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).

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.

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.

In many respects, Zambia is an African success story. From a territory whose borders were drawn with minimal attention either to the ethnic geography of the day or to natural features that combined (and sometimes divided) dozens of distinct ethnic groups, rose a nation with a long record of peace that has enjoyed decades of constitutional rule, and even, in recent years, an increasingly competitive democracy. Perhaps most improbably, the country has forged a national identity. Unfortunately, peace, constitutionalism, democracy, and nationhood constantly face challenges, such as in the elections of 2006 when the ugly language of ethnic confrontation found renewed currency. Moreover, Zambia's economic record and prospects have been on the decline. After over four decades, per capita incomes are lower than they were at the dawn of independence, and 95 percent of its people live on less that $2 per day. Despite repeated efforts to diversify the economy, copper exports and foreign assistance are the main sources of the vast majority of Zambia's foreign exchange earnings. And most devastating at all, the AIDS pandemic has already lowered the average life expectancy below 40. For a country one might regard as "heading in the right direction," Zambia has a long way to go. The third edition of Historical Dictionary of Zambia, through its chronology, introductory essay, appendixes, map, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events, and institutions and significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects, provides an important reference on this African country.

Innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics. In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesised that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics. Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize.

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.

'One of the most exciting and provocative books that I've read in a long time' - Mike Davis, author of Planet of the Slums Can people who live in shantytowns, shacks and favelas teach us anything about democracy? About how to govern society in a way that is inclusive, participatory and addresses popular needs? This book argues that they can. In a study conducted in dozens of South Africa's shack settlements, where more than 9 million people live, Trevor Ngwane finds thriving shack dwellers' committees that govern local life, are responsive to popular needs and provide a voice for the community. These committees, called 'amakomiti' in the Zulu language, organise the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, public works and crime prevention especially during settlement establishment. Amakomiti argues that, contrary to common perception, slum dwellers are in fact an essential part of the urban population, whose political agency must be recognised and respected. In a world searching for democratic alternatives that serve the many and not the few, it is to the shantytowns, rather than the seats of political power, that we should turn.

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.

For three thousand years a dominant force, Ancient Egypt is arguably the most successful and longest lasting human civilization yet. In this pacy guide, world renowned Egyptologist, Professor Barry Kemp, seeks to explain why Ancient Egypt was able to thrive with such stability for such a long time. The answers may be surprising - Kemp shows that human rights and career progression played an important role, as well as the traditional forces of slave labour and religion. Taking a thematic approach, Kemp examines ancient Egypt's geography, rulers, society, morality, family life, art and architecture, military, science, philosophy and religion. He then goes on to ask what happened to Ancient Egypt, and to point to its lasting influence today. Ancient Egypt: All That Matters is perfect for those who want to gain a sound grasp of the subject quickly, and those looking for a good entry-level book as a starting point for further study.

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.

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.

After invading Tunisia in 1881, the French installed a protectorate in which they shared power with the Tunisian ruling dynasty and, due to the dynasty's treaties with other European powers, with some of their imperial rivals. This "indirect" form of colonization was intended to prevent the violent clashes marking France's outright annexation of neighboring Algeria. But as Mary Dewhurst Lewis shows in Divided Rule, France's method of governance in Tunisia actually created a whole new set of conflicts. In one of the most dynamic crossroads of the Mediterranean world, residents of Tunisia - whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian - navigated through the competing power structures to further their civil rights and individual interests and often thwarted the aims of the French state in the process. Over time, these everyday challenges to colonial authority led France to institute reforms that slowly undermined Tunisian sovereignty and replaced it with a more heavy-handed form of rule - a move also intended to ward off France's European rivals, who still sought influence in Tunisia. In so doing, the French inadvertently encouraged a powerful backlash with major historical consequences, as Tunisians developed one of the earliest and most successful nationalist movements in the French empire. Based on archival research in four countries, Lewis uncovers important links between international power politics and everyday matters of rights, identity, and resistance to colonial authority, while re-interpreting the whole arc of French rule in Tunisia from the 1880s to the mid-20th century. Scholars, students, and anyone interested in the history of politics and rights in North Africa, or in the nature of imperialism more generally, will gain a deeper understanding of these issues from this sophisticated study of colonial Tunisia.

Mali is often depicted as a successor state of the Ancient Mali Empire. Since 2012, a lasting political, social, and security crisis has engulfed the country. Non-state armed groups, community militias, and fundamental Islamist fighters, have been wreaking havoc in a state that was praised for its diversity and religious tolerance. Amidst these violent conflicts, various narratives have been employed to mobilize support for Mali. These narratives have not prevented the rise of community-centered strategies for survival. Fula, the largest West African community, has often been associated with narratives related to violent conflict. Subjective appropriations have fueled peacebuilding and warmongering. National Narratives of Mali: Fula Communities in Times of Crisis analyzes the narratives employed in Mali by actors in the field to justify their actions and strategies. Dougoukolo Alpha Oumar Ba Konare studies the reactions from Fula communities that have experienced and created narratives of their own, based on their own senses of identity.

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.