The two main arguments in the book are to contest the reduction of African civil wars to ethnic conflicts, and to point out the emergence of civil wars as the result of political struggles. The construction of Africa as the "other" has entailed that factors commonly used to explain war elsewhere have been neglected in Sub-Saharan Africa. The book aims at bringing the political power struggle as it evolves around the state to the forefront in analyses of civil wars and societal conflict.

Possidius, the bishop of Calama, was a life-long friend of St. Augustine's and best known for writing a biography of the bishop of Hippo, the Vita Augustini. Hermanowicz analyzes both the biography and the legally-oriented career of Possidius to illustrate how active Augustine's colleagues were in soliciting imperial support against their religious competitors and to show just how often Augustine's close friends disagreed with him on important matters of law, coercion and diplomacy. It is still widely asserted by scholars that St. Augustine dominated the theological landscape of North Africa, but this engaging study demonstrates how often he was, in fact, singular and isolated in his beliefs.

The study examines the interrelationships which evolved among the rural polities of Kauru and Pengana hills in the Central Nigerian Highlands. It analyses the relations within and between these polities and between them and the Islamic states which emerged in their neighbourhood and which tried to bring the polities under their control. It considers both patterns of peaceful coexistence and military confrontations. The volume is a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the historiography of African intergroup relations. It is a major addition in the search for the basis of conflict resolutions in North Central Nigeria.

This edited volume provides the first fully comprehensive evaluation of Libya since the Qadhafi coup in 1969. Throughout the different chapters the authors explore the rise of the military in Libya, the impact of its self-styled revolution on Libyan society and economy.

This text analyses the political and ethnical tensions that characterize Nigeria, which derive both from colonial and contemporary conflicts. It points out three major factors why Nigeria has not yet collapsed like many other African states: ethnic power sharing amongst the political elite, the military with its national outlook, and oil wealth.

This book tells the story of Kwame Nkrumah, the first post-colonial president of an independent African country. The book utilizes previously unpublished and recently declassified IS State Department documents to give an analysis and a chronology of Nkrumah's fall. The book is written for a general audience and for academic historians and students.

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 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

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.

Since humans first emerged as a distinct species, they have eaten, fought, prayed, and moved with other animals. In this stunningly original and conceptually rich book, historian Alan Mikhail puts the history of human-animal relations at the center of transformations in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Mikhail uses the history of the empire's most important province, Egypt, to explain how human interactions with livestock, dogs, and charismatic megafauna changed more in a few centuries than they had for millennia. The human world became one in which animals' social and economic functions were diminished. Without animals, humans had to remake the societies they had built around intimate and cooperative interactions between species. The political and even evolutionary consequences of this separation of people and animals were wrenching and often violent. This book's interspecies histories underscore continuities between the early modern period and the nineteenth century and help to reconcile Ottoman and Arab histories. Further, the book highlights the importance of integrating Ottoman history with issues in animal studies, economic history, early modern history, and environmental history. Carefully crafted and compellingly argued, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt tells the story of the high price humans and animals paid as they entered the modern world.

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.

During the heyday of camel caravan traffic-from the eighth century CE arrival of Islam in North Africa to the early twentieth-century building of European colonial railroads that linked the Sudan with the Atlantic-the Sahara was one of the world's great commercial highways, bringing gold, slaves, and other commodities northward and sending both manufactured goods and Mediterranean culture southward into the Sudan. Historian Ralph A. Austen here tells the remarkable story of an African world that grew out of more than one thousand years of trans-Saharan trading. Perhaps the most enduring impact of this trade and the common cultural reference point of trans-Saharan Africa was Islam. Austen traces this faith in its various forms-as a legal system for regulating trade, an inspiration for reformist movements, and a vehicle of literacy and cosmopolitan knowledge. He also analyzes the impact of European overseas expansion, which marginalized trans-Saharan commerce in global terms but stimulated its local growth. Indeed, trans-Saharan culture not only adapted to colonial changes, but often thrived upon them, remaining a potent force into the twenty-first century.

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

Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and even cooperation between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority? Addressing the question of how the risk of genocide develops over time, On the Path to Genocide contributes to a better understand why genocide occurs when it does. It provides a comprehensive and comparative historical analysis of the factors that led to the 1915 Armenian genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using fresh sources and perspectives that yield new insights into the history of the Armenian and Rwandan peoples. Finally, it also presents new research into constraints that inhibit genocide, and how they can be utilized to attempt the prevention of genocide in the future.

""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.

Trouble in the West provides the first full and continuous account of the Persian-Egyptian War, a conflict that continued for nearly the two-hundred-year duration of the Persian Empire. Despite its status as the largest of all ancient Persian military enterprises--including any aimed at Greece--this conflict has never been reconstructed in any detailed and comprehensive way. Thus, Trouble in the West adds tremendously to our understanding of Persian imperial affairs. At the same time, it dramatically revises our understanding of eastern Mediterranean and Aegean affairs by linking Persian dealings with Greeks and other peoples in the west to Persia's fundamental, ongoing Egyptian concerns. In this study, Stephen Ruzicka argues that Persia's Egyptian problem and, conversely, Egypt's Persian problem, were much more important in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean worlds than our conventional Greek-centered perspective and sources have allowed us to see. In looking at this conflict as one stage in an enduring east-west conflict between successive Near Eastern imperial powers and Egypt--one which stretched across nearly the whole of ancient history--it represents an important turning point: by pulling in remote western states and peoples, who subsequently became masters of Egypt, western opposition to Near Eastern power was sustained right up to the 7th century Arab conquests. For classicists and historians of the ancient Near East, Trouble in the West will serve as a valuable, and long-overdue, resource.

From protest to challenge is a multi-volume chronicle of the struggle to achieve democracy and end racial discrimination in South Africa. Beginning in 1882 during the heyday of European imperialism, these volumes document the history of race conflict, protest, and political mobilisation by South Africa’s black majority. Completely revised and updated, with the inclusion of photographs and with the previous volumes re-formatted to unify the series, this second edition of From protest to challenge revives the classic work of Thomas Karis and Gwendolen Carter and provides an indispensable resource for students and scholars of African history, race and ethnicity, identity politics, democratic transitions and conflict resolution. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance and generosity of all those who helped to make this book possible. During two extended periods of pioneering field research by Gwendolen Carter, Thomas Karis, and Sheridan Johns in South Africa in 1963 and 1964 – a period of growing political tension – dozens of South Africans gave them documents or loaned them material to photocopy, often in the hope of preventing irreplaceable records from falling into the hands of the police. In addition, lawyers for the defendants in the 1956–61 treason trial contributed a complete set of the trial transcript and the preliminary examination, as well as a set of virtually all the documents assembled by the defence in preparation for the trial. Added to the materials that the team was able to photocopy from archival collections at several South African universities and at the South African institute of race relations, these months of fieldwork provided the initial foundation for what was to become the first four volumes of From protest to challenge.