The Palgrave Handbook of African Traditional Religion interrogates and presents robust and comprehensive contributions from interdisciplinary experts and scholars. Offering a range of perspectives and opinions through the prism of understanding the past about African Traditional religions and, more importantly, capturing their dynamics in the present and projecting their sustainability and relevance for the future, this volume is an essential resource for knowledge and understanding of African Traditional religions in the global space of religious traditions.

Commissioned to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of work in the royal burial ground by the 5th Earl of Carnavon and Howard Carter, this book presents an up-to-date review of the developments in excavation, mapping and research in the Valley of the Kings.

The fifth volume in the Voice of Witness series presents the narratives of Zimbabweans whose lives have been affected by the country's political, economic, and human rights crises. This book asks the question: How did a country with so much promise-a stellar education system, a growing middle class of professionals, a sophisticated economic infrastructure, a liberal constitution, and an independent judiciary-go so wrong? In their own words, they recount their experiences of losing their homes, land, livelihoods, and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at home, or beaten up or raped to "punish" votes for the opposition. Those living abroad in exile or forced to flee to neighboring countries recount their escapes, of cutting through fences, swimming across crocodile-infested rivers, and entrusting themselves to human smugglers. This book includes Zimbabweans of every age, class and political conviction, from farm laborers to academics, from artists and opposition leaders to ordinary Zimbabweans: men and women simply trying to survive as a once thriving nation heads for collapse.

In 1967, Nigeria was plunged into a brutal civil war with secessionist Biafra. The war, which lasted for 30 months and led to the death of over one million ethnic Igbo, has been described as the first genocide in post-colonial Africa. Although much has been written about the Nigeria Civil war, most of what has been written remains the perspectives of the major actors and generals who conducted the war. This book, through careful analysis of the experiences of those who witnessed the war on the Biafra side as well as other primary and archival sources, brings to life the Civil War-time trials and tribulations of ordinary Biafrans. Focusing primarily on the Biafran side of that civil war, the book reexamines the civil war from the perspective of non-military support of the war effort and the lingering human costs of that conflict. It also presents the Biafra experience in the context of issues of genocide, the role of humanitarian and international civil or advocacy groups; International Organizations and conflict resolution; and the impact of the Cold War and resources control (oil) in shaping the contours of the Nigeria-Biafra War. Based on personal experiences of the Biafra-Nigeria War, this book speaks to some elements in the causes of the war, the actual conduct of the war on both sides, and the underlying genocidal rather than political motivations for the war. As Michael J. C. Echeruo notes "Biafra should stand in the world's conscience as a monument to the possibility of successfully resisting 'final solutions.'"' This is an important book for collections in African studies, history, international studies, and political science.

In a sweeping narrative that traverses 600 years, one that eloquently weaves precise historical detail with poignant personal reportage, Pulitzer Prize finalist Howard W. French retells the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in America and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanising engagement with the "darkest" continent. Born in Blackness dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures whose stories have been repeatedly etiolated and erased over centuries, from unimaginably rich medieval African emperors who traded with Asia; to Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers; to ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage. In doing so, French tells the story of gold, tobacco, sugar and cotton-and the greatest "commodity" of all, the millions of people brought in chains from Africa to the New World, whose reclaimed histories fundamentally help explain our present world.

Unprecedented in its use of Egyptian official sources, this book sheds new light on the difficulties and challenges of a nascent relationship characterized by missed opportunities, mixed messages, and mutual frustrations. Alterman compellingly shows how the interests of the U.S. and Egypt diverged to undermine this early American attempt at economic assistance for Egyptian development. He shows how the attempt was stymied by bureaucratic obstacles both in Egypt and the U.S. and how it became entangled in the politics of the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict. This important book reveals the complexities of linking economic aid with political objectives.

During the early years of World War II, Britain devoted immense resources to building military bases in Egypt and Palestine. The political stability of the two countries was of prime concern to avoid diverting troops away from fighting the external enemy to internal security tasks. The paradox of Britain's eventual victory was that it could not perpetuate its political authority. Demands for independence intensified in Egypt and among Palestinian Jewry, and led to postwar struggles.

"Will be welcomed by all interested in African history and anthropology. A valuable contribution and a rich mine of material."
"--Journal of African History"

In many parts of the African Muslim world, slavery still blights the landscape. What are the origins of this terrible institution? Why is it still practiced? How widespread is it and how does it differ from Western chattel slavery?

This book tells the story of how the enslavement of Africans by Berbers, Arabs, and other Africans became institutionalized and legitimized throughout Muslim Africa. A classic, pioneering study, first published in 1971 and extensively updated in this revised edition, Slavery in the History of Black Muslim Africa provides an expansive portrait of domestic slavery from the tenth to the nineteenth century in the context of the religious, social, and economic conditions of the African Islamic world.

Drawing on a host of accounts from contemporary observers such as Leo Africanus and Ibn Battuta, Fisher and Fisher describe the status and rights of slaves in Africa, and their various roles as currency, goods, eunuchs, soldiers, and statesmen, as well as the jarring historical interruption brought on by slave raiders and traders in West and North Africa.

Boko Haram is the major threat to the Nigerian state, and has emerged as a destabilizing factor across sub-Saharan Africa. This is now a major focus of global policy-making, as between 2013 and 2014 insurgency-related deaths in Nigeria exceeded those in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is the first to focus on the military nature of Boko Haram, the reasons for its success in those specific regions of the Chad basin it operates in and a detailed history of the Nigerian army's counter-insurgency - with whom, uniquely, the author has spent research time. The book identifies and analyses the battles and skirmishes on the front line, as well as unearthing a wider explanation for Boko Haram's military success and the causes of the instability in the region.

This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They went to work and to be trained as a vanguard labor force for the intended African industrial revolutions. While they were there, they contributed their labor power to the East German economy. This book draws on more than 260 life history interviews and uncovers complex and contradictory experiences and transnational encounters. What emerges is a series of dualities that exist side by side in the memories of the former migrants: the state and the individual, work and consumption, integration and exclusion, loss and gain, and the past in the past and the past in the present and future. By uncovering these dualities, the book explores the lives of African migrants moving between the Third and Second worlds. Devoted to the memories of worker-trainees, this transnational study comes at a time when historians are uncovering the many varied, complicated, and important connections within the global socialist world.

Versamelde Boesmanstories 2 volg op die gewilde Versamelde Boesmanstories 1 (2009). Hierdie keer word "Deel III: Die Boesman Self, Sy Sedes, Gewoontes En Bekwaamhede" en "Deel IV: Gemengde Vertellings, Mees Van ’n Avontuurlike Aard", in een deel gepubliseer.

Versamelde Boesmanstories 2 gee ’n blik in die lewe en gewoontes van Boesmans, gesien deur die bril van G.R. von Wielligh.

Ons vind uit dat ’n Boesman nie graag aan vreemdelinge uitwys waar watergate in die woestyn is nie en dat hy hom kan vermom soos ’n volstruis om wild te bekruip. Wanneer ’n Boesman in die veld seerkry en hy wil hê iemand moet hom sien, gooi hy stof in die lug.

In a disruptive media landscape characterized by the relentless death of legacy newspapers, Nigeria's Digital Diaspora shows that a country's transnational elite can shake its media ecosystem through distant online citizen journalism. 2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Winner. Over a decade ago, when Nigeria's migratory digital elite in the United States pioneered a new fangled form of online citizen journalism that disrupted the certainties of legacy journalism, the country's professional journalists assumed that this amateur insurgency would be transitory. Instead, it was transformative. Diasporic online citizen journalism is now not only an integral part of Nigeria's media ecosystem, it has also inspired successful homeland emulators and is challenging, even in some cases supplanting, traditional media in the nation's democratic discourse. Within the frenetic and deeply engaged social media scene, diasporic citizen journalism, homeland news, and social media activism are merging to create the most energetic moment in Nigeria's media history. Nigeria's Digital Diaspora chronicles the emergence and transformation of this diasporic citizen journalism from the margins to the mainstream of the country's journalistic landscape.

Even leaving aside the vast death and suffering that it wrought on indigenous populations, German ambitions to transform Southwest Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were futile for most. For years colonists wrestled ocean waters, desert landscapes, and widespread aridity as they tried to reach inland in their effort of turning outwardly barren lands into a profitable settler colony. In his innovative environmental history, Martin Kalb outlines the development of the colony up to World War I, deconstructing the common settler narrative, all to reveal the importance of natural forces and the Kaisereich's everyday violence.

This scholarly work focuses on the establishment in 1809 of the celebrated Sokoto caliphate in what is now Nigeria. The Sokoto caliphate may well have been the last complete re-establishment of Islam in its entirety, comprising all of its many and varied dimensions.

Looting has become an increasingly popular concept in South Africa as an unsophisticated interpretation of ownership by "force" of property during periods of mayhem. However, looting is a complex concept whose origin spans a long history that cuts across time and space. In The Afrocentricity Trajectories of Looting in South Africa, edited by Mfundo Masuku, Dalifa Ngobese, Mbulaheni Obert Maguvhe, and Sifiso Ndlovu, contributors provide sophisticated analysis on the concept of "looting" and address nuances in the concept of looting, looking at links to spiraling inequality and poverty, racialization of property ownership, and skewed access and benefits of economic policies. As shown in this collection, looting has taken on a variety of political meanings: a challenge to the violence of racial capitalism, an alternative and accelerated path to justice, and a way to call attention to the reality of racial violence that is often ignored by the media, to name a few. This volume provides a critical analysis of looting from a multi-disciplinary approach that focuses on a combination of themes to show that looting is deeply rooted in property "ownership" and spiraling poverty and inequality that is structural in nature.

This book provides a contemporary overview of Boko Haram's activities. Since Boko Haram emerged in 2002, media-driven narratives as well as social scientific methodologies have been increasingly applied to draw generalisable conclusions on what goals the groups have pursued, what strategies it has used for these purposes and the counter campaign strategies authorities have pursued. But from 2009 to 2018, Boko Haram has pursued high-intensity violence: assassinations, bombing, kidnappings, beheading or threats of violence, conscriptions and territorial occupation. This makes it imperative to deepen and broaden our understanding of the groups' activities toward a problem-solving and policy-relevant analysis. Previously published in Security Journal Volume 33, issue 3, September 2020

As the Cold War faded, Ambassador Hank Cohen, President George Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, engaged in aggressive diplomatic intervention in Africa's civil wars. In this revealing book Cohen tells how he and his Africa Bureau team operated in seven countries in crisis--Angola, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan. He candidly characterizes key personalities and events and provides a treasure trove of lessons learned and basic principles for practitioners of conflict resolution within states.

San material culture has been a subject of study for many researchers and archaeologists but rarely has the documented material been seen through the eyes of the people themselves. San Elders Speak: Ancestral Knowledge of the Kalahari San is the first attempt to document indigenous knowledge through the voices of four San elders from the Kalahari. Over a period of seven days, the authors presented the four San elders, leaders in their community and custodians of ancient knowledge, with of the largest collection of KhoiSan ethnographica collected by Dr Louis Fourie at the beginning of the 19th century.

The San elders rediscovered objects last seen in their childhood and shared stories inspired by their handling of the objects. They provide the correct traditional names and explain how items were made, from what material, who used them, why and when. In a number of instances the elders changed the identification given by Louis Fourie. The knowledge they shared over those several days at Museum Africa in Johannesburg provide an enriching account that links the past and present in San life in illuminating ways. The text is accompanied by a rich visual record of the artefacts and how the San elders portray their use.

Aimed at scholars and students of archaeology, human evolution, anthropology, material culture studies, conservation, museology, and African studies, San Elders Speak is a captivating record into all aspects of this ancient and vanishing world of indigenous knowlegde, and represents a unique heritage for the people of descendant San communities.

Analyzes how negotiations between Dutch consuls and North African rulers over the liberation of Dutch sailors helped create a new diplomatic order in the western Mediterranean. This work offers a new perspective on the history of diplomacy in the western Mediterranean, examining how piracy and captivity at sea forced Protestant states from northwest Europe to develop complex relationships with Islamic North Africa. Tracing how Dutch diplomats and North African officials negotiated the liberation of Dutch sailors enslaved in the Maghrib, author Erica Heinsen-Roach argues that captivity and redemption helped shape (rather than undermine) a new diplomatic order in the western Mediterranean. Making use of extensive archival research, Consuls and Captives shows how encounters with North African society led the Protestant North to adjust to the norms and practices of the western Mediterranean. Dutch consuls became state representatives, tasked with claiming the unconditional release of captives from the Netherlands. But caught between these directives and the realities of Maghribi politics, the diplomats consented to pay ransom, participated in what they considered lavish gift-giving practices, and began to pay tribute -- all practices that were departures from the norms the Dutch States General upheld in "doing" diplomacy. In analyzing these adjustments, Heinsen-Roach brings into question earlier interpretations of diplomacy as a progressively evolving institution anchored in the western modern tradition. Consuls and Captives shows instead that early modern diplomacy in the western Mediterranean developed in uneven ways as a product of cultural encounters. With its compelling argument and wide-ranging evidence, this book will have a strong appeal to scholars of early modern diplomacy, slavery, and Mediterranean history, as well as to specialists on the Dutch Republic. Erica Heinsen-Roach is visiting assistant professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.