The comparison of early Italy's and Japan's colonialism is without precedence. The majority of studies on Italian and Japanese expansion refer to the 1930-1940s period (fascist/totalitarian era) when Japan annexed Manchuria (1931) and Italy Ethiopia (1936). The first formative and crucial steps that paved the way for this expansion have been neglected. This analysis covers a range of social, political and economic parameters illuminating the diversity but also the common ground of the nature and aspirations of Japan's and Italy's early colonial systems. The two states alongside the Great Powers of the era expanded in the name of humanism and civilization but in reality in a way typically imperialistic, they sought territorial compensations, financial privileges and prestige. A parallel and deeper understanding of the nineteenth century socio-cultural-psychological parameters, such as tradition, mentality, and religion that shaped and explain the later ideological framework of Rome's and Tokyo's expansionist disposition, has never been attempted before. This monograph offers a detailed examination of the phenomenon of colonialism by examining the issue from two different angles. The study contributes to the understanding of Italy's and Japan's early imperial expansion. In addition, it traces the origins of these states' similar and common historical evolution in late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.

David Livingstone (1813-1873) was one of the supreme representatives of the British Empire. Yet his career suffered many set-backs during his own life-time, and since his death his reputation has swung between extremes of adulation and dismissal. Were his epic journeys through Africa purely to save souls and counter the slave trade? Or were they the first steps towards bringing the peoples of Central Africa under the control of Europeans who would destroy their values and exploit them economically? Beyond these questions, there lies the puzzle of Livingstone's own character and its contradictions.
Livingstone's career was certainly an extraordinary one. Born in poverty in Blantyre, Scotland, he educated himself by heroic endeavor, later proving him-self to be a remarkable linguist and scientist. His missionary journeys brought him into contact with a wide range of African peoples, for whom he showed remarkable sympathy. "David Livingstone: Mission and Empire is a scholarly and readable account of Livingstone's life and of his achievements.

This book examines diplomatic role of Okoi Arikpo during Biafran War in Nigeria. It examines his diplomatic engagements and how they shaped the international politics of the fighting. Okoi Arikpo was Nigeria's longest serving Minister of Foreign Affairs, saddled with the country's chief diplomatic responsibilities from 1967 and 1975. Okoi Arikpo played the role of Federal emissary on foreign relations in the Biafran Crisis as well. The Foreign Ministry's role in the foreign policy decision-making system was also due to the sort of leadership that Arikpo was able to provide.

The first dynasty to mint gold dinars outside of the Abbasid heartlands, the Aghlabid (r. 800-909) reign in North Africa has largely been neglected in the scholarship of recent decades, despite the canonical status of its monuments and artworks in early Islamic art history. The Aghlabids and their Neighbors focuses new attention on this key dynasty. The essays in this volume, produced by an international group of specialists in history, art and architectural history, archaeology, and numismatics, illuminate the Aghlabid dynasty's interactions with neighbors in the western Mediterranean and its rivals and allies elsewhere, providing a state of the question on early medieval North Africa and revealing the centrality of the dynasty and the region to global economic and political networks. Contributors: Lotfi Abdeljaouad, Glaire D. Anderson, Lucia Arcifa, Fabiola Ardizzone, Alessandra Bagnera, Jonathan M. Bloom, Lorenzo Bondioli, Chloe Capel, Patrice Cressier, Mounira Chapoutot-Remadi, Abdelaziz Daoulatli, Claire Delery, Ahmed El Bahi, Kaoutar Elbaljan, Ahmed Ettahiri, Abdelhamid Fenina, Elizabeth Fentress, Abdallah Fili, Mohamed Ghodhbane, Caroline Goodson, Soundes Gragueb Chatti, Khadija Hamdi, Renata Holod, Jeremy Johns, Tarek Kahlaoui, Hugh Kennedy, Sihem Lamine, Faouzi Mahfoudh, David Mattingly, Irene Montilla, Annliese Nef, Elena Pezzini, Nadege Picotin, Cheryl Porter, Dwight Reynolds, Viva Sacco, Elena Salinas, Martin Sterry.

While there is much discussion on Africa-China relations, the focus tends to lean more on the Chinese presence in Africa than on the African presence in China. There are numerous studies on the former but, with the exception of a few articles on the presence of African traders and students in China, little is known of the latter, even though an increasing number of Africans are visiting and settling in China and forming migrant communities there. This is a phenomenon that has never happened before the turn of the century and has thus led to what is often termed Africa's newest Diaspora. This book focuses on analyzing this new Diaspora, addressing the crucial question: What is it like to be an African in China? Africans in China is the first book-length study of the process of Africans travelling to China and forming communities there. Based on innovative intermingling of qualitative and quantitative research methods involving prolonged interaction with approximately 800 Africans across six main Chinese cities--Guangzhou, Yiwu, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau--sociolinguistic and sociocultural profiles are constructed to depict the everyday life of Africans in China. The study provides insights into understanding issues such as why Africans go to China, what they do there, how they communicate with their Chinese hosts, what opportunities and problems they encounter in their China sojourn, and how they are received by the Chinese state. Beyond these methodological and empirical contributions, the book also makes a theoretical contribution by proposing a crosscultural bridge theory of migrant-indigene relations, arguing that Africans in China act as sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural bridges linking Africa to China. This approach to the analysis of Diaspora communities has consequences for crosscultural and crosslinguistic studies in an era of globalization. Africans in China is an important book for African Studies, Asian Studies, Africa-China relations studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, international studies, and migration and Diaspora studies in an era of globalization.

This is a story of human survival over the last one million years in the Namib Desert – one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

The resilience and ingenuity of desert communities provides a vivid picture of our species’ response to climate change, and ancient strategies to counter ever-present risk. Dusty fragments of stone, pottery and bone tell a history of perpetual transition, of shifting and temporary states of balance.

Namib digs beneath the usual evidence of archaeology to uncover a world of arcane rituals, of travelling rain-makers, and of intricate social networks which maintained vital systems of negotiated access to scarce resources. It covers a million years of human history in the Namib Desert, including the Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Ages, colonial occupation and genocide, to the invasion of the desert by South African troops during World War I.

This is more than a work of scientific research; it is a love-song to the desert and its people.

During the 1920s and 1930s, anthropologists and folklorists became obsessed with uncovering connections between African Americans and their African roots. At the same time, popular print media and artistic productions tapped the new appeal of black folk life, highlighting African-styled voodoo networks, positioning beating drums and blood sacrifices as essential elements of black folk culture. Inspired by this curious mix of influences, researchers converged on one site in particular, Sapelo Island, Georgia, to seek support for their theories about ""African survivals."" The legacy of that body of research is the area's contemporary identification as a Gullah community and a set of broader notions about Gullah identity. This wide-ranging history upends a long tradition of scrutinizing the Low Country blacks of Sapelo Island by refocusing the observational lens on those who studied them. Cooper uses a wide variety of sources to unmask the connections between the rise of the social sciences, the voodoo craze during the interwar years, the black studies movement, and black land loss and land struggles in coastal black communities in the Low Country. What emerges is a fascinating examination of Gullah people's heritage, and how it was reimagined and transformed to serve vastly divergent ends over the decades.