Showing papers in "International Journal of African Historical Studies in 1986"

An introduction to the history of central Africa : Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe

Abstract: Revised in light of the most recent research, this new edition brings the story of the Central African region completely up-to-date. Particular attention is given to the liberation struggle and the fortunes of the independent regime of Zimbabwe.

Islam in Tribal Societies : From the Atlas to the Indus

Abstract: A lively debate is currently being conducted in the social sciences around the concepts of "tribe", "segmentary societies" and "Islam in society". This wide-ranging collection by thirteen distinguished anthropologists contributes to the debate by examining various segmentary Islamic tribal societies from Morocco to Pakistan.

The Repercussions of Rinderpest: Cattle Plague and Peasant Decline in Colonial Natal

Abstract: The 1890s and early 1900s were difficult years for many agricultural communities throughout much of the African continent, particularly the eastern and southern regions. The causes of the severe crop and stock losses among farmers, and the attendant social and political repercussions that followed in the wake of destruction, are squarely attributable to a cluster of natural disasters. The African continent, from Somaliland in the north to the Cape Colony in the south, reeled under the effects of first a locust plague, and then the dreaded cattle epidemics of rinderpest and East Coast Fever. These afflictions were punctuated by a series of prolonged droughts that further crippled agriculturalists.1 The natural disasters that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century have been pointed to as important "re-inforcing factors" that contributed to the decline of southern African peasant communities.2 In the German colony of Tanganyika, rinderpest is claimed to have broken "the economic backbone of many of the most prosperous and advanced communities" and initiated the break-down of a longestablished ecological balance and placed nature again at an advantage."3 The repercussions of the rinderpest epidemic on the British colony of Natal were also severe as an examination of the conjunction of this dreaded cattle plague with

Les Gourounsi de Haute-Volta: Conquete et Colonisation 1896-1933

Abstract: Le pays gurunsi a l'epoque precoloniale. Etapes de la conquete et administration coloniale francaise.

'No Girl Leaves the School Unmarried': Mabel Shaw and the Education of Girls at Mbereshi, Northern Rhodesia, 1915-1940

Abstract: In the 1920s and 1930s the main educational center for Africans in Northern Rhodesia was the London Missionary Society station of Mbereshi, in the present Luapula Province of Zambia. The most prestigious institution of the Mbereshi complex was Mbereshi Girls' Boarding School, the earliest girls' school in Northern Rhodesia. Under Mabel Shaw, principal from 1915 to 1940, this school gained an international reputation. This article examines the school's attempt to inculcate a form of Christian neo-traditionalism as a defense for its girls, who were educated above all for Christian marriage, against what Mabel Shaw saw as the superstition and degradation of village "paganism" and against the viciousness and materialism of what she considered to be neo-pagan African urban life. Struggling with this Janus-like enemy, Mabel Shaw's thinking followed a deeply spiritual trajectory which contrasted and ultimately clashed with the approach of the secular colonial education authorities.1