This first academic history of diamond mining in Kimberley is a major study of the beginning of South Africa's mineral revolution. It includes the first analysis of the formation of De Beers Consolidated Mines, one of the most successful mining companies ever to have been established in Africa. Based on new documentary sources, notably in the Standard Bank Archive, the Rothschild archive and the Philipson Stow Papers, it includes a new interpretation of the Black Flag revolt and of the celebrated amalgamation struggle between Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato for the control of the...

This substantial and thoroughly documented book is a political biography of an important figure in Sierra Leone. It is also a comment on two of the major themes of the country's history--the relations between the Colony (Krio Society) and the protectorate (the earlier inhabitants of the territory) and more importantly, the position of the imperial regime vis-a-vis its colonial subjects. The author, a Sierra Leonean and a Krio himself, skillfully examines the country's recent history through the life of Dr. H.C. Bankole-Bright, an important leader of the Krio people. The Krio, descendants of...

John Yoder chronicles the history of the Kanyok, a people from the southern savanna of Zaire, from before 1500 until their incorporation into the Congo Free State in the 1890s. By analyzing their oral traditions, myths, and legends, the author describes the political and cultural development of a people who, before 1891, had no written records, and whose history has previously been confined to the stale recitation of wars and succession struggles that characterize many existing books on pre-colonial Africa. Yoder sets his work firmly within the larger context of the southern savanna by...

This authoritative study of 400 years of Senegambian history is unrivaled in its detailed grasp of published and unpublished materials. Taking as his subject the vast area covering the Senegal and Gambia river basins, Boubacar Barry explores the changing dynamics of regional trade, clashes between African and Muslim authorities, the colonial system and the slave trade. This newly-translated book is a vital tool in our understanding of West African history.

This study examines the interaction between growing palm oil export production and changes in Ngwa patterns of food production and family relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It challenges the arguments of both dependency and vent-for-surplus theorists on the dominance of export-sector developments and the importance of changes initiated by Europeans. Local patterns of export growth and capital investment are shown to have been heavily influenced by independent changes in food production methods, gender and inter-generational relationships. Ngwa producers were affected by...

What will tomorrow's Cape Town look like? This volume reflects on the urban development and restructuring efforts made in Cape Town in the past few years, with a focus on the question: Is the "apartheid city" reproducing itself?
Christoph Haferburg is a researcher at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Jrgen O?enbrgge is professor of economic and political geography at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Many of the economic transformations in Africa have been as dramatic as those in Eastern Europe, though little is written about them. This study of Mozambique's shift from a command to a market economy draws on a wealth of empirical material, including archival sources, interviews, political posters and corporate advertisements, to reveal that the state is a central actor in the reform process, despite the claims of neo-liberals and their critics. Alongside the state, social forces--from World Bank officials to rural smallholders--have also accelerated, thwarted or shaped change in...

This book details the devastating Mau Mau civil war fought in Kenya during the 1950s and the legacies of that conflict for the post-colonial state. As many Kikuyu fought with the colonial government as loyalists joined the Mau Mau rebellion. Focusing on the role of those loyalists, the book examines the ways in which residents of the country s Central Highlands sought to navigate a path through the bloodshed and uncertainty of civil war. It explores the instrumental use of violence, changes to allegiances, and the ways in which cleavages created by the war informed local politics for decades...

Drawing on rich oral histories from over two hundred in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, Robtel Neajai Pailey examines socio-economic change in Liberia, Africa's first black republic, through the prism of citizenship. Marking how historical policy changes on citizenship and contemporary public discourse on dual citizenship have impacted development policy and practice, she reveals that as Liberia transformed from a country of immigration to one of emigration, so too did the nature of citizenship, thus influencing claims for and against dual citizenship. In this...