The African Poor: A History

ISBN-13: 9780521348775 / Angielski / Miękka / 1987 / 400 str.

John Iliffe; David Anderson; Carolyn Brown

Opis

This is a book for all readers concerned with the future of Africa. The first history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa, it begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. It provides a historical context for poverty in Africa--both the permanent poverty of the dispossessed and the temporary poverty of famine victims. Its thesis, modelled on the histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been incapacitated for labor, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. Dr. Iliffe investigates what it is like to be poor, how the poor seek to help themselves, how their families help, and how charitable and governmental institutions provide for them.

Recenzje

'This pioneering book is both comprehensive and also eminently fair: whether in dealing with pre-colonial, colonial, or contemporary conditions, Iliffe presents a splendidly balanced and unprejudiced view always meticulously supported by the factual evidence.' American Anthropologist

Spis treści

Preface; 1. The comparative history of the poor; 2. Christian Ethiopia; 3. The Islamic tradition; 4. Poverty and pastoralism; 6. Yoruba and Igbo; 7. Early European initiatives; 8. Poverty in South Africa, 1886–1948; 9. Rural poverty in colonial Africa; 10. Urban poverty in tropical Africa; 11. The care of the poor in colonial Africa; 12. Leprosy; 13. The growth of poverty in independent Africa; 14. The transformation of poverty in southern Africa; Notes; Bibliography; Index.