Between 1880 and 1920, Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In Paths of Accommodation, David Robinson examines the ways in which the leaders of the orders negotiated relations with the Federation of French West Africa in order to preserve autonomy within the religious, social, and economic realms while abandoning the political sphere to their non-Muslim rulers. This was a striking development because the local inhabitants had a strong sense of belonging to the Dar al-Islam, the world of Islam in which Muslims...
Between 1880 and 1920, Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In Paths of Accommodat...
This is a study of the "unofficial" side of African fiction the largely undocumented writing, publishing, and reading of pamphlets and paperbacks which exists outside the grid of mass production. Stephanie Newell examines the popular fiction of Ghana produced since the 1930s, analyzing the distinctive ways in which narrative forms are borrowed and regenerated by authors and readers. Familiar narratives from local and international literary sources are endowed with new meanings and relevance, bearing little relation to the metropolitan centers in which the sources originated. The...
This is a study of the "unofficial" side of African fiction the largely undocumented writing, publishing, and reading of pamphlets and paperbacks whic...
"West African Challenge to Empire" examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915-16. It was the largest challenge that the French ever faced in their West African colonial empire, and one of the largest armed oppositions to colonialism anywhere in Africa. How such a movement could be organized in the face of European technological superiority despite the fact that this region is generally described as having consisted of rival villages and descent groups is a puzzle. In this jointly written book the two authors provide a detailed political and military history of this...
"West African Challenge to Empire" examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915-16. It was the largest challenge that the French...
In Guinea-Bissau, as elsewhere in Africa, there is a disjuncture between the central state and rural civil society. It is this significant and overlooked aspect of Guinea-Bissau's political evolution-the continuing ability of civil society to evade and thwart state power-that is at the heart of Joshua B. Forrest's Lineages of State Fragility. Professor Forrest argues that despite European influences, the contemporary fragility of African states can be fully appreciated only by examining the indigenous social context in which these states evolved. Focusing on Guinea-Bissau, Forrest exposes the...
In Guinea-Bissau, as elsewhere in Africa, there is a disjuncture between the central state and rural civil society. It is this significant and overloo...
While most studies of the slave trade focus on the volume of captives and on their ethnic origins, the question of how the Africans organized their familial and communal lives to resist and assail it has not received adequate attention. But our picture of the slave trade is incomplete without an examination of the ways in which men and women responded to the threat and reality of enslavement and deportation.
Fighting the Slave Trade is the first book to explore in a systematic manner the strategies Africans used to protect and defend themselves and their communities from...
While most studies of the slave trade focus on the volume of captives and on their ethnic origins, the question of how the Africans organized their...
A series of transformations, reforms, and attempted abolitions of slavery form a core narrative of nineteenth-century coastal West Africa. As the region's role in Atlantic commercial networks underwent a gradual transition from principally that of slave exporter to producer of "legitimate goods" and dependent markets, institutions of slavery became battlegrounds in which European abolitionism, pragmatic colonialism, and indigenous agency clashed.
In Slavery and Reform in West Africa, Trevor Getz demonstrates that it was largely on the anvil of this issue that French and...
A series of transformations, reforms, and attempted abolitions of slavery form a core narrative of nineteenth-century coastal West Africa. As the r...
There has long been a need for a new textbook on West Africa s history. In "Themes in West Africa s History," editor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and his contributors meet this need, examining key themes in West Africa's prehistory to the present through the lenses of their different disciplines. The contents of the book comprise an introduction and thirteen chapters divided into three parts. Each chapter provides an overview of existing literature on major topics, as well as a short list of recommended reading, and breaks new ground through the incorporation of original research. The first...
There has long been a need for a new textbook on West Africa s history. In "Themes in West Africa s History," editor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and his...
Winner of the African Politics Conference Group s Best Book Award
In September 1958, Guinea claimed its independence, rejecting a constitution that would have relegated it to junior partnership in the French Community. In all the French empire, Guinea was the only territory to vote No. Orchestrating the No vote was the Guinean branch of the Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA), an alliance of political parties with affiliates in French West and Equatorial Africa and the United Nations trusts of Togo and Cameroon. Although Guinea s stance vis-a-vis the 1958 constitution has been...
Winner of the African Politics Conference Group s Best Book Award
In September 1958, Guinea claimed its independence, rejecting a constituti...
This collection of thirteen case studies by international scholars examines the strategies whole societies adopted in opposition to slavery over a period of five centuries.
This collection of thirteen case studies by international scholars examines the strategies whole societies adopted in opposition to slavery over a per...
