This work explores the long-term evolutionary implications of the "Mobility Imperative:" the foundational nature of mobility for human beings and their societies. The author puts forward a parsimonious but comprehensive model based on Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) rationales. The selected case studies range from the emergence and expansion of humans to cattle domestication and beyond.

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.

An original, rigorously researched volume that questions long-accepted paradigms concerning land ownership and its use in Africa. Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin draws on new sources to offer an original approach to the study of land in African history. Documenting the impact of Islamization, the development of peanut production, and the institution of colonial rule on people living along the middle and lower Gambia River, the book shows how these waves of changes sweeping the region after 1850 altered local political and social arrangements, with important implications for the ability of elites to control land. Author Assan Sarr argues for a nuanced understanding of land and its historic value in Africa. Moving beyond a recognition of the material value of land, Sarr'sanalysis highlights its cultural and social worth, pointing out the spiritual associations the land generated and the ways that certain people gained privileged access to those spiritual powers. By emphasizing that the land aroundthe Gambia River both inspired and gave form to a cosmology of ritual and belief, the book points to what might be considered an indigenous tradition of ecological preservation and protection. Assan Sarr is assistant professor of history at Ohio University.

This monograph, in its second, hard-to-locate edition, proposes a connection between prehistoric monumental European sites and those of the Pyramid Age in Egypt. Using ethnicity as a basis, Smith ties the ancient peoples of Egypt to those of Syria and discusses how Egyptian culture spread from its point of origin.

This volume provides a multidimensional assessment of the diverse ends of the European colonial empires, addressing different geographies, taking into account diverse chronologies of decolonization, and evaluating the specificities of each imperial configuration under appreciation (Portuguese, Belgian, French, British, Dutch).

Archives of Times Past explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa's time before the colonial era. It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: 'How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?'

Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them?

The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook. The book aims to make us think critically about where ideas about the time before the colonial era originate. It encourages us to think about why people in South Africa often refer to this 'deep history' when arguing about public affairs in the present.

The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years. They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.

A key book on Zimbabwe's industrial policy and the relationship between manufacturing, the state, and economic interest groups. Under pressure from local manufacturers, and recognising that industrial policy was a legitimate instrument for development, on 1 July 2016, to boost domestic production, the Government of Zimbabwe passed Statutory Instrument 64 which limited imports and foreign manufactures, allowing local producers satisfy demand. Zimbabwe's neighbours immediately protested that this flouted the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)'s Protocol on Trade, which aimed to increase trade across borders at regional and national levels. This matter revived the conversation about protectionism as an instrument of industrial policy. Protectionism in Africa is neither limited to Zimbabwe, nor is it a new phenomenon. This book brings a historical perspective to the conversation by exploring the policy proposals and political pressure exerted by manufacturing businesses on the trajectory of industrialisation in colonial Zimbabwe, and reveals that the major point of contention between the state, industry, and other economic interest groups in this period was protection. Tracing changing attitudes to the country's political economy, the author examines the way in which industrialists advanced their interests through the Association of Rhodesian Industries (ARnI) and other trade bodies, and shows how this pitted them not only against the state but other blocs of capital - farmers, miners and commerce. He examines the impact of the post-war Customs Union Agreement with South Africa, manufacturing strategy under UDI, and examines the impact of Southern Rhodesia's development on its trading partners in South Africa, Zambia and Malawi. Casting new light on the continuing debate on regional trade, this important book adds to our understanding of the settler colony's economic, business, and political history.

On November 11, 1965 the colony of Southern Rhodesia unilaterally and illegally declared itself independent from Britain, the first and only time that this had happened since the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. After fifteen years of internat

On April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe executed a bloody coup that put an end to the Americo-Liberian minority regime in Liberia, transforming Africa's first republic into a military dictatorship. In Liberia under Samuel Doe, 1980-1985: The Politics of Personal Rule, Yekutiel Gershoni examines the evolution and effects of Samuel K. Doe's reign in Liberia. Gershoni shows Doe's path to absolute power, corruption, and dictatorship and the economic crises and political turmoil that ensued, even after his murder in 1990. Liberia under Samuel Doe also examines the role of the United States as Liberia's closest ally, detailing how Doe managed to attract American diplomatic and military support due to U.S. interests in the Cold War. Through in-depth research, primary sources, and interviews with diplomats, politicians, and activists, Gershoni carefully details the timeline of Doe's rise to power and the lasting effects of his dictatorial legacy.

This study enriches understanding of East Africa's refugee situation by examining the conditions that gave rise to it and how the refugees themselves sought to reconstruct their lives. Focusing on the 1990s, Veney compares Kenya and Tanzania, two nations that did not generate many refugees, but become important hosts for the general region. Veney argues that the restrictive refugee policies that were adopted in Tanzania and Kenya were a direct product of liberalization and democratization, the result of two nations forced to clarify their refugee policies at a time of immense internal political and socioeconomic transformation.

Limamou Laye, an Islamic leader from present-day Senegal, has proclaimed himself the reincarnation of Muhammad, with his son later proclaiming himself to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Limamou Laye established a tariqa, or Sufi organization, based upon his claims and the miracles attributed to him. This study analyzes Limamou Laye's goals for his community, his theology; as well as the various elements --- both local and global - that created him and helped him to emerge as a religious leader of significance. This book also explores how the growth of Islamic communities in Senegambia stems from an evolving conflict between the traditional governments and the emerging Islamic communities. Douglas H. Thomas demonstrates that Sufism was the obvious vehicle for the growth of Islam among West Africans, striking a chord with indigenous cultures through an engagement with the spirit world which pre-Islamic Senegambian religions were primarily concerned with.

Key book on the debates surrounding the knowledge economy and decolonialization of African Studies, that brings the subject up to date for the 21st century. Decolonization of knowledge has become a major issue in African Studies in recent years, brought to the fore by social movements such as #RhodesMustFall and #BlackLivesMatter. This timely book explores the politics and disputed character of knowledge production in colonial and postcolonial Uganda, where efforts to generate forms of knowledge and solidarity that transcend colonial epistemologies draw on long histories of resistance and refusal. Bringing together scholars from Africa, Europe and North America, the contributors in this volume analyse how knowledge has been created, mobilized, and contested across a wide range of Ugandan contexts. In so doing, they reveal how Ugandans have built, disputed, and reimagined institutions of authority and knowledge production in ways that disrupt the colonial frames that continue to shape scholarly analyses and state structures. From the politics of language and gender in Bakiga naming practices to ways of knowing among the Acholi, the hampering of critical scholarship by militarism and authoritarianism, and debates over the names of streets, lakes, mountains, and other public spaces, this book shows how scholars and a wide range of Ugandan activists are reimagining the politics of knowledge in Ugandan public life.

In A Tapestry of African Histories: With Longer Times and Wider Geopolitics, contributors demonstrate that African historians are neither comfortable nor content with studying continental or global geopolitical, social, and economic events across the superficial divide of time as if they were disparate or disconnected. Instead, the chapters within the volume reevaluate African history through a geopolitically transcendent lens that brings African countries into conversation with other pertinent histories both within and outside of the continent. The collection analyzes the pre- and post-colonial eras within African countries such as Kenya, Malawi, and Sudan, examining major historical figures and events, struggles for independence and stability, contemporary urban settlements, social and economic development, as well as constitutional, legal, and human rights issues that began in the colonial era and persist to this day.

The coral atoll of Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory) today is a pivotal US naval and air base for all Middle East operations (Afghanistan, Iraq, and potentially, Iran). This book, largely based on hitherto unpublished source material, describes the build-up of the base - starting with a secret US-UK bilateral deal in 1966; the deportation of the native island population in the 1970s; the clouded new role of Diego Garcia as a destination for Guantanamo-style 'renditions'; and the impacts of military construction on the environment of the island - which because of its average elevation of 4 ft above sea-level is at direct risk from climate change

This book is a philosopher's view into the chaotic postcolony of Zimbabwe, delving into Robert Mugabe's Will to Power. The Will to Power refers to a spirited desire for power and overwhelming fear of powerlessness that Mugabe artfully concealed behind performances of invincibility. Nietzsche's philosophical concept of the Will to Power is interpreted and expanded in this book to explain how a tyrant is produced and enabled, and how he performs his tyranny. Achille Mbembe's novel concept of the African postcolony is mobilised to locate Zimbabwe under Mugabe as a domain of the madness of power. The book describes Mugabe's development from a vulnerable youth who was intoxicated with delusions of divine commission to a monstrous tyrant of the postcolony who mistook himself for a political messiah. This account exposes how post-political euphoria about independence from colonialism and the heroism of one leader can easily lead to the degeneration of leadership. However, this book is as much about bad leadership as it is about bad followership. Away from Eurocentric stereotypes where tyranny is isolated to African despots, this book shows how Mugabe is part of an extended family of tyrants of the world. He fought settler colonialism but failed to avoid being infected by it, and eventually became a native coloniser to his own people. The book concludes that Zimbabwe faces not only a simple struggle for democracy and human rights, but a Himalayan struggle for liberation from genocidal native colonialism that endures even after Robert Mugabe's dethronement and death.

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.

Examines the historical, political, religious, and social dynamics of Muslim minority status in Uganda, and important themes of pre- and post-colonial political community, religion and national identity. Between 2012 and 2016 several Muslim clerics were murdered in Uganda: there is still no consensus as to who was responsible. In this book Joseph Kasule seeks to explain this by examining the colonial and postcolonial history of the Muslim minority and questions of Muslim identity within a non-Muslim state. Challenging prevalent scholarship that has homogenized Muslims' political identity, Kasule demonstrates that Muslim responses to power have been varied and multiple. Beginning with the pre-colonial political community in Buganda, and Muteesa I's attempted Islamization of the country using Islam as a centralizing ideology, the author discusses how the political status of Islam and Muslims in Uganda has been defined under successive regimes. Muteesa I's Islamization faltered when Christianity entered Buganda in the latter half of the 19th century, resulting in division between Muslim and Christian sections. The colonial period created a new type of political project that defined the Muslim question as one of representation, and Kasule discusses how this laid the foundation for a politics of Muslim containment within a predominantly Christian power. He examines contrasting urban-based Muslim organizations and rural expressions of Islam; tension between representative claims of Muslim leaderships within the demand for Muslim autonomy; and the rise of new reform groups. As these splits turned violent, 'new' Muslim 'publics' emerged around opposing centres of Muslim power which sought different resolutions to their minority situation. East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi): Makerere Institute of Social Research

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. -- .

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.

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.

This is a monograph about the medieval Jewish community of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. Through deep analyses of contemporary historical sources, mostly documents from the Cairo Geniza, life stories, conducts and practices of private people are revealed. When put together these private biographies convey a social portrait of an elite group which ruled over the local community, but was part of a supra communal network.