Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa aims to explore the ways Christianity and colonialism acted as hegemonic or counter hegemonic forces in the making of African societies. As Western interventionist forces, Christianity and colonialism were crucial in establishing and maintaining political, cultural, and economic domination. Indeed, both elements of Africa's encounter with the West played pivotal roles in shaping African societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume uses a wide range of perspectives to address the intersection between missions, evangelism, and colonial expansion across Africa. The contributors address several issues, including missionary collaboration with the colonizing effort of European powers; disagreements between missionaries and colonizing agents; the ways in which missionaries and colonial officials used language, imagery, and European epistemology to legitimize relations of inequality with Africans; and the ways in which both groups collaborated to transform African societies. Thus, Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa transcends the narrow boundaries that often separate the role of these two elements of European encounter to argue that missionary endeavours and official colonial actions could all be conceptualized as hegemonic institutions, in which both pursued the same civilizing mission, even if they adopted different strategies in their encounter with African societies.

Although numerous studies have been made of the Western educated political elite of colonial Nigeria in particular, and of Africa in general, very few have approached the study from a perspective that analyzes the impacts of indigenous institutions on the lives, values, and ideas of these individuals. This book is about the diachronic impact of indigenous and Western agencies in the upbringing, socialization, and careers of the colonial Igbo political elite of southeastern Nigeria. The thesis argues that the new elite manifests the continuity of traditions and culture and therefore their leadership values and the impact they brought on African society cannot be fully understood without looking closely at their lived experiences in those indigenous institutions where African life coheres. The key has been to explore this question at the level of biography, set in the context of a carefully reconstructed social history of the particular local communities surrounding the elite figures. It starts from an understanding of their family and village life, and moves forward striving to balance the familiar account of these individuals in public life, with an account of the ongoing influences from family, kinship, age grades, marriage and gender roles, secret societies, the church, local leaders and others. The result is not only a model of a new approach to African elite history, but also an argument about how to understand these emergent leaders and their peers as individuals who shared with their fellow Africans a dynamic and complex set of values that evolved over the six decades of colonialism.

Recent advances in theory and observations using passive microwave remote sensing have hightlighted the potential of spaceborne sensors for contributing to the required land surface measurements of soils, vegetation, snow cover and precipitation. Furthermore, the spatial resolution of passive microwave observations matches the special scales of large-scale models of land-atmosphere interactions both for data assimilation and validation. In order to stimulate and focus this research a workshop, sponsored by ESA and NASA, was organized to review the state-of-the-art in microwave radiometry related to land applications and to exchange ideas leading into new directions for future research. This volume contains the refereed papers from the aforementioned ESA/NASA workshop, which are arranged by topic, as well as the (edited) working group reports.

Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa aims to explore the ways Christianity and colonialism acted as hegemonic or counter hegemonic forces in the making of African societies. As Western interventionist forces, Christianity and colonialism were crucial in establishing and maintaining political, cultural, and economic domination. Indeed, both elements of Africa's encounter with the West played pivotal roles in shaping African societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume uses a wide range of perspectives to address the intersection between missions, evangelism, and colonial expansion across Africa. The contributors address several issues, including missionary collaboration with the colonizing effort of European powers; disagreements between missionaries and colonizing agents; the ways in which missionaries and colonial officials used language, imagery, and European epistemology to legitimize relations of inequality with Africans; and the ways in which both groups collaborated to transform African societies. Thus, Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa transcends the narrow boundaries that often separate the role of these two elements of European encounter to argue that missionary endeavours and official colonial actions could all be conceptualized as hegemonic institutions, in which both pursued the same civilizing mission, even if they adopted different strategies in their encounter with African societies.

Although numerous studies have been made of the Western educated political elite of colonial Nigeria in particular, and of Africa in general, very few have approached the study from a perspective that analyzes the impacts of indigenous institutions on the lives, values, and ideas of these individuals. This book is about the diachronic impact of indigenous and Western agencies in the upbringing, socialization, and careers of the colonial Igbo political elite of southeastern Nigeria. The thesis argues that the new elite manifests the continuity of traditions and culture and therefore their leadership values and the impact they brought on African society cannot be fully understood without looking closely at their lived experiences in those indigenous institutions where African life coheres. The key has been to explore this question at the level of biography, set in the context of a carefully reconstructed social history of the particular local communities surrounding the elite figures. It starts from an understanding of their family and village life, and moves forward striving to balance the familiar account of these individuals in public life, with an account of the ongoing influences from family, kinship, age grades, marriage and gender roles, secret societies, the church, local leaders and others. The result is not only a model of a new approach to African elite history, but also an argument about how to understand these emergent leaders and their peers as individuals who shared with their fellow Africans a dynamic and complex set of values that evolved over the six decades of colonialism.

The Igbo are one of the most populous ethnic groups in Nigeria and are perhaps best known and celebrated in the work of Chinua Achebe. In this landmark collection on Igbo society and arts, Toyin Falola and Raphael Chijioke Njoku have compiled a detailed and innovative examination of the Igbo experience in Africa and in the diaspora. Focusing on institutions and cultural practices, the volume covers the enslavement, middle passage, and American experience of the Igbo as well as their return to Africa and aspects of Igbo language, society, and cultural arts. By employing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume presents a comprehensive view of how the Igbo were integrated into the Atlantic world through the slave trade and slavery, the transformations of Igbo identities and culture, and the strategies for resistance employed by the Igbo in the New World. Moving beyond descriptions of generic African experiences, this collection includes 21 essays by prominent scholars throughout the world.

A critical examination of the engaging voice and multiple stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on war, feminism, art, ideology, hair, complex human identities and the challenges of multicultural existence. Easily the leading and most engaging voice of her era and generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bridged gaps and introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized contemporary African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). With Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and The Thing Around Your Neck - Short Stories (2009), she established herself as a preeminent story-teller. Americanah (2013), with ingeniouscraftsmanship addresses the sensitive themes of passionate love, independence, freedom and moral responsibility with extravagant and versatile narrative innovations. Through her writings, she has made herself relevant topeople of all ages - across racial and linguistic boundaries. Her talks, blogs, musings on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop-mentoring for budding young writers, lecture circuit discourses, all enrich her imaginativecreativity as they expand and define her mission as a writer. "We Should All be Feminists" she proclaimed in an essay, giving feminism a "tweak and twist" and suggesting new outlooks in literary theory. Her contributionsto African, Diasporic and World literatures deserve serious analyses, commentaries and interpretations, and this Companion to her work critically examines her creative outputs from her art and ideology, from feminism to war, to matters of myth and perception, and the challenges of multicultural existence and complex human identities.

Represents the first encyclopedic work dedicated to remote sensing Serves as the best point of entry for anyone wishing to explore the world of remote sensing Offers clear, reliable descriptions and plenty of references to help readers continue their research Fulfills the need for a scholarly, yet accessible resource for scientists, engineers, educators, managers, policy makers and anyone interested in the impact and implications of remote sensing Remote sensing has revolutionized the scientific study of the Earth by enabling measurements of more detailed and hitherto unexplored phenomena with spatially-extensive and global perspectives. Various disciplines and industries have benefited from the dramatic discoveries enabled by remote sensing. This volume cuts across these disciplines and describes the basic foundations, principles and state of the art of remote sensing. It covers the development of remote sensing, the theoretical underpinnings, forward modeling, commercial applications, and global and international coordination and policy. This first encyclopaedic reference on remote sensing describes the concepts, techniques, instrumentation, data analysis, interpretation, and applications of remote sensing, both airborne and space-based. Scientists, engineers, academics, and students can quickly access answers to their reference questions and direction for further study.

A revisionist account of African masquerade carnivals in transnational context that offers readers a unique perspective on the connecting threads between African cultural trends and African American cultural artifacts In recent decades, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in African-styled traditions and the influence of these traditions upon the African diaspora. In this important new analysis, author Raphael Njoku explores the transnational connections between masquerade narratives and memory over the past four centuries to show how enslaved Africans became culture carriers of inherited African traditions. In doing so, he questions the scholarly predisposition toward ethnicization of African cultural artifacts in the Americas. As Njoku's research shows, the practices reenacted by the Igbo and Bight of Biafra modelers in the Americas were not exact replicas of the African prototypes. Cultural modeling is dynamic, and the inheritors of West African traditions often adapted their customs to their circumstances--altering and transforming the meaning and purpose of the customs they initially represented. With the Bantu migrations serving as a catalyst for ethnic mixing and change prior to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African-themed cultural activities in the New World became dilutions of practices from several ethnic African and European nations. African cultures were already experiencing changes through Bantuization; in this well-researched and engagingly written scholarly work, the author explores the extension of this process beyond the African continent. This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.