This book is a memoir with a ‘double heartbeat’. At its centre is the author’s relationship with the late Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, whose award-winning book The House of Hunger marked him as a powerful, disruptive, perhaps prophetic voice in African literature.

Flora Veit-Wild is internationally recognised for her significant contribution to preserving Marechera’s legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple’s first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987.

What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.

This book is about Angolan literature and culture. It investigates a segment of Angolan history and literature, with which even Portuguese-speaking readers are generally not familiar. Its main purpose is to define the features and the literary production of the so-called 'creole elite', as well as its contribution to the early manifestations of dissatisfaction towards colonial rule patent during a period of renewed Portuguese commitment to its African colonies, but also of unrealised ambitions, economic crisis, and socio-political upheaval in Angola and in Portugal itself. Nineteenth-century Angolan society was characterised by the presence of a semi-urbanised commercial and administrative elite of Portuguese-speaking creole families--white, black, some of mixed race, some Catholic and others Protestant, some old established and others cosmopolitan--who were based in the main coastal towns. As well as their wealth, derived from the functions performed in the colonial administrative, commercial and customs apparatus, their European-influenced culture and habits clearly distinguished them from the broad native population of black peasants and farm workers. In order to expand its control over the region, Portugal desperately needed the support of this kind of non-coloniser urban elite, which was also used as an assimilating force, or better as a source of dissemination of a relevant model of social behaviour. Thus, until the 1850s great creole merchants and inland chiefs dealt in captive slaves, bound for export to Brazil via Cape Verde and Sao Tome: the tribal aristocracy and the creole bourgeoisie thrived on the profits of overseas trade and lived in style, consuming imported alcoholic beverages and wearing European clothes. After the abolition, however, their social and economic position was eroded by an influx of petty merchants and bureaucrats from Portugal who wished to grasp the commercial and employment opportunities created by a new and modern colonial order, anxious to keep up with other European colonial powers engaged in the partition of the African continent. This book thus considers the first intellectuals, the early printed publications in the country, and the pioneers of Angolan literature who felt the need to raise their roots to higher dignity. Thus, they wrote grammar, dictionaries, poetry, fiction, and of course, incendiary articles denouncing exploitation, racism, and the different treatment afforded by the colonial authorities to Portuguese expatriates and natives.

This book examines the Empire's Patriotic Fund, established in Victoria, Australia, in 1901 to assist the dependants of the men serving in the Boer War and the men invalided home because of wounds or illness. Acting as an autonomous body and drawing on funds raised through a public appeal, its work marked one of the first attempts in Australia to deal with the consequences of Australian participation in a sustained war. This is the first full study of an Australian fund established to support those affected by a sustained war being fought for Empire by Australians. Rather than casting those affected by war as victims, John McQuilton examines how a body of middle class men attempted to come to grips with an experience that lay outside prevailing notions of social welfare. Based on applications submitted to the Empire's Patriotic Fund where both class and gender played their roles, this book opens up further study of such funds and the question of antecedents in the history of repatriation in Australia in the early twentieth century.

The Angolan story is only another in the fantastic web of indulgence, misery, absurdity and suffering beyond expression that is bred in peace no less than war in 'situations' the world over. The story told in this title involves an understanding of what is particular to Angola, but it goes far beyond that. It is a story of the extremes of the human condition and, as such, its relevance is timeless. Combining reportage and analysis, Justin Pearce shows the human face of Angola at a critical juncture in its history. Jonas Savimbi, leader of the rebel movement UNITA, was killed in February 2002. Crippled by the large imbalance between its resources and those of the MPLA government and the death of its messianic leader, a cult figure who has been described as of Mao-Tse-Tung proportions, UNITA collapsed, giving Angola its first extended period of peace since the nationalist uprising against Portuguese rule in the 1960s. Working as the BBC correspondent based in Luanda, Justin Pearce was the only English-speaking journalist based in Angola in 2001 and 2002. He travelled extensively in Angola, hearing the testimonies of those whose lives were shaped by political divisions and war. He was also able to observe how Angola was governed in a manner which had little in common with the ideals professed by the government since independence. As is clear in the title, the words 'situation' and 'confusion' have a particular resonance in Angola. Both are part of the fatalistic discourse adopted by Angolans when talking about the war, or about the state of their society. Hunger, corruption and all manner of human misery may be blamed on the ‘situation', something which is implicitly unchanging. 'Confusion', for its part, can signify anything from the usual English sense of the word – a muddle, a misunderstanding – to a full-scale war, blurring the moral distinction between the two. This title speaks to the non-specialist reader with an interest in African affairs; or people who have a particular interest in Angola, be it through business, humanitarian or policy development work, and who are looking for a perspective on the country's recent social history.

"This is the first book-length study of the French Caribbean presence in Africa, and serves as a unique contribution to the field of African Diaspora and Colonial studies. By using administrative records, newspapers, and interviews, it explores the French Caribbean presence in the colonial administration in Africa before World War II"--Provided by publisher.

Five hundred years before Homer immortalized the Trojan Horse, the ancient Egyptians had already composed a tale of soldiers hiding Ali Baba-like in baskets to capture a besieged city. Shortly after the rise to power of the warrior pharaoh Ramesses II ("the Great"), Egyptian authors began to write stories about battles and conquest. However, these stories were not set in the present, but in the past-they were the world's first works of historical fiction. These literary recreations of past events, which preserve fascinating mixtures of fact and fiction, provide unparalleled information about topics as diverse as ancient Egyptian historiography, religion, and notions of humor and wit. Imagining the Past is the first volume to provide complete translations and commentary for the historical fiction composed during Egypt's New Kingdom. The four tales included here represent a multifaceted approach to history and its actors. The Quarrel of Apepi and Seqenenere, set at the end of the Second Intermediate Period, preserves details of political history and taxation that are attested in contemporaneous sources. In The Capture of Joppa, a historically-attested general Djehuty from the reign of Thutmose III successfully defeats the ruler of Joppa through one of the first attested stratagems in world military history. Royalty takes center stage with Thutmose III in Asia, whose fragmentary narrative may be a fictional presentation of the Battle of Megiddo. The Libyan Battle Story, composed only a generation after the Battle of Perire, contains abundant historical details attested in hieroglyphic and hieratic sources and borders on fictionalized history. A concluding analysis summarizes the audience and function of historical fiction as well as theology and historiography within the tales. An appendix of the hieroglyphic texts, all transliterated with philological commentary, make these texts accessible to a wide audience, while representing the first critical scholarly edition of them available. Colleen Manassa's thorough research into the literary, political, and social context of each tale will further stimulate current discussions of genres and the transmission of texts in Egyptolology and comparative literature studies.

'Masterful.' - The Economist The Congo-Ocean railroad stands as one of the deadliest construction projects in history. It was completed in 1934, when Equatorial Africa was a French colony. African workers were conscripted at gunpoint, separated from their families and subjected to hellish conditions as they hacked their way through dense tropical foliage; excavated by hand thousands of tonnes of earth in order to lay down track; blasted their way through rock to construct tunnels; or risked their lives building bridges over otherwise impassable rivers. In the process, they suffered disease, malnutrition and rampant physical abuse, likely resulting in at least 20,000 deaths. Drawing on exhaustive research in French and Congolese archives, a chilling documentary record and eye-opening photographic evidence, J. P. Daughton tells the epic story of the Congo-Ocean railroad, and in doing so reveals the human costs and contradictions of modern empire.

This edited volume encompasses a range of themes and approaches relevant to the field of South African history today, as viewed from the perspective of practicing historians at the cutting edge of research in the discipline. The collection features the historians offering critical reflection on the theoretical and methodological aspects of their work. This involves them both looking back at the inherited historiographical tradition in the respective areas of their research, while also pointing forwards to possible future directions for scholarly engagement. -- .

Since the 1980s, democratic struggles have triggered constitutional reforms, elections, and other forms of political progress. This comprehensive volume offers refreshing perspectives on Africa's democratic renewal and will open up dialogue on the trends and trajectory of Africa's democratic future.

African research played a major role in transforming the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century. Ethnographic studies, in turn, had significant effects on the way imperial powers in Africa approached subject peoples. Ordering Africa provides the first comparative history of these processes. With essays exploring metropolitan research institutes, Africans as ethnographers, the transnational features of knowledge production, and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration, this volume both consolidates and extends a range of new research questions focusing on the politics of imperial knowledge. Specific chapters examine French West Africa, the Belgian and French Congo, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Italian Northeast Africa, Kenya, and Equatorial Africa (Gabon) as well as developments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. A major collection of essays that will be welcomed by scholars interested in imperial history and the history of Africa. -- .

How did Tunisia succeed in eliminating the threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism? Borowiec examines the actions, which begin with the removal of the senile President Habib Bourguiba in 1987, known in Tunisia as the change. Today, while its next door neighbor, Algeria, is in the midst of an upheaval threatening modernization and a secular government, Tunisia is the only Muslim country to ban polygamy and to introduce state-funded contraception. Borowiec begins by sketching Tunisia's history from the Phoenician era onward. He provides a detailed analysis of the country's Islamic movement, and then examines the efforts of Bourguiba's successor, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to liberalize the economy, foster a Western orientation, and make education accessible to all. Interviews with leading government officials as well as educators, writers, and average Tunisians puts a human face on a process that may allow Tunisia to make the transition to become a young developed nation at the beginning of the next millennium. This book is important to scholars, researchers, and the general public concerned with events in North Africa and the Arab world.

This book takes as its theme the ways in which governments legitimate their rule, both to themselves and to their subjects. Its introduction explores legitimacy and pre-colonial states, but the three sections of the book deal with colonial legitimacy, the question of legitimation in the transition from colonialism to majority rule, and the contemporary debate about accountability.

This project documents the rich source material in European and North American repositories relating to the history of countries formerly under colonial rule. The manuscript and document holdings of public and private archives, libraries, museums and other institutions referred to in the guide cover all aspects of history. The primary emphasis is on political, diplomatic, commercial and military history, but there is good coverage of cultural history - especially in the reports and correspondence of explorers and travellers in missionary archives. Each series, of which this is the third, is arranged by country; sources within national volumes are described by repositories and archival groups.

"A strength of the volume is its coverage of the "applied" aspects of knowledge, from Anthropology through to Eugenics and state and social planning. There is also a commendable sensitivity to the unique ethnic dynamics of southern Africa, not least, for example, the complications of an "indigenized" and powerful Afrikaner nationalism." Donal Lowry, Oxford Brookes University This collection, dealing with case studies drawn from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Mauritius, examines the relationship between scientific claims and practices on the one hand and the exercise of colonial power on the other. It challenges conventional views that portray science as a detached mode of reasoning with the capacity to confer benefits in a more or less even-handed manner. That science has the potential to further the collective good is not fundamentally at issue, but science can also be seen as complicit in processes of colonial domination. Not only did science assist in bolstering aspects of colonial power and exploitation, it also possessed a significant ideological component: it offered a means of legitimating colonial authority by counter-poising Western rationality to native superstition and it served to enhance the self-image of colonial or settler elites in important respects. This innovative volume ranges broadly through topics such as statistics, medicine, eugenics, agriculture, entomology and botany. Its interdisciplinary approach will find a readership amongst historians, sociologists, anthropologists and historians of science and medicine, both at an undergraduate and at a specialist level. Contributions are drawn from South Africa, Britain and North America.

Victims of political persecution since 2000, Zimbabwe's whites have never overcome the problem of belonging. In North America and Australia, Europeans became the majority and "normal" partially through the genocide of native peoples. Settlers to Zimbabwe, however, only comprised a tiny minority. They monopolized the territory but struggled to assimilate culturally. Rather than integrating with African societies, many adopted a strategy of social escape. In this arresting and powerful study, David McDermott Hughes shows how they became emotionally and artistically invested in the non-human environment surrounding them. He traces how writers, artists, and farmers crafted a white identity focused on ecological conservation and how, emerging from state terror, some are now groping toward a whiteness of uncommon humanity and humility.

The Women of Cairo: Scenes of Life in the Orient, first published in 1929, describes the trip to Egypt and other locations in the Ottoman Empire taken by French Romanticist Gerard de Nerval. The book focuses on both reinforcing and dispelling the old ways in which people saw the Orient, as well as examining their old and new customs. This book is perfect for those studying history and travel.

Did colonialism, a world-historical catastrophe, inflict only material damage on the colonized, or did it cause psychic injury as well? What would it mean, then, to read postcolonial writings under the prism of trauma? In History, Trauma, and Healing in Post-Colonial Narratives, Ifowodo tackles these questions through a psycho-social examination of the lingering impact of imperialist domination. His hybrid method that encompasses historicism, psychoanalysis and a realist concept of linguistic reference stakes a bold, new ground in postcolonial studies. The focus is trans-continental and the analysis centered on primary texts that explore the African, African-American, and Caribbean experience of slavery/colonialism. The result is a refreshing and necessary complement to the cultural-materialist studies that dominate the field.

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.

Breaking new ground in the study of European colonialism, this book focuses on a nation historically positioned between the Western and Eastern Empires of Europe - Finland. Although Finland never had overseas colonies, the authors argue that the country was undeniably involved in the colonial world, with Finns adopting ideologies and identities that cannot easily be disentangled from colonialism. This book explores the concepts of 'colonial complicity' and 'colonialism without colonies' in relation to Finland, a nation that was oppressed, but also itself complicit in colonialism. It offers insights into European colonialism on the margins of the continent and within a nation that has traditionally declared its innocence and exceptionalism. The book shows that Finns were active participants in various colonial contexts, including Southern Africa and Sapmi in the North. Demonstrating that colonialism was a common practice shared by all European nations, with or without formal colonies, this book provides essential reading for anyone interested in European colonial history. Chapters 1, 7 and 8 are available open access under a via link.springer.com.>

The book examines South African history and society from a variety of comparative perspectives. It brings together work by scholars based in South Africa, USA and the UK to reflect on the nature and evolution of what was considered for a long time a unique society. Drawing on studies of social, political and intellectual processes elsewhere, the authors seek to place South African developments in a broader context that sheds light on their specific features as well as global relevance.

The French North African Crisis analyzes the postwar breakdown in French imperial rule in North West Africa, concentrating primarily upon the Algerian war of independence. This book highlights the human tragedy involved and the divisive consequences within French metropolitan politics of intractable colonial conflict. It further examines how far the protracted crisis of colonial control in North Africa shaped French foreign and security policy and this impacted upon Anglo-French relations, the western alliance and the wider process of decolonization.