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  3. African Studies

The African Studies series, founded in 1968, is a prestigious series of monographs, general surveys, and textbooks on Africa covering history, political science, anthropology, economics, and ecological and environmental issues. The series seeks to publish work by senior scholars as well as the best new research.

  • Editorial Boards: David Anderson, University of Warwick, Carolyn Brown, Rutgers University, New Jersey, Christopher Clapham, University of Cambridge, Richard L. Roberts, Stanford University, California, Leonardo A. Villalón, University of Florida

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115 results in African Studies

Page 3 of 6

The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland
  • Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914–2014
  • Kate Skinner
  • Published online:
    05 July 2015
    Print publication:
    17 June 2015
  • The end of World War I saw the former German protectorate of Togoland split into British- and French-administered territories. By the 1950s a political movement led by the Ewe ethnic group called for the unification of British and French Togoland into an independent multiethnic state. Despite the efforts of the Ewe, the United Nations trust territory of British Togoland was ultimately merged with the Gold Coast to become Ghana, the first independent nation in sub-Saharan Africa; French Togoland later declared independence as the nation of Togo. Based on interviews with former political activists and their families, access to private papers, and a collection of oral and written propaganda, this book examines the history and politics behind the failed project of Togoland unification. Kate Skinner challenges the marginalization of the Togoland question from popular and academic analyses of postcolonial politics and explores present-day ramifications of the contingencies of decolonization.

Political Identity and Conflict in Central Angola, 1975–2002
  • Justin Pearce
  • Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    02 July 2015
  • This book examines the internal politics of the war that divided Angola for more than a quarter-century after its independence. It emphasises the Angolan people's relationship to the rival political forces that prevented the development of a united nation, an aspect of the conflict that has received little attention in earlier studies. Drawing upon interviews with farmers, town dwellers, soldiers and politicians in Central Angola, Justin Pearce examines the ideologies about nation and state that elites deployed in pursuit of hegemony and traces how people responded to these attempts at politicisation. The book not only demonstrates the potency of the rival conceptions of state and nation in shaping perceptions of self-interest and determining political loyalty, but also shows the ways in which allegiances could and did change for much of the Angolan population in response to the experience of military force.

Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania
  • Freedom, Democracy and Citizenship in the Era of Decolonization
  • Emma Hunter
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    27 April 2015
  • Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania is a study of the interplay of vernacular and global languages of politics in the era of decolonization in Africa. Decolonization is often understood as a moment when Western forms of political order were imposed on non-Western societies, but this book draws attention instead to debates over universal questions about the nature of politics, concept of freedom and the meaning of citizenship. These debates generated political narratives that were formed in dialogue with both global discourses and local political arguments. The United Nations Trusteeship Territory of Tanganyika, now mainland Tanzania, serves as a compelling example of these processes. Starting in 1945 and culminating with the Arusha Declaration of 1967, Emma Hunter explores political argument in Tanzania's public sphere to show how political narratives succeeded when they managed to combine promises of freedom with new forms of belonging at local and national level.

Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan
  • The Political Economy of Military-Islamist State Building
  • Harry Verhoeven
  • Published online:
    05 March 2015
    Print publication:
    05 March 2015
  • In 1989, a secretive movement of Islamists allied itself to a military cabal to violently take power in Africa's biggest country. Sudan's revolutionary regime was built on four pillars - a new politics, economic liberalisation, an Islamic revival, and a U-turn in foreign relations - and mixed militant conservatism with social engineering: a vision of authoritarian modernisation. Water and agricultural policy have been central to this state-building project. Going beyond the conventional lenses of famine, 'water wars' or the oil resource curse, Harry Verhoeven links environmental factors, development, and political power. Based on years of unique access to the Islamists, generals, and business elites at the core of the Al-Ingaz Revolution, Verhoeven tells the story of one of Africa's most ambitious state-building projects in the modern era - and how its gamble to instrumentalise water and agriculture to consolidate power is linked to twenty-first-century globalisation, Islamist ideology, and intensifying geopolitics of the Nile.

From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel
  • The Road to Nongovernmentality
  • Gregory Mann
  • Published online:
    05 January 2015
    Print publication:
    29 December 2014
  • This book looks beyond the familiar history of former empires and new nation-states to consider newly transnational communities of solidarity and aid, social science and activism. Shortly after independence from France in 1960, the people living along the Sahel - a long, thin stretch of land bordering the Sahara - became the subjects of human rights campaigns and humanitarian interventions. Just when its states were strongest and most ambitious, the postcolonial West African Sahel became fertile terrain for the production of novel forms of governmental rationality realized through NGOs. The roots of this 'nongovernmentality' lay partly in Europe and North America, but it flowered, paradoxically, in the Sahel. This book is unique in that it questions not only how West African states exercised their new sovereignty but also how and why NGOs - ranging from CARE and Amnesty International to black internationalists - began to assume elements of sovereignty during a period in which it was so highly valued.

Dictators and Democracy in African Development
  • The Political Economy of Good Governance in Nigeria
  • A. Carl LeVan
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    17 November 2014
  • What are the conditions for good governance in Africa, and why do many democracies still struggle with persistent poverty? Drawing on a historical study of Nigeria since independence, this book argues that the structure of the policy-making process explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors, such as oil, colonialism, ethnic diversity, foreign debt, and dictatorships. The author links the political structure of the policy process to patterns of government performance over half a century to show that the key factor is not simply the status of the regime as a dictatorship or a democracy, but rather it is the structure of the policy-making process by which different policy demands are included or excluded. By identifying political actors with the leverage to prevent policy change and extract concessions, empirical tests demonstrate how these 'veto players' systematically affect the performance of two broad categories of public policy. This Madisonian dilemma has important implications for African countries struggling with the institutional trade-offs presented by different regimes.

The Borders of Race in Colonial South Africa
  • The Kat River Settlement, 1829–1856
  • Robert Ross
  • Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013
  • This book provides a detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century. The settlement was created by the British to use the Khoekhoe as a living barrier between the Cape Colony and the amaXhosa. It was fought over with some regularity, however, and finally broken up after some of the Khoekhoe joined the amaXhosa in their war against the colony. Nevertheless, in the time that the settlement existed, the Khoekhoe both created a fertile landscape in the valley and developed a political theology of great importance for the evolution of South Africa. They were also the subjects of - and participants in - the major debates leading to the introduction of a liberal constitution for the Cape in 1853. The history of the settlement is thus crucial in understanding the development of both colonial racism and the creation of the colony's non-racial democracy.

A History of African Motherhood
  • The Case of Uganda, 700–1900
  • Rhiannon Stephens
  • Published online:
    05 September 2013
    Print publication:
    02 September 2013
  • This history of African motherhood over the longue durée demonstrates that it was, ideologically and practically, central to social, economic, cultural and political life. The book explores how people in the North Nyanzan societies of Uganda used an ideology of motherhood to shape their communities. More than biology, motherhood created essential social and political connections that cut across patrilineal and cultural-linguistic divides. The importance of motherhood as an ideology and a social institution meant that in chiefdoms and kingdoms queen mothers were powerful officials who legitimated the power of kings. This was the case in Buganda, the many kingdoms of Busoga, and the polities of Bugwere. By taking a long-term perspective from c.700 to 1900 CE and using an interdisciplinary approach - drawing on historical linguistics, comparative ethnography, and oral traditions and literature, as well as archival sources - this book shows the durability, mutability and complexity of ideologies of motherhood in this region.

Making Citizens in Africa
  • Ethnicity, Gender, and National Identity in Ethiopia
  • Lahra Smith
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    20 May 2013
  • Smith argues that citizenship creation and expansion is a pivotal part of political contestation in Africa today. Citizenship is a powerful analytical tool to approach political life in contemporary Africa because the institutional and structural reforms of the past two decades have been inextricably linked with the battle over the 'right to have rights'. Professor Lahra Smith's work advances the notion of meaningful citizenship, referring to the ways in which rights are exercised, or the effective practice of citizenship. Using data from Ethiopia and developing a historically informed study of language policy, ethnicity and gender identities, Smith analyzes the contestation over citizenship that engages the state, social movements and individuals in substantive ways. By combining original data on language policy in contemporary Ethiopia with detailed historical study and a focus on ethnicity, citizenship and gender, this work brings a fresh approach to Ethiopian political development and contemporary citizenship concerns across Africa.

An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World
  • Benguela and its Hinterland
  • Mariana Candido
  • Published online:
    05 April 2013
    Print publication:
    29 March 2013
  • This book traces the history and development of the port of Benguela, the third largest port of slave embarkation on the coast of Africa, from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Benguela, located on the central coast of present-day Angola, was founded by the Portuguese in the early seventeenth century. In discussing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African societies, Mariana P. Candido explores the formation of new elites, the collapse of old states and the emergence of new states. Placing Benguela in an Atlantic perspective, this study shows how events in the Caribbean and Brazil affected social and political changes on the African coast. This book emphasizes the importance of the South Atlantic as a space for the circulation of people, ideas and crops.

Slavery and Emancipation in Islamic East Africa
  • From Honor to Respectability
  • Elisabeth McMahon
  • Published online:
    05 March 2013
    Print publication:
    30 April 2013
  • Examining the process of abolition on the island of Pemba off the East African coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book demonstrates the links between emancipation and the redefinition of honour among all classes of people on the island. By examining the social vulnerability of ex-slaves and the former slave-owning elite caused by the abolition order of 1897, this study argues that moments of resistance on Pemba reflected an effort to mitigate vulnerability rather than resist the hegemonic power of elites or the colonial state. As the meaning of the Swahili word heshima shifted from honour to respectability, individuals' reputations came under scrutiny and the Islamic kadhi and colonial courts became an integral location for interrogating reputations in the community. This study illustrates the ways in which former slaves used piety, reputation, gossip, education, kinship and witchcraft to negotiate the gap between emancipation and local notions of belonging.

Black Morocco
  • A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam
  • Chouki El Hamel
  • Published online:
    05 January 2013
    Print publication:
    10 December 2012
  • Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam chronicles the experiences, identity and achievements of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Chouki El Hamel argues that we cannot rely solely on Islamic ideology as the key to explain social relations and particularly the history of black slavery in the Muslim world, for this viewpoint yields an inaccurate historical record of the people, institutions and social practices of slavery in Northwest Africa. El Hamel focuses on black Moroccans' collective experience beginning with their enslavement to serve as the loyal army of the Sultan Isma'il. By the time the Sultan died in 1727, they had become a political force, making and unmaking rulers well into the nineteenth century. The emphasis on the political history of the black army is augmented by a close examination of the continuity of black Moroccan identity through the musical and cultural practices of the Gnawa.

Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival
  • A History of Dissent, c.1935–1972
  • Derek R. Peterson
  • Published online:
    05 October 2012
    Print publication:
    24 September 2012
  • Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival shows how, in the era of African political independence, cosmopolitan Christian converts struggled with East Africa's patriots over the definition of culture and community. The book traces the history of the East African Revival, an evangelical movement that spread through much of eastern and central Africa. Its converts offered a subversive reading of culture, disavowing their compatriots and disregarding their obligations to kin. They earned the ire of East Africa's patriots, who worked to root people in place as inheritors of ancestral wisdom. This book casts religious conversion in a new light: not as an inward reorientation of belief, but as a political action that opened up novel paths of self-narration and unsettled the inventions of tradition.

From Africa to Brazil
  • Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830
  • Walter Hawthorne
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    13 September 2010
  • From Africa to Brazil traces the flows of enslaved Africans from the broad region of Africa called Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil. These two regions, though separated by an ocean, were made one by a slave route. Walter Hawthorne considers why planters in Amazonia wanted African slaves, why and how those sent to Amazonia were enslaved, and what their Middle Passage experience was like. The book is also concerned with how Africans in diaspora shaped labor regimes, determined the nature of their family lives, and crafted religious beliefs that were similar to those they had known before enslavement. It presents the only book-length examination of African slavery in Amazonia and identifies with precision the locations in Africa from where members of a large diaspora in the Americas hailed. From Africa to Brazil also proposes new directions for scholarship focused on how immigrant groups created new or recreated old cultures.

Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa's Democracies
  • M. Anne Pitcher
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 May 2012
  • In Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa's Democracies, M. Anne Pitcher offers an engaging new theory to explain the different trajectories of private sector development across contemporary Africa. Pitcher argues that the outcomes of economic reforms depend not only on the kinds of institutional arrangements adopted by states in order to create or expand their private sectors, but also on the nature of party system competition and the quality of democracy in particular countries. To illustrate her claim, Pitcher draws on several original data sets covering twenty-seven countries in Africa, and detailed case studies of the privatization process in Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. This study underscores the importance of formal institutions and political context to the design and outcome of economic policies in developing countries.

Misreading the African Landscape
  • Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic
  • James Fairhead, Melissa Leach
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    17 October 1996
  • Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. In this 1996 text, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences of a century of erroneous policy. Interweaving historical, social anthropological and ecological data, this fascinating study advances a novel theoretical framework for ecological anthropology, encouraging a radical re-examination of some central tenets in each of these disciplines.

Transformations in Slavery
  • A History of Slavery in Africa
  • 3rd edition
  • Paul E. Lovejoy
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    10 October 2011
  • This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European abolition and assesses slavery's role in African history. The book corrects the accepted interpretation that African slavery was mild and resulted in the slaves' assimilation. Instead, slaves were used extensively in production, although the exploitation methods and the relationships to world markets differed from those in the Americas. Nevertheless, slavery in Africa, like slavery in the Americas, developed from its position on the periphery of capitalist Europe. This new edition revises all statistical material on the slave trade demography and incorporates recent research and an updated bibliography.

The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya
  • Angelique Haugerud
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    11 May 1995
  • Once the major success story of a troubled continent, by the early 1990s Kenya came to be regarded as its fallen star. This book challenges such images of reversal and the analytical polarities which sustain them. Based on several years of research in Kenya, the analysis ranges from telescopic to microscopic fields of vision - from national political culture, oratory, and the staging of politics, to everyday struggles for livelihood among people in one rural locale during the past century. This sliding scale of analysis allows the author to experiment theoretically with a number of themes informed by contemporary analytical tensions among post-modernist 'chaos', historical contingency, and structural regularities. The result is a study which combines many disciplines and perspectives to give a rich and varied picture of the culture of politics in twentieth-century Kenya.

Africa in the Time of Cholera
  • A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present
  • Myron Echenberg
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 February 2011
  • This book combines evidence from natural and social sciences to examine the impact on Africa of seven cholera pandemics since 1817, particularly the current impact of cholera on such major countries as Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Myron Echenberg highlights the irony that this once-terrible scourge, having receded from most of the globe, now kills thousands of Africans annually - Africa now accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's cases and deaths - and leaves many more with severe developmental impairment. Responsibility for the suffering caused is shared by Western lending and health institutions and by often venal and incompetent African leadership. If the threat of this old scourge is addressed with more urgency, great progress in the public health of Africans can be achieved.

Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World
  • Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade
  • Roquinaldo Ferreira
  • Published online:
    05 May 2012
    Print publication:
    09 April 2012
  • This book argues that Angola and Brazil were connected, not separated, by the Atlantic Ocean. Roquinaldo Ferreira focuses on the cultural, religious and social impacts of the slave trade on Angola. Reconstructing biographies of Africans and merchants, he demonstrates how cross-cultural trade, identity formation, religious ties and resistance to slaving were central to the formation of the Atlantic world. By adding to our knowledge of the slaving process, the book powerfully illustrates how Atlantic slaving transformed key African institutions, such as local regimes of forced labor that predated and coexisted with Atlantic slaving and made them fundamental features of the Atlantic world's social fabric.

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