Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies – ideological, economic, military and political – The Sources of Social Power traces their interrelations throughout human history In this first volume, Michael Mann examines interrelations between these elements from neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilizations, the classical Mediterranean age and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England It offers explanations of the emergence of the state and social stratification; of city-states, militaristic empires and the persistent interaction between them; of the world salvation religions; and of the particular dynamism of medieval and early modern Europe It ends by generalizing about the nature of overall social development, the varying forms of social cohesion and the role of classes and class struggle in history First published in 1986, this new edition of Volume 1 includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of the work

The sources of social power

PIP: This paper presents the effects of climate, topography, and natural ecology on public health, nutrition, demographics, technological diffusion, international trade and other determinants of economic development in Africa. The goal of this paper is to emphasize the need for intensified research on the issues at the intersection of ecology and human society. Geography was given emphasis because of three reasons: the minimal gain from another recitation of the damage caused by statism, protectionism and corruption to African economic performance; negligence of the role of natural forces in shaping economic performance; and tailoring of policies to geographical realities. The paper also discusses the general problems of tropical development and the focus of Africa's problems in worldwide tropical perspectives; demographic trends in Africa; use of standard cross-country growth equations with demographic and geographic variables, to account for the relative roles of geography; and the future growth strategies and the need for urban-based export growth in manufacturing and services. Lastly, the authors provide a summary of conclusions and discuss the agenda for future research.

/pdf/geography-demography-and-economic-growth-in-africa-21hd177zjf.pdf

Geography, demography, and economic growth in Africa.

Introduction: states and industrialization in the global periphery Part I. Galloping Ahead: Korea: 1. The colonial origins of a modern political economy: the Japanese lineage of Korea's cohesive-capitalist state 2. The rhee interregnum: saving South Korea for cohesive capitalism 3. A cohesive-capitalist state reimposed: Park Chung Hee and rapid industrialization Part II. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Brazil 4. Invited dependency: fragmented state and foreign resources in Brazil's early industrialization 5. Grow now, pay later: state indebted industrialization in modern Brazil Part III. Slow but Steady: India: 6. Origins of a fragmented-multiclass state and a sluggish economy: colonial India 7. India's fragmented-multiclass state and protected industrialization Part IV. Dashed Expectations: Nigeria: 8. Colonial Nigeria: origins of a neopatrimonial state and a commodity-exporting economy 9. Sovereign Nigeria: neopatrimonialism and failure of industrialization Conclusion: understanding states and state intervention in the global periphery.

/pdf/state-directed-development-political-power-and-1ccxx48asu.pdf

State-directed development : political power and industrialization in the global periphery

L’auteur essaie de demontrer qu’il n’existe pas d’identite africaine que l’on peut designer par un seul terme ou ranger sous une seule rubrique. L’identite africaine n’existe que comme substance. Elle se constitue, a travers une serie de pratiques, notamment de pratiques de pouvoir et du soi, ce que Michel Foucault, appelle les jeux de verite, Ni les formes de cette identite, ni ses idiomes ne sont toujours semblables a eux meme. Ces formes sont mobiles, reversibles et instables. Par consequent, elles ne peuvent etre reduites a un ordre purement biologique base sur le sang, la race, ou la geographie. Elles ne peuvent non plus etre reduites a la tradition, dans la mesure ou celle-ci est constamment reinventee.

https://calternatives.org/resource/pdf/African%20Modes%20of%20Self-Writing.pdf

African modes of self-writing

This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven best-documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and adjacent peoples in the Valley of Mexico, the Classic Maya, the Inka, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, economic systems, religion, and culture. Many of this study's findings are surprising and provocative. Agricultural systems, technologies, and economic behaviour turn out to have been far more diverse than was expected. These findings and many others challenge not only current understandings of early civilizations but also the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology and anthropology. The key to understanding early civilizations lies not in their historical connections but in what they can tell us about similarities and differences in human behaviour.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/2002074052.pdf

Understanding early civilizations : a comparative study

List of contributors List of abbreviations Introduction Robin Law 1. The initial 'crisis of adaptation': the impact of British abolition on the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa, 1808-1820 Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson 2. The West African palm oil trade in the nineteenth century and the 'crisis of adaptation' Martin Lynn 3. The compatibility of the slave and palm oil trades in Dahomey, 1818-1858 Elisee Soumonni 4. Between abolition and Jihad: the Asante response to the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, 1807-1896 Gareth Austin 5. Plantations and labour in the south-east Gold Coast from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Ray A. Kea 6. Owners, slaves and the struggle for labour in the commercial transition at Lagos Kristin Mann 7. Slaves, Igbo women and palm oil in the nineteenth century Susan Martin 8. 'Legitimate' trade and gender relations in Yorubaland and Dahomey Robin Law 9. In search of a desert-edge perspective: the Sahara-Sahel and the Atlantic trade, c. 1815-1900 E. Ann McDougall 10. The 'New International Economic Order' in the nineteenth century: Britain's first development plan for Africa A. G. Hopkins Appendix: the 'crisis of adaptation': a bibliography Index.

From slave trade to "legitimate" commerce : the commercial transition in nineteenth-century West Africa

Country and people Economy and society Polity and ideology The Atlantic slave trade, I: the development of European enterprise The Atlantic slave trade, II: the operation and impact of the trade The decline of Allada, 1671-1720 The rise of Dahomey 1720-1734 The consoldiation of Dahomey 1734-1750 Conclusion: 'God made war for all the world'

The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750 : the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on an African society

Ethnicity was evidently critical for the operation of the Atlantic slave trade, on both the African and the European sides of the trade. For Africans, given the general convention against enslaving fellow citizens, ethnic identities served to define a category of “others” who were legitimately enslavable. For African Muslims this function was performed by religion, though here too, it is noteworthy that the classic discussion of this issue, by the Timbuktu scholar Ahmad Baba in 1615, approaches it mainly in terms of ethnicity, through classification of West African peoples as Muslim or pagan. Europeans, for their part, regularly distinguished different ethnicities among the slaves they purchased, and American markets developed preferences for slaves of particular ethnic origins. This raises interesting (but as yet little researched) questions about the ways in which African and European definitions of African ethnicity may have interacted. Both Africans and Europeans, for example, commonly employed, as a means of distinguishing among African ethnicities, the facial and bodily scarifications (“tribal marks”) characteristic of different communities—a topic on which there is detailed information in European sources back at least into the seventeenth century, which might well form the basis for a historical study of ethnic identities.In this context as in others, of course, ethnicity should be seen, not as a constant, but as fluid and subject to constant redefinition. The lately fashionable debate on “the invention of tribes” in Africa concentrated on the impact of European colonialism in the twentieth century, rather than on that of the Atlantic slave trade earlier—no doubt because it was addressed primarily to Southern, Central and Eastern rather than Western Africa.

Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: Lucumi and Nago as Ethnonyms in West Africa

African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency

Introduction - Origins: Ouidah before the Dahomian conquest - The Dahomian conquest of Ouidah - Dahomian Ouidah - The operation of the Atlantic slave trade - De Souza's Ouidah: the era of the illegal slave trade, 1815-39 - The era of transition: from slaves to palm oil, 1840-57 - Dissension & decline: Ouidah under King Glele, 1858-77 - From Dahomian to French rule, 1878-92 - Sources & bibliography.

Robin Law

Papers

From slave trade to "legitimate" commerce : the commercial transition in nineteenth-century West Africa

The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750 : the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on an African society

Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: Lucumi and Nago as Ethnonyms in West Africa

African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency

Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving Port 1727-1892