David Livingstone was a doctor from Scotland, trained at the University of Glasgow and sent to South Africa by the London Missionary Society. He attended to both the spiritual and physical needs of people as he met them, but he also aimed to help people by being more strategic - trying to end slavery and promote trade. These quests caused him to be the first European to cross the African Continent. It should be noted that Livingstone's words are of his time and would be seen as racist by today's standards. He uses the terms and the science that were available to him, which were flawed, but is fascinated by the people that he meets and approaches them as fellow human beings. He writes with delicious humor and captivates the reader. This is book that both fascinates and enthrals.

Wits: The Early Years is a history of the University up to 1939.

First established in 1922, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg developed out of the South African School of Mines in Kimberley circa 1896. Examining the historical foundations, the struggle to establish a university in Johannesburg, and the progress of the University in the two decades prior to World War II, historian Bruce Murray captures the quality and texture of life in the early years of Wits University and the personalities who enlivened it and contributed to its growth.

Particular attention is given to the wider issues and the challenges which faced Wits in its formative years. The book examines the role Wits came to occupy as a major centre of liberal thought and criticism in South Africa, its contribution to the development of the professions of the country, the relationship of its research to the wider society, and its attempts to grapple with a range of peculiarly South African problems, such as the admission of black students to the University and the relations of English- and Afrikaans speaking white students within it.

The Sea of Zanj has been a place of myth and mystery since time immemorial, and its islands have captured countless imaginations. Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues, the Seychelles and Madagascar – Thomas Victor Bulpin recounts their stories and histories; stories of strange animals and exotic places, of pirates and runaway slaves, of forgotten kingdoms and deadly welcomes.

Much has changed in the islands since Islands in a forgotten sea first appeared in the 1950s, and the author has left an invaluable account of an enchanting and often brutal world far removed from the air-conditioned resorts and package tours so familiar to tourists today.

The Liberal Party of South Africa was founded in 1953 to promote nonracial democratic liberalism in opposition to white supremacist apartheid. Under Alan Paton, it quickly moved into the extra-parliamentary field and won considerable black support, competing with Communism and black nationalism. Growing influence brought heavy government attack, and the 'banning' of nearly 50 of its leaders, black and white. Despite forced dissolution in 1968, the Liberals' ideas have triumphed over those of left and right in the 'new South Africa'.

Long regarded as disturbing remnants of the Atlantic slave trade, the European forts and castles of West Africa have attained iconic positions as universally significant historical monuments and world heritage tourist destinations. This volume of original contributions by leading Africanists presents extensive new historical views of the forts in Ghana and Benin, providing both impetus and a scholarly basis for further research and fresh debate about their historical and geographical contexts; their role in the slave trade; the economic and political connections, centred on the forts, between the Europeans and local African polities; and their place in variously focused heritage studies and endeavours. Contributors are Hermann W. von Hesse, Daniel Hopkins, Jon Olav Hove, Ole Justesen, Ineke van Kessel, Robin Law, John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu, Jarle Simensen, Selena Axelrod Winsnes, Larry Yarak.

This book is the product of many years’ research by Lodge, whose Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (1983) established him as a leading commentator on South African politics, past and present.

2021 will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and today’s South African Communist Party (SACP, founded in 1953 after the proscription of the CPSA) will be extremely fortunate to have the milestone marked by a scholarly work of this calibre. Since 1994, many memoirs have been written by communists, and private archives have been donated to university and other collections. Significant official archives have been opened to scrutiny, particularly those of South Africa and the former Soviet Union. It is as if a notoriously secretive body has suddenly become confiding and confessional! While every chapter draws upon original material of this sort, such evidence is supported, amplified, illuminated and challenged by the scholarship of others: the breadth of secondary sources used by the author reflects what may well be an unrivalled familiarity with the scholarly literature on political organisations and resistance in twentieth century South Africa.

Lodge provides a richly detailed history of the Party’s vicissitudes and victories; individuals – their ideas, attitudes and activities – are sensitively located within their context; the text provides a fascinating sociology of the South African left over time. Lodge is adept at making explicit what the key questions and issues are for different periods; and he answers these with analyses and conclusions that are judicious, clearly stated, and meticulously argued.

Without doubt, this book will become a central text for students of communism in South Africa, of the Party’s links with Russia and the socialist bloc, and of the Communist Party’s changing relations with African nationalism – before, during and after three decades of exile.

President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia was an Arab leader greatly admired in the West for his moderation and level headedness. He led his small country to independence after a prolonged struggle against the French coloniser. He suffered long periods of deprivation and imprisonment before he acceded to supreme rule. His country has much to thank him for but he ruled too long and ended his reign in the tragedy of senility and absolutism. This book is a sympathetic study of a long and fascinating life.

This volume advances extant reflections on the state constituted as the Ur-Power in society, particularly in Africa. It analyzes how various agents within the Nigerian society 'encounter' the state - ranging from the most routine form of contact to the spectacular. While many recent collections have reheated the old paradigms - of the perils of federalism; corruption; ethnicity etc, our focus here is on 'encounter', that is, the nuance and complexity of how the state shapes society and vice-versa. Through this, we depart from the standard state versus society approach that proves so limiting in explaining the African political landscape.

The Shining Path was one of the most brutal insurgencies ever seen in the Western Hemisphere. Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru explores the devastating effects of insurgent violence and the state's brutal counterinsurgency methods on Peruvian civil society.

This volume presents a vast number of monuments and documents from almost all levels of Egyptian society during the long reign of Ramesses II. They range across social categories from grand viziers, viceroys of Nubia, chiefs of treasury and granaries, high priests and leading clerics of Egypt's principal gods, army generals and elite corps, through the high, middle and lower ranks of Egyptian society to the workmen who cut the royal tombs.

While many monuments are formal, even outwardly banal, they contain a mass of data on family geneaologies enabling us to trace the careers of many people. Some of these documents give unrivalled glimpses into the social and official life of early Ramesside Egypt; the Deir el-Medina material sheds much light on the organisation from construction of the royal tombs in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. In all sections, a great many of these monuments and documents appear in English for the first time (for some, the first appearance in any modern language).

This volume, like its predecessors, gives a wide public full access to a vast range of inscriptions previously only intelligible to a few specialists.

An ancient Egyptian statuette is found on a tiny island in the Central Mediterranean in 1713. It disappears for a century before resurfacing as the centrepiece of an archaeological exhibition. Archaeological investigators, including authors Anton Mifsud and Marta Farrugia are mystified by the find. What in the world was this statuette doing on Malta well before Napoleon and the tomb raiders following in his wake? Dedicated to an unusual triad of Egyptian gods, the statuette belonged to a humble tomb painter in the Valley of the Kings at the time of Rameses the Great. In a bid to unravel the statuette's mystery, Mifsud and Farrugia begin researching the other artefacts that the tomb painter commissioned. As they unravel details about the statuette, they also unravel some unusual details about the tomb painter's life, work and family. But the mystery deepens when they discover the statuette is not what it appears to be in I Painted for Pharaoh. "All objects surviving from ancient Egypt have a story to tell. When and why were they made and how have they survived until the present day? The authors here reveal after long and detailed research, the origins and history of one statuette, investigating why and how it ended in Malta, but also uncovering a fascinating story of more modern intrigue". [Review paragraph by Robert Partridge, editor of Ancient Egypt]

*Based on new sources in Republic of South Africa. *Shows extensive relations with African states - totally opposed to apartheid - during apartheid period and how relations were based on essentially olitical, and not merely economic, factors. *Shows the development of South Africa from pariah status to acceptable African state and superpower. South Africa's contacts with the neighbouring African states during the apartheid years are well documented. But here is a unique study based on hitherto un-explored primary sources behind the apartheid screen exposing extensive contact even with the the countries further north during these years. These relations paved the way for South Africa's emergence as a middle power acceptable to its fellow African states.

This book presents a series of essays by leading English and French scholas examining the politics, economics, international relations and defects of the literary scene of France and the former territories of francophone West Africa since 1965. The approach is emphatically a thematic one rather than a country-by-country analysis.

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was Keeper of the British Museum's department of oriental antiquities from 1894 until his retirement in 1924. Carrying out many missions to Egypt in search of ancient objects, Budge was hugely successful in collecting papyri, statues and other artefacts for the trustees of the British Museum: numbering into the thousands and of great cultural and historical significance. Budge published well over 100 monographs, which shaped the development of future scholarship and are still of great academic value today, dealing with subjects such as Egyptian religion, history and literature. First published in 1908, this is the first of two volumes dealing with the kings of Egypt. Using a variety of material from the British Library's extensive collections, Budge meticulously collated the names of the Pharaohs and royal personages from the 1st to the 19th Dynasties of Egypt. With a detailed discussion concerning Egyptian chronology, this classic work will be of great interest and value to scholars and students of Ancient Egyptian history and archaeology.

The name and fame of Muhammad Ali, the Founder of Modern Egypt, are well known. His vivid personality has appealed to many writers, who have concentrated the limelight on him. Some of them have allowed Muhammad Ali's son, Ibrahim, to appear on the stage, but they have assigned him a more or less obscure role. They refer to him as the sword wielded by his astute father, and have usually treated him as if he knew nothing of statesmanship, and were merely a bluff soldier whose military talents happened to be superior to those of the generals opposed to him. This book seeks to redress this error and bring the truth into its proper perspective. It does not belittle the glory of Muhammad Ali, but it stresses the part played by Ibrahim in the affairs of Egypt. First published 1935.

This book explores the political relationship between the Muslim majority and Coptic minority in Egypt between 1918 and 1952. Many Egyptians hoped to see the collaboration of the 1919 revolution spur the creation of both a new collective Egyptian identity and a state without religious bias. Traditional ways of governing, however, were not so easily cast aside. Some Egyptians held tenaciously to the traditional arrangements which had both guaranteed Muslim primacy and served relatively well to protect the Copts and afford them some autonomy. Differences within the Coptic community over the wisdom of trusting the genuineness and durability of Muslim support for equality were accentuated by a protracted struggle between reforming laymen and conservative clergy for control of the community. The unwillingness of all parties to compromise hampered the ability of the community both to determine and to defend its interests. The Copts met with modest success in their attempt to become full Egyptian citizens. Their influence in the Wafd, the pre-eminent political party, was very strong prior to and in the early years of the constitutional monarchy, and their formal representation was generally adequate and, in some parliaments, better than adequate. However, this very success produced a backlash which caused many Copts to believe, by the 1940s, that the experiment had failed: political activity has become fraught with risk for them. At the close of the monarchy, equality and shared power seemed motions as distant as in the disheartening years before the 1919 revolution.

Ever since Nasser overthrew Prince Farouk in 1952, Egypt has held a special, leading position within the Arab world. It is now facing major problems, the most serious of which are the growing strength of the Muslim fundamentalists, continuing population growth and external debt problems. Together, these are creating a volatile and potentially explosive climate. In this book, the journalist Anthony McDermott examines the development of Egypt from Revolution to the present, describing various features of Egyptian society and the contributions of its leaders. He asks whether Egypt has fulfilled its expected role as the model for Arab and developing countries or whether the peace pact made by Sadat with Israel was a major error, causing Egypt's withdrawal under Mubarak from the centre of international politics. The book is lively and readable and provides a challenging introduction to the development and problems of the largest country in the Middle East. First published 1988.

As the leaders of a revolutionary, nationalist regime, the Egyptian Free Officers who came to power following the 1952 Revolution committed themselves to the attainment of goals associated with modernization, namely rapid economic development based on State planning and industrialization and the political mobilization of society along State-decreed lines. Arising from a conference held at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, with contributions from scholars from the Arab world, Europe and the US as well as the UK, these papers raise the questions most important to students of economic and political development.

Merely to inhabit a desert demands much skill, craft, experience and travel. For the numerous nomadic tribes of Africa and the Middle East, living ancestors of the Egyptians, Jews and Arabs, Egypt is their meeting ground. The author, with twenty-five years of accumulated knowledge, here sets out to present analyses of their cultures and beliefs, along with descriptions of each tribe. First published 1935.

A work of history, culture, politics, economics, packed with period photographs and period insights.

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was Keeper of the British Museum's department of oriental antiquities from 1894 until his retirement in 1924. Carrying out many missions to Egypt in search of ancient objects, Budge was hugely successful in collecting papyri, statues and other artefacts for the trustees of the British Museum: numbering into the thousands and of great cultural and historical significance. Budge published well over 100 monographs, which shaped the development of future scholarship and are still of great academic value today, dealing with subjects such as Egyptian religion, history and literature. First published in 1912, this work is the first of two volumes which deal explicitly with ancient Egyptian literature. Budge reproduces the most typical literature in hieroglyphic form, with the intention of providing the beginner with a series of books to read alongside translations. They are arranged here with English translations next to the original writing, and are complemented by a detailed introduction which provides a contextual framework for this fascinating material. Also including a number of other texts and a range of detailed images and hieroglyphics, this classic work will be of interest to scholars and students of Ancient Egyptian literature, language and history.

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was Keeper of the British Museum's department of oriental antiquities from 1894 until his retirement in 1924. Carrying out many missions to Egypt in search of ancient objects, Budge was hugely successful in collecting papyri, statues and other artefacts for the trustees of the British Museum: numbering into the thousands and of great cultural and historical significance. Budge published well over 100 monographs, which shaped the development of future scholarship and are still of great academic value today, dealing with subjects such as Egyptian religion, history and literature. First published in 1912, this work is the second of two volumes which deal explicitly with ancient Egyptian literature. This volume contains Egyptian texts, with English translations, taken from the Seven Stelae which originally stood in a group at the great temple at Gebel Barkal. The texts describe areas of the history of Egypt, including the principal events which took place in the kingdom of Napata from c.750 B.C. to 500 B.C. Also including a number of other texts and a range of detailed images and hieroglyphics, this classic work will be of interest to scholars and students of Ancient Egyptian literature, language and history.