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. -- .

Handelsryk in die Ooste is die tweede deel van ’n vyfdelige reeks oor vroeë blanke vestiging aan die Kaap.

In dié deel beskryf Karel Schoeman die totstandkoming en bestuur van die Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) se uitgebreide handelsnetwerk in die gebied van die Indiese Oseaan gedurende die sewentiende eeu. Vir die meeste Suid-Afrikaanse lesers wat maar min kennis van die VOC het, bied hierdie boek besonder baie insigte en word die stigting van die klein verversingspos aan die Kaap die Goeie Hoop in 1652 in konteks geplaas. Dit gee byvoorbeeld aandag aan die groot intra-Asiatiese handelsnetwerk wat selfs voor die koms van die Portugese en Spaanse ontdekkingsreisigers in die gebied bestaan het, aan die wedywering tussen die seevarende moondhede Portugal, Nederland, Engeland en Frankryk om vastrapplek in verskillende Oosterse lande te kry en aan die soms bloedige stryd om monopolieë in die handel met kosbare produkte soos speserye, tekstiel en porselein te verkry.

’n Aantal hoofstukke word gewy aan Batavia, die VOC se administratiewe hoofstad: Vanuit die VOC-kantore is die retoervlote gekoördineer; hiervandaan is verkenningstogte na die binneland onderneem; het die amptenary en ryk handelaars ’n swierige lewenstyl ontwikkel en het kosbare Oosterse meubels en tapyte modieus geword. Ten slotte word ook aandag aan die verskynsel van slawerny en die invloed wat dit gehad het op die koloniale lewe, ook aan die Kaap.

Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora recounts the life story of the pioneering Henry Sylvester Williams, an unknown Trinidadian son of an immigrant carpenter in the late-19th and early 20th century. Williams, then a student in Britain, organized the African Association in 1897, and the first-ever Pan-African Conference in 1900. He is thus the progenitor of the OAU/AU. Some of those who attended went on to work in various pan-African organizations in their homelands. He became not only a qualified barrister, but the first Black man admitted to the Bar in Cape Town, and one of the first two elected Black borough councilors in London. These are remarkable achievements for anyone, especially for a Black man of working-class origins in an era of gross racial discrimination and social class hierarchies. Williams died in 1911, soon after his return to his homeland, Trinidad. Through original research, Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora is set in the social context of the times, providing insight not only into a remarkable man who has been heretofore virtually written out of history, but also into the African Diaspora in the UK a century ago.

This collection of essays contextualises the discourse on Ubuntu within the wider historical framework of postcolonial attempts to re-articulate African humanism as a substantial philosophy and emancipatory ideology. As such, the emergence of Ubuntu as a postcolonial philosophy is posited as both a function of and a critical response to Western modernity. The central question addressed in this book is: Was Ubuntu's emancipatory potential confined to and perhaps exhausted by South Africa's transition to democracy or does the notion of our 'shared humanity', as theorised in Ubuntu discourse, still have relevance for our urgent need to imagine South Africa's post-nationalist and post-neoliberal future? The contributions in this volume address this question from the perspective of a wide range of disciplines, including political philosophy, African history, gender studies, philosophy of law and cultural studies. Leonhard Praeg is associate professor and Siphokazi Magadla is a lecturer and PhD candidate, both in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Contributors: Danielle Bowler, Ama Biney, Ezra Chitando, Drucilla Cornell, Katherine Furman, Lewis R. Gordon, Ilze Keevy, Siphokazi Magadla, Leonhard Praeg, Mogobe B. Ramose, Issa Shivji

When the author embarked on her study, her aim was to approach former colonial officers with a view to analyzing processes of domination in the ex-Belgian Congo. However, after establishing a rapport with some of these officers, the author was soon forced to revise her initial assumptions, widely held in present-day Belgium: these officers were not the "baddies" she had expected to meet. Exploring the colonial experience through the respondents' memories resulted in a far more complex picture of the colonial situation than she had anticipated, again forcing her to question her original assumptions. This resulted not only in a more differentiated perspective on Belgian colonialist rule, but is also sensitized her as regards the question of anthropological understanding and of what constitutes historical fact. These two aspects of her work are reflected in this study that offers specific material on the way Belgian colonialism is remembered and reflects on its conditions of production, thus combining ethnographic analysis with a theoretical essay.

Congolese logging camps are places where mud, rain, fuel smugglers, and village roadblocks slow down multinational timber firms; where workers wage wars against trees while evading company surveillance deep in the forest; where labor compounds trigger disturbing colonial memories; and where blunt racism, logger machismo, and homoerotic desires reproduce violence. In Rainforest Capitalism Thomas Hendriks examines the rowdy world of industrial timber production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to theorize racialized and gendered power dynamics in capitalist extraction. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Congolese workers and European company managers as well as traders, farmers, smugglers, and barkeepers, Hendriks shows how logging is deeply tied to feelings of existential vulnerability in the face of larger forces, structures, and histories. These feelings, Hendriks contends, reveal a precarious side of power in an environment where companies, workers, and local residents frequently find themselves out of control. An ethnography of complicity, ecstasis, and paranoia, Rainforest Capitalism queers assumptions of corporate strength and opens up new ways to understand the complexities and contradictions of capitalist extraction.

This book examines proclivity to genocide in the protracted killings that have continued for decades in the northern Nigeria ethno-religious conflict, spanning from the 1966 northern Nigeria massacres of thousands of Ibos up to the present, ongoing killings between extremist Muslims and Christians or non-Muslims in the region. It explores the ethnic and religious dimensions of the conflict over five phases to investigate genocidal proclivity to the killings and the extent to which religion foments and escalates the conflict. This book adopts a conceptual analytic approach of establishing similarity of genocidal patterns to the northern Nigeria ethno-religious conflict by examining genocidal occurrences and massacres in history, particularly the twentieth-century contemporary genocides, for an understanding of genocide. With this reference frame, the study structures a Genocide Proclivity Model for identifying inclinations to genocide and derives a substantive theory using the Strauss and Corbin (1990) approach. By identifying genocidal intent as underlying the various manifestations and causes of genocide in specific genocide cases, the book establishes that genocidal proclivity or the intent to exterminate the "other" on the basis of religion and/or ethnicity underlies most of the northern Nigerian episodic, but protracted, killings. The book's analytic framework and approach are grounded in identifiable and provable evidences of specific intent to annihilate the "other," mostly involving extremist Muslims intent to 'cleanse' northern Nigeria of Christians and other non-Muslims through the 'exclusionary ideology' of imposition of the Sharia Law, and to 'force assimilation' or 'extermination' through massacres and genocidal killings of those who refuse to assimilate or adopt the Muslim ideology. The study establishes that the genocidal inclinations to the conflict have remained latent because of the intermittent but protracted nature of the killings and lends credence to the conception of genocidal intent and its covertness in situations of genocidal intermittency. The book unearths the latency of episodic genocide in the northern Nigeria ethno-religious conflict, prescribes recommendations, and launches a clarion call for international intervention to stop the genocide.

South Africa's future is increasingly tied up with that of India. While trade and investment between the two countries is intensifying, they share long-standing historical ties and have much in common: apart from cricket, colonialism and Gandhi, both countries are important players in the global South. As India emerges as a major economic power, the need to understand these links becomes ever more pressing. Can the two countries enter balanced forms of exchange? What forms of transnational political community between these two regions have yet to be researched and understood? The first section of South Africa and India traces the range of historical connection between the two countries. The second section explores unconventional comparisons that offer rich ground on which to build original areas of study. This innovative book looks to a post-American world in which the global South will become ever more important. Within this context, the Indian Ocean arena itself and South Africa and India in particular move to the fore. The book's main contribution lies in the approaches and methods offered by its wide range of contributors for thinking about this set of circumstances.

By examining Mauritius and the Indian Ocean, this synthesis of imperial and naval/military history reveals the depths of colonial involvement in the Second World War and the role of colonies in British strategic planning from the 18th century. In the century of total war, the British Empire was fully mobilized. The author looks at how the Mauritian home front became regimented, troops were recruited for service overseas, the Eastern fleet guarded the Indian Ocean, and Mauritius became a base for SOE operations and intelligence-gathering for Bletchley.

Describing the fate of South Africa's drive, which began in 1949, to associate itself with Britain, France, Portugal and Belgium in an African defence pact, this book describes how South Africa had to settle for an entente rather than an alliance, and how even this had been greatly emasculated by 1960. In light of this case, the book considers the argument that ententes have the advantages of alliances without their disadvantages and concludes that this is exaggerated. There is also discussion of the background to the "fourth" secret Simonstown Agreement. Other books by the author include "The Politics of the South Africa Run: European Shipping and Pretoria", "Return to the UN" and "International Politics".

A powerful re-reading of modern South African history following apartheid that examines the violent transformation during the transition era and how this was enacted in the African townships of the Witwatersrand. In 1993 South Africa state president F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime". Yet, while bothdeserved the plaudits they received for entering the negotiations that led to the end of apartheid, the four years of negotiations preceding the April 1994 elections, known as the transition era, were not "peaceful": they were the bloodiest of the entire apartheid era, with an estimated 14,000 deaths attributed to politically related violence. This book studies, for the first time, the conflicts between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party that took place in South Africa's industrial heartland surrounding Johannesburg. Exploring these events through the perceptions and memories of combatants and non-combatants from war-torn areas, along with security force members, politicians and violence monitors, offers new possibilities for understanding South Africa's turbulent transition. Challenging the prevailing narrative which attributes the bulk of the violence to a joint state security force and IFP assault against ANC supporters, the author argues for a more expansive approach that incorporates the aggression of ANC militants, the intersection between criminal and political violence, and especially clashes between groups alignedwith the ANC. Gary Kynoch is Associate Professor of History at Dalhousie University. He has written one previous book, We are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947-1999 (OhioUniversity Press, 2005). Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Swaziland): Wits University Press

Opens a fresh conversation on the study of the Mau Mau rebellion and Kenyan history by arguing that Mau Mau was a nationalist movement rather than a Kikuyu war. Through a critical examination of the Mau Mau oath used to initiate and unite fighters, The Power of the Oath opens a fresh conversation on the study of Mau Mau and Kenyan history. It argues for a historiographical shift inthe framing of the Mau Mau rebellion as a Kikuyu war. Instead, Mickie Mwanzia Koster suggests that Mau Mau was a nationalist movement, embraced by non-Kikuyu communities like the Kamba ethnic group. Incorporating a creative blendof primary sources, including testimonies from ex-Mau Mau participants, survey analysis, archival data, Mau Mau court cases, ceremonial reenactments, and folklore, The Power of the Oath demonstrates how and why the movement was spread, embraced, and internalized. Mwanzia Koster traces the evolution and structure of the Mau Mau oath, examining the British criminalization of the oath, its gendered use, and the purification associated with it, in order to reveal how Mau Mau unfolded in Kenya. Mickie Mwanzia Koster is associate professor of history at the University of Texas, Tyler.

British sleeping sickness control in colonial Uganda and Tanzania became a powerful mechanism for environmental and social engineering that defined and delineated African landscapes, reordered African mobility and access to resources. As colonialism shifted from conquest to occupation, colonial scientists exercised much influence during periods of administrative uncertainty about the role and future of colonial rule. "Impartial" and "objective" science helped to justify the British "civilizing mission" in East Africa by muting the moral ambiguities and violence of colonial occupation. Africans' actions shaped systems of western scientific knowledge as they evolved in colonial contexts. Bridging what might otherwise be viewed as the disparate colonial functions of environmental and health control, sleeping sickness policy by the British was not a straightforward exercise of colonial power. The implementation of sleeping sickness control compelled both Africans and British to negotiate. Africans' actions shaped systems of western scientific knowledge as they evolved in colonial contexts. Bridging what might otherwise be viewed as the disparate colonial functions of environmental and health control, sleeping sickness policy by the British was not a straightforward exercise of colonial power. The implementation of sleeping sickness control compelled both Africans and British to negotiate. African elite, farmers, and fishers, and British administrators, field officers, and African employees, all adjusted their actions according to on-going processes of resistance, cooperation and compromise. Interactions between colonial officials, their African agents, and other African groups informedAfrican and British understandings about sleeping sickness, sleeping sickness control and African environments, and transformed Western ideas in practice.

Africa In Stereo examines the role that African American music has played in the pan-Africanist imagination since the end of the nineteenth century. Throughout, Jaji marshals a wide array of critical, archival, literary, visual, and sonic sources to craft an argument centered on the stereophonic echoes between three sites on the African continent emblematic of pan-Africanism (Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa) and black musical cultures in the US (as well as few other places on the diasporic landscape). Rather than take a purely musical tack that traces the influence of African American music on musical repertoires from Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa, Africa In Stereo beautifully shows how a US black popular musical genres inspired a host of writers and filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembene, John Akomfrah, Sol Plaatje, Leopold Senghor, K. Anyidoho, Charlotte Maxeke, Ken Bugul, as well as the glossy visual languages found in the early magazines Bingo (Senegal) and Zonk! (South Africa).

Spanning more than two thousand years of African history, from the African Iron Age to the collapse of colonialism and the beginnings of independence, Hosea Jaffe's magisterial work remains one of the few to do full justice to the continent's complex and diverse past. The great strength of Jaffe's work lies in its unique theoretical perspective, which stresses the distinctive character of Africa's social structures and historical development. Crucially, Jaffe rejects all efforts to impose Eurocentric models of history onto Africa, whether it be liberal notions of 'progress' or Marxist theories of class struggle, arguing instead that the key dynamics underpinning African history are unique to the continent itself, and rooted in conflicts between different modes of production. The work also includes a foreword by the distinguished economist and political theorist Samir Amin, in which he outlines the contribution of Jaffe's work to our understanding of African history and its ongoing post-colonial struggles.

This edited volume examines the complexities of the Cold War in Southern Africa and uses a range of archives to develop a more detailed understanding of the impact of the Cold War environment upon the processes of political change.

In the aftermath of European decolonization, the struggle between white minority governments and black liberation movements encouraged both sides to appeal for external support from the two superpower blocs. Cold War in Southern Africa highlights the importance of the global ideological environment on the perceptions and consequent behaviour of the white minority regimes, the Black Nationalist movements, and the newly independent African nationalist governments. Together, they underline the variety of archival sources on the history of Southern Africa in the Cold War and its growing importance in Cold War Studies.

This volume brings together a series of essays by leading scholars based on a wide range of sources in the United States, Russia, Cuba, Britain, Zambia and South Africa. By focussing on a range of independent actors, these essays highlight the complexity of the conflict in Southern Africa: a battle of power blocs, of systems and ideas, which intersected with notions and practices of race and class

This book will appeal to students of cold war studies, US foreign policy, African politics and International History.

Sue Onslow has taught at the London School of Economics since 1994. She is currently a Cold War Studies Fellow in the Cold War Studies Centre/IDEAS

Cameroon is characterized by an extraordinary geographical, cultural, and linguistic diversity. This collection of essays by eminent historians and anthropologists summarizes three generations of research in Cameroon that began with the collaboration of Phyllis Kaberry and E. M. Chilver soon after the Second World War and continues to this day. The idea for this book arose from a concern to recognize the continuing influence of E. M. Chilver on a wide variety of social, historical, political and economic studies. The result is a volume with a broad historical scope yet one that also focuses on major contemporary theoretical issues such as the meaning and construction of ethnic identities and the anthropological study of historical processes. For more information on this title and related publications, go to http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Chilver/index.html

Sylvia Pankhurst, the former British Suffragette, devoted the last forty years of her life to Anti-Fascism and support for Ethiopia, for many centuries Africa's principal independent state. She responded to Mussolini's invasion of the country in 1935 by founding a weekly newspaper New Times and Ethiopia News, which she was to edit for twenty years. She protested against the Fascist use of poison-gas in Ethiopia, and published news of the Ethiopian patriot resistance. Her paper condemned Britain's "appeasement" of the Axis Dictators, and supported the Republican Government in the Spanish Civil War. After Mussolini's entry into the European War, on the side of Nazi Germany, she agitated against the return to Italy of her African colonies. Ever against colonialism, she clashed with the British Government in demanding the full restoration of Ethiopian independence, and advocated the "reunion" of the former Italian colony of Eritrea with Ethiopia. She raised funds for Ethiopia's first teaching hospital, and wrote extensively on Ethiopian art and culture. Having moved to Addis Ababa in 1956, with her son, the author, she founded a monthly journal, Ethiopia Observer, on many aspects of Ethiopian life and development. She died in 1960, and was buried with the Ethiopian Patriots, in front of Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, in the presence of the Emperor.