Bücher der Reihe African Studies

This study critically synthesizes and analyses the relationship between Kwame Nkrumah's politico-cultural philosophy and policies as an African-centred paradigm for the post-independence African revolution. It also argues for the relevance of his theories and politics in today's Africa.

Provides a treatment of the concept of good and beauty in ancient Egypt. This book seeks to examine the dimensions of "nefer," the term used to describe the good and the beautiful, within the context of ordinary life. It aims to open up space for a review of the aesthetics of other African societies in the Nile Valley.

Understanding the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Africa by historicizing NGOs, this book uses the Rockefeller Foundation as a case study.

This study examines the issues of indigenous philosophies, which are embedded in different aspects of the socialization process among the Akan of Ghana.

John Iliffe's extensively researched 1998 history of the training and work of East African doctors since modern medicine began in the region during the 1870s discusses recruitment, education, the practice of modern medicine, and the struggle to secure professional status and to preserve it amidst recent political and economic decline.

This book traces the history and development of the port of Benguela, on the coast of Africa, from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. In discussing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African societies, Mariana P. Candido explores the formation of new elites, the collapse of old states and the emergence of new states.

Smith argues that citizenship creation and expansion is a pivotal part of political contestation in Africa today. Citizenship is a powerful analytical tool to approach political life in contemporary Africa because the institutional and structural reforms of the past two decades have been inextricably linked with the battle over the 'right to have rights'. Professor Lahra Smith's work advances the notion of meaningful citizenship, referring to the ways in which rights are exercised, or the effective practice of citizenship. Using data from Ethiopia and developing a historically informed study of language policy, ethnicity and gender identities, Smith analyzes the contestation over citizenship that engages the state, social movements and individuals in substantive ways. By combining original data on language policy in contemporary Ethiopia with detailed historical study and a focus on ethnicity, citizenship and gender, this work brings a fresh approach to Ethiopian political development and contemporary citizenship concerns across Africa.

This is the detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement, located on the border between the Cape Colony and the amaXhosa in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century. The settlement created a fertile landscape and developed a political theology of great political and racial importance to the evolution of the Cape and South Africa as a whole.

This book chronicles the experiences, identity and achievements of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, arguing that we cannot rely solely on Islamic ideology as the key to explaining social relations and particularly the history of black slavery in the Muslim world.

Originally published in 1985, this book examines the rising of the menalamba, the Red Shawls, against French colonial rule in Madagascar in the 1890s. Using the words of the Malagasy themselves and the archives of the Malagasy kings and queens, as well as European records, it tells from the inside the story of an Afro-Asian society at a moment of crisis.

Originally published in 1987, this book used data from Kisangani, Upper Zaire and North Kivu to demonstrate the emergence of an indigenous bourgeoisie of local capitalists without political position. The text discusses how the spiralling economic crisis in Zaire resulted in a severe decline in the administrative capacity of the state, but also opened up opportunities for social mobility.

This book explains the shift from the government of empires to that of NGOs in the region just south of the Sahara. It describes the ambitions of newly independent African states, their political experiments, and the challenges they faced. No other book places black American activism, Amnesty International, and CARE together in the history of African politics.

Drawing on a historical study of Nigeria since independence, this book argues that the structure of the policy-making process - by which different policy demands are included or excluded - explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors, such as oil, colonialism, ethnic diversity, foreign debt, and dictatorships.

Based on years of unique access to Islamists, generals, and business elites, Harry Verhoeven tells the story of Africa's most ambitious state-building project in the modern era and how Sudan's gamble to instrumentalise water to consolidate power is linked to globalisation, Islamist ideology, and the intensifying geopolitics of the Nile.

This book examines the internal politics of the war that divided Angola for over a quarter-century after its independence. Drawing upon interviews with farmers, town dwellers, soldiers and politicians in Central Angola, Justin Pearce examines the ideologies about nation and state that elites deployed in pursuit of hegemony.

This book traces the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) across its three decades in exile through rich, local histories of the camps where Namibian exiles lived in Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola and highlights how different Namibians experienced these sites, as well as the tensions that developed within.

From Slavery to Aid takes two major themes of African historiography - the death of slavery and the birth of aid - and constructs a social history of the Ader region, an understudied region of the West African Sahel in today's Republic of Niger.

This book examines the internal politics of the war that divided Angola for more than a quarter-century after its independence. It emphasises the Angolan people's relationship to the rival political forces that prevented the development of a united nation, an aspect of the conflict that has received little attention in earlier studies. Drawing upon interviews with farmers, town dwellers, soldiers and politicians in Central Angola, Justin Pearce examines the ideologies about nation and state that elites deployed in pursuit of hegemony and traces how people responded to these attempts at politicisation. The book not only demonstrates the potency of the rival conceptions of state and nation in shaping perceptions of self-interest and determining political loyalty, but also shows the ways in which allegiances could and did change for much of the Angolan population in response to the experience of military force.

This book examines the role of the law in the constitution and contestation of state power in Zimbabwean history. It is for researchers interested in the history of the state in Southern Africa, as well as those interested in African legal history.

This book traces the development of a new Sudanese state during the postcolonial era, following how economic development fostered state formation and civil war. It is for historians of colonial and postcolonial Africa. It offers important archival research for those examining the economic history of Sudan and the wider region.

This book offers an intellectual history of colonial Buganda, using previously unseen archival material to recast the end of empire in East Africa. It will be ideal for researchers, upper-level undergraduate and graduate students interested in the cultural, intellectual, religious and political history of modern East Africa.

Telling a neglected history of decolonisation and violence in Burundi, Aidan Russell examines the political language of truth that drove extraordinary change, from democracy to genocide. His study is the only English account of the first postcolonial genocide on the African continent.

Reconstructing Jomo Kenyatta's political biography and presidency in order to explore the links between his emergence as an uncontested leader and the deeper colonial and postcolonial history of Kenya, this is the first study to use Kenyatta as a basis for examining the origins of presidentialism in Africa.

Drawing on more than a thousand cases from a diverse set of courts, Thornberry provides a ground breaking social and political history of rape in colonial South Africa, as well as an important case study for comparative legal history, histories of sexuality, and public policy on sexual violence.

A comparative analysis of how African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. Elischer outlines how African states can become radicalizers or demobilizers of homegrown violent extremism, providing a nuanced and systematic review of state-Islamic relations.

This book examines the gradual decline of slavery in Northern Nigeria during the first forty years of colonial rule. At the time of the British conquest, the Sokoto Caliphate was one of the largest slave societies in modern history. The authors have written a thoughtful and provocative book which raises doubts over the moral legitimacy of both the Sokoto Caliphate and the colonial state. They chart the development of British colonial policy towards resolving the dilemma of slavery and how to end it.

The small but important region of Dahomey (now the People's Republic of Benin) has played an active role in the world economy throughout the era of mercantile and industrial capitalism, beginning as an exporter of slaves and becoming an exporter of plain oil and palm kernels. This book covers a span of three centuries, integrating into a single framework the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial economic history of Dahomey. Mr Manning has pieced together an extensive body of new evidence and new interpretations: he has combined descriptive evidence with quantitative data on foreign trade, slave demography and colonial government finance, and has used both Marxian and Neoclassical techniques of economic analysis. He argues that, despite the severe strain on population and economic growth caused by the slave trade, the economy continued to expand from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and the colonial state acted as an economic depressant rather than a stimulant.

Political life among the Wolof (the largest and most powerful of Senegal's 'tribal' groups) is the principal theme of this collection of essays. The focus of study is on African political leadership, in towns and villages. Within the constraints of alien control or influence, it is argued, cultural and organisational barriers have consistently allowed a wide range of initiative to African leaders and communities in a creative and flexible adjustment to new and unfamiliar demands. Exploration of this African initiative in various contexts suggests a complex, fascinating pattern of cultural and structural interaction. The multidisciplinary approach to politics in these essays will interest historians and social anthropologists as well as political scientists. These studies are indeed relevant to any student of the problems of 'underdeveloped' societies involved in the modern state. Parts of the essays have been published elsewhere, but all have been extensively revised, updated and integrated to a coherent pattern of analysis.