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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 5 of 6

Decolonization and African Society
  • The Labor Question in French and British Africa
  • Frederick Cooper
  • Published online:
    22 February 2010
    Print publication:
    28 August 1996
  • This detailed and authoritative volume changes our conceptions of 'imperial' and 'African' history. Frederick Cooper gathers a vast range of archival sources in French and English to achieve a truly comparative study of colonial policy toward the recruitment, control, and institutionalization of African labor forces from the mid 1930s, when the labor question was first posed, to the late 1950s, when decolonization was well under way. Professor Cooper explores colonial conceptions of the African worker and shows how African trade union and political leaders used the new language of social change to claim equality and a share of power. This helped to persuade European officials that the 'modern' Africa they imagined was unaffordable. Britain and France could not reshape African society. As they left the continent, the question was how they had affected the ways in which Africans could reorganize society themselves.

France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960
  • Christopher Harrison
  • Published online:
    01 February 2010
    Print publication:
    25 August 1988
  • This book is a major contribution to the social, political and intellectual history of the largest colonial state in Africa, the French West African Federation. By focusing on the specific subject of the development of French policy towards Islam, it sheds light on a wide range of issues, from the grand strategy of French imperialism to the psychology of individual administrators in isolated outposts of the empire. Christopher Harrison argues that in order to make sense of colonial rule, it is vitally important to understand the way in which the colonial power thought about the people it governed. He demonstrates how French understanding of Islam in West Africa evolved from the short-term, and often contradictory, policies associated with the period of military expansion, through a period of intense suspicion and fear of pan-Islamic movements, to a widely-held consensus that Islam in Africa was quite distinct from the Islam of the Arab world.

Political Domination in Africa
  • Patrick Chabal
  • Published online:
    26 January 2010
    Print publication:
    09 October 1986
  • This collection of essays brings together historians and political scientists from Britain, France and the United States, who, from widely differing perspectives and traditions, have been involved in the process of rethinking African politics. They present here the outline of a new approach, grounded in universal political theory rather than on theories of Third World political development. This seeks to integrate the history of Africa (from pre- to post-colonial) with concepts of political theory as they have been applied historically to the analysis of Europe and America. The book addresses a wide audience: students of African history and politics, of Third World development and of political theory.

Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa
  • Robert H. Bates
  • Published online:
    26 January 2010
    Print publication:
    01 January 1983
  • This book addresses several of the classic questions in African Studies. In the pre-colonial era what were the sources of order in societies without states? And what were the origins of 'traditional' states in Africa? In the colonial period, what caused the divergent patterns of agricultural development? And what were the issues that drove the peasantry into the rebellions which brought an end to colonial rule? Since independence what has been the fate of the African peasantry? What has been the content of the agricultural policies adopted by the governments of Africa? And how can these policies be accounted for? In answering these questions, the book explores various forms of explanation and advances a form of political economy based upon rational-choice analysis.

West African States: Failure and Promise
  • A Study in Comparative Politics
  • Edited by John Dunn
  • Published online:
    19 January 2010
    Print publication:
    01 June 1978
  • In 1956 the West African coast between southern Mauretania and western Cameroon was lined with no less than ten European colonial territories, along with a single independent African state. All of these colonial units have joined Liberia in formal political independence. Their political experiences since 1956 and indeed the forms of their present political regimes themselves have varied very widely over this period, from the defiant and paranoid austerity of Guinea to the gleeful surge of Nigeria's oil-generated capitalist expansion. In political taste the present governments cover almost the full spectrum of Third World regimes. Yet the societies themselves have many geographical and historical features in common, certainly far more in common than in the case of most units studied by analysts of comparative politics. This book was first published in 1978.

Liberia and Sierra Leone
  • An Essay in Comparative Politics
  • Christopher Clapham
  • Published online:
    15 January 2010
    Print publication:
    29 July 1976
  • Very similar in some ways, but strikingly different in others, Sierra Leone and Liberia have an obvious appeal for comparative analysis. They share the legacy of foundation by immigrants of African descent and the juxtaposition of these with indigenous peoples, but within the contrasting institutional frameworks of settler independence and British colonialism. They have similar social and economic structures but sharply dissimilar political records: Liberia has long been regarded as the classic case of stability at the price of oligarchy, whereas Sierra Leone, after a period as West Africa's most successful two-party democracy, suffered a succession of military coups and by 1973 was effectively a single-party state. This study seeks to analyse and account for both similarities and differences, looking at the two countries' experience in the 1960s and early 1970s, not only in central politics but also at the local level and in economic policy.

Kingship and State
  • The Buganda Dynasty
  • Christopher Wrigley
  • Published online:
    12 January 2010
    Print publication:
    23 February 1996
  • The precolonial kingdom of Buganda, nucleus of the present Uganda state, has long attracted scholarly interest. Since written records are lacking entirely until 1862, historians have had to rely on oral traditions that were recorded from the end of the nineteenth century. These sources provide rich materials on Buganda in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but in this 1996 book Christopher Wrigley endeavours to show that the stories which appear to relate to earlier periods are largely mythology. He argues that this does not reduce their value since they are of interest in their own mythical right, revealing ancient traces of sacred kingship, and also throwing oblique light on the development of the recent state. He has written an elegant and wide-ranging study of one of Africa's most famous kingdoms.

Islam and Social Change in French West Africa
  • History of an Emancipatory Community
  • Sean Hanretta
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    23 March 2009
  • Exploring the history and religious community of a group of Muslim Sufi mystics in colonial French West Africa, this study shows the relationship between religious, social and economic change in the region. It highlights the role that intellectuals played in shaping social and cultural change and illuminates the specific religious ideas and political contexts that gave their efforts meaning. In contrast to depictions that emphasize the importance of international networks and anti-modern reaction in twentieth-century Islamic reform, this book claims that, in West Africa, such movements were driven by local forces and constituted only the most recent round in a set of centuries-old debates about the best way for pious people to confront social injustice. It argues that traditional historical methods prevent an appreciation of Muslim intellectual history in Africa by misunderstanding the nature of information gathering during colonial rule and misconstruing the relationship between documents and oral history.

Contemporary West African States
  • Edited by Donal Cruise O'Brien, John Dunn, Richard Rathbone
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    26 January 1990
  • The West African states have reached maturity. This new volume - appearing a decade after the successful West African States: Failure and Promise - provides up-to-date studies of nine states, including Chad, Burkina Faso and Cameroon, which were neglected in the earlier volume, and introduces contemporary theories of West African politics. The book reflects changes on the ground and also in academic debate, notably the remarkable retreat of dependency theory and Marxian analysis and the rise of free-market theorising by both governments and scholars. The volume also contains important observations on the political importance of religious fundamentalism in the region, and the growth of sub-national forms of political activity. The writers are well-known scholars in the field, and include contributors to the influential journal Politique Africaine. This will be a useful textbook for everyone interested in African politics, but it is also a provocative contribution to the debate on the nature of the state and political processes in Africa.

Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa
  • The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century
  • Martin Lynn
  • Published online:
    04 December 2009
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997
  • A key theme in the West African trading system of the nineteenth century is the transition from the slave trade to 'legitimate' commerce, and its significance for the African societies of the region. In this period of transition, trade in palm oil was at the core of relations between Britain and West Africa, and of immense importance to the economies of large parts of West Africa. Martin Lynn's authoritative and comprehensive study of the palm oil trade covers the whole of this critical period for all of West Africa. It explains how the palm oil trade grew organically out of the organisation of the slave trade. The situation changed sharply with the development of steam communication between Britain and West Africa from the 1850s, leading to severe problems for the commerce in the second half of the century, the erosion of African brokers' powers, and the restructuring of the trade thereafter. The result was a crisis within the trade towards the end of the century and, eventually, with the arrival of colonial rule, the ending of the long established structures of the commerce.

Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia
  • The Tigray People's Liberation Front, 1975–1991
  • John Young
  • Published online:
    12 November 2009
    Print publication:
    04 September 1997
  • In the wake of the overthrow of the Haile-Selassie regime in Ethiopia in 1974 and the coming to power of the military, a number of opposition forces launched insurrections. But only one movement, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) triumphed, liberating Tigray in 1989, and in an ethnic-based coalition which it dominated, assuming state power in 1991. This is the first chronicle of the history of that struggle, and it is based largely on interviews with peasants who formed the core of the Tigrayan revolution and the TPLF leadership. It provides the necessary background to understanding post-1991 political developments in Ethiopia. It also offers an explanation of peasant-based revolution that contrasts with contemporary approaches by Marxists, Skocpol, and in particular the works of Wolf, Paige and Scott, all of whom largely ignore the political considerations and the role of the revolutionary party, which Dr Young identifies as a critical element in his study.

Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal
  • Disciples and Citizens in Fatick
  • Leonardo A. Villalón
  • Published online:
    10 November 2009
    Print publication:
    16 February 1995
  • The Sufi Muslim orders to which the vast majority of Senegalese belong are the most significant institutions of social organization in the country. While studies of Islam and politics have tended to focus on the destabilizing force of religiously based groups, the author argues that in Senegal the orders have been a central component of a political system that has been among the most stable in Africa. Focusing on a regional administrative centre, he combines a detailed account of grassroots politics with an analysis of national and international forces to examine the ways in which the internal dynamics of the orders shape the exercise of power by the Senegalese. This is a major study that should be read by every student of Islam and politics as well as of Africa.

Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville
  • Phyllis Martin
  • Published online:
    09 November 2009
    Print publication:
    11 January 1996
  • In this book, Phyllis Martin, a well-known Africanist scholar, opens up a whole new field of African research: the leisure activities of urban Africans. Her comprehensive study, set in colonial Brazzaville and based on a wide variety of written sources and interviews, investigates recreational activities from football and fashion to music, dance and night life. In it, she brings out the ways in which these activities built social networks, humanised daily life and forged new identities, and explains how they ultimately helped to remake older traditions and values with new cultural forms.

Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade
  • Boubacar Barry
  • Published online:
    31 October 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 1997
  • Boubacar Barry is one of the leading figures in West African historiography. His authoritative study of 400 years of Senegambian history is unrivalled in its detailed grasp of published and unpublished materials. Taking as its subject the vast area covering the Senegal and Gambia river basins, this book explores the changing dynamics of regional and Atlantic trade, clashes between traditional African and emergent Muslim authorities, the colonial system and the slave trade, and current obstacles to the integration of the region's modern states. Professor Barry argues cogently for the integrity of the Senegambian region as a historical subject, and he forges a coherent narrative from the dismemberment and unification which characterised Senegambia's development from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. This newly-translated study is a vital tool in our understanding of West African history.

Prelude to the Mahdiyya
  • Peasants and Traders in the Shendi Region, 1821–1885
  • Anders Bjørkelo
  • Published online:
    31 October 2009
    Print publication:
    16 March 1989
  • During the first colonial period (the Turkiyya, 1821–85), the Shendi region of the Northern Sudan was inhabited by peasants, traders and nomads. This book analyses socio-economic change among the peasants and traders during this formative period of Sudanese history. Administration, agriculture and trade in transition from a pre-colonial to a colonial economy are discussed. Anders Bjørkelo argues that Turkish demands for cash-crop cultivation and taxation in cash ruined the villages and towns and undermined the local subsistence economy, and that the role of traders as mediators in the process of monetisation contributed to stagnation and rural indebtedness. By combining a thorough mastery of the travel literature with examination of previously unknown manuscript sources, notably the private papers of a prominent Sudanese merchant, he is able to offer a closer view of the situation of trader and peasant families. For the first time it is possible to consider the period from a Sudanese point of view. Dr Bjørkelo concludes that General Gordon's policy of driving back to the impoverished north the waves of emigrants to the Southern Sudan was instrumental in triggering off the Mahdist movement, and also interestingly suggests points of comparison between reactions to Muslim, as against European, imperialism.

The African Poor
  • A History
  • John Iliffe
  • Published online:
    31 October 2009
    Print publication:
    25 December 1987
  • This history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. Its thesis, derived from histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been individuals incapacitated for labour, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. There has emerged the distinct poverty of those excluded from access to productive resources. Natural disaster brought widespread destitution, but as a cause of mass mortality it was almost eliminated in the colonial era, to return to those areas where drought has been compounded by administrative breakdown. Professor Iliffe investigates what it was like to be poor, how the poor sought to help themselves, how their counterparts in other continents live. The poor live as people, rather than merely parading as statistics. Famines have alerted the world to African poverty, but the problem itself is ancient. Its prevailing forms will not be understood until those of earlier periods are revealed and trends of change are identified. This is a book for all concerned with the future of Africa, as well as for students of poverty elsewhere.

A History of African Christianity 1950–1975
  • Adrian Hastings
  • Published online:
    28 October 2009
    Print publication:
    17 May 1979
  • The churches in Africa probably constitute the most important growth area for Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century. From being a number of rather tightly controlled 'mission fields' zealously guarded by the great missionary societies, Catholic and Protestant, they have emerged across the last decades in bewildering variety to selfhood, a membership of close on a hundred million adherents and an influential role both within their own societies and in the world Church. This book surveys the history of Christianity throughout sub-Saharan Africa during the third quarter of this century. It begins in 1950 at a time when the churches were still for the most part emphatically part of the colonial order and it takes the story on from there across the coming of political independence and the transformations of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960
  • Patrick Manning
  • Published online:
    26 October 2009
    Print publication:
    30 April 1982
  • The small but important region of Dahomey (now the People's Republic of Benin) has played an active role in the world economy throughout the era of mercantile and industrial capitalism, beginning as an exporter of slaves and becoming an exporter of plain oil and palm kernels. This book covers a span of three centuries, integrating into a single framework the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial economic history of Dahomey. Mr Manning has pieced together an extensive body of new evidence and new interpretations: he has combined descriptive evidence with quantitative data on foreign trade, slave demography and colonial government finance, and has used both Marxian and Neoclassical techniques of economic analysis. He argues that, despite the severe strain on population and economic growth caused by the slave trade, the economy continued to expand from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and the colonial state acted as an economic depressant rather than a stimulant.

West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce
  • The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860
  • James F. Searing
  • Published online:
    19 October 2009
    Print publication:
    22 July 1993
  • West African societies were transformed by the slave trade, even in regions where few slaves were exported. While many books have been written on the import and export trade and on warrior predation, Dr Searing's concern is with the effects of the Atlantic slave trade on the societies of the Senegal river valley in the eighteenth century. He shows that the growth of the Atlantic trade stimulated the development of slavery within West Africa. Slaves worked as seamen in the river and coasting trades, produced surplus grain to feed slaves in transit, and sometimes came to hold pivotal positions in the political structure of the coastal kingdoms of Senegambia. This local slave system had far-reaching consequences, leading to religious protest and slave rebellions. The changes in agricultural production fostered an ecological crisis.

The Shell Money of the Slave Trade
  • Jan Hogendorn, Marion Johnson
  • Published online:
    12 October 2009
    Print publication:
    11 September 1986
  • This study examines the role of cowrie-shell money in West African trade, particularly the slave trade. The shells were carried from the Maldives to the Mediterranean by Arab traders for further transport across the Sahara, and to Europe by competing Portuguese, Dutch, English and French traders for onward transport to the West African coast. In Africa they served to purchase the slaves exported to the New World, as well as other less sinister exports. Over a large part of West Africa they became the regular market currency, but were severely devalued by the importation of thousands of tons of the cheaper Zanzibar cowries. Colonial governments disliked cowries because of the inflation and encouraged their replacement by low-value coins. They disappeared almost totally, to re-appear during the depression of the 1930s, and have been found occasionally in the markets of remote frontier districts, avoiding exchange and currency control problems.

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