This book is the first English translation of Felice di Michele Brancacci's diary of his 1422 mission to the court of Sultan Al-Ashraf Seyf-ad-Din Barsbay of Egypt. Following the purchase of Port of Pisa in 1421, and the building of a galley system, Florence went on to assume a more active role in Levant trade, and this rich text recounts the maiden voyage of the Florentine galleys to Egypt. The text portrays the transnational experiences of Brancacci including those between the East and West, Christians and Muslims, and the ancient and modern worlds. The accompanying critical introduction discusses the unexpected motifs in Brancacci's voyage, as well as tracing the aftershocks of what was a traumatic Egyptian experience for him. It shows that this aftershock was then measured, captured, and memorialized in the iconic image of Tribute Money, the fresco he commissioned from Masaccio, on his return to his own world in Florence.

This book focuses on the late colonial history of Zambia and Malawi, which between 1953 and 1963 were part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Although there were many links in their history and between their populations, the two territories (British protectorates under Colonial Office control) contrasted greatly in power structures, in their economies, and in their development. Europeans living in Northern Rhodesia, with a power base in the mining economy, were able to establish a dominant position in the territory after the Second World War. By the 1950s it looked as though they would have, with Southern Rhodesian Europeans, a long hegemony, gaining independence from Britain as a new Dominion, which would mean control over both Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland through the Federation. Thus, white ethnicity and ideology are essential factors in this book relating to the struggle for power from just before the Second World War up to the 1960s. However, crises in 1959 and 1960 led to the collapse of the Federation. A second focus is on issues of social and economic development. For Africans in Nyasaland, and in rural parts of Northern Rhodesia, there was a relatively weak economy in this period, a pattern of limited cash crop production, while many people became caught up in labour migration, subordinate to powerful European-dominated economic forces within southern Africa. This meant that colonial policies aimed at rural development were fundamentally flawed. The book also looks at the actual nature of rural economic change (as opposed to colonial policies) and discusses alternative visions of the future which were put forward. The argument is put that historians have often concentrated on the activities of the main nationalist movements in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, seeing them as bringing progress away from colonialism and towards independence. Here there is an attempt to draw out the complexities of life, and a variety of responses in the colonial situation, progress coming in a number of forms, but not always being achieved.

The Asante World provides fresh perspectives on the Asante, the largest Akan group in Southern Ghana, and what new scholars are thinking and writing about the "world the Asante made." By employing a thematic approach, the volume interrogates several dimensions of Asante history including state formation, Asante-Ahafo and Bassari-Dagomba relations in the context of Asante northward expansion, and the expansion to the south. It examines the role of Islam which, although extremely intense for just a short time, had important ramifications. Together the essays excavate key aspects of Asante political economy and culture, exemplified in kola nut production, the kente/adinkra cloth types and their associated symbols, proverbs, and drum language. The Asante World explores the Asante origins of Jamaican maroons, Asante secular government, contemporary politics of progress, governance through the institution of Ahemaa or Queenmothers, epidemiology and disease, and education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Featuring innovative and insightful contributions from leading historians of the Asante world, this volume is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars concerned with African Studies, African diaspora history, the history of Ghana and the Gold Coast, the history of Islam in Africa, and Asante history.

This book focuses on the late colonial history of Zambia and Malawi, which between 1953 and 1963 were part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Although there were many links in their history and between their populations, the two territories (British protectorates under Colonial Office control) contrasted greatly in power structures, in their economies, and in their development. Europeans living in Northern Rhodesia, with a power base in the mining economy, were able to establish a dominant position in the territory after the Second World War. By the 1950s it looked as though they would have, with Southern Rhodesian Europeans, a long hegemony, gaining independence from Britain as a new Dominion, which would mean control over both Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland through the Federation. Thus, white ethnicity and ideology are essential factors in this book relating to the struggle for power from just before the Second World War up to the 1960s. However, crises in 1959 and 1960 led to the collapse of the Federation. A second focus is on issues of social and economic development. For Africans in Nyasaland, and in rural parts of Northern Rhodesia, there was a relatively weak economy in this period, a pattern of limited cash crop production, while many people became caught up in labour migration, subordinate to powerful European-dominated economic forces within southern Africa. This meant that colonial policies aimed at rural development were fundamentally flawed. The book also looks at the actual nature of rural economic change (as opposed to colonial policies) and discusses alternative visions of the future which were put forward. The argument is put that historians have often concentrated on the activities of the main nationalist movements in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, seeing them as bringing progress away from colonialism and towards independence. Here there is an attempt to draw out the complexities of life, and a variety of responses in the colonial situation, progress coming in a number of forms, but not always being achieved.

Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of research and data, Women of Piracy employs a criminological lens to explore how women have been involved in, and impacted by, maritime piracy operations from the 16th century to present day piracy off the coast of Somalia. The book challenges and resists popular understandings of women as peripheral to the criminal enterprise of piracy by presenting and analyzing their roles and experiences as victims, perpetrators, and criminal justice actors, showing that women have been, and continue to be, central figures in maritime piracy. Unfolding in three parts, part one sets the context by providing readers with a history of the masculinization of the sea. Part two focuses on the gendered division of labor in piracy operations, discussing how and why the roles and responsibilities associated with this gendered labor have emerged, persisted, evolved, and/or ceased over time, as well as considering which roles and responsibilities appear to be context-specific and which seem to transgress geographical locations. Part three explores how women have (or have not) been brought to justice for their participation in crimes of piracy as well as the roles of women in efforts to combat piracy. The overarching objective is to ignite a broader discussion about the various cultural, social, historical, and economic forces that create opportunities for women to participate in maritime piracy and counter-piracy, why women continue to be invisible figures of piracy, and what implications this has for how we study, police, and bring pirates to justice. The first criminologically-grounded, global study exploring the continuity and evolution of women in maritime piracy, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, gender, feminist studies, international relations, anthropology, history, and political geography. It will also be useful to maritime and law enforcement professionals.

The African Red Sea Littoral, currently divided between Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, is one of the poorest regions in the world. But the pastoralist communities indigenous to this region were not always poor-historically, they had access to a variety of resources that allowed them to prosper in the harsh, arid environment. This access was mediated by a robust moral economy of pastoralism that acted as a social safety net. Steven Serels charts the erosion of this moral economy, a slow-moving process that began during the Little Ice Age mega-drought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and continued through the devastating famines of the twentieth century. By examining mass sedentarization after the Second World War as merely the latest manifestation of an inter-generational environmental and economic crisis, this book offers an innovative lens for understanding poverty in northeastern Africa.

Ugandan Asians in Great Britain (1975) examines the impact of the 1972 immigration of 28,000 Asians expelled from Uganda, looking at the impact on both the immigrants themselves and the British host community. It is an attempt to understand some of the dynamics of forced migrant transition from one society and culture to another. The study was largely carried out in Wandsworth and Slough and shows how these communities - not without social problems before this influx of immigrants - adapted to the new arrivals. The sensitivity and effectiveness of the community relations organisations and the welfare agencies in these areas is revealed.

Jamaican Migrant (1965) is the honest and moving recollection of a Jamaican cabinet-maker who emigrated to a new life in Britain. This is the book of a man who has been through the whole story in his own life - childhood in a large and humble Jamaican family, apprenticeship there, the journey to Britain as a stowaway, years in London as a Jamaican immigrant. The author takes us from Jamaica's coast, the drug-idlers and orators on the beach, the hurricanes, his father's wartime jazz band, to the problems and sophistication of girls and jobs and solitude in a London winter.

Migration and Mobility (1984) examines the biological aspects of population movement, including genetic, anthropometric and psychological aspects. Other contributions deal with geographical and demographic features of human migration. Specific studies are described, and the theoretical framework used to describe population mobility is presented.

Crossing Cultural Borders (1991) examines the day-to-day interaction of immigrant children with adults, siblings and peers in the home, school and community at large as these families demonstrate their skill in using their culture to survive in a new society. Children of Mexican and Central American immigrant families in Secoya crossed a national border, and continue to cross linguistic, social and cultural borders that separate the home, school and outside world.

The Americanization Syndrome (1987) examines the historical role of education in the process of 'Americanization'. It argues that beginning with seventeenth century puritan leaders such as John Winthrop and Cotton Maher, the pattern of American education has been not the promotion of a blend of different cultures but the indoctrination of norms of belief of religion, politics and economics and an explicit discouragement of cultural variety. It traces the political role of education at key junctures of American history - after Independence, in the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War, in the establishment of settlement houses and the use of scientific management techniques by employers. The author focuses on the period 1900-1925 when new waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe led to a new drive for orthodoxy.

Minorities in the Open Society (1986) challenges optimistic assumptions regarding race relations in western nations, namely that social justice will prevail without much effort. It examines the interests behind public affirmations of commitment to integration, and presents a range of contemporary and historical material which illustrate the double-binds created for minorities by the dominant communities, who offer equality with one hand while obstructing it with the other. Individual members of minorities may be given the opportunity to achieve social prominence - but only to carry out special jobs on behalf of the majority.

Migrant Labour in Europe (1987) examines the movement of workers from less prosperous parts of Europe to areas with demand for their services. The author identifies seven major systems of migrant labour: the North Sea System (mainly Westphalian workers heading for the German and Dutch North Sea Coast and Walloon/French workers bound for the Belgian and Zeeland coasts); the area between London and the Humber; the Paris Basin; Provence, Languedoc and Catalonia; Castile; Piedmont; and central Italy with Corsica. A detailed study of the first of these systems, tracing its development and changes, is brought into a synchronic relation with data for the other regions. The evidence shows major waves of immigration in the seventeenth century, and a rapid diminution of migratory labour to the North Sea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a time when new 'pull areas' were created by the expanding industrial complexes of Germany and labour began to come in from areas outside Europe.

This edited collection is the first book-length project to undertake a multidisciplinary study of democratization and human security in the post war nation of Sierra Leone. The overarching theme is there is synergy of democratization and human security which makes it imperative for the state to foster and enhance the realization of these concepts in postwar Sierra Leone. The book is divided into two broad thematic sections. The first section deals with democratization with a critical examination of the creation and instrumentality of institutions largely considered a necessity for democracy to take hold in a country. The second section delineates human security or the lack thereof in key areas of political, social and economic life. Though the book is specific to Sierra Leone, African countries and indeed countries transitioning to democracy around the world, scholars and practitioners of postwar or democratic transition studies would benefit from the concepts expounded in this collection.

In Poverty and Wealth in East Africa Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in eastern Uganda have sustained and changed their ways of thinking about wealth and poverty over the past two thousand years. This history serves as a powerful reminder that colonialism and capitalism did not introduce economic thought to this region and demonstrates that even in contexts of relative material equality between households, people invested intellectual energy in creating new ways to talk about the poor and the rich. Stephens uses an interdisciplinary approach to write this history for societies without written records before the nineteenth century. She reconstructs the words people spoke in different eras using the methods of comparative historical linguistics, overlaid with evidence from archaeology, climate science, oral traditions, and ethnography. Demonstrating the dynamism of people's thinking about poverty and wealth in East Africa long before colonial conquest, Stephens challenges much of the received wisdom about the nature and existence of economic and social inequality in the region's deeper past.

In 1978, the South African activist and novelist Alex La Guma (1925-1985) published A Soviet Journey, a memoir of his travels in the Soviet Union. Today it stands as one of the longest and most substantive first-hand accounts of the USSR by an African writer. La Guma's book is consequently a rare and important document of the anti-apartheid struggle and the Cold War period, depicting the Soviet model from an African perspective and the specific meaning it held for those envisioning a future South Africa. For many members of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, the Soviet Union represented a political system that had achieved political and economic justice through socialism-a point of view that has since been lost with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. This new edition of A Soviet Journey-the first since 1978-restores this vision to the historical record, highlighting how activist-intellectuals like La Guma looked to the Soviet Union as a paradigm of self-determination, decolonization, and postcolonial development. The introduction by Christopher J. Lee discusses these elements of La Guma's text, in addition to situating La Guma more broadly within the intercontinental spaces of the Black Atlantic and an emergent Third World. Presenting a more expansive view of African literature and its global intellectual engagements, A Soviet Journey will be of interest to readers of African fiction and non-fiction, South African history, postcolonial Cold War studies, and radical political thought.

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.

examines the life and work of Mazisi Kunene explores how 'oraliterature' and cultural traditions informed Kunene's poetry draws on a range of interviews and comparative studies, the book situates Kunene's work in a wider conversation about South African social struggles. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of one of the giants of African literary history. As such, it will be of interest to researchers across African literary and postcolonial studies.

This volume, the fifth in the important Koobi Fora series on human origins, reports archaeological finds from excavations at East Turkana in northern Kenya from 1969-1979. It concentrates on the evidence from the period between 1.9 and 0.7 million years ago for reconstructing the behavior of early human ancestors. During this research study, new interdisciplinary methods of survey, mapping, excavation, experimentation, and analysis were developed. The study investigated the geology, stratigraphy, site formation processes, technology of the stone assemblages, and associated fauna of the region. This book is a unique record for this time period in Kenya, and this work is a benchmark in the field of human evolution.

A single image taken from a high-rise building in inner-city Johannesburg uncovers layers of history-from its premise and promise of gold to its current improvisations. It reveals the city as carcass and as crucible, where informal agents and processes spearhead its rapid reshaping and transformation. In Wake Up, This Is Joburg, writer Tanya Zack and photographer Mark Lewis offer a stunning portrait of Johannesburg and personal stories of some of the city's ordinary, odd, and outrageous residents. Their photos and essays take readers into meat markets where butchers chop cow heads; the eclectic home of an outsider artist that features turrets and full of manikins; long-abandoned gold pits beneath the city, where people continue to mine informally; and lively markets, taxi depots, and residential high-rises. Sharing people's private and work lives and the extraordinary spaces of the metropolis, Zack and Lewis show that Johannesburg's urban transformation occurs not in a series of dramatic, wide-scale changes but in the everyday lives, actions, and dreams of individuals.

An essential resource for students or general readers interested in post-colonial Africa, this encyclopedia provides coverage of different regions, countries, wars, battles, factions, leaders, and foreign powers. Armed conflict represents a substantial part of African history since around 1960, yet this history is either insufficiently taught or overshadowed by negative stereotypes about African "tribal warfare." In an effort to introduce this vital topic to students and general readers alike, this one-volume encyclopedia provides concise historical information on conflicts that occurred in postcolonial Africa. The entries cover all the regions of Africa (North, West, Central, East, and Southern); the Cold War and post-Cold War periods; a range of important leaders; various types of conflicts from civil wars and insurgencies to conventional military engagements; involvement of foreign powers; and such themes as airpower, women and war, and genocide. Includes more than 150 entries on various individuals, events, movements, and organizations Presents further reading sources at the end of each entry in order to further aid readers in their study of the topic Offers a chronology of the events discussed throughout the encyclopedia Features contributions from key scholars in the fields of African history and military studies

Drawing heavily on material from the archives of the governments of colonial Zimbabwe, this invaluable reference tool examines administrative policy concerning issues such as land conservation, community development, and land apportionment to Africans. Much of the original documentation collected here was destroyed by the Rhodesian Front government before Zimbabwean independence in 1980.

As a source book, containing circulars, directives, legislation, official reports, and minutes from office holders, "Hidden Conflict" provides an inside look at administrative policy in colonial Zimbabwe and the intentions behind it. Through her examination of these documents, Passmore highlights the roles played by colonial civil servants in influencing events in Zimbabwe. The issues, controversies, and concerns the author depicts in her book remain relevant for postcolonial Zimbabwe and many other African countries today.

Expanded third edition of this key text on the complex underlying conditions of the civil war from the 1960s to the present day, including a new chapter on the current wars in Sudan's new south and South Sudan. Sudan's post-independence history has been dominated by political and civil strife. Most commentators have attributed the country's recurring civil war either to an age-old racial divide between Arabs and Africans, or to recent colonially constructed inequalities. This book attempts a more complex analysis, briefly examining the historical, political, economic and social factors which have contributed to periodic outbreaks of violence between the state andits peripheries. In tracing historical continuities, it outlines the essential differences between the modern Sudan's first civil war in the 1960s and today, including an analysis of the escalation of the Darfur war, implementation of the 2005 peace agreement and implications of the Southern referendum in 2011 and the new war in Sudan's new south and South Sudan. The author also looks at the series of minor civil wars generated by, and contained within, the major conflict, as well as the regional and international factors - including humanitarian aid - which have exacerbated civil violence. This introduction is aimed at students of North-East Africa, and of conflict and ethnicity. It will be essential reading for those in aid and international organizations who need a straightforward analytical survey which will help them assess the prospects for a lasting peace in Sudan. Douglas H. Johnson isan independent scholar and former international expert on the Abyei Boundaries Commission.

First published in 1978 Nasser and His Generation is one of the most important books on modern Egyptian history. It goes much further than a simple history of the Nasser regime or a psychobiography of the Egyptian ruler. It examines his personality, attitudes and beliefs and how these were informed or acquired and seeks to explain what and who he was. But it also considers Nasser to be a representative of a generation of Egyptians, many of whom rode on his bandwagon to power, serve him, and then more or less promptly forgot him. The first two parts set the scene for the emergence of the military regime, highlighting the disintegration of the old political order which the Free Officers overthrew in 1952. Part Three deals with Nasser in his several capacities as absolute ruler of Egypt and his relations with Arabs, Israel and the rest of the world. Part Four provides a depiction of Nasser as the absolute ruler and Part Five attempts a general assessment of Nasser's personality and his impact on Egypt. Based on archival sources and extensive interviews with many of his associates, closest members of his family and his deepest enemies, this volume is a must read for any student of political history, African studies, Middle East studies and political science.