In Africa today, inherited conceptions of "honor" can obstruct democracy, inspire resistance to tyranny, and motivate the defense of dignity in the face of AIDS. This account of the role of "honor" in African history from the fourteenth century to the present argues that it is essential to understanding past and present African behavior.

This comprehensive economic history of pre-colonial Madagascar examines the island's role in the burgeoning international economy and the rise of modern European imperialism. It reveals that the Merina of the Central Highlands attempted to found an island empire and, through the exploitation of its human and natural resources, develop the economic and military might to challenge British and French pretensions in the region. Ultimately, their failure (due to imperial forced labor policies and natural disasters) caused the nefarious consequences, attributed to external capitalist and French...

This compelling example of the new cultural history of South Africa is a subtle and wide-ranging study of status and respectability in the colonial Cape. Focusing on domestic relationships, gender, education, and religion, it analyzes values and modes of thinking current in different social strata, arguing that these cultural factors were related to high political developments. The result is a rich account of changes in social identity that accompanied the transition from Dutch to British overrule, and the development of white racism and ideologies of resistance to white domination.

The book is based on lecture courses given for the London M.Sc. degree in 1969 and 1972, and the treatment is more algebraic than usual.

In 1956 the West African coast between southern Mauretania and western Cameroon was lined with no less than ten European colonial territories, along with a single independent African state. All of these colonial units have joined Liberia in formal political independence. Their political experiences since 1956 and indeed the forms of their present political regimes themselves have varied very widely over this period, from the defiant and paranoid austerity of Guinea to the gleeful surge of Nigeria's oil-generated capitalist expansion. In political taste the present governments cover almost the...

The book addresses a wide audience: students of African history and politics, of Third World development and of political theory.

Originally published in 1979 as part of the Urbanization in Developing Countries series, this book is a detailed account of the process of urbanization, and provides a unique perspective on the creation by Papua New Guineans of their own distinctively Melanesian urban centres. The authors synthesized a wide range of material drawn from their own research and that of many scholars. They concentrate their analysis on the subtle modification of rural idioms in the urban social field, the formation and role of urban ethnic units, reactions to emerging class differences within the indigenous...

Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. In this 1996 text, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences...

Originally published in 1975, and reprinted with additional introductory material in 1989, this book provides an in-depth account of Asante history during the nineteenth century.