African History
Featured Title(s)
Women and Slavery, Volume One
Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic
Edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers and Joseph C. Miller
The literature on women enslaved around the world has grown rapidly in the last ten years, evidencing strong interest in the subject across a range of academic disciplines. Until Women and Slavery, no single collection has focused on female slaves who—as these two volumes reveal—probably constituted the considerable majority of those enslaved in Africa, Asia, and Europe over several millennia and who accounted for a greater proportion of the enslaved in the Americas than is customarily acknowledged.…
The African AIDS Epidemic
A History
By John Iliffe
This history of the African AIDS epidemic is a much-needed, accessibly written historical account of the most serious epidemiological catastrophe of modern times. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History answers President Thabo Mbeki’s provocative question as to why Africa has suffered this terrible epidemic.…
An African American in South Africa – On Sale
The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche 28 September 1937–1 January 1938
Edited by Ralph Bunche and Robert R. Edgar
Ralph Bunche, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, traveled to South Africa for three months in 1937. His notes, which have been skillfully compiled and annotated by historian Robert R. Edgar, provide unique insights on a segregated society.…
The African Experience with Higher Education – On Sale
By J. F. Ade Ajayi, Lameck K. H. Goma and G. Ampah Johnson
There have been institutions of higher learning for centuries in Africa, but the phenomenal growth has taken place in the last fifty years, first in the later days of colonialism and then in the heady days of independence and commodity boom.…
After the TRC
Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation
Edited by Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver
Has South Africa dealt effectively with the past, and is the country ready to face the future? What are the challenges facing both government and civil society in the years ahead? These and other questions are explored in this collection of essays by international and local commentators on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.…
Being Maasai
Ethnicity and Identity In East Africa
Edited by Thomas Spear and Richard Waller
Everyone “knows” the Maasai as proud pastoralists who once dominated the Rift Valley from northern Kenya to central Tanzania. But many people who identity themselves as Maasai, or who speak Maa, are not pastoralist at all, but farmers and hunters.…
Between the Sea and the Lagoon – On Sale
An Eco-social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana c. 1850 to Recent Times
This study offers a “social interpretation of environmental process” for the coastal lowlands of southeastern Ghana. The Anlo-Ewe, sometimes hailed as the quintessential sea fishermen of the West African coast, are a previously non-maritime people who developed a maritime tradition.…
Black Lawyers, White Courts – On Sale
The Soul of South African Law
In the struggle against apartheid, one often overlooked group of crusaders was the coterie of black lawyers who overcame the Byzantine system that the government established oftentimes explicitly to block the paths of its black citizens from achieving justice.…
Brothers at War
Making Sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War
By Tekaste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll
The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment.…
A Burning Hunger
One Family’s Struggle Against Apartheid
If the Mandelas were the generals in the fight for black liberation, the Mashininis were the foot soldiers. Theirs is a story of exile, imprisonment, torture, and loss, but also of dignity, courage, and strength in the face of appalling adversity.…
Butterflies & Barbarians
Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa
Swiss missionaries played a primary and little-known role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasizes how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent.…
Changing Uganda – On Sale
Dilemmas of Structural Adjustment
Edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
Yoweri Museveni battled to power in 1986. His government has impressed many observers as Uganda's most innovative since it gained independence from Britain in 1962. The Economist recommended it as a model for other African states struggling to develop their resources in the best interests of their peoples.…
The Children of Africa Confront AIDS
From Vulnerability to Possibility
Edited by Arvind Singhal and W. Stephen Howard
AIDS is now the leading cause of death in Africa, where twenty-eight million people are HIV-positive, and where some twelve million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In Zimbabwe, 45 percent of children under the age of five are HIV-positive, and the epidemic has shortened life expectancy by twenty-two years.…
Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World – On Sale
Edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
The fact that many of the leaders in the Third World were educated by Christian missionaries is a decisive factor in world politics today. Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World provides examples of how these missionaries contributed to the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of state structures in Africa and the Caribbean, through educational activity and attempts at healing and trade, as well as by preaching, prayer, and other sacramental endeavors.…
Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958
In September 1958, Guinea claimed its independence, rejecting a constitution that would have relegated it to junior partnership in the French Community. In all the French empire, Guinea was the only territory to vote “No.…
Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880-1940 – On Sale
This exceptional study of the Mongo people of the upper Congo River basin focuses on the evolution of Mongo work patterns from the period of the late nineteenth century to 1940, the high-water mark of the colonial period.…
Conflict Resolution in Uganda – On Sale
Edited by Kumar Rupesinghe
There is a new mood in Uganda. There is a determination to reak out of the bitter history of internal conflict. Uganda gives hope to all those other areas of the world where violence has become endemic such as Ulster, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.…
Confronting Leviathan
Mozambique Since Independence
By Margaret Hall and Tom Young
Confronting Leviathan describes Mozambique’s attempt to construct a socialist society in one African country on the back of an anti-colonial struggle for national independence. In explaining the failure of this effort the authors suggest reasons why the socialist vision of the ruling party, Frelimo, lacked resonance with Mozambican society.…
Creating Germans Abroad – On Sale
Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia
When World War I brought an end to German colonial rule in Namibia, much of the German population stayed on. The German community, which had managed to deal with colonial administration, faced new challenges when the region became a South African mandate under the League of Nations in 1919.…
Custodians of the Land – On Sale
Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania
Edited by Gregory H. Maddox, James L. Giblin and Isaria N. Kimambo
Farming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history.…
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.…
