“Anyone seeking to understand the colonial roots of urban and national problems in, at the least, Anglophonic Africa, should read this book.”
The Historian
“African Underclass examines the social, political, and administrative repercussions of rapid urbanization in colonial Dar es Salaam and the evolution of official policy that viewed urbanization as inextricably linked with social disorder. This policy marginalized young Africans entering the town-and thus, paradoxically, the policy itself subverted the colonial order. Well researched and sharply written-one of the best and most stimulating accounts of urbanization in Eastern Africa to have been produced in recent years.”
John McCracken, emeritus professor of history, University of Stirling
“Burton’s book is a masterful survey of the development of Dar es Salaam’s underworld....this volume will cement his influence.”
American Historical Review
African Underclass examines the social, political, and administrative repercussions of rapid urban growth in Dar es Salaam. The origins of an often coercive response to urbanization in postcolonial Tanzania are traced back to the colonial period. The British reacted to unanticipated urban growth by attempting to limit the process, though this failed to prevent a substantial increase in rates of urbanization.
Instead, official policy marginalized the growing numbers of Africans who failed to fit colonial criteria for town residence. An underclass emerged whose rights to urban citizenship were eroded by a policy response to urbanization that criminalized not only many of the economic activities adopted by Africans, but often their very presence in the town. This was influenced by entrenched attitudes among official, settler, and elite African opinion that linked the phenomenon of urbanization with social disorder.
Andrew Burton is an honorary research associate of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, currently based in Addis Ababa. His publications include African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime & Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam and the coedited volume Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis. More info →
Retail price:
$32.95 ·
Save 20% ($26.36)
Retail price:
$80.00 ·
Save 20% ($64)
US and Canada only
Share 
To request instructor exam/desk copies, email Jeff Kallet at kallet@ohio.edu.
To request media review copies, email Laura Andre at andrel@ohio.edu.
Permission to reprint
Permission
to photocopy or include in a course pack
via Copyright Clearance
Center
Paperback
978-0-8214-1636-5
Retail price: $32.95,
S.
Release date: January 2005
320 pages
·
5¼ × 8½ in.
Rights: World (exclusive in Americas, and Philippines) except British Commonwealth, Continental Europe, and United Kingdom
Hardcover
978-0-8214-1635-8
Retail price: $80.00,
S.
Release date: January 2005
320 pages
·
5½ × 8½ in.
Rights: World (exclusive in Americas, and Philippines) except British Commonwealth, Continental Europe, and United Kingdom
African Genius
By Basil Davidson
The African Genius presents the ideas, social systems, religions, moral values, arts, and metaphysics of a range of African peoples, disputing the notion that Africa gained under colonialism by entering the modern world.
African History · Historical Essays · Africa · African Studies
Flickering Shadows
Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe
By J. M. Burns
Every European power in Africa made motion pictures for its subjects, but no state invested as heavily in these films, and expected as much from them, as the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Flickering Shadows is the first book to explore this little-known world of colonial cinema.J.
African History · Film and Video - History and Criticism · Media Studies · Zimbabwe · African Studies · African Film
The Demographics of Empire
The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge
Edited by Karl Ittmann, Dennis D. Cordell, and Gregory H. Maddox
The Demographics of Empire is a collection of essays examining the multifaceted nature of the colonial science of demography in the last two centuries. The contributing scholars of Africa and the British and French empires focus on three questions: How have historians, demographers, and other social scientists understood colonial populations? What were the demographic realities of African societies and how did they affect colonial systems of power?
