In Search of a Nation — 2005 ·

Histories of Authority & Dissidence in Tanzania

Edited by James L. Giblin and Gregory H. Maddox

“This volume is concerned with the cultural politics of power—with histories of how local people interpreted, criticized, and produced political legitimacy. In this volume, more than a dozen established and emerging scholars explore these themes in various Tanzanian historical contexts. The high esteem in which [Isario N.] Kimambo is held is reflected in the quality of the chapters and in the impressive list of contributors, including many of the most influential and active historians of Africa.”

African Studies Review

“Taken together, the essays that comprise this collection provide a powerful overview of the changing ways in which Tanzanians understood and negotiated the ‘nation’ and the institutions of state power in the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Journal of Asian and African Studies

The double-sided nature of African nationalism—its capacity to inspire expressions of unity, and its tendency to narrow political debate—are explored by sixteen historians, focusing on the experience of Tanzania. The narrative of the nation of Tanzania, which was created by the anticolonial nationalist movement, expanded by the Union after the Zanzibar Revolution, and fused by the ideology of Ujamaa by Julius Nyerere, has shaped Tanzanian political discourse for decades, but has not obliterated the great wealth of political discourses and identities which exist within the nation.

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James L. Giblin is an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.

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Gregory H. Maddox is a professor of history at Texas Southern University and author of Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History and coauthor of Praticing History in Central Tanzania: Writing, Memory, and Performance.