Bücher der Reihe African Studies

City Politics is a detailed study of the city of Kinshasa (formerly Leopoldville), capital of the Congo, in the years immediately following independence. The book is a study of political leadership in an urban African movement undergoing extremely rapid change.

The churches in Africa probably constitute the most important growth area for Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century. From being a number of rather tightly controlled 'mission fields' zealously guarded by the great missionary societies, Catholic and Protestant, they have emerged across the last decades in bewildering variety to selfhood.

In this case study of contemporary Sierra Leone, William Reno argues that the global reach of some foreign firms offer supposedly 'weak' African rulers political resources to reshape regimes in ways that do not include building the 'strong stakes' that reformers expect.

Exploring the history of a group of Muslim Sufi mystics and their religious community in colonial French West Africa, this study shows the relationship between religious, social and economic change in the region. It highlights the role that the people played in shaping social and cultural change.

Very similar in some ways, but strikingly different in others, Sierra Leone and Liberia have an obvious appeal for comparative analysis. They share the legacy of foundation by immigrants of African descent and the juxtaposition of these with indigenous peoples, but within the contrasting institutional frameworks of settler independence and British colonialism.

Presenting an analysis of ancient African texts that predate Greco-Roman treatises, this title revisits the roots of rhetorical theory and challenges what is often advanced as the 'darkness metaphor' - the rhetorical construction of Africa and Africans.

This compelling 1999 example of the cultural history of South Africa argues that cultural factors were related to high political developments in the colonial Cape. It describes changes in social identity accompanying the transition from Dutch to British overrule, and the development of white racism and of ideologies of resistance.

This book summarizes a wide range of recent literature on slavery for all of tropical Africa. It analyzes the demography, economics, social structure, and ideology of slavery in Africa from the beginning of large-scale exports in the seventeenth century to the gradual elimination of slavery in the twentieth century.

There exists a strong tendency within Western literary criticism to either deny the existence of epics in Africa or to see African literatures as exotic copies of European originals. This book revises traditional literary canons in examining the social, cultural and emotional specificity of African epics.

From Africa to Brazil traces the flows of enslaved Africans from identifiable points in the broad region of Africa called Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil, considering why planters in Amazonia wanted African slaves, why and how those sent to Amazonia were enslaved, and what their Middle Passage experience was like.

Showing how international law is often manipulated in the debate about humanitarian intervention, this book explains why the Liberian case provides an opportunity to challenge UN and the Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS') approach. It argues that ECOWAS' and the UN's justifications for moving away from these norms are flawed.

This book contrasts voluntary labor and political migration with the involuntary diaspora by focusing on the paradoxes of migration, exile, and survival of African immigrants in the New World.

Provides an analysis of South Africa's political economy in transition, documenting the history of the gold mining industry's involvement in shaping the political landscape of the country.

Provides a historical analysis of the role of student voices in the development of Uganda's higher education. This book not only chronicles incidents of student protests, but also explores and analyses their trigger points as well as the strategies employed by the university, the government, and the students to manage or resolve those crises.

This study analyses the complexity and flexibility of gender relations in Igbo society with emphasis on such major cultural zones as the Anioma, the Ngwa, the Onitsha, the Nsukka and the Aro.

The Duala people entered the international scene as merchant-brokers for precolonial trade in ivory, slaves and palm products. Under colonial rule they used the advantages gained from earlier riverain trade to develop cocoa plantations and provide their children with exceptional levels of European education. At the same time they came into early conflict with both German and French regimes and played a leading - if ultimately unsuccessful - role in anti-colonial politics. In tracing these changing economic and political roles, this book also examines the growing consciousness of the Duala as an ethnic group and uses their history to shed light on the history of 'middleman' communities in surrounding regions of West and Central Africa. The authors draw upon a wide range of written and oral sources, including indigenous accounts of the past conflicting with their own findings but illuminate local conceptions of social hierarchy and their relationship to spiritual beliefs.

Examines the emergence of American-educated Kenyan elites (Asomi), their role in the nationalist movement, and their 'Africanization' of the Kenyan civil and private sectors. This book provides a historical perspective on the development of western-educated Kenyans, depicting the commonalities that existed between Africans and African-Americans.

The main theme of this 1972 book is the determination of wages. Dr Wilson believes that successive South African governments used the gold mining industry when planning labour policies, so that the mines' labour strategy exerted a profound influence on the social and economic structure of South Africa.

Written in a style attractive to non-specialists, this book combines evidence from natural and social sciences to examine the impact on Africa of seven cholera pandemics since 1817, particularly the current impact of cholera on such major countries as Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Martin Klein's history of slavery during the 19th and 20th centuries in three former French colonies focuses on the constantly changing relationships between slave and master, and the attempts on the part of slaves to seek freedom, or autonomy where they remained in servitude.

African forest landscapes are often considered as degraded. However, this fascinating 1996 study reveals how inhabitants have enriched their land when scientists believe they have damaged it. It provides a framework for ecological anthropology, and a challenge to old assumptions about the African landscape.

Originally published in 1975, and reprinted with additional introductory material in 1989, this book provides an in-depth account of Asante history during the nineteenth century. The focus is on the broad political development of Asante society, concentrating on the material factors which affected the decision making process during various administrations.

This book traces the development of arguments about race over a period of more than 350 years in the Niger Bend in northern Mali. Bruce S. Hall reconstructs an African intellectual history of race that long predated colonial conquest, and which has continued to orient community relations ever since.

Starting in 1945 and culminating with the Arusha Declaration of 1967, Emma Hunter explores political argument in mainland Tanzania's public sphere to show how political narratives succeeded when they managed to combine promises of freedom with new forms of belonging at both a local and national level.

This book chronicles witchcraft practices in colonial Kenya and the attempts of British bureaucrats to control them. Colonial authorities produced an elaborate body of jurisprudence, making witchcraft a capital offense punishable by death. This book offers an analytical narrative of these efforts in the first half of the twentieth century.

Argues that the matrilineal nature of the ancient Egyptian family and social organization provides us with the key to understanding why and how ancient Egyptian women were able to rise to power, study medicine, and enjoy basic freedoms that did not emerge in Western Civilization until the 20th century.

Originally published in 1987, this book examines the relationship between the pattern of party formation in Nigeria and a mode of social, political and economic behaviour Richard Joseph terms 'prebendalism'. He demonstrates the centrality in the Nigerian polity of the struggle to control and exploit public office.

Pitcher offers an engaging theory to explain different patterns of private sector development across Africa. She argues that the interaction of formal institutions, party system competition and the quality of democracy explain patterns of private sector development across Africa.

Examining the slave trade between Angola and Brazil, Roquinaldo Ferreira focuses on the cultural ties between the two countries.

The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland examines the history and politics behind the failed project of Togoland unification, in which the United Nations trust territory of British Togoland was to be separated from the Gold Coast to join with French Togoland in a new independent African state.