Showing papers in "International Journal of African Historical Studies in 2011"

Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract: Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa. By J. Michael Williams. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. Pp. viii, 282; maps, bibliography, index, list of abbreviations. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. "One of the most vivid political reminders of the apartheid past, the institution of chieftaincy" (p. 1), has maintained its legitimacy in a country where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has dedicated itself since 1994 to eradicating that past. J. Michael Williams explores how the "conflicting worldviews about the nature of authority and the right to rule" (p. 2) between chieftaincy and the post-apartheid state have produced an inevitable struggle about political legitimacy. To understand how this struggle plays out at the local level, he focuses on three chieftaincies in KwaZulu-Natal in order to "tell the stories of real South Africans dealing with the everyday struggles that exist in the postapartheid dispensation" (p. 31). Utilizing "the multiple legitimacies framework," he argues "that even though both the democratic state institutions and the chieftaincy seek to exercise exclusive political control in the rural areas" (p. 19), neither is able to dominate. Instead, the outcome is a "syncretism of authority relations" in which "the different sources of legitimacy overlap" (p. 19). Having introduced his overall argument in the Introduction, Williams uses the next six chapters to understand how and why the chieftaincy in each of his three study areas remains "a central pillar to the local populations" (p. 38). The second chapter, "The Binding Together of the People," examines chieftaincy in historical perspective and how through the changing circumstance of colonial and apartheid rule the principle of the unity of the community through the chieftaincy persevered. This was in large part due to the chiefs and izinduna ("headmen") learning "to selectively invoke particular principles and ideas in different circumstances" (p. 79). The third chapter "examines the national debates concerning the chieftaincy in the 1990s" (p. 80), and the official integration of the institution into the new constitutional order, which resulted in the creation of a mixed polity. With the passage of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (TLGF Act) in 2003, the ANC seemingly came to recognize "the unique qualities of the chieftaincy and that it indeed occupies a space distinct from the state or civil society" (p. 106). The next chapters focus on the local level to gain insight into how the TLGF Act was largely reactive to events unfolding from the early 1990s. …

The African Diaspora: A History through Culture

Abstract: The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture. By Patrick Manning. Columbia Studies in Global and International History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. ix-xxi, 395; maps, graphs and tables, photographs, illustrations, notes, index. $24.50 / £17 paper. Patrick Manning's The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture is an ambitious and far-reaching volume that puts Africa and the African Diaspora at the center of world history. Like Michael Gomez in Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2005), John Thornton and Linda Heywood in Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Toyin Falola and Kevin Roberts in The Atlantic World, 14502000 (Indiana University Press, 2008), Manning presents a broad revision of how Africans and the African Diaspora can be understood as social actors in the past. Yet, Manning does not necessarily invoke the idea of the Black Atlantic per se. Rather, he believes the idea of modernity can be productive, and that people of Africa and its Diaspora are at the center of the construction of the contemporary world. Aware of the potential pitfalls and critiques of such an approach, Manning's detailed and encyclopedic discussion of the African Diaspora over the last five hundred years stresses connectivity and flow of communities moving into and out of Africa. Thus, though Manning may seem a little too eager to accept "modernity" as a real historical era, his approach certainly takes the best of post-colonial and postmodern approaches in revising and re-constructing the idea of world history with Africa and the African Diaspora as important generators of history and cultural meaning. The African Diaspora also offers us a way to think about the most important aspects of African and African Diaspora history from multiple starting points. His chapter, "Diaspora: Struggles and Connections," gives a well-rounded discussion of the idea of Diaspora starting from its biblical and Greek roots to how the idea and term has been internationalized, and especially used to describe the experiences of dispersed Africans over the centuries. What is particularly refreshing is Manning's constant return in the volume to Eastern African Diasporas as examples of this process (p. 176-77). Manning also turns the lens onto Africans at home in order to think about early African history and culture in his chapter "Connections to 1600" (esp. pp. 42-58). Other chapters, like "Survival, 1600-1800," and "Emancipation, 1800-1900," broadly discuss slavery and colonialism in a manner that explains the connections between the two in creating global structures of power and material wealth. …

West Africa's Discovery of the Atlantic

Abstract: This article comprises two separate (although related) parts. The first deals with matters of objective history, stressing the revolutionary nature of the opening up of West Africa to European maritime trade from the fifteenth century onwards. The second (and longer) deals rather with subjective history, the ways in which the Europeans and their trade were fitted into local cosmological and religious conceptions. Although some account is taken of the entire western African coast, the main focus of the analysis is the principal area of my own specialist research, the region known to Europeans between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries as the "Slave Coast": in geographical terms, the Bight of Benin, corresponding to the modern states of Togo and the Republic of Benin, with the southeastern part of Ghana to the west and the southwestern part of Nigeria to the east. The principal indigenous societies in question are, from west to east, first, the various Gbespeaking communities- AnIo, Gen (known to Europeans as "Little Popo"), Pia ("GrandPopo"), and finally Hueda and Aliada (which were both conquered and incorporated in the early eighteenth century by the inland kingdom of Dahomey); second, the various Yoruba states, including the coastal port of Lagos; and third, the kingdom of Benin. Part One: The African Discovery of the Atlantic The starting point for my thinking on this subject was reading David Northrup's book Africa's Discovery of Europe (2002), whose title has been appropriated and adapted for this article.1 Northrup was concerned to look at the encounter between Africa and Europe from the perspective of Africans, stressing the role of the latter as active participants, rather than merely passive victims, in the construction and operation of the Atlantic world, and the degree of control which Africans exercised over the conduct of trade, which obliged Europeans to conform to African expectations and practices rather than vice versa. Although this analysis is not directly challenged in the present article (since I basically agree with it), it is suggested that Northrup's emphasis on continuity (together with his aggregation of material from a period of four centuries, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries) tends to under-emphasize the radical novelty of the initial opening of direct European maritime commerce with West Africa in the fifteenth century. The main point argued here is that, for most West Africans, the opening up of their continent to the Atlantic, as a result of Portuguese enterprise in the second half of the fifteenth century, represented a truly revolutionary development in their historical experience. This does not apply so completely to those West Africans who were Muslims, who were already linked to a wider world, through overland contacts across the Sahara desert to the north. This prior experience also clearly influenced how they perceived and responded to the Europeans who later arrived by sea. Along the coast of the Sahara desert (in what is today Mauritania), for example, it was noted in the 1450s, that "They are Muhammadans, and very hostile to Christians"; though this may have been a response to recent Portuguese slave raiding, rather than knowledge of the wider Christian/Muslim confrontation in northwestern Africa.2 The first sub-Saharan Africans whom the Portuguese encountered, at the River Senegal and in the kingdom of Cayor, were likewise Muslims; while further along the coast, for example at the River Gambia, they found societies which, although still predominantly pagan, already included significant Muslim minorities.3 In such Muslim or partly Muslim sub-Saharan societies also, reactions to the Portuguese were at least to some degree conceived within a wider religious framework. At the Gambia in the 1450s, for example, the Portuguese found that the local inhabitants identified them as Christians, with whom they assumed their relationship should be hostile, even if their understanding of Christian religious practice was shaky: "they firmly believed that we Christians ate human flesh, and that we only bought negroes to eat them: that for their part they did not want our friendship on any terms. …

Land, Memory, Reconstruction, and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa

Abstract: Land, Memory, Reconstruction, and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa Edited by Cherryl Walker, Anna Bohlin, Ruth Hall, and Thembela Kepe Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010 Pp xiv, 335; maps, contributors, index $2895 paper This edited volume in four parts addresses several themes that have dominated discussions of the South African land restitution process These themes include the challenges of achieving some conception of justice through restitution As Ruth Hall says: "Land restitution is intended to right the wrongs of the past: to redress dispossession and to heal" (p 17 See also Dhupelia-Mesthrie, and Fay and James) Other familiar themes recounted here are the bureaucratic obstacles to successful land restitution, the difficulties of reconciling the different dynamics of urban and rural land claims (Walker), and the tensions between imperatives to effect land restitution while respecting existing rights to property, adhering to market principles and developing urban environments (Bohlin, Beyers) The volume does make a novel and valuable contribution, however, with its focus on the effects of the land claims process on the notions of community and belonging in claims-making communities This theme recurs throughout the volume and binds many of the chapters together The case studies point to how a sense of community has been forged or fractured, or both, by making claims, living with the consequences of settlement agreements, and government involvement after restitution Part 1 sets out "contextual, comparative and legal perspectives" on land restitution Hall's description of the formalities of land claims, such as the categories of eligibility, are taken up in both of the following chapters Fay and James discuss how the discourse of tradition and identity mobilized in making land claims is subsequently undermined by the conditions of modernization that the state places on claimants At the same time, the sense of community generated by making claims is often fractured in the post-settlement period as the memory of loss "loses its salience as a rallying point for unity" (p 47) Mostert's chapter describes how the courts have played a central role in managing- mostly expansively- the categories of "community," "dispossession," "discrimination," and "rights" as legislative criteria of eligibility for restitution Part 2 offers four case studies In their respective accounts of dispossessed communities, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie and Anna Bohlin recount how initial hopes of recovering the sense of community, belonging and ownership associated with their former homes were frustrated by administrative and bureaucratic inefficiency, and gradually gave way to the resigned acceptance of cash compensation over restitution The two contributions point out the very real challenge in settling land claims, in a drastically altered urban environment, in ways that satisfy dispossessed communities' desires to see the wrongs of the past "righted" The contributions by Marc Wegerif and by Angela Conway and Tim Xipu describe very different approaches to rural land claims Wegerif 's approval of "poor people making their own choices- without government, NGO or consultant intervention" (p 110) is contrasted with tales of failure in nearby community property associations (CPAs) established as a result of land settlements Wegerif seems to advocate the "occupation of unused land" without government sanction, in light of the "snail's pace of official land reform" (p …

Postcolonial realism: Tanganyika's foreign policy under Nyerere, 1960-1963

Abstract: The triumphs of the year were won abroad. Internationally, the prestige of Tanganyika and Nyerere had never been higher; the accolades of Addis and the triumph for moderation in the OAU charter; the forefront of African liberation and the capital of the Committee of Nine; the mid-year prospects for an East African Federation and the wider vistas that lay beyond; the containment of Southern Rhodesia by the prevention of the majority's government-in-exile and the minority's unilateral independence through the skillful marshalling of Commonwealth influence; the Kennedy visit, the Scandinavian tour, the processions to Algiers and Conakry ... the passion for development within the promise of non-racialism.1 This year-end report by the American ambassador William Leonhart for 1963 captured the stature Tanganyika had gained through its activist foreign policy during its first years of independence, before its union with Zanzibar that created the new nation of Tanzania Tanzania has been one of the most influential countries of independent Africa, taking a leading role in the effort to overthrow white minority rule in Southern Africa, and defining the ideals of African non-alignment. Yet as with many African countries, the beginnings of its foreign policy orientation remain obscure in political science studies lacking archival material.2 Because of this, Tanzania's formative impact on the liberation movement in Southern Africa from 1960-63 has been largely ignored in recent scholarship.3 While Tanzania's foreign policy goals were prominently proclaimed, their implementation was highly secretive, and its documentation still publicly unavailable.4 By carefully sifting the diplomatic correspondence and intelligence reports of American and British observers, supplemented by the memories of Tanzanian participants and Portuguese reports, one can reconstruct a portrait of this formative period. From 1960-1963 Tanganyika instituted a realist foreign policy that established the new nation as an effective sovereign power on the international stage despite its military and economic weakness. Tanganyika extended a sphere of influence into Eastern and Southern Africa while cultivating international prestige to sustain its regional strategy. Realism, Idealism, and Scholarly Silences Okwudiba Nnoli's foundational analysis of Tanzanian foreign policy is nearly silent on this early period, going on to describe the events of 1964-1966 as "a series of diplomatic frustrations which portrayed the shallow limits of Tanzanian power."5 While Nnoli's analysis is fundamentally persuasive, his contradicting assertion that Tanzania exercised a vigorous foreign policy and credible non-aligned posture despite its weakness blurs his assessment.6 For this formative period Nnoli makes mention of major public issues and offers an insightful analysis of economic activity and foreign aid flows, but otherwise has almost no detail about foreign policy from 1960-1963. Nnoli argued that Tanzania's foreign policy from 1961-1967 was marked by a profound deficiency of "positive" or assertive power, and that it exercised "negative" power at best, obstructing the offensive policies of larger countries. By embarking on a new path of "self-reliance" in 1967, Nnoli proposed, Tanzania sought to enhance is sovereign autonomy and so increase its ability to project positive influence on the world stage. The general thrust of Nnoli's analysis is reinforced in an informative volume edited by K. Mathews and S.S. Mushi that likewise has very little to say about the foreign policy of Tanganyika before 1964 beyond the broad outlines of the liberation struggle and East African Federation.7 Godfrey Mwakikagile offers an anecdotal account of Tanzania's foreign policy but no archival documentation.8 Joseph Nye's early analysis of efforts towards regional integration provides a partial portrait, featuring information drawn from interviews with prominent actors in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika Nye argued that the desire for East African Federation drew on the proto-national idealism of Pan-Africanism, with the implication that federation failed because it did not accord with the interests of the individual nations. …

Historical Dictionary of Nigeria

Abstract: Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. By Toyin Falola and Ann Genova. Historical Dictionaries of Africa. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2009. Pp. xlii, 423; map, bibliography. $120.00. There are few comprehensive, up-to-date, country-specific historical dictionaries, so one would be forgiven for not having had to consult one in the course of one's scholarly or pedagogical activities. For Africa, the dearth of good reference materials is especially acute and well known among specialists. Because the "Historical Dictionary" genre is defined by chronological and geographical exclusivity, it places a special burden on author-compilers. Authoring this reference text was thus a challenging task for Falola and Genova to take on. They deserve commendation for tackling it with grace and subtlety and for producing this gem. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria is a text that performs the traditional role of a subject/area dictionary while also providing very useful contextual information and analysis that ground the entries and deepen our understanding of the larger orbits in which they thrive(d). The introduction accomplishes this important task, which is necessary for a successful navigation of the text by the reader. It explores the historical, geographical, and sociological contexts and underpinnings of Nigeria's existence, identity, and on-going evolution. It provides a valuable point of entry into the text especially for non-specialist audiences and those encountering the country at a methodical, academic, or systematic level for the first time. The section titled "chronology" complements the analytical introduction nicely. It provides a useful guide and facilitates quick referencing and cross-referencing. This section builds on the strength of Falola's other reference work, Key Events in African History, whose rich chronological coverage of events is already a treasure for Africanists. The authors continue with their context-setting, reader-friendly style in the "Reader's Note" section. Here they pay commendable attention to orthographic accuracy, authenticity, and variation, announcing important disclaimers and caveats regarding names of people, places, and objects. This helps the reader sift through and make sense of the various nomenclatural mutations and variations in the dictionary. One important innovation in the text is the coverage of historical and contemporary figures and phenomena in the same structural frame of reference. …

Bellah Histories of Decolonization, Iklan Paths to Freedom: The Meanings of Race and Slavery in the Late-Colonial Niger Bend (Mali), 1944-1960

Abstract: The standard story of the decolonization process in French-ruled West Africa involves race in a very direct and obvious way. Beginning with the Popular Front government in France (1936-38), and again with the Brazzaville Conference in 1944, a new reformist imperialism was outlined that would, in theory, be universal in its application to all people in the Empire. The implications of such rhetoric were latched onto by many Africans who increasingly formulated political demands based on principles of non-racial universality. Among the best-known examples is the strike in 1947^18 on the Dakar-Bamako railroad in which workers demanded a single pay scale (cadre unique) for all employees, European and African alike.1 In this and other well-known cases, African leaders learned, as Tony Chafer put it, "that they could turn the French language of assimilation to their own advantage, by using it to justify the demand for equality between Africans and Europeans in the socio-economic field."2 The language of racial equality was made particularly potent in the immediate postwar period because of the experience of Vichy rule in West Africa and the extensive demands made by wartime French administrations upon Africans at this time.3 In an interview in 1965, Mali's first president Modibo Keita explained that he had been motivated to join the anti-colonial movement by French racism during the war: "I can still recall that gathering of the population, called by the governor of Soudan in Bamako, to hear an envoy of Marechal Petain. That evening, even though the white civil servants had not been able to occupy all the empty chairs and benches, we were invited as blacks, dressed in white, to sit on the red ground."4 Such indignities served as reference points for many anti-colonial activists, providing a racial gloss to the political struggles of the late colonial period. The larger story of decolonization in French West Africa, and the racial basis of colonial rule, is well known. What is not properly understood by historians of this period is the extent to which European-African racial dynamics, so central to late-colonial politics, sometimes sat uncomfortably on top of more local racial formations. In the arid regions along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert where Arab, Tuareg, and Fulbe pastoralist groups were concentrated, and where slavery had been most durable and long lasting, ideas about intra-African racial difference played an important role in orienting political responses to colonial reforms and eventual independence. For many representatives of the colonial state, and certain anti-colonial activists, the visibility and continued servility of darker-skinned slaves in places such as northern Mali, northern Niger, and Mauritania, made race an important problem to be addressed in the post- World War II period. It also provided a racial idiom for the much more widespread - and usually non-racial - political struggles between the often conservative representatives of established chiefly and prominent families and the proponents of more radical social change. These Sahelian ideas about race grew in importance after political independence was achieved in 1960. In postcolonial Mali, race has been at the center of the relationship between the Malian state and the Tuareg and Arab populations of the Saharan borderlands. According to Baz Lecocq, racial arguments have played a significant role in the two civil wars fought in northern Mali in 1963-64 and 1990-95: "The conflict between the Malian state and the [Tuareg and Arabs] forms part of a problem that haunts all of the Sahel, a problem often seen by foreign experts as one of ethnicity, but locally phrased in terms of race."5 I contend in this article that in order to understand the racialized conflicts in the postcolonial Sahel, we must attend to the local history of racial ideas and practices that produced them.6 One of the reasons that racialized conflict has become so prolific in the postcolonial Sahel is because the first generation of leaders who brought Sahelian countries to independence deployed one set of racial arguments drawn from the larger French imperial context (Europe-Africa) to deal with problems in local settings where race meant very different things. …

Death, Christianity, and African Miners: Contesting Indirect Rule in the Zambian Copperbelt, 1935-1962*

Abstract: Introduction Early in 1956 Mukuka Nkoloso, a budding, mission-educated African nationalist, had a score to settle with the district commissioner of Ndola, the commercial and administrative hub of the colonial Zambian Copperbelt. Storming into the DC's office, the young nationalist demanded to know why the town's European foreman, acting under the orders of the district commissioner, had exhumed African skeletons and corpses from a cemetery near Kabushi Location and relocated them to the outskirts of the town, despite stiff opposition from the inhabitants of Kabushi. Mukuka Nkoloso had earlier added his own voice to the chorus of public outcry by complaining in the media against the desecration of the cemetery. This move had indeed won him the enthusiastic support of the African Urban Advisory Council of which the nationalist himself was an outspoken member. Exasperated by the nationalist's audacity to challenge the decision to bury the African dead on the outskirts of Ndola, the DC threatened to "call a meeting of the chiefs of the district where he would recommend the deportation" of the recalcitrant political upstart to his "home district" in north-eastern Zambia. "I don't care," shouted the equally infuriated Nkoloso, as he stormed out of the DCs office.1 Confrontations between colonial rulers and their subjects over issues of mortality and the disposal of the remains of the dead were ubiquitous on the African imperial frontier. Fueled by the "politics of death,"2 such altercations took place in areas as far removed in time and space as nineteenth-century Ghana and South Africa and twentiethcentury Namibia, Cameroon, Botswana, and, of course, the Copperbelt.3 In spite of their ubiquity and pervasiveness, these conflicts have surprisingly drawn little or no attention in historical writings. This gap in academic scholarship has been partly filled by social and symbolic anthropologists, whose main preoccupation since the days of colonialism has been to elucidate cultural meanings and symbolism that non- Western societies infuse into death with its associated rituals.4 Symbolic anthropologists have long explored the myriad avenues through which localized experiences of funerals and interment either wear thin or solidify kinship relationships and local networks of political power and authority.5 They have thus impressively demonstrated the significant role that death and rituals of mortality play in the exercise of chiefly power and social control at the grassroots level. Crucial as such analyses may be, they nonetheless open a very small window on how historical dynamics influence what anthropologist David Mandelbaum describes as the "social uses" of mortuary and burial rites.6 This stems in part from the fact that such analyses scarcely shed light on how social, economic, and political changes influence societal notions and practices of mortality.7 It is no surprise, then, that anthropological studies gloss over the ways in which African knowledge of and practices around death have mutated in response to such extra-local dynamics as colonial penetration, labor migration, urbanization, Christianity, and more recently, nationalism, cross-border migrations, and globalization.8 In locating death, its rituals, and their underlying belief systems outside the historical context in which they occur, anthropological interpretations obscure fundamental transformations that take place in the social and cultural meanings of death and rituals when societies come under the pressure of socioeconomic and political change. It is no surprise, then, that symbolic analyses of death and mortuary practices hardly elucidate what symbolic meanings of death and death-related rituals actually signify in real life conditions.9 By emphasizing the role of ceremonies of death in shaping local networks of power, anthropological discourses on mortality obfuscate how death and its rituals mediates relations between rulers who monopolize centralized state power and those that they govern. …

Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib

Abstract: Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib. Edited by Katherine E. Hoffman and Susan Gilson Miller. Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. Pp. xi, 225; bibliography, contributors, index. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. The somewhat unwieldy title of this collection is intended as a reference to Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, a landmark volume edited by Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud and published some thirty-five years ago. While the volume under review lacks the heft of its namesake, it remains an ambitious and worthy effort all the same. Edited by Katherine E. Hoffman and Susan Gilson Miller, the nine chapters, which originated in a 2006 Harvard workshop, exemplify what the editors call the "current exuberance" of Berber studies today (p. 1 1). According to Hoffman and Miller, the resurgence of interest in Berber/Amazigh ethnicity reflects a variety of factors, chief among them "a more relaxed political climate in Morocco and Algeria [that] allows for a greater appreciation of multiculturalism and ethnicity as positive attributes of the modern nation-state" (p. 2). Nationalist ideology in both countries had previously stressed Arabness as central to the struggle for independence. Today's climate of openness also testifies to the vigor of Berber/Amazigh activism. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Amazigh activists successfully framed the issue of Berber cultural and linguistic expression in terms of human rights, a sophisticated strategy carefully explored by Jane E. Goodman in her chapter, "Imazighen on Trial: Human Rights and Berber Identity, Algeria, 1985." What exactly constitutes Berber identity remains the book's underlying question. Two prominent themes emerge. The first, which finds expression in the volume's historical chapters, decries the sometimes willful and occasionally wishful (mis)appropriation of the Berber past by successive interpreters. These range from classical Greek and Arab historians to French colonialists, Arab nationalists, and Berber activists themselves. The second theme, implicit in the anthropological chapters, is the heterogeneity of Berber/Amazigh experience. These authors point out the inadequacy of simplistic older dichotomies that juxtaposed Arab and Berber, urban and rural, or "orthodox" Islam and vestigial pre-Islamic Berber custom. The complexity of contemporary Berber life is reflected in the varieties of Tamazight dialects and the charged debates over the appropriate alphabet for writing Berber (Latin, Arabic, or competing forms of tifnagh script). The migration of Berbers to the cities of North Africa and abroad raises questions regarding the relationship between transnational activism and local experience, a topic expertly explored in Paul A. Silverstein's discussion of "racial politics, land rights, and cultural activism in Southeastern Morocco" (p. 83). Efforts by some Amazigh activists to locate a mythic and ahistorically "pure" Berber past stand in contrast to the diversity of the contemporary scene. In his excellent chapter, "Histories of Heresy and Salvation," James McDougall objects to the "mechanistic deployment of [the terms 'Arab' and 'Berber'] as a permanent ethnic dualism" (p. 16). He gives as an extended example the case of the Barghawata, a Moroccan Berberophone people who in the mid-ninth through eleventh centuries adhered to a heterodox Islamic doctrine. While some historians like the Tunisian Mohamed Talbi have interpreted the Barghawata revolt through the lens of contemporary decolonization and see it as a protonationalist Berber movement, McDougall correctly locates the movement within the tradition of other heterodox Islamic sects. …

The War for South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902)

Abstract: The War for South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). By BUl Nasson. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2010. Pp. x, 352; 13 maps, 43 b/w photographs; 3 drawings. $22.95 paper. Bill Nasson published the first version of this superb book in 1999 with a similar title, The South African War (1899-1902), distributed by London publisher Hoddard. In the aftermath of the war's centennial and continued discussion of its character, Nasson updated his work and secured a new publisher. This revision contains eleven chapters somewhat chronologically and thematically presented. Splendid maps and helpful illustrations significantly enable readers to visualize South Africa at the tum of the twentieth century. Nasson conveys the South African War with well-written prose spiced with humor and irony. A topic so vast requires difficult choices of omission, but Nasson's subjects and discussions will usually satisfy the most demanding readers. After the preface and introductory chapter, Nasson invites many old and several new friends to his crowded and lively seminar table during his historiographical discussion of the origins, nomenclature, and meaning of the South African War. Those present include John Hobson, Geoffrey Blainey, Andrew Porter, Shula Marks, Albert Grundlingh, JeanJacques Van-Helton, Ronald Robinson, Jack Gallagher, Stanley Trapido, Rodney Davenport, Richard Mendelsohn, Neil Parsons, Liz Stanley, Donald Denoon, Peter Warwick, Alan Jeeves, Mordechai Tamarkin, Ritchie Ovendale, and Ian Phimister. As his book develops, Nasson cautiously invites readers to consider the South African War in comparative perspective with more recent wars in Viet-Nam, the Falklands, and Iraq. Like those wars, the South African War was a human story of woe. He knows comparisons can only go so far, yet he also understands that pulling the past into our global present can make history personally relevant on individual and collective scales. While folk of hope believe history, even of war, holds keys to a more civilized human society, they have had a difficult time learning how to use keys forged by this war, particularly when one of the first doors after the war's end opened to groot apartheid. The list of rogues, heroes, and heroines is vast. Nasson succeeds in balancing Cecil Rhodes, Leander Starr Jameson, Alfred Milner, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener with Paul Krager, Marthinus Steyn, Jan Smuts, Louis Botha, Koos De La Rey, and Christiaan De Wet. Imperial and republican diplomacy and major and minor battles are presented for historians of diplomacy and war. More modern work on the South African War has gone far beyond the older topics that explored the aspirations of Boer and Briton, the relationship between Cape Afrikaners and Boer Republicans, set battles and guerilla warfare, black labor and the gold mines, and dichotomous rural and urban societies. Nasson updates readers on scholarship related to African involvement on both sides, their rights in the aftermath of the war, the role of Boer women, black and white concentration camps, and new nomenclature that shifts perspective from the "white man's war" to an inclusivity more appropriate for the New South Africa and history. …

Indirect rule and colonial intervention: chiefs and agrarian change in Nyasaland, ca. 1933 to the early 1950s

Abstract: Introduction In the 1980s, an increasing number of historians began to critically examine the policy of indirect rule, which was implemented as the governing principle in most parts of British Africa in the 1920s and 1930s. The studies mainly focus on the concept of "invention of tradition" as developed by Terence Ranger in an article from 1983.1 Colonial governments not only relied on rural elites, but also were active in the creation of tribal identities and customary law. In more recent years, several scholars including Ranger have cast doubt on the usefulness of speaking of invention since it implies a conscious construction of identities and tends to exaggerate the powers of the colonial rulers.2 Nevertheless, indirect rule marked an ideological change in British Africa, away from more liberal and marketoriented policies towards social-conservative ideas of protecting rural Africans from modernity. Or, to quote the Colonial Office in Britain, indirect rule was an attempt to find an administrative system for people "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world."3 Some scholars have even suggested that indirect rule partly aimed to consolidate pre-capitalist structures. In the case of Nyasaland, Joey Power for example, claims that by giving greater powers to local traditional authorities, indirect rule aimed to "thwart class formation" and leave the "petit bourgeoisie" in the political wilderness.4 In that sense, the British colonial authorities were "conservationists - of people as well as game" to quote Cain and Hopkins.5 In the analyses of the socioeconomic consequences of indirect rule, there is a tendency to neglect the fact that there are two sides to every story, one about preserving social structures and one about facilitating change. From the 1920s onwards, colonial administrations increasingly intervened in rural areas with the aim of changing farming methods lacking major technological and institutional changes. For this purpose, they planned to use chiefs and village headmen to disseminate information and propaganda. Grishow acknowledges in his discussion on chiefs in southern Ghana, that indirect rule became the solution whereby "development could be achieved without disrupting traditional community."6 The colonial rulers regarded indirect rule as a viable strategy to solve the dilemma of supporting a further expansion of African commercial agriculture and, at the same time, prevent the rise of capitalist relations of production. Indirect rule can therefore be seen as one of the greatest contradictions of colonial rule in terms of "preserving the past, promoting economic development and protecting Africans from the traumas of modernity."7 This paper deals with this contradiction by discussing the role of indirect rale in the early years of agricultural extension services in Nyasaland (1930s to early 1950s). On paper, the first two decades of agricultural extension work in Nyasaland depended on the willingness of the Native Authorities (NA) to impose regulations, disseminate information and propagate change. The question is hence to what extent indirect rale, through the work of the chiefs, facilitated colonial intervention in the local agricultural economies? The paper approaches this question by comparing two contrasting cases: Thyolo (known as Cholo by the colonial administration, but throughout the paper referred to as Thyolo) in southern Nyasaland and the Mzimba district in the north. The focus will be on NA Nsabwe and Ntondeza in Thyolo and NA M'mbelwa in Mzimba. Colonial authorities believed chieftainship in Thyolo to be fluid, while in Mzimba the hierarchical order was seen as well defined and the local elite too strong for colonial authorities to bypass the chiefs. Chiefs as Principals and Agents The implementation and function of indirect rule, in general, and the identification of chiefs, in particular, was a complex process affected by a wide range of factors, such as the local socioeconomic structure, history, individual characteristics of the chiefs and the colonial officers, and so on. …

Early Limits of Local Decolonization in São Tomé and Príncipe: From Colonial Abuses to Postcolonial Disappointment, 1945–1976

Abstract: The administration of Sao Tome's rural interior and of some coastal rural areas—home of at least one third of the archipelago's population—was mainly a two-man show in the early years after decolonization. While the crucial decisions about the future of the country's main economic activity and source of agricultural wealth (the cocoa plantations or rocas situated in these zones) were made at government level and in the president's office, and while these plantations formally had a strong degree of self-administration in the form of the Comissoes Administrativas Provisorias (Provisional Committees of Administration) later becoming the Comites de Accâo Politica (Committees of Political Action: both CAP), the control of everyday life lay in the hands of the labor inspectorate. Inspector-General Francisco Martins Xavier de Pina and his auxiliary, Americo Goncalves da Graca do Es pirito Santo, had an enormous task and held power over the lives of thousands of workers on the plantations. Both officials had been appointed during the transition phase before 12 July 1975, when Sâo Tome e Principe became an independent state.1 Struggling for a short time with the complicated bureaucratic heritage that had been left by the colonial admin istration, both officials rapidly established a routine of work. During 1976 the two officials were constantly active in visiting the different plantations, in hearing the complaints of laborers, plantation officials, and owners, and in processing information coming from the

Contextualizing Privatization and Conservation in the History of Resource Management in Southwestern Uganda: Ethnicity, Political Privilege, and Resource Access over Time

Abstract: Introduction Economic development pressure from multilateral lending agencies and donors1 has led to increased privatization of land and other public resources2 and the creation of national parks, especially in sub-Saharan African rangelands. Since the 1970s, vast public resources have undergone processes of privatization,3 increasing dependence on private enterprises.4 Privatization has been touted by neoclassical economic theory as more efficient and thus has been more attractive to foreign investors,5 and has also been a requirement for World Bank and IMF loans.6 However, evidence suggests that privatization has led to increased inequality in sub-Saharan Africa.7 Similarly, the creation of national parks is intended to increase revenue from tourism. Tourism and national park entrance fees (and permits to see gorillas and chimpanzees in Uganda) indeed do contribute a large portion to GDP in many African countries.8 In Uganda, travel and tourism accounted for 9.2 percent of the national GDP, with an annual growth forecast of 4.7 percent.9 In South Africa, tourism increased by 6 percent from 2003 to 2005 at the Royal Natal National Park.10 Conservation and privatization often occur in tandem, through funding sources and loan contingencies,11 leading to further marginalization of those once living within the boundaries of the national park12 by reducing access to environmental resources, economic activities13 and community cohesion.14 But, as national governments became saddled by massive debt and lenders encouraged the creation of protected areas and the increase in marketable resources, national parks and privatization of land have proliferated in the past twenty years. In addition to external pressures, there have even been internal political motivations behind national park designation and resource allocation, such as increasing state control, establishment of a taxable base, and de-stabilization of an opponent's voting population as is the case with Lake Mburo National Park (LMNP) in Uganda.15 In this case, changes in land use policy can be tied to evolving external and internal political pressures and ultimately to the removal of decision-making power over resources and livelihoods from the communities and to the state. Specifically, LMNP was designated and the surrounding land was subsequently allocated as private parcels. Accounts of these land use policies often separate the effects of privatization from those of conservation. In actuality, the interactions between these two policies may be more informative of contemporary experiences in access to resources and consequences in the communities today. Many of these accounts are also devoid of the potentially differential lived experiences of the policies, which were implemented via existing systems of social stratification such as ethnicity, wealth, and political power. The purposes of this research are to: 1) contextualize the policies of land privatization and creation of LMNP in a broader history of resource management (pre- 1900 to date), noting discrepancies and omissions in existing textual accounts; 2) cartographically represent the changes in land use over time; 3) understand the linked roles of ethnicity and political privilege as patronage systems for policy implementation; and 4) examine the lived experiences of the implementation of these policies and their contemporary consequences. Study Site and Population In southwestern Uganda, policies were implemented in the 1980s through the 1990s that created private ranches, allocated private parcels of land and ranches, and designated people's grazing and farming land and the permanent drinking water source, Lake Mburo, a national park. Lake Mburo served as the destination of annual migration for Bahima pastoralists during the extended dry season for centuries. External pressure mounted from donor agencies to generate income from tourism through national park user fees. External pressure also led to the promotion of commercialization of agriculture and ranching. …

Guinea-Bissau: how a successful social revolution can become an obstacle to subsequent State-building

Abstract: This case study looks at state failure from a historical point of view. By state failure, I mean that the government has failed to set the country onto a path of economic development, political stability, and democratic governance. Guinea-Bissau has been consistently ranked among the ten worst countries in the world on various economic and sociopolitical indicators.1 Recent political developments do not inspire much hope for improvement, because they continue a longstanding pattern in Guinea-Bissau's personalized politics that has its roots in the state-socialism of the later stages of the revolutionary period. Historical events during this time were entirely determined by the personal attributes and decisions of Amilcar Cabral, who was undisputedly "the great leader." Future politicians remade the government to suit their personal styles but always in a dictatorial mode, and personal feuds with the military have plagued successive presidents. As will be explained in an upcoming section, this paper creates a three-part analytic framework that stresses the institutional legacy (the one-party state and the colonial state), the ideological legacy (state-socialism) and the "great leader legacy" to understand modern-day Guinea-Bissau.

The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415-1670: A Documentary History

Abstract: The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670, brings together a collection of documents – the majority in new English translation – that illustrate aspects of the encounters between the Portuguese and the peoples of north and west Africa. This period witnessed the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews, the emigration of Portuguese to west Africa and the islands, and the beginnings of the black diaspora associated with the slave trade. The documents show how the Portuguese tried to understand the societies with which they came into contact, and to reconcile their experience with the myths and legends inherited from classical and medieval learning. They also show how Africans reacted to the coming of Europeans, adapting Christian ideas to local beliefs and making use of exotic imports and European technologies. The documents also describe the evolution of the black Portuguese communities in Guinea and the islands, as well as the slave trade and the way that it was organized, understood and justified.

Magic and Warfare: Appearance and Reality in Contemporary African Conflict and Beyond

Abstract: Magic and Warfare: Appearance and Reality in Contemporary African Conflict and Beyond. By Nathalie Wlodarczyk. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Pp. xix, 188; maps, tables, figures, bibliography, index. $80.00. The stakes of Nathalie Wlodarczyk's fascinating Magic and Warfare are announced early in the Introduction. "The battlefield in these [contemporary] wars," she writes, "is increasingly the population. Winning their hearts and minds requires that we understand their way of thinking" (p. 7). What follows is ostensibly a case study of the occult practices of a pro-government irregular militia that existed in one form or another through much of Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. Civil Defense Forces (CDF) fighters (or more specifically, the Mende kamajors who made up most of the force) maintained that initiation into the group made their bodies bulletproof and bestowed a range of other occult powers. Yet unlike most recent studies of the African occult, Wlodarczyk's intended audience is not anthropologists or historians. Magic and Warfare is a user's manual for theorists and policy makers in strategic studies and international relations. It is a guide for engaging a world in which religion and belief factor into warfare in ways that don't make sense according to conventional teachings about military strategy and tactics. The result is a book that should find its place in military and security studies for the way it takes culture seriously. Magic and Warfare consists of ten short chapters. The first four of these deal little with the kamajors or the CDF. Instead they map out the intellectual terrain on which the case study (and the book's central argument) are built. "Magic," Wlodarczyk explains, describes activities that deploy "invisible supernatural power to affect people and events in the visible and tangible human world" (p. 13). Crucially for her argument, this means that the seemingly irrational claims of African militia forces share a qualitative similarity with those of world religions, their more "organized and centralized kin in cathedrals, mosques, and temples" (p. 3). And these beliefs are not going away. As Wlodarczyk makes clear by cataloging a range of conflicts, spiritual practices are commonplace on contemporary battlefields in Africa and elsewhere- and they have practical consequences for how wars are waged and violence is performed. These chapters play two important roles in relation to the case study that follows. …

Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing Identities in a Connected World

Abstract: Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing Identities in a Connected World. By Iain Walker. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. Pp. xv, 286; maps, photographs, illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index, glossary. $59.99/£39.99. Ngazidja (sometimes known as Grande Comore), largest island of the Comoros archipelago, provides a fascinating comparison with the closely related communities of the Swahili-speaking coast of eastern Africa. Ngazidja is perhaps best known to historians of Africa for its role in the spread of the Salihiyya Yashrutiyya to the continent by Said Mohammed Cheikh al-Maarouf in the late nineteenth century and for being a source of arms for Renamo during independent Mozambique's civil war. To anthropologists Ngazidja has been a place of particular interest for being both Islamic and matrilineal, as well as for having an age grade system. In this very interesting book, which is based on the author's thoroughly revised doctoral dissertation (full disclosure: for which I was an external examiner), anthropologist Iain Walker argues that "an engaged participation in large-scale and long-term trading networks across the ocean have prompted these islanders to develop mimesis as a strategy for negotiation of contacts with the outside world" (p. 2). For those familiar with the fine study of mimesis on the smaller Comoro island of Nzwani in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by historian Jeremy Prestholdt,1 Walker's approach will not surprise, although he certainly goes well beyond Prestholdt in his application of the concept of mimesis, which he discusses at some length in Chapter 1. All of the key elements in Walker's interpretation come together in what he calls "a social framework" (p. 124) called aada, also known as grand marriage or ndola nkuu, "big wedding," an extravagant phenomenon that brings together all of these features of Ngazidja society. Walker's understanding in Chapter 3 of the concept of mila na ntsi, in which he emphasizes the significance of place in its several meanings for the Comorians of Ngazidja and his thick description of aada na mila, "custom and usage," in Chapter 4 of his book will both be of considerable interest to students of Comorian society and anthropologists. For readers of this journal, however, I suspect that the most interesting contribution will be Chapter 2 on "The Historical Basis for Diversity or, Mythical Histories and Historical Myths. …

'Mesdames tirailleurs' and indirect clients: West African women and the French colonial army, 1908-1918

Abstract: Between 1908 and 1918, women associated with tirailleurs senegalais1 migrated to regional West African training centers and distant North African battlefields in order to support West African infantrymen serving in the French colonial army. In 1908, the French colonial army deployed two regiments of West African troops in Casablanca, Morocco. West African women, referred to as mesdames tirailleurs in the North African context, were an essential element of that fighting force. French military officials, particularly Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mangin, envisioned North Africa as a training ground for the tirailleurs senegalais,2 who would then provide defense for France if eminent war with Germany became a reality. The deployment of West African troops in North Africa signaled a new development in French colonial military policy- the deployment of tirailleurs senegalais outside of sub-Saharan Africa Sanctioning and providing for West African soldiers' female companions in Morocco was also exceptional to French military policy. By the twentieth century, civilians no longer accompanied French infantrymen into battle. In 1914, Germany's declaration of war prompted the French to deploy tirailleurs senegalais in mainland France, but conspicuously without mesdames tirailleurs. The outbreak of World War I engendered a shift in how the military viewed tirailleurs senegalais' female companions, as well as how West African women fit into France's broader effort to modernize its colonial army. Mesdames tirailleurs' participation in the Moroccan campaign was seen as necessary for military success in the campaign to "pacify" Morocco. During World War I, migrant West African women's presence on the periphery of West African military bases inspired the French colonial state to narrow the definition of wife in order to nudge these women from the state's visibility and marginalize them from its protection. Women accompanying tirailleurs senegalais to Morocco were implicitly recognized as wives. After the onset of World War I, women following recruits to military camps were explicitly not recognized as wives. Few women won official recognition as wives of tirailleurs senegalais, but those who did often requested and received varying forms of assistance from the army. West African women could manipulate their connections through tirailleurs senegalais with the French colonial military to achieve personal goals. The uncontested inclusion of West African women in France's conquest of Morocco, and the greater scrutiny on their marital status in French West Africa (AOF) during World War I, indicates that the French colonial army's attitude toward tirailleurs senegalais' wives radically shifted over the course of a decade. The French military viewed these women as beneficial or disadvantageous based on how well they could be controlled and monitored. This is a common trope in historical debates broadly regarding civilian women associated with soldiers, who were often deemed "official" or "unofficial" by military personnel. Regardless of whether their relationships with soldiers were sanctioned, West African women navigated the French colonial state and military's growing presence in their lives in order to preserve some autonomy, as well as to safeguard their personal interests. West African women included in the following article were linked to the French colonial army and state through their relationship with tirailleurs senegalais. While the relationship between these women and tirailleurs senegalais did not radically alter over the course of a decade (1908-1918), the ways in which the French colonial army defined their relationship with tirailleurs senegalais' wives evolved drastically. The shift from a colonial war of conquest in Morocco to a large-scale war in mainland France prompted the French military to reassess the desirability of having West African women as auxiliaries in the tirailleurs senegalais serving outside of AOF. …

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400-1948

Abstract: Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400-1948. By Paul S. Landau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi, 300; maps, photographs, bibliography, index. $90.00. The history of the South African highveld- defined as the region around the "Middle" or "Willow" River (Mohokare or the Caledon)- shows "popular sovereignties" and "rural mobilizations." The African rulers were anything but "politically naive," using "basic rationality" and "sensical and effective ways" (p. xii) to create movements that were unique. The forebears of people known today as "Coloureds," Sothos, and Tswanas mastered institutions that served them well. They learned to "embrace and absorb" the flow of strangers and create alliances. Indeed, this principle of hybridity (metissage) was central to their traditions, and despite efforts to stamp it out, has survived through the twentieth century in independent Christian churches, popular movements, rural resistance, and African National Congress (ANC) politics. This seminal idea is developed in a scholarly book whose range and depth of primary and secondary sources is extraordinary. The book starts with the Borderland, an open area beyond the Orange River "governed by interactive, overlapping, and incomplete authorities" (p. 3) occupied by maroon communities, Khoikhois, briquas, metis, Koranas, the Dutch and other whites. Dithakong was a multhingual trading post, so named by "Bitjuanas" (Bechuanas), meaning "mixed together" where "mateships" and metissage were tolerated without reference to tribal identities. "Ethnic differences existed, but chiefly politics made and remade ethnicity, not the other way around" (p. 41), the author maintains. Chiefs found open-ended solutions by adopting two or more names to create multiple alliances. Indeed, the people of southern Africa were "unusually connected" in speech and traditions from the fifth century forward" (p. 49). Related chiefdoms controlled important watersheds in the region to nurture "political traditions capable of accommodating and embracing strangers ..." (p. 73). The start of the nineteenth century shows indigenous political institutions that included the prominence of past chiefs or ancestors, twin-courts (divided authorities), and alliances in times of war and peace, even during the great turmoil of the early 1820s. So, how did all this change? The author attributes this to outside agents, the first among whom were the missionaries. They generally denied Africans politics of their own and promoted tribal identifications. In addition to their direct role in political matters, missionaries "midwived Christianity" out of highveld speech and ideas that had farreaching and unintended consequences. For example, Robert Moffat helped people to integrate into their lives "unforeseen frameworks and patterns" that "facilitated the greater project of exploitation" (p. 74). His concept of God was translated by interpreters within realities consistent with their "unselfconsciously commonsensical view of the world" (p. 94). Christian transcendental views clashed with those of the farmers. He, like other missionaries, introduced paradoxical ideas, including the Millennium, relating the growth of one's wealth, crops, cattle, children, and the power and authority of the chief. This is the backdrop against which we should follow the history of Chief Moroka who reigned from 1828 to 1880 over an ethnic mix of Bechuanas and Griquas. For him, hybridity was the foundation of alliances. He moved his people from the Vaal-Harts confluence to Thaba Nchu. Despite the political turmoil of the 1850s and 1860s- during which two Boer republics emerged- Moroka survived through key alliances. Ultimately, however, Boer and British colonial ambitions and the privatization of highveld lands eroded his chiefly autonomy. Tribalization grew with the erosion of chiefly powers, and together with such ethnic identification, Christianity grew in the Caledon valley. …

Deforestation and Reforestation in Namibia: The Global Consequences of Local Contradictions

Abstract: Deforestation and Reforestation in Namibia: The Global Consequences of Local Contradictions. By Emmanuel Kreike. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2010. Pp. xiv, 224; maps, photographs, bibliography, index. $88.95 cloth, $28.95 paper. This book, on the history of changing forest resources in the Ovambo floodplain of Namibia, follows the author's earlier environmental history of the movement of the Oukwanyama kingdom out of Angola and its recreation in northern Namibia. Both are concerned with processes of environmental change in the region, but this book is more conceptual than empirical in its approach, and its arguments strike the reviewer as tilting at windmills in some cases, and unpersuasive in others. It is difficult to know who the intended readership of this book is. It is not a coherent history of the environment of the Ovambo floodplain, as the substantive chapters are thematic and linked to the paradigms raised in the conceptual chapters. But to an environmental historian, the book is a bit frustrating. The first conceptual chapter lays out a series of paradigms, which, according to Kreike, underlay most environmental historymodernization, declinist, and inclinisi- all of which assume that environmental change is unilinear, moving from Nature to Culture. This strikes me as a vast oversimplification of the field. The five substantive chapters look at specific themes in Ovambo history, explaining how each challenges unidirectional narratives of change from Nature to Culture. Chapter 2 considers Malthusian narratives of population growth in the region- narratives constructed as people poured across the Angolan border into Namibia to escape Portuguese aggression and then moved from older settlements into the forested areas of the floodplain, cutting down trees all the while to build their distinctive palisaded homesteads. Chapter 3 looks at the system of indirect rule in Ovamboland and its impact on the environment, especially land use patterns; Chapter 4 examines new diseases, particularly livestock diseases, that swept into the region from the mid-nineteenth century on (Kreike interestingly neglects to consider the equally epidemic rates of syphilis and gonorrhea that accompanied the creation of a colonial migrant labor system). Chapter 5, entitled "Guns, Hoes, and Steel," explores the environmental impacts of the importation of guns, hoes and plows; and Chapter 6 looks at what Kreike calls the "deglobal ization" of the cattle trade in the region. The final two conceptual chapters revisit these issues through the lens, primarily, of changes in woody resources in the region Each chapter covers a similar span of time (late nineteenth century to the 1980s) and each considers the three unidirectional paradigms Kreike lays out in the beginning before concluding that change in each case was multidirectional, and, often, ambiguous in its outcome, resulting in neither a simply degraded landscape nor a simply modernized and "improved" one. The chapters themselves are uneven. Chapter 6, for example, argues that a thriving nineteenth-century cattle trade that tied the floodplain to the global economy gave way under colonialism to a subsistence-style economy as herders were forcibly cut off from markets. …

The Classics and South African Identities

Abstract: The Classics and South African Identities. By Michael Lambert. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011. Pp. 160; bibliography, index. $33.00 paper. Every student who has ever taken a course in western civilization knows that the ancient Greeks were "just like us," befitting the true founders of western culture. Despite the best efforts of instructors who draw on the recent work of S.L. Marchand and Paul Cartledge to study classical societies value free on their own terms, this notion persists nonetheless. Classical scholars have shown that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the collective "West" has in fact developed national identities through an odd double evolution. All of them consider themselves to be the cultural descendants of the ancient Greeks, with a grudging nod to Rome, but also as the polar opposites of other societies, especially those of the "East" or "Orient," which are opposite, strange, and different The Greeks themselves started the ball rolling of course by calling everyone who did not speak Greek, "barbarians," a term that some world historians today could altogether do without, as indeed also with the term "civilization." The study of classical civilization has all too often been deployed by a society to inflate and justify its own righteousness and sense of cultural superiority over lesser societies. This notion forms the basic assumption of Michael Lambert's brief study The Classics and South African Identities, "that academic disciplines in South Africa, such as the Classics, are deeply embedded in the power relations, which have existed and continue to exist between the different races that constitute South African society" (p. 7). Lambert is senior lecturer in the School of Literary Studies, Media and Creative Arts (Classics) at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus, so he carries some first-hand experience as well as scholarly expertise to the subject. The first thing that comes to mind to anyone with a knowledge of South African history is "What could be more obvious?" The study of classics is simply part of a matrix of western imperial education that was used to justify an exploitative and racist system and therefore has no part to play in a postapartheid, majority African South Africa. Yet in this unique, readable, very personal work, Lambert does detail how the Classics shaped the identities of three groups in South African history concluding with some speculation about what the future holds for the study of Classics in the new multiracial South Africa. He begins with the foundation of the Classical Association of South Africa (CASA) in 1956, which acted as a potent cultural reinforcement of Afrikaner identity. Founded at the height of the Nationalist Party's apartheid regime, the organization founded by Afrikaner scholars sought to have Latin and Greek texts translated into Afrikaans. Comparisons were lovingly made between the hardy, serious farmers of the Roman Republic and the Voortrekkers. Classicism came to be viewed as "a cultural beacon in a sea of black barbarism" (p. 48). Afrikaners were associated with the virtue of the ancients. It advocated the teaching of Latin and Greek in schools. The presence of Gerrit van Niekerk Viljoen, one of the founding members of CASA, later minister of education in the Nationalist government and chairman of the Broederbond, indicated just how strongly the organization was involved in Afrikaner nationalist ideology. Lambert next turns his attention to the Classics and English-speaking South African identities. Here he begins with Cecil Rhodes, whose last will and testament included a quotation from one of Horace's Odes, and whose two favorite works were Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. …

The Fante shrine of 'Nananom Mpow' and the Atlantic slave trade in southern Ghana

Abstract: African historiography has long acknowledged that the impacts of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on African communities reached far beyond the loss of life and freedom that occurred in innumerable acts of enslavement. Recent studies have shown how the violent and unstable conditions of the slave trade affected virtually all aspects of African life, from the types of crops people grew and ate to forms of social organization and methods of religious practice.1 In spite of this important research trend, the social and cultural changes that transformed the population of southern Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) during the era of the Atlantic slave trade remain unexplored. Considering the abundance of eighteenthcentury documentation available for this region of West Africa and the fact that over one million enslaved Africans disembarked for the Americas from this stretch of coast, the time is ripe for an examination of this aspect of southern Ghana's history. Coastal societies in what is today Ghana's Central Region developed new, shared institutions under the umbrella of a coalition-style government during the era of the slave trade, creating the basis for what has since evolved into Fante ethnicity and culture. An analysis of the social and cultural history of the coast in that period is therefore essential to understanding the history of the Fante, one of Ghana's main ethno-linguistic groups.2 As with all African societies, political power among the precolonial Fante was inextricably tied to religious power.3 During the course of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the sacred grove known as Nananom Mpow shaped regional and trans-Atlantic events and processes by guiding the principal political and military leaders in Fanteland. It was particularly active in determining the timing and extent of warfare in southern Ghana during the era of the slave trade. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the real and perceived roles of Nananom Mpow in protecting Fanteland from Asante invasion reinforced the ways in which coastal peoples faced the struggles and opportunities of the slave trade era as one community united in their fate. Nananom Mpow was therefore one of the most significant elements of historical change in southern Ghana in the eighteenth century and a crucial component of Fante history in the period immediately preceding British occupation of the Gold Coast. Eighteenth-century accounts of southern Ghana written by European observers focus on the ever-changing mosaic of chiefs and merchants who controlled the flow of trade through the coastal region. Occasionally, however, these records mention a powerful shrine in the hinterland, where religious leaders spoke on behalf of ancestral and supernatural powers. Europeans who resided on the Gold Coast for extended periods (multiple years) learned that this shrine and its priests had a profound influence on political and economic developments in the region. The sources available for the study of Nananom Mpow are limited to documents created by Europeans visiting the Ghana coast, oral traditions recorded in the past century, ethnographic studies, and archaeology. Taken together, these sources demonstrate that spiritual beliefs and practices associated with the shrine of Nananom Mpow guided coastal peoples' strategies for defense, survival, and political change during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Origins of Nananom Mpow Every self-professed Fante is familiar with the name "Nananom Mpow." Literally meaning "The Grove of the Ancestors,"4 Nananom Mpow is known by Fantes as the sacred site where the three founding fathers of Fanteland- Oburumankoma, Odapagyan, and Osonare buried. The large stones and dense thicket of trees that mark the burial place are still preserved near the village of Obidan, which is located southeast of the Mankessim junction on the Accra-Cape Coast road that stretches across southern Ghana.5 Although Mankessim is a bustling market center on a major thoroughfare, the sacred grove of Nananom Mpow is rarely visited today. …

The Homeland Is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism, and the Integration of Senegalese Immigrants in America

Abstract: The Homeland Is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism, and the Integration of Senegalese Immigrants in America. By Ousmane Oumar Kane. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. ix, 313; photographs, glossary, bibliography, index. $35.00 paper. Kane's latest book is a welcome addition to African Studies, Islamic Studies, and Migration Studies, providing insight into a previously neglected population in scholarship on transnationatism and immigrant integration in the United States: undocumented francophone West Africans. Kane skillfully illustrates the lives of Senegalese migrants with an abundance of meticulous details that only an insider is privy to, while consciously explaining foreign practices to an American authence unfamiliar with Islam and African culture. He writes clearly, unburdened by theory, and effectively covers a wide range of topics. The book's title, The Homeland Is the Arena, is the translation of a Wolof saying implying that Senegalese emigrants living under precarious conditions compete for social status in the homeland. The arena alludes to wrestling, a favorite Senegalese male sport. Despite this masculine metaphor, Kane pays attention to transforming gender and caste roles in the diaspora He interweaves current debates about religion, politics, and economics in Senegal into his discussion of migrants in America, describes Wolof and Pulaar ethnic politics in New York City, and does not neglect the Catholic minority. Chapter 1 offers a concise yet comprehensive overview of the history of Islam and politics in Senegal. Chapter 2 sets the scene for the emergence of Little Senegal in Harlem and Fuuta Town in Brooklyn. In labeling these ethnic enclaves, Kane highlights the concentration of vital service providers that enable Senegalese migrants to feel at home, and intentionally separates the concept from the sociological literature debating economic constraints. He also questions scholarship that claims the majority of Senegalese immigrants in the diaspora are uneducated modou-modous, those of rural origin, suggesting, in the absence of hard data, that there may be greater numbers of educated Senegalese migrants in the United States. Yet he focuses his study on street vendors, taxi drivers, hairdressers, tailors, and restaurant workers. Kane addresses another overlooked theme in migration studies: immigrant associations. Chapter 3 portrays the functioning of Sufi Muslim associations (da 'iras) that finance religious celebrations as well as assist Senegalese in need (with medical bills and repatriating corpses). Tensions abound between younger members who prefer to invest in staying in the United States versus the older generation that prioritizes sending money to Senegal. Chapter 4 outlines other immigrant associations, such as all-African and nationality-, pan-ethnic-, region-, caste-, and village-based associations in addition to homeland political parties and their interrelations. …

The uncontrollable force: a brief history of the Liberian Frontier Force, 1908-1944

Abstract: Introduction About ten miles northeast of Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia, next to the deserted Hotel Africa, stands the monolithic Unity Conference Center. This huge venue, built by President Tolbert to house the 1979 conference of the OAU, like the former luxury hotel adjacent, is now vacant.1 Yet, the discerning visitor can still make out, above the entrance to the grand auditorium, a gigantic mural depicting relevant scenes from Liberian History.2 This huge painting literally frames the events and personages that shaped the history of the republic as official discourse. William R. Tolbert (1971-1980), the president who commissioned the mural, is depicted standing proudly in the lower left comer and is just one of the several influential Liberian presidents who figure prominently. Centrally located in the painting, situated next to the face of President Daniel Howard (1912-1920), are the enlisted men of the Liberian Frontier Force (LFF). These soldiers, dressed in their khaki uniforms, sport red tarbush style hats, and bedrolls strapped to their backs. The scene shows them on a mission engaged in a firefight. They lie on their stomachs on the ground firing their rifles over a hillock at an invisible adversary. The central placement of the LFF within the mural is important for several reasons. First, it serves as an official tribute to the indigenous men who formed the bulk of the Frontier Force during the "pacification of the hinterland"; a process largely completed by the end of the Howard presidency in 1920. Second, it tacitly acknowledges that without the formation of the Frontier Force in 1908 much more of Liberia's claimed territory might have been seized by neighboring colonial powers England and France. The Frontier Force not only brought territories and chiefdoms into the political custodianship of the Liberian government, but also acted as a bulwark against European encroachment and a defender of the Liberian state. The centrality of this scene within this official depiction of the Liberian state's past recognizes and validates the Frontier Force's dual role.3 However, one must also recognize that this official history represents a self-congratulatory narrative, one that depicts the linear progress of the Liberian nation-state as a unique experiment of black self-rule in Africa. Liberia, the continents' first independent republic, was established as a type of "Black Zion" for settlers from the African diaspora of the Americas (overwhelmingly from the United States and to a lesser extent from the Caribbean).4 This narrative omits how the indigenous African practices of warfare diverged and transformed the Liberian Army (the LFF) from its theoretical American model. Central Contention Rather than being simple undisciplined and incurable rabble-rousers, the African troops incorporated into the LFF instead applied time honored indigenous methods of warfare.5 They operated under a set of assumptions unfamiliar to the officers under whom they served. From its inception, two seemingly competing but actually compatible cultural ideologies and modes of warfare were at work in the Force. The officer corps, which included the Americo-Liberian officers along with their American advisors, operated under military codes influenced by the practices of European colonial forces operating in tropical Africa. The goal of the LFF was to establish authority and collect taxes; to brutally impose a "Pax Liberica" on the "savage" and unruly hinterlands. The enlisted troops waged warfare based upon African codes and traditions of the first indigenous groups to be inducted: the Lorma (Lorna), Mende, and Mano (Mah), among others. These groups generally conceptualized warfare as a raiding system that aimed to collect booty, to exact revenge, or to liberate pawns from servitude. At first blush these indigenous practices and understandings contradicted the official ideology of the "civilized" Liberian government whose goal was to bring the hinterland population under the sovereign and political jurisdiction of Monrovia and open it to internal trade. …