Eastern African Studies

Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia
The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century
By Bahru Zewde

In this exciting new study, Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country’s history. Ethiopia’s political independence at the end of the nineteenth century put this new African state in a position to determine its own levels of engagement with the West. Ethiopians went to study in universities around the world.

African History · African Studies · Ethiopia

African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1950
By Tabitha Kanogo

This book explores the history of African womanhood in colonial Kenya. By focussing on key sociocultural institutions and practices around which the lives of women were organized, and on the protracted debates that surrounded these institutions and practices during the colonial period, it investigates the nature of indigenous, mission, and colonial control of African women.The

Women’s Studies · History | Africa | East · Colonialism and Decolonization · Customs, Traditions, and Everyday Life · Kenya · Eastern Africa · Africa · African Studies

Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003
By Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo and Marjorie Keniston McIntosh

This groundbreaking book by two leading scholars offers a complete historical picture of women and their work in Uganda, tracing developments from precolonial times to the present and into the future. Setting women’s economic activities into a broader political, social, and cultural context, it provides the first general account of their experiences amid the changes that shaped the country.

African History · Women’s Studies · Uganda · African Studies

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa
Edited by Henri Médard and Shane Doyle

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa is a collection of ten studies by the most prominent historians of the region. Slavery was more important in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa than often has been assumed, and Africans from the interior played a more complex role than was previously recognized. The essays in this collection reveal the connections between the peoples of the region as well as their encounters with the conquering Europeans.

African History · Slavery and Slave Trade · African Studies · Eastern Africa · Democratic Republic of the Congo

War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa
The Patterns and Meanings of State-Level Conflict in the 19th Century
By Richard Reid

War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa examines the nature and objectives of violence in the region in the nineteenth century. It is particularly concerned with highland Ethiopia and the Great Lakes. It will be of use to those interested in military history and to anyone involved in modern development and conflict resolution seeking to understand the deeper historical roots of African warfare.Contents:

African History · Violence in Society · Military History · Eastern Africa · African Studies

Cultivating Success in Uganda
Kigezi Farmers and Colonial Policies
By Grace Carswell

Kigezi, a district in southwestern Uganda, is exceptional in many ways. In contrast to many other parts of the colonial world, this district did not adopt cash crops. Soil conservation practices were successfully adopted, and the region maintained a remarkably developed and individualized land market from the early colonial period.Grace Carswell presents a comprehensive study of livelihoods in Kigezi.

African History · Environmental Policy · Food Studies · Colonialism and Decolonization · African Studies

Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914
By Jan-Georg Deutsch

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. However, despite government efforts to keep the institution of slavery alive, it significantly declined in Tanganyika in the period concerned.

Slavery and Slave Trade · History · African History · 19th century · Europe · Western Europe · Germany · Africa · Eastern Africa · African Studies

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. Ethnic Federalism closely examines aspects of the Ethiopean case and asks why the use of territorial decentralism to accommodate ethnic differences has been generally unpopular in Africa.

Political Science, Africa · Ethiopia · African Studies

Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro
Population & Environment in Western Uganda 1860–1955
By Shane Doyle

One of the first studies of the political ecology of a major African kingdom, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro focuses on the interplay between levels of environmental activity within a highly stratified society.

Environmental Policy · African History · History · African Studies

In Search of a Nation
Histories of Authority and Dissidence in Tanzania
Edited by Gregory H. Maddox and James L. Giblin

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.

African History · History · History | Modern | 20th Century · Politics · Tanzania · Eastern Africa · Africa · African Studies

A History of the Excluded
Making Family a Refuge from State in Twentieth-Century Tanzania
By James L. Giblin

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. Njombe’s people came to see themselves as excluded from agricultural markets, access to medical services, schooling—in short, from all opportunity to escape the impoverishing trap of migrant labor.

African History · History | Modern | 20th Century · Labor History · Emigration and Immigration · Africa · Eastern Africa · Tanzania · African Studies

Black Poachers, White Hunters
A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya
By Edward I. Steinhart

Black Poachers, White Hunters traces the history of hunting in Kenya in the colonial era, describing the British attempt to impose the practices and values of nineteenth-century European aristocratic hunts followed, ultimately, by claims over African wildlife by conservationists.

African History · History · Social History · Race and Ethnicity · Kenya · Eastern Africa · Africa · African Studies

Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar, 1860-1970
By Erik Gilbert

Conventional history assumes that the rise of the steamship trade killed off the Indian Ocean dhow trade in the twentieth century. Erik Gilbert argues that the dhow economy played a major role in shaping the economic and social life of colonial Zanzibar. Dhows, and the regional trade they fostered, allowed a class of indigenous entrepreneurs to thrive in Zanzibar.

African History · History · South Indian Ocean Islands · Tanzania · Eastern Africa · Africa · African Studies

African Underclass
Urbanisation, Crime, and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam
By Andrew Burton

This study examines the social, political, and administrative repercussions of rapid urban growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Social Science | Sociology | Urban · Colonialism and Decolonization · Criminology · Social History · Tanzania · Eastern Africa · Africa · African Studies

Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa
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.This

Geography · Agricultural and Food Policy · Food Studies · Eastern Africa · African Studies