Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Humanities > History > African history > General
Why is the Horn such a distinctive part of Africa? This book, by one of the foremost scholars of the region, traces this question through its exceptional history and also probes the wildly divergent fates of the Horn's contemporary nation-states, despite the striking regional particularity inherited from the colonial past. Christopher Clapham explores how the Horn's peculiar topography gave rise to the Ethiopian empire, the sole African state not only to survive European colonialism, but also to participate in a colonial enterprise of its own. Its impact on its neighbours, present-day Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Somaliland, created a region very different from that of post-colonial Africa. This dynamic has become all the more distinct since 1991, when Eritrea and Somaliland emerged from the break-up of both Ethiopia and Somalia. Yet this evolution has produced highly varied outcomes in the region's constituent countries, from state collapse (and deeply flawed reconstruction) in Somalia, through militarised isolation in Eritrea, to a still fragile 'developmental state' in Ethiopia. The tensions implicit in the process of state formation now drive the relationships between the once historically close nations of the Horn.
An integrative approach combining an historical approach and anthropological interpretation / Relying essentially on indigenous Arabic sources, often inaccessible to foreign scholars, the book presents a more objective view of Islam as a culture / Underlines at every turn the close and complex interrelatedness of religion and politics in Muslim societies.
’n Epiese reis in ’n klein seiljag van Frankryk tot aan die
Namakwalandse kus gedurende die Tweede Wêreldoorlog,
sabotasiepogings en planne om Eerste Minister Jan Smuts in ’n
sluipmoord om die lewe te bring . . . In die vroeë 1940’s is die
Suid-Afrikaanse publiek aangegryp deur die uitdagende optrede van
die Olimpiese bokser en swaargewigkampioen Robey Leibbrandt. Hy was
dodelik gekant teen Suid-Afrika se deelname aan die oorlog.
This book reflects on the life and politics of Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) and his efforts to broker peace and reconciliation in a deeply divided country. Through examples from apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, it explores conflict and methods for realising peace, social justice, and democracy. The book looks at the festering of animosity and racial bitterness between the white Afrikaner community and the black community during years of racial violence, injustices, and authoritarianism in South Africa. In the most violent phase of the country's history, Mandela offered to both communities peaceful means to ensure equality, justice, and inclusivity. The author highlights the extraordinary challenges which Mandela faced in mobilising consent and persuading both the black and the Afrikaner community to acquiesce to a peaceful transfer of power. The volume further details the socio-political contexts and negotiations which resulted in the swift transfer of power, Mandela's insistence on crafting inclusive systems of nationhood, his multi-cultural cabinet, and the institutionalisation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address challenges facing the two communities in the post-conflict period. An accessible introduction to one of the greatest leaders in contemporary history, this book will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of peace and conflict studies, social exclusion and discrimination, critical race theory, human rights, politics, decolonisation and post-colonial studies, sociology, and history.
Development in Modern Africa: Past and Present Perspectives contributes to our understanding of Africa's experiences with the development process. It does so by adopting a historical and contemporary analysis of this experience. The book is set within the context of critiques on development in Africa that have yielded two general categories of analysis: skepticism and pessimism. While not overlooking the shortcomings of development, the themes in the book express an optimistic view of Africa's development experiences, highlighting elements that can be tapped into to enhance the condition of African populations and their states. By using case studies from precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial Africa, contributors to the volume demonstrate that human instincts to improve material, social and spiritual words are universal. They are not limited to the Western world, which the term and process of development are typically associated with. Before and after contact with the West, Africans have actively created institutions and values that they have actively employed to improve individual and community lives. This innovative spirit has motivated Africans to integrate or experiment with new values and structures, challenges, and solutions to human welfare that resulted from contact with colonialism and the postcolonial global community. The book will be of interest to academics in the fields of history, African studies, and regional studies.
This book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa. Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa's white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. Addressing themes such as the class-based disruption of racial norms and practices, state surveillance and interventions - and their failures - towards nonhegemonic whites, and the opportunities and limitations of physical and social mobility, the book mounts a forceful argument for the regional consideration of white societies in this historical context. Centrally, it extends the path-breaking insights emanating from scholarship on racialized class identities from North America to the African context to argue that race and class cannot be considered independently in Southern Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of southern African studies, African history, and the history of race.
Women in the Modern History of Libya features histories of Libyan women exploring the diversity of cultures, languages and memories of Libya from the age of the Empires to the present. The chapters explore a series of institutional and private archives inside and outside Libya, illuminating historical trajectories marginalised by colonialism, nationalism and identity politics. They provide engaging and critical exploration of the archives of the Ottoman cities, of the colonial forces of Italy, Britain and the US, and of the Libyan resistance - the Mawsu'at riwayat al-jihad (Oral Narratives of the Jihad) collection at the Libyan Studies Center of Tripoli - as well as of the private records in the homes of Jewish and Amazigh Libyans across the world. Developing the tools of women's and gender studies and engaging with the multiple languages of Libya, contributors raise a series of critical questions on the writing of history and on the representation of Libyan people in the past and the present. Illuminating the sheer diversity of histories, memories and languages of Libya, Women in the Modern History of Libya will be of great interest to scholars of North Africa; women's and gender history; memory in history; cultural studies; and colonialism. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of North African Studies.
Ausi Told Me: Why Cape Herstoriographies Matter provides fascinating insights into life at the Cape over several centuries, the indigenous inhabitants and their accumulated knowledge, and how attempts were made to systematically erase this knowledge during the colonial and apartheid eras. Yet the wisdom of the ages still resides with the Ausidi, the female, intergenerational knowledge-keepers who are revered for the central role they played in Rondevlei, Hardevlei and other communities on the Cape Flats before the forced removals from the 1960s onwards changed the landscape forever. The book delves into many of the untold stories of the Cape, challenging various scholarly assumptions about the origins and enduring influence of the Khoi and San in the languages and cultures of southern Africa. The meticulously well-researched text is also skilfully interwoven with stories from current and former residents of the Cape Flats who speak candidly about their childhood experiences, the vast expanses of plants and flowers that used to more than satisfy local communities’ food and medicinal requirements, and the Ausidi – the formidable yet selfless family matriarchs, many of whom refused to be cowed by the apartheid regime’s forced removal policy and fought to protect their cherished livestock and land. Ausi Told Me: Why Cape Herstoriographies Matter serves as a reminder that popular history is not unassailable; it should be regularly questioned and, where necessary, challenged. The book makes a powerful case for a decolonised approach to exploring and interpreting southern Africa’s neglected past – in which the stories, dreams, visions and rituals passed down through the generations are recognised once more as critical sources of scholarly knowledge and physical and emotional wellbeing.
Darfur s Sorrow is the first general history of Darfur to be published in any language. The book surveys events from before the founding of the Fur sultanate in the sixteenth century through the rise and establishment of the Fur state and its incorporation into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1916. The narrative continues with detailed coverage of the brief but all-important colonial period (1916 1956) and Darfur s history as a neglected peripheral region since independence. The political, economic, environmental, and social factors that gave rise to the current humanitarian crisis are discussed in detail, as are the course of Darfur s rebellion, its brutal suppression by the Sudanese government, and the lawless brigands known as janjawid. The second edition of the book brings the story up to date and includes an analysis of attempts to save Darfur s embattled people and to bring an end to the fighting.
Published in 1886, My African Travels is a succinct record of British American explorer Henry Morton Stanley's adventurous African expeditions during 1871-1884 and the results of his travels. Stanley, was commissioned by New York Herald to undertake a secret mission to find and rescue the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who was lost in the midst of the African jungle. Stanley describes his journey through the forests and rivers of Africa and his encounters with the African wildlife, tribespeople, and Arab settlers and traders amidst the variegated beauty of places such as Unyamwezi, Usagara, Ukawendi, and Tanganika districts. Ranging over events such as Stanley's historic rescue of Livingstone to Livingstone's death and Stanley's further expeditions in Africa and his exploration and development of the Congo state, My African Travels is the saga of a passionate explorer with graphic descriptions of the vicissitudes of an African journey.
Sir John Barrow (1764-1848) was a distinguished British government servant whose diplomatic career took him to China and Africa, and who in forty years as Secretary to the Admiralty was responsible for promoting Arctic and Antarctic exploration, including the voyages of Sir John Ross, Sir William Parry, Sir James Clark Ross and Sir John Franklin (the last of which famously ended in disaster). Barrow's autobiography, written when he was eighty-three, depicts a life extraordinary for its range of experience and activity, from a small farm in the Furness peninsula to the court of the Emperor of China, and from an apparently settled life as a civil servant at Cape Town to the centre of affairs at a time when the British Navy's reach and influence reached their highest point. This fascinating account will be of interest to anyone interested in exploration and the history of the British Navy.
Modern international criminal law typically traces its origins to the twentieth-century Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, excluding the slave trade and abolition. Yet, as this book shows, the slave trade and abolition resound in international criminal law in multiple ways. Its central focus lies in a close examination of the often-controversial litigation, in the first part of the nineteenth century, arising from British efforts to capture slave ships, much of it before Mixed Commissions. With archival-based research into this litigation, it explores the legal construction of so-called 'recaptives' (slaves found on board captured slave ships). The book argues that, notwithstanding its promise of freedom, the law actually constructed recaptives restrictively. In particular, it focused on questions of intervention rather than recaptives' rights. At the same time it shows how a critical reading of the archive reveals that recaptives contributed to litigation in important, but hitherto largely unrecognized, ways. The book is, however, not simply a contribution to the history of international law. Efforts to deliver justice through international criminal law continue to face considerable challenges and raise testing questions about the construction - and alternative construction - of victims. By inscribing the recaptive in international criminal legal history, the book offers an original contribution to these contentious issues and a reflection on critical international criminal legal history writing and its accompanying methodological and political choices.
This book investigates the role of ethnic federalism in Ethiopian politics, reflecting on a long history of division amongst the country's political elites. The book argues that these patterns have enabled the resilience and survival of authoritarianism in the country, and have led to the failure of democratization. Ethnic conflict in Ethiopia stretches back to the country's imperial history. Competing nationalisms begin to emerge towards the end of the imperial era, but were formalized by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) from the 1990s onwards. Under the EPRDF, ethnicity and language classifications formed the main organizing principles for political parties and organizations, and the country's new federal arrangement was also designed along ethnic fault lines. This book argues that this ethnic federal arrangement, and the continuation of an elite political culture are major factors in explaining the continuation of authoritarianism in Ethiopia. Focusing largely on the last 27 years under the EPRDF and on the political changes of the last few years, but also stretching back to historical narratives of ethnic grievances and division, this book is an important guide to the ethnic politics of Ethiopia and will be of interest to researchers of African politics, authoritarianism and ethnic conflict.
Divided Country explains how segregation and apartheid became entrenched in a unique way in cricket in South Africa between 1915 and the 1950s. While the rest of the cricket world increasingly rubbed out old dividing lines, South Africa reinforced them until seven different South Africas existed at the same time in cricket. Each of them claimed the title `South Africa' and `national'. Each ran leagues and provincial competitions and chose national teams. This book continues the task started by Cricket and Conquest (2017), which re-wrote the foundational narratives of cricket in southern Africa between 1795 and 1914. One reviewer noted it was `simply the finest book ever written about sport in South Africa'. Another that it had the effect of `bowling over prevailing histories, de-colonising existing narratives of the game ... *and+ throwing all that came before into a spin' so that `what was will never be the same'. Divided Country similarly attempts to paint an entirely new picture of cricket in South Africa during a crucial and complex period. It completely inverts previous whites-only general histories of cricket, showing that the game has an infinitely richer history than has been recorded to date. Without knowing how apartheid in cricket unfolded one cannot even begin to understand the journey the country has travelled since the 1950s, and how, slowly, painstakingly, the cricket unity we take for granted today was struggled for and constructed. This will be the explosive theme of Volume 3 of this series.
SPECIAL COMMENDATION in Africa's 100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century. The series is illustrated throughout with maps and black and white photographs. Volume 2 covers the period beginning at the close of the Neolithic era, from around the eighth millenium before our era. This period of some nine thousand years has been sub-divided into four major geographical zones. Chapters 1 to 12 cover the Nile, Egypt and Nubia: by far the largest part of the book is devoted to the ancient civilization of Egypt because of its pre-eminent place in the early history of Africa. Chapters 13 to 16 relate to the Ethiopianhighlands. Chapters 17 to 20 describe the Maghrib and its Sahara hinterland, and Chapters 21 to 29 the rest of Africa including some of the Indian Ocean islands. The series is co-published in Africa with seven publishers, inthe United States and Canada by the University of California Press, and in association with the UNESCO Press.
This Variorum volume is a collection of articles dealing with Egypt under the Fatimids, originally published in diverse journals and books between 1984 and 2013. The Fatimids came to power in North Africa in 910 CE, and ruled in Egypt from 969 to 1171 CE. As Imams and Caliphs, they claimed authority for the faith and the government of the Muslim world. In Egypt and Syria, they both reigned and ruled over the state. In North Africa and Sicily, the Hijaz and latterly the Yemen, they reigned but did not rule. In the rest of the Muslim world, they pursued their aim for recognition, notably through their missionaries active in Iraq and Iran A core theme is the evolution of the population and its passage from a Coptic to a Muslim majority. Two articles deal with the murderous history of the Wazirs of the Pen before the Armenian Badr al-Jamali began the rule of the Wazirs of the Sword. Four articles deal with the question of Fatimid diplomacy followed by three dealing with Badr al-Jamali and his revival of the dynasty, including his relations with the Yemen, his use of the Coptic church to extend Fatimid influence to Christian Nubia and Ethiopia, and his employment of his military as tax-farmers, creating a system which culminated in the Mamluk regime of the 13th to the 16th century. The final articles concern the Fatimid response to the Crusades which ended with Saladin and the death of the last Imam Caliph, leaving Ismailism to the breakaway sects of the Nizaris in Iran and the Tayyibis in the Yemen.
This book applies oral, archival and other interdisciplinary evidence from West Africa and the Americas to analyses of new world Maroons, slaves and free blacks, examining a "Gold Coast" entrepot of Akan, Ga, Guan and other peoples in an Atlantic era of non-linear, mutable intersection of contested history and culture. Combining extant evidence with newer interdisciplinary insights to reconsider under-recognized histories and actors, Identity, Spirit and Freedom in the Atlantic World explores West African cosmologies, regional statecraft and socio-cultural practice, and the way they contributed to Atlantic ideas of freedom, identity and spirituality. Archival researches of British, Dutch and Danish Atlantic thoroughfares bring to light histories of royals, priests and others remade as captive laborers, Maroons and free blacks. Looking at Akwamu's overtaking of Great Accra, Jamaica's Maroon Wars, the 1712 Rebellion in New York and many other examples, this book explores the evolution of identity and spirituality in the diaspora of the Gold Coast and the Atlantic world. Identity, Spirit and Freedom in the Atlantic World will be of interest to scholars and students of African studies, the African diaspora, cultural studies and Atlantic and American history.
The collective inquiries in this volume address ethnicity in ancient Africa as social fact and political artifact along numerous dimensions. Is ethnicity a useful analytic? What can archaeology say about the kinds of deeper time questions which scholars have asked of identities in Africa? Eleven authors engage with contemporary anthropological, historical and archaeological perspectives to examine how ideas of self-understanding, belonging, and difference in Africa were made and unmade. They examine how these intersect with other salient domains of social experience: states, landscapes, discourses, memory, technology, politics, and power. The various chapters cover broad geographic and temporal ground, following an arc across Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and East Africa, spanning from prehistory to the colonial period.
First published in 1914, this title was the first comparative study of the marriage ceremonies in different parts of Morocco. Westermarck considers how ceremonial customs and rituals differ across social and cultural groups throughout the country and discusses their possible roots. Based on extensive primary research, visiting many of the tribes and places mentioned in the book, this is a really fascinating title of great value to students of sociology and cultural anthropology with an interest in the foundations of the marriage ceremony.
Echoes of Slavery: Voices from our Past is a collection of true stories, each chosen to illuminate a particular facet of Cape slavery in its mature form. The book concentrates on the final 30 years of slavery in order to place the least distance between Cape slaves and their modern descendants. For example, Chrisje of the Cape's horror at the prospect of having her hair cut as a punishment in 1831 is easier to comprehend than the probable state Valentijn of Madagascar's mind when he was sold for 80 wagonloads of firewood in 1689.;Most of these sketches have previously appeared as weekly columns in the Cape Argus under the banner 'The Way We Were', which looked at the history of Cape Town's previously marginalised under classes. The author, Jackie Loos, gleaned much of the information from previously untapped primary and secondary sources in the Cape Town Archives Repository and the National Library of South Africa. Jackie Loos joined the Special Collections Department of the South African Library in 1990 and worked with author Karel Schoeman until 1998.;Since then she has been a freelance researcher and written more than 200 illustrated articles for the Cape Argus. She is well known by many local historians. This year, 2004 has been announced as the Unesco Year of the Slave. This book doesn't only remind many South Africans of their interesting past, but also serves as a unique bedside read.
The Story of One Tells the Struggle of All: Metalworkers under
Apartheid is the third volume in the Hidden Voices Series. It is
comprised of two booklets first published under Raven Press’s
Worker Series which aims to tell the lived experiences of workers
during apartheid. “I work here in Boksburg but my spirit is in
Mahlabatini.
'Africa is a lost cause.' This is a cynical view held widely in the West, in much of the world and even in Africa. Many people in the old European colonial powers - and not only the dwindling band of 'old Africa hands' who served in the colonies - are in despair, lamenting maladministration, corruption, civil and inter-state wars, poverty, famine and the seemingly unstoppable march of AIDS. And all in a great continent with abundant human and natural resources. The other side of the coin is that hope is beginning to dawn as Africa's plight is recognised by the Africans themselves and its vital strategic, political and economic importance in the age of globalisation is gaining universal appreciation. An 'African renaissance' may seem far-fetched but there is perhaps light at the end of the tunnel. This is the backdrop against which Andrew Sardanis's fascinating story is set. It begins with his work as a journalist in Cyprus - on the receiving end of British colonialism - and moves to Northern Rhodesia where he played a leading role as an international businessman and in the politics of independence leading to the new nation of Zambia. He was at the heart of Zambia's political and business development, and always a sympathetic but critical observer and adviser, both in government and in business, also a close but objective friend of leaders including Kenneth Kaunda.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Zanzibar Sultanate became the focal point of European imperial and humanitarian policies, most notably Britain, France, and Germany. In fact, the Sultanate was one of the few places in the world where humanitarianism and imperialism met in the most obvious fashion. This crucial encounter was perfectly embodied by the iconic meeting of Dr. Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley in 1871. This book challenges the common presumption that those humanitarian concerns only served to conceal vile colonial interests. It brings the repression of the East African slave trade at sea and the expansion of empires into a new light in comparing French and British archives for the first time.
Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field. Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.
This book is a contribution to the global history of the transfer of political ideas, as exemplified by the case of modern Ethiopia. Like many non-European nation-states, Ethiopia adopted a western model of statehood, that is, the nation-state. Unlike the postcolonial polities that have retained the mode of statehood imposed on them by their colonial powers, Ethiopia was never successfully colonized leaving its ruling elite free to select a model of 'modern' (western) statehood. In 1931, via Japan, they adopted the model of unitary, ethnolinguistically homogenous nation-state, in turn copied by Tokyo in 1889 from the German Empire (founded in 1871). Following the Ethiopian Revolution (1974) that overthrew the imperial system, the new revolutionary elite promised to address the 'nationality question' through the marxist-leninist model. The Soviet model of ethnolinguistic federalism (originally derived from Austria-Hungary) was introduced in Ethiopia, first in 1992 and officially with the 1995 Constitution. To this day the politics of modern Ethiopia is marked by the tension between these two opposed models of the essentially central European type of statehood. The late 19th-century 'German-German' quarrel on the 'proper' model of national statehood for Germany - or more broadly, modern central Europe - remains the quarrel of Ethiopian politics nowadays. The book will be useful for scholars of Ethiopian and African history and politics, and also offers a case in comparative studies on the subject of different models of national statehood elsewhere. |
You may like...
1 Recce: Volume 3 - Onsigbaarheid Is Ons…
Alexander Strachan
Paperback
Women In Solitary - Inside The Female…
Shanthini Naidoo
Paperback
(1)
The Lie Of 1652 - A Decolonised History…
Patric Mellet
Paperback
(7)
|