Eastern African Studies
About Eastern African Studies
A ground-breaking series that has redefined a region, the Eastern African Studies Series takes in a broad sweep of the continent from Ethiopia and the Red Sea to Mozambique. The EAS is both multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. It includes studies of distinction that contribute to academic debates, general regional and country surveys, and multi-authored collections on key topics. An outlet for first-time authors as well as a showcase for established scholars, EAS has presented major new works on Mau Mau, the nature of the colonial state, social history and social life, religion and politics, conflict and reconstruction, environmental history, and poverty and development. All books in the series are available in paperback editions.
Featured Titles
Decolonization & Independence in Kenya, 1940–1993
Edited by B. A. Ogot and W. R. Ochieng
This is a sharply observed assessment of the history of the last half century by a distinguished group of historians of Kenya. At the same time the book is a courageous reflection in the dilemmas of African nationhood.…
Eroding the Commons – On Sale
The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890s-1963
Colonial Baringo was largely unnoticed until drought and localized famine in the mid-1920s led to claims that its crisis was brought on by overcrowding and livestock mismanagement. In response to the alarm over erosion, the state embarked on a program for rehabilitation, conservation, and development.…
Mau Mau and Nationhood – On Sale
Arms, Authority, and Narration
Edited by E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale
Fifty years after the declaration of the state of emergency, Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself. Mau Mau and Nationhood is a collection of essays providing the most recent thinking on the uprising and its aftermath.…
Religion & Politics in East Africa
The Period since Independence
Edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
Religious activities have been of continuing importance in the rise of protest against postcolonial governments in Eastern Africa. Issues considered include attempts by government to “manage” religious affairs in both Muslim and Christian areas; religious denominations as surrogate oppositions to one-party-state regimes and as advocates of human rights; Islamic fundamentalism before and after the end of the Cold War; and Christian churches as NGOs in the age of structural adjustment.…
Emancipation Without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914
This study examines the complex history of slavery in East Africa, focusing on the area that came under German colonial rule. In contrast to the policy pursued at the time by other colonial powers in Africa, the German authorities did not legally abolish slavery in their colonial territories.…
Empire State-Building – On Sale
War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952
By Joanna Lewis
This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks four questions: Why was Kenya's welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies? Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor? Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine? If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down? The answers offer revealing insight into the dynamics of rule in the late colonial period in Kenya.…
Eroding the Commons – On Sale
The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890s-1963
Colonial Baringo was largely unnoticed until drought and localized famine in the mid-1920s led to claims that its crisis was brought on by overcrowding and livestock mismanagement. In response to the alarm over erosion, the state embarked on a program for rehabilitation, conservation, and development.…
Ethnic Federalism
The Ethiopian Experience in Comparative Perspective
Edited by David Turton
Since 1991, Ethiopia has gone further than any other country in using ethnicity as the fundamental organizing principle of a federal system of government. And yet this pioneering experiment in “ethnic federalism” has been largely ignored in the growing literature on democratization and ethnicity in Africa and on the accommodation of ethnic diversity in democratic states.…
Ethnicity & Conflict In The Horn of Africa
Composed of eleven studies on the Horn of Africa, the book is based on primary research by David Turton, Hiroshi Matsuda, John Lamphear, Eisei Kurimoro, Wendy James, P.T.W. Baxter, Tim Allen and others.…
From Guerrillas to Government
The Eritrean People's Liberation Front
By David Pool
In 1991 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years later after a referendum in May 1993. It was the climax of a thirty-year struggle, though the EPLF itself was formed only in the early 1970s.…
The History and Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town
Edited by Abdul Sheriff
Zanzibar Stone Town presents the problems of conservation in its most acute forms. Should it be fossilized for the tourists? Or should it grow for the benefit of the inhabitants? Can ways be found to accommodate conflicting social and economic pressures? For its size, Zanzibar, like Venice, occupies a remarkably large romantic space in world imagination.…
A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991
Second Edition
By Bahru Zewde
Bounded by Sudan to the west and north, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the southeast, and Eritrea and Djibouti to the northeast, Ethiopia is a pivotal country in the geopolitics of the region. Yet it is important to understand this ancient and often splintered country in its own right.…
A History of the Excluded
Making Family a Refuge from State in Twentieth-Century Tanzania
The twentieth-century history of Njombe, the Southern Highlands district of Tanzania, can aptly be summed up as exclusion within incorporation. Njombe was marginalized even as it was incorporated into the colonial economy.…
In Search of a Nation
Histories of Authority & Dissidence in Tanzania
Edited by James L. Giblin and Gregory H. Maddox
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.…
Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa – On Sale
Edited by Mats Widgren and John E.G. Sutton
Islands of intensive agriculture are areas of local cultivation surrounded by low-density livestock herders or extensive cultivators. Along the line of the East Africa Rift Valley, and in the highlands on either side, communities of considerable historical depth have developed highly specialized agricultural regimes, employing such labor-intensive devices as furrow irrigation, hillside terracing, and stall-feeding of cattle.…
Jua Kali Kenya – On Sale
Change and Development in an Informal Economy, 1970–1995
By Kenneth King
Kenya was where the term “informal sector” was first used in 1971. During the 1980s the term “jua kali"--in Swahili “hot sun"--came to be used of the informal sector artisans, such as carworkers and metalworkers, who were working under the hot sun because of a lack of premises.…
Kakungulu & the Creation of Uganda: 1868–1928
This is a history of the early days of Uganda. The account has an African focus because it shows the British takeover through the experiences of an extraordinary leader.“At this spot in the year 1901 the British flag was first hoisted by Semei Kakanguru, emissary and loyal servant of His Majesty the King.…
Kampala Women Getting By – On Sale
Wellbeing in the Time of AIDS
What do ordinary women in an African city do in the face of “serious enough” infections in themselves and signs of acute illness in their young children? How do they manage? What does it take to get by? How do they maintain the wellbeing of the household in a setting without what would be considered as basic health provision in an American or European city?Professor Wallman focuses on women in a densely-populated part of Kampala called Kamwokya.…
Leaf of Allah
Khat & Agricultural Transformation in Harerge, Ethiopia, 1875–1991
Khat is a quasi-legal psychoactive shrub, produced and marketed in the province of Harerge, Ethiopia, and widely consumed throughout Northeast Africa. In the late nineteenth century the main cash crop of Harerge was coffee.…
Mau Mau and Nationhood – On Sale
Arms, Authority, and Narration
Edited by E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale
Fifty years after the declaration of the state of emergency, Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself. Mau Mau and Nationhood is a collection of essays providing the most recent thinking on the uprising and its aftermath.…
Mau Mau from Below – On Sale
John Lonsdale says in his introduction: “This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau ‘Emergency’ in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.…
The Mau Mau War in Perspective
By Frank Furedi
The book breaks new ground in following the story of the participants of the rural movement during the decade after the defeat of the Mau Mau. New archival sources and interviews provide exciting material on the mechanics of the sociology of decolonization and on the containment of rural radicalism in Kenya.…
A Modern History of the Somali
Nation and State in the Horn of Africa
By I. M. Lewis
This latest edition of A Modern History of the Somali brings I. M. Lewis's definitive history up to date and shows the amazing continuity of Somali forms of social organization. Lewis's history portrays the ingeniousness with which the Somali way of life has been adapted to all forms of modernity.…
Multi-Party Politics in Kenya – On Sale
The Kenyatta & Moi States & the Triumph of the System in the 1992 Election
By David Throup and Charles Hornsby
This book uses the Kenyan political system to address issues relevant to recent political developments throughout Africa. The authors analyze the construction of the Moi state since 1978. They show the marginalization of Kikuyu interests as the political economy of Kenya has been reconstructed to benefit President Moi's Kalenjin people and their allies.…
