Bruce S. Hall

Bio: Bruce S. Hall is an academic researcher from Duke University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Islam & Colonialism. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 14 publications receiving 345 citations.

One hippopotamus and eight blind analysts: a multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali

Abstract: This is an exercise in contemporary history that aims to give a comprehensive background and analysis to the current (2012) political crisis in Mali, generated by the start of a new Tuareg nationalist uprising against the state, complemented by a coordinated attack on the state by both international (AQIM) and local Jihadi–Salafi movements, leading to a coup d’etat against the incumbent President Toure, and finallly a political stalemate of great concern to the international community. By pooling sources and analysis, a group of eight scholars tries to give a comprehensive overall picture.

One hippopotamus and eight blind analysts: a multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali: extended editors cut

Abstract: In 2012, the political landscape in the Republic of Mali transformed rapidly, drastically, and unpredictably The formation of a new Tuareg political movement—the National Movement of Azawad—in October 2010 and the return to Mali of Tuareg with military experience from the Libyan conflict in August 2011—bringing along heavy weapons and logistical supplies— made speculation on renewed violence on the part of separatist Tuareg inevitable Indeed, Tuareg separatists launched attacks on Malian garrisons in the Sahara in January 2012 Mali had experienced such rebellions before What nobody foresaw was that this renewed conflict would lead to a coup d'etat by disgruntled junior officers; the near total collapse of Mali’s army and most of its democratic institutions; the seizure of all of northern Mali by Tuareg rebels and foreign and local mujahideen;1 the precocious proclamation of an independent Azawad Republic; and the effective occupation of the north of the country by an alliance of Jihadi-Salafi movements who imposed their form of shari'a law on a suffering and largely recalcitrant population Those events happened very quickly, and their effects will be felt for years This article attempts to give an overview of the crisis in Mali as it unfolded through 2012, with particular attention to what was happening on the ground in Mali itself

A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600-1960

Abstract: The mobilization of local ideas about racial difference has been important in generating, and intensifying, civil wars that have occurred since the end of colonial rule in all of the countries that straddle the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. From Sudan to Mauritania, the racial categories deployed in contemporary conflicts often hearken back to an older history in which blackness could be equated with slavery and non-blackness with predatory and uncivilized banditry. This book traces the development of arguments about race over a period of more than 350 years in one important place along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert: the Niger Bend in northern Mali. Using Arabic documents held in Timbuktu, as well as local colonial sources in French and oral interviews, Bruce S. Hall reconstructs an African intellectual history of race that long predated colonial conquest, and which has continued to orient inter-African relations ever since.

The Historic "Core Curriculum" And The Book Market In Islamic West Africa

Abstract: Much work has been done to map out the contours of Islamic intellectual production in West Africa before the twentieth century. This chapter describes the books - by author and title - that were in heaviest demand by doing an inventory of the contents of a cross-section of West African libraries. The working assumption in the chapter is that the extant copies of manuscripts that appear in the largest numbers across representative libraries from the Atlantic to northern Nigeria are a good indication of the most widely studied subjects and texts across the Sahel. These works - "core curriculum" - were likely at the center of any regional book market. The Arabic Manuscript Management System (AMMS) database of extant manuscripts allows us to identify a "core curriculum" common to the southern Sahara and West Africa that likely overlapped in large part with the books in greatest demand. Keywords: Arabic Manuscript Management System (AMMS); Islamic West Africa; Sahelian core curriculum; West African bookmarket

The question of 'race' in the pre-colonial southern Sahara

Abstract: One of the principle issues that divide people in the southern margins of the Sahara Desert is the issue of ‘race.’ Each of the countries that share this region, from Mauritania to Sudan, has experienced civil violence with racial overtones since achieving independence from colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s. Today's crisis in Western Sudan is only the latest example. However, very little academic attention has been paid to the issue of ‘race’ in the region, in large part because southern Saharan racial discourses do not correspond directly to the idea of ‘race’ in the West. For the outsider, local racial distinctions are often difficult to discern because somatic difference is not the only, and certainly not the most important, basis for racial identities. In this article, I focus on the development of pre-colonial ideas about ‘race’ in the Hodh, Azawad, and Niger Bend, which today are in Northern Mali and Western Mauritania. The article examines the evolving relationship between North and West African...

The New Imperialism

Abstract: From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

Why Men Rebel

Abstract: Why Men Rebel was first published in 1970 on the heels of a decade of political violence and protest not only in remote corners of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also at home in the United States. Forty years later, the world is riveted on uprisings in the Middle East, and the United States has been overtaken by a focus on international terrorism and a fascination with citizen movements at home and abroad. Do the arguments of 1970 apply today? Why Men Rebel lends new insight into contemporary challenges of transnational recruitment and organization, multimedia mobilization, and terrorism.

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge

Abstract: What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism ? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses. North America: Indiana U Press