Ancient Africa by
A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world history This book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era. Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies--from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting--highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators. He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa. A monumental achievement by one of today's eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.
It's a Continent by
'. . . we need this book. Of course Africa needs it as well, because no other huge area of the planet is treated as such a singular region, and that has to change. But the rest of the planet needs It's a Continent because we miss out by not recognising the individual majesty, the complexity, the beauty, the culture and the stories of the dozens of African countries. We owe it to ourselves and our history to put that right.' - Simon Reeve Why is Africa still perceived as a single country? How did African soldiers contribute to World War II? Who else led the charge against Apartheid in South Africa? How did an African man become one of the wealthiest people in history? There are (hi)stories you were never taught in school. IT'S A CONTINENT delves into these stories and reveals an Africa as you've never read it before. Breaking down this vast, beautiful, and complex continent and exploring each nations' unique history and culture, IT'S A CONTINENT highlights the key historical moments that have shaped each nation and contributed to its modern global position. Each chapter focuses on a different country and uncovers stories that mainstream education doesn't address at its peril. This book aims to highlight the consequences of colonialism and how this legacy reverberates today, as well as how many African countries continue to re-build in its wake. IT'S A CONTINENT is a bold and colourful corrective to the perception of Africa as a monolith. It reveals the fascinating, often overlooked, histories of its 54 nation states too often misrepresented, its inhabitants and its place in the world too often neglected.
Africa since Decolonization by
Home to more than 1.2 billion people, living in 54 recognized states, speaking around 3,000 languages, Africa is a diverse and complex continent made up of states which differ in regard to their colonial history, political system, socio-economic development, economic polices and their experience with crises and conflicts. This introduction and overview of African history and politics since decolonization emphasises throughout, the diversity of the continent. Organised thematically to include chapters on decolonization and its legacies, external influences, economics, political systems, inter-African relations, crises, conflicts and conflict management, and Africa's external relations, Martin Welz strikes a fine balance between the use of contextual information, analysis, case studies and examples with theoretical debates in development, politics and global policy. Accessible to students at all levels, it counters histories which offer reductive explanations of complex issues, and offers new insights into the role African actors have played in influencing international affairs beyond the continent.
Those for Whom the Lamp Shines by
In Those for Whom the Lamp Shines, Vince L. Bantu uses the rich body of anti-Chalcedonian literature to explore how the peoples of Egypt, both inside and outside the Coptic Church, came to understand their identity as Egyptians. Working across a comparative spectrum of traditions and communities in late antiquity, at the intersection of religious and other social forms of identity, Bantu shows that it was the dissenting doctrines of the Coptic Church that played the crucial role in conceptualizing Egypt and being Egyptian. Based on the study of neglected Coptic and Syriac texts, Those for Whom the Lamp Shines offers the only sustained treatment of ethnic and religious self-understanding in Africa's oldest Christian church.
Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 To 2021 by
In times of peace as well as conflict, humor has served Algerians as a tool of both unification and division. Humor has also assisted Algerians of various backgrounds and ideological leanings with engaging critically in power struggles throughout the country's contemporary history. By analyzing comedic discourse in various forms (including plays, jokes, and cartoons), Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021demonstrates the globally informed and creative ways that civilians have made sense of moments of victory and loss through humor. Using oral interviews and media archives in Arabic, French, and Tamazight, Elizabeth M. Perego expands on theoretical debates about humor as a tool of resistance and explores the importance of humor as an instrument of war, peace, and social memory, as well as a source for retracing volatile, contested pasts. Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021reveals how Algerians have harnessed humor to express competing visions for unity in a divided colonial society, to channel and process emotions surrounding a brutal war of decolonization and the forging of a new nation, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of a terrifying civil conflict.
Facing the Sea of Sand by
Northern Africa is dominated by the Sahara Desert, stretching across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. This book is about the people who lived around the edges of the Desert and the different ways in which they responded to its challenges, establishing networks of communication across its expanse. But the Sahara has not always been a desert. From about 9000 BC the region began to enjoy a warm, humid period allowing vegetation to flourish and wild animals to move in. Humans soon followed practising pastoral economies but with the onset of harsher conditions once more around 3000 BC the desert reclaimed its own. Since then fluctuations in climate have continued to affect the lives of people living around the desert fringes. The communities occupying the North African Coast and in the Nile Valley have come under the influence of the states dominating the Near East and the Mediterranean but those living in in the Sahel to the south of the desert have developed their own distinctive cultures. The book tells the story of the growing links between the two worlds, showing that Africa played a crucial part in the development of the Old World before it was drawn into the story of the New World.
The Horn of Africa by
Why is the Horn such a distinctive part of Africa? This book, by one of the foremost scholars of the region, traces this question through its exceptional history and also probes the wildly divergent fates of the Horn's contemporary nation-states, despite the striking regional particularity inherited from the colonial past. Christopher Clapham explores how the Horn's peculiar topography gave rise to the Ethiopian empire, the sole African state not only to survive European colonialism, but also to participate in a colonial enterprise of its own. Its impact on its neighbours, present-day Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Somaliland, created a region very different from that of post-colonial Africa. This dynamic has become all the more distinct since 1991, when Eritrea and Somaliland emerged from the break-up of both Ethiopia and Somalia. Yet this evolution has produced highly varied outcomes in the region's constituent countries, from state collapse (and deeply flawed reconstruction) in Somalia, through militarised isolation in Eritrea, to a still fragile 'developmental state' in Ethiopia. The tensions implicit in the process of state formation now drive the relationships between the once historically close nations of the Horn.
Understanding Ethiopia's Tigray War by
The war in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray began in November 2020. It inflicted more casualties than any other contemporary conflict in the world. It has also been among the least understood.The fighting and accompanying blockade led to an estimated 600,000 deaths - more than the number who died in the 1984-5 famine. International journalists were banned as the region was sealed off from the outside world by Ethiopian and Eritrean governments prosecuting a strategy designed to crush Tigray at almost any cost.Hatred of Tigrayans was stoked by senior advisers to Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed: they have called Tigrayans 'weeds' who must be uprooted, their place in history extinguished. Their language was reminiscent of that which preceded the genocide in Rwanda.The war was also orchestrated by Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki, who came to wield increasing influence over Ethiopian affairs. It drew in Somali troops as well as Eritrean forces. Peace agreements signed in November 2022 ended the worst of the violence, but without resolving the war's underlying drivers, which continue to feed a tense and uncertain situation.This book provides the first clear explanation of the factors that led to the conflict, unravelling their roots in Ethiopia's long and complex history. It describes the battles that were fought at such terrible cost and the immense suffering, particularly of women, who were brutally abused.
Colonial West Africa by
Originally published in 1978, this volume provides a selection of Michael Crowder's wrtings on the impact of colonial rule in West Africa and African reaction to it from the conquest to independence. Key themes include the impact of European culture on African culture; the resistance of Africans to European conquest; African reaction to colonial rule; the differences between French and British administrative, social and economic politices and the consequences of these differences for those subjected to them; the extent to which Africans accepted the new socio-political strucrrues imposed on them and the point at which they began to take control over them; and finally the importance or otherwise of the colonial period in African history as a whole.
What Britain Did to Nigeria by
Most accounts of Nigeria's colonisation were written by British officials, presenting it as a noble civilising mission to rid Africans of barbaric superstition and corrupt tribal leadership. Thanks to this skewed writing of history, many Nigerians today still have Empire nostalgia and view the colonial period through rose-tinted glasses. Max Siollun offers a bold rethink: an unromanticised history, arguing compellingly that colonialism had few benevolent intentions, but many unjust outcomes. It may have ended slavery and human sacrifice, but it was accompanied by extreme violence; ethnic and religious identity were cynically exploited to maintain control, while the forceful remoulding of longstanding legal and social practices permanently altered the culture and internal politics of indigenous communities. The aftershocks of this colonial meddling are still being felt decades after independence. Popular narratives often suggest that the economic and political turmoil are homegrown, but the reality is that Britain created many of Nigeria's crises, and has left them behind for Nigerians to resolve. This is a definitive, head-on confrontation with Nigeria's experience under British rule, showing how it forever changed the country--perhaps cataclysmically.
Biafra Genocide by
One of the great tragedies of Africa is not only the fact that a million people - mostly civilians and a large proportion of them children - died in one of Africa's first post-independence wars, but that until it happened the world thought Nigeria was immune from the wasting disease of tribalism. It certainly was not because the Biafran War is still the most expansive tribal conflagration that the continent has experienced - barring perhaps the ongoing Great Lakes conflict - involving the forces of East and West, only this time, with the British siding with the Soviets. Worse, some of the religious differences that emerged before and after that dreadful carnage are still with us today. During the course of hostilities that lasted almost four years, a lot of other shortcomings surfaced in Africa's most populous nation, including the kind of corruption that, until then, had always been linked to countries rich in oil. Disunity, incompetence and instability - from which Nigeria never really recovered - also emerged. Two bloody army coups followed after the rebels capitulated, together with an appalling series of massacres, mostly of southern Christians by Muslim northerners. Half a century later the slaughter continues.
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by
A "tremendous," "intrepid" history of the devastating war in the heart of Africa's Congo, with first-hand accounts of the continent's worst conflict in modern times. At the heart of Africa is the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal war in which millions have died. In Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, renowned political activist and researcher Jason K. Stearns has written a compelling and deeply-reported narrative of how Congo became a failed state that collapsed into a war of retaliatory massacres. Stearns brilliantly describes the key perpetrators, many of whom he met personally, and highlights the nature of the political system that brought these people to power, as well as the moral decisions with which the war confronted them. Now updated with a new introduction, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters tells the full story of Africa's Great War.
Political Power and Colonial Development in British Central Africa 1938-1960s by
This book focuses on the late colonial history of Zambia and Malawi, which between 1953 and 1963 were part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Although there were many links in their history and between their populations, the two territories (British protectorates under Colonial Office control) contrasted greatly in power structures, in their economies, and in their development. Europeans living in Northern Rhodesia, with a power base in the mining economy, were able to establish a dominant position in the territory after the Second World War. By the 1950s it looked as though they would have, with Southern Rhodesian Europeans, a long hegemony, gaining independence from Britain as a new Dominion, which would mean control over both Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland through the Federation. Thus, white ethnicity and ideology are essential factors in this book relating to the struggle for power from just before the Second World War up to the 1960s. However, crises in 1959 and 1960 led to the collapse of the Federation. A second focus is on issues of social and economic development. For Africans in Nyasaland, and in rural parts of Northern Rhodesia, there was a relatively weak economy in this period, a pattern of limited cash crop production, while many people became caught up in labour migration, subordinate to powerful European-dominated economic forces within southern Africa. This meant that colonial policies aimed at rural development were fundamentally flawed. The book also looks at the actual nature of rural economic change (as opposed to colonial policies) and discusses alternative visions of the future which were put forward. The argument is put that historians have often concentrated on the activities of the main nationalist movements in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, seeing them as bringing progress away from colonialism and towards independence. Here there is an attempt to draw out the complexities of life, and a variety of responses in the colonial situation, progress coming in a number of forms, but not always being achieved.
Controlling the Frontier by
In this concise and engaging book, historian Hugh Driver examines the struggle to determine and stabilize the frontier of southern Africa's Cape Colony in the aftermath of the British occupation in 1806. In troop movements arising out of the Napoleonic Wars, a close analysis is made of those units deemed appropriate for the inherited bush warfare of the eastern frontier, with an emphasis on Colonel John Graham's controversial method of frontier control implemented in the wake of the Fourth Cape Frontier War of 1811-1812.Those events leading up to the Battle of Grahamstown in April 1819 - notably the inter-Xhosa Battle of Amalinde in October 1818 - are then carefully delineated from contemporary sources, before the entire Fifth Cape Frontier War is considered, noting its significance not only at the time, but also in subsequent South African historiography.The volume then goes on to examine the development and deployment of colonial forces beyond the frontier in the aftermath of the war. This was primarily in response to the so-called 'Fetcani alarm', which was essentially how the Cape Colony experienced the Zulu-generated Mfecane. It culminated in a British campaign on the Umtata and the highly contentious and much misunderstood Battle of Mbolompo in August 1828, involving the 55th Foot, Cape Mounted Riflemen and Royal Artillery, among other units.
Mandela: in Honor of an Extraordinary Life by
A tribute to her father, Makaziwe Mandela shares the most definitive portrait of Nelson Mandela to date, revealing the man behind the anti-apartheid movement that changed the world. One of Time magazine's Most Important People of the Twentieth Century, Nelson Mandela continues to be a symbol of equality and justice: a Nobel Prize winner, South Africa's first Black president, and an unrelenting leader in the movement to dismantle racial inequality. Written by his daughter, her story uncovers the family man behind the international peacemaker persona. This volume presents an extraordinary assembly of historic biography and imagery alongside never-before-published family stories and personal photographs, Nelson Mandela's letters to friends and family, journal entries written during his incarceration, and a unique collection of rarely seen charcoal drawings and paintings he began at 83 years old. Chapters chronicle Mandela's childhood growing up in Mvezo, his time in Johannesburg as leader of the African National Congress, the importance of his familial relationships, decades of imprisonment, and his role as president and philanthropist. An enthralling read illustrated by powerful historic imagery, this tome delves into the life of the man that continues to galvanize so many.
Stirring the Pot by
Africa's art of cooking is a key part of its history. All too often Africa is associated with famine, but in Stirring the Pot, James C. McCann describes how the ingredients, the practices, and the varied tastes of African cuisine comprise a body of historically gendered knowledge practiced and perfected in households across diverse human and ecological landscape. McCann reveals how tastes and culinary practices are integral to the understanding of history and more generally to the new literature on food as social history. Stirring the Pot offers a chronology of African cuisine beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing from Africa's original edible endowments to its globalization. McCann traces cooks' use of new crops, spices, and tastes, including New World imports like maize, hot peppers, cassava, potatoes, tomatoes, and peanuts, as well as plantain, sugarcane, spices, Asian rice, and other ingredients from the Indian Ocean world. He analyzes recipes, not as fixed ahistorical documents,but as lively and living records of historical change in women's knowledge and farmers' experiments. A final chapter describes in sensuous detail the direct connections of African cooking to New Orleans jambalaya, Cuban rice and beans, and the cooking of African Americans' "soul food." Stirring the Pot breaks new ground and makes clear the relationship between food and the culture, history, and national identity of Africans.
African Artists by
As featured in the New York Times, ARTnews, Colossal, Metropolis and New York Magazine's The Strategist A groundbreaking A-Z survey of the work of over 300 modern and contemporary artists born or based in Africa Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today's art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art. Advisory Panel: Alayo Akinkugbe, Kavita Chellaram, Raphael Chikukwa, Julie Crooks, Tandazani Dhlakama, Oumy Diaw, Janine Gaëlle Dieudji, Ekow Eshun, Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, Joseph Gergel, Danda Jaroljmek, Omar Kholeif, Rose Jepkorir Kiptum, Alicia Knock, Nkule Mabaso, Lucy MacGarry, Owen Martin, Aude Christel Mgba, Bongani Mkhonza, Riason Naidoo, Paula Nascimento, Simon Njami, Robert Njathika, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Hannah O'Leary, Sean O'Toole, John Owoo, Brenda Schmahmann, Mark Sealy, Yasmeen Siddiqui, and Joseph L. Underwood
War, Rebellion and Epic in Byzantine North Africa by
In around 550 CE, the Latin poet Corippus composed his epic Iohannis to celebrate the forgotten wars of a Byzantine general against the 'Moorish' or 'Berber' peoples of North Africa. This book explores the rich narrative of that poem and the changing political, social and cultural environment within which he worked. The study provides an important reappraisal of the dramatic first decades of Byzantine North Africa (533-550), including detailed assessments of the ethnography of Moorish Africa, the diplomatic and military history of the imperial administration, and the religious transformations (both Christian and 'pagan') of this period. In considering the Iohannis as a political text, the study also casts important new light on the continued importance of poetry and literature on the southern fringes of imperial power, and presents a model for reading epic as a historical source.
Wrestling with the Devil by
A New York Times Editors' Choice "A welcome addition to the vast literature produced by jailed writers across the centuries . . . [a] thrilling testament to the human spirit." --Ariel Dorfman, The New York Times Book Review "Wrestling with the Devil is a powerful testament to the courage of Ngũgĩ and his fellow prisoners and validation of the hope that an independent Kenya would eventually emerge." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "The Ngũgĩ of Wrestling with the Devil called not just for adding a bit of color to the canon's sagging shelf, but for abolition and upheaval." --Bookforum An unforgettable chronicle of the year the brilliant novelist and memoirist, long favored for the Nobel Prize, was thrown in a Kenyan jail without charge Wrestling with the Devil, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's powerful prison memoir, begins literally half an hour before his release on December 12, 1978. In one extended flashback he recalls the night, a year earlier, when armed police pulled him from his home and jailed him in Kenya's Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, one of the largest in Africa. There, he lives in a prison block with eighteen other political prisoners, quarantined from the general prison population. In a conscious effort to fight back the humiliation and the intended degradation of the spirit, Ngũgĩ--the world-renowned author of Weep Not, Child; Petals of Blood; and Wizard of the Crow--decides to write a novel on toilet paper, the only paper to which he has access, a book that will become his classic, Devil on the Cross. Written in the early 1980s and never before published in America, Wrestling with the Devil is Ngũgĩ's account of the drama and the challenges of writing the novel under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He captures not only the excruciating pain that comes from being cut off from his wife and children, but also the spirit of defiance that defines hope. Ultimately, Wrestling with the Devil is a testimony to the power of imagination to help humans break free of confinement, which is truly the story of all art.