniova Prandy, David Schoenbrun, Lorelle Semley
Real and Imagined Readers looks at an important period in South African literary history, marked by apartheid censorship and the extensive banning of intellectual and creative voices. Returning to the archive, this book offers a reader-centric view of the successive censorship laws, and the consequences of publication control on the world of books. Books and print culture created intersectional spaces of solidarity where ideas and knowledge were contested, mediated and translated into the socio-political domain. By focusing on these marginalised readers, Matteau Matsha sheds light on the reading cultures and practices that developed in the shadow of apartheid censorship, creating alternative literary spaces. Real readers engaged in an elusive dialogue with the censors' imagined readers, and definitions of literature and readerships emerged from this unusual connection, leading to the formation of literary conventions that inform reading politics to this day. By understanding reading as a complex and dynamic activity, this book stresses the importance of appreciating books in relation to the social context in which they are written and, most importantly, read.
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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