New Books in African Studies

Andrew Farrand, "The Algerian Dream: Youth and the Quest for Dignity" (New Degree Press, 2021)

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

"Algeria is different." Africa's largest country is a place that few western academics have studied or been able to travel to. The modern nation, forg...

Anne Meng, "Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

12 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why do weak autocrats create strong autocracies? Using game-theoretic logic and an analysis of the post-colonial experience of sub-Saharan Africa, Ann...

Ben Guest, "Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: A Namibian Odyssey" (2021)

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Ben Guest about his new book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: A Namibian Odyssey (2021). Pressure plays, buzzer-beaters, a...

Anna Hedlund, "Hutu Rebels: Exile Warriors in the Eastern Congo" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1994, almost one million ethnic Tutsis were killed in the genocide in Rwanda. In the aftermath of the genocide, some of the top-echelon Hutu office...

Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021)

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of t...

Max Siollun, "What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule" (Hurst, 2021)

27 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this ambitious book, Max Siollun provides an overview of Nigerian history from 1472 to the 1950s. As such, What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short Hi...

Cheikh Anta Babou, "The Muridiyya on the Move: Islam, Migration, and Place Making" (Ohio UP, 2021)

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The construction of collective identity among the Muridiyya abroad is a communal but contested endeavor. Differing conceptions of what should be the m...

Susanna Fioratta, "Global Nomads: An Ethnography of Migration, Islam, and Politics" (Oxford UP, 2020)

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Countering the traditional narrative of "migration as crisis," Global Nomads tells the story of a group of people for whom migration is not a symptom ...

Sean Andrew Wempe, "Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans, Imperialism, and the League of Nations" (Oxford UP, 2019)

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans, Imperialism, and the League of Nations (Oxford UP, 2019) reveals the various ways in which Colonial...

Daniel Larsen, "Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

30 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and increasingly dependent on the US, rival factions in Asquith's government battl...

Ousmane Oumar Kane, "Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts" (James Currey, 2021)

24 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1937, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, travelling to Mecca to make his first hajj, encountered Egyptian scholars who couldn’t fathom that Niasse’s erudi...

Ebenezer Obadare, "Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria" (Zed Books, 2018)

22 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout its history, Nigeria has been plagued by religious divisions. Tensions have only intensified since the restoration of democracy in 1999, wi...

Danny Adeno Abebe, "From Africa To Zion" (Miskal, 2021)

31 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1984, in an unprecedented act of brotherhood, Israel airlifted thousands of persecuted and starving Ethiopian Jews from Africa to Israel. They had ...

Devaka Premawardhana, "Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Anthropologist Devaka Premawardhana arrived in Africa to study the so-called explosion of Pentecostalism, the spread of which has indeed been massive....

Aaron Y. Zelin, "Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad" (Columbia UP, 2020)

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tunisia became one of the largest sources of foreign fighters for the Islamic State—even though the country stands out as a democratic bright spot o...

Sarah J. Zimmerman, "Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire" (Ohio UP, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Following tirailleurs sénégalais’ deployments in West Africa, Congo, Madagascar, North Africa, Syria-Lebanon, Vietnam, and Algeria from the 1880s ...

Leslie Anne Hadfield, "A Bold Profession: African Nurses in Rural Apartheid South Africa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)

17 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The first African nurse was certified in the Ciskei region of South Africa during the early decades of the twentieth century. Since then, African nurs...

Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)

12 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Most development histories focus on large-scale projects and multi-year plans. But how would we understand development differently if we chose a diffe...

Mai Hassan, "Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

11 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When trying to understand how to help countries escape poverty, economists initially focused on macro topics like inflation, government deficits, trad...

Shelby Grossman, "The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: How the State Shapes Private Governance" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Property rights are important for economic exchange, but many governments don't protect them. Private market organizations can fill this gap by provid...

Christopher J. Lee, "Kwame Anthony Appiah" (Routledge, 2021)

28 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Kwame Anthony Appiah is among the most respected philosophers and thinkers of his generation. In Kwame Anthony Appiah (Routledge, 2021), Christophe...

Cynthia J. Becker, "Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity Through Music and Visual Culture" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For more than thirteen centuries, caravans transported millions of enslaved people from Africa south of the Sahara into what is now the Kingdom of Mor...

Rahul Rao, "Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality" (Oxford UP, 2020)

06 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Between 2009 and 2014, an anti-homosexuality law circulating in the Ugandan parliament came to be the focus of a global conversation about queer right...

Monica Popescu, "At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War" (Duke UP, 2020)

02 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War (Duke UP, 2020), Monica Popescu traces the development of African litera...

Megan Carney, "Island of Hope: Migration and Solidarity in the Mediterranean" ( U of California Press, 2021)

15 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With thousands of migrants attempting the perilous maritime journey from North Africa to Europe each year, transnational migration is a defining featu...

Alice Elliot, "The Outside: Migration As Life in Morocco" (Indiana UP, 2021)

11 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco (Indiana UP, 2021) traces how migration has come to occupy a striking place in the lives of many Moroccans...

Jonas Kreienbaum, "A Sad Fiasco: Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908" (Berghahn Books, 2019)

09 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Holocaust and Genocide historians have spent much time and effort recently considering the connections between the experiences and ideas of colonialis...

Judith Surkis, "Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930" (Cornell UP, 2019)

04 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930 (Cornell UP, 2019) traces the intersection of colonialism, law, land expropri...

Hannah Hoechner, "Quranic Schools in Northern Nigeria: Everyday Experiences of Youth, Faith, and Poverty" (U Cambridge Press, 2018)

28 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In a global context of widespread fears over Islamic radicalization and militancy, poor Muslim youth, especially those socialized in religious seminar...

Naminata Diabate, "Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa" (Duke UP, 2020)

24 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bala Saho (Associate Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Naminata Diabate (Associate Professor, Cornell University) about her book, Naked ...

S. Garnett Russell, "Becoming Rwandan: Education, Reconciliation, and the Making of a Post-Genocide Citizen" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

12 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Becoming Rwandan: Education, Reconciliation and the Making of a Post-Genocide Citizen (Rutgers UP, 2020), S. Garnett Russell argues that althou...

João José Reis, "Ganhadores: A greve negra de 1857 na Bahia" (Companhia das Letras, 2019)

12 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Um retrato original da Bahia no século XIX, num livro cheio de movimento e vozes, sobretudo da gente negra. Em Ganhadores: A Greve Negra de 1857 na ...

Catherine E. McKinley, "The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Womanhood" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

29 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to tie your cloth to that of another person, as in the Ghanaian tradition, or to be in full dress? How is fashion photography in a c...

Adom Getachew, "Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination" (Princeton UP, 2020)

26 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Adom Getachew, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, is the author of Worldmaking after Empire:...

Christian A. Williams, "National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO's Exile Camps" (Cambridge UP, 2015)

19 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Chri...

Michela Wrong, "Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad" (PublicAffairs, 2021)

16 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Michela Wrong’s Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad (PublicAffairs, 2021) is a glorious piece of journ...

Yuichiro Onishi and Fumiko Sakashita, "Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan's Black Studies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)

09 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Transpacific Correspondences: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies, an essay collection edited by Dr. Yuichiro Onishi and Dr Fumiko Sakashita, int...

New Ethnographies of the Global South: In Conversation with Victoria Reyes and Marco Garrido

08 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How can Sociology be nudged away from its traditional parochialism to embrace empirical work that focuses on the global south? Marco Garrido (assistan...

Duane Jethro, "Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Aesthetics of Power" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

07 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Duane Jethro’s Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Aesthetics of Power (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a terrific book. In it,...

Emily Callaci, "Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania" (Duke UP, 2017)

07 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Callaci's book Street Archives and City Life. Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania (Duke University Press, 2017) tells the histories...

Smriti Srinivas et al., "Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds" (Routledge, 2020)

02 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (Routledge, 2020), coedited by Smriti Srinivas, Bettina Ng'weno, and Neelima Jeychandran, breaks new ground by bringi...

Zach Sell, "Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital" (UNC Press, 2021)

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Missi...

Dan Hicks, "The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution" (Pluto Books, 2020)

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan Hicks, Curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University has written a terrific book. The Brutish Museums:...

Carolyn Holmes, "The Black and White Rainbow: Reconciliation, Opposition, and Nation-building in Democratic South Africa" (U Michigan Press, 2020)

25 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Carolyn Holmes’ new book, The Black and White Rainbow: Reconciliation, Opposition, and Nation-building in Democratic South Africa (U Michigan Pres...

Jeremy Best, "Heavenly Fatherland: German Missionary Culture and Globalization in the Age of Empire" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Motivated by a theology that declared missionary work was independent of secular colonial pursuits, Protestant missionaries from Germany operated in w...

Joshua Cole, "Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria" (Cornell UP, 2019)

17 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Joshua Cole's Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria (Cornell University Press, 2019) appeals to a few of th...

Jonathan S. Holloway, "The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans" (Oxford UP, 2021)

15 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. I...

John M. Janzen, "Health in a Fragile State. Science, Sorcery, and Spirit in the Lower Congo" (Wisconsin UP, 2019)

08 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

John M. Janzen's Health in a Fragile State: Science, Sorcery, and Spirit in the Lower Congo (Wisconsin University Press, 2019) offers a granular an...

Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, "Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature" (Northwestern UP, 2020)

18 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez pens towards decolonial freedom. Her recently published book, Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic ...

Nicholas Jepson, "In China's Wake: How the Commodity Boom Transformed Development Strategies in the Global South" (Columbia UP, 2019)

17 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From 2002 to 2013, China’s rapid economic growth caused a boom in the prices of commodities—particularly of metals, fuel, and soybeans. According ...

Jelmer Vos, "Kongo in the Age of Empire, 1860–1913: The Breakdown of a Moral Order" (U Wisconsin Press, 2017)

16 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Kongo in the Age of Empire, 1860-1913: The Breakdown of a Moral Order (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) traces the history that led to a violent insurrectio...

Juliane Okot Bitek, "100 Days" (U Alberta Press, 2016)

12 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Juliane Okot Bitek, of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and writer-in-residence at Simon Fraser University, has written a terrific book of ...

Łukasz Stanek, "Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2020)

11 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with ...

Tiffany N. Florvil, "Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

03 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1980s and 1990s, Black German women began to play significant roles in challenging the discrimination in their own nation and abroad. Their gra...

Steven Press, "Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa" (Harvard UP, 2017)

02 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Steven Press is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. His marvelous first book, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe’s...

Matthew Gavin Frank, "Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa" (Liveright, 2021)

28 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For nearly eighty years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed off to the public. With many of its pits now deemed “overmined” and aba...

Becky L. Schulthies, "Channeling Moroccanness: Language and the Media of Sociality" (Fordham UP, 2020)

20 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to connect as a people through mass media? This book approaches that question by exploring how Moroccans engage communicative failur...

C. Decker and E. McMahon, "The Idea of Development in Africa: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

13 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Idea of Development in Africa: A History (Cambridge UP, 2020) challenges prevailing international development discourses about the continent, by...

Steven Serels, "The Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral, 1640–1945" (Palgrave, 2018)

11 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The African Red Sea Littoral, currently divided between Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, is one of the poorest regions in the world. But the pa...

Tara McIndoe-Calder, "Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe: Background, Impact, and Policy" (Palgrave, 2019)

04 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis, Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyperinflation became an unlikely publish...

Narrating Africa in South Asia

31 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Narrating Africa in South Asia (Special Journal Issue: South Asian History and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020) explores the multifaceted and longu...

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, "Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History" (Routledge, 2020)

31 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This original research on the forgotten Libyan genocide specifically recovers the hidden history of the fascist Italian concentration camps (1929-1934...

Constance Smith, "Nairobi in the Making: Landscapes of Time and Urban Belonging" (James Currey, 2019)

22 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a colonial-era housing estate in Nairobi, urban life unfolds in the shadow of a billboard promising a bright hypermodern global future. How do ordi...

Anne Garland Mahler, "From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity" (Duke UP, 2018)

22 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Duke UP, 2018), Anne Garland Mahler traces the hist...

Beatrice Nicolini, "Land and Maritime Empires in the Indian Ocean" (Educatt, 2017)

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Land and Maritime Empires in the Indian Ocean (Educatt, 2017) reconceptualizes the history of the Indian Ocean through the themes of mobility, encoun...

Ana Beatriz Ribeiro, "Modernization Dreams, Lusotropical Promises: A Global Studies Perspective on Brazil-Mozambique Development Discourse" (Brill, 2020)

15 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What history and motivations make up the discourses we are taught to hold, and spread, as common sense? As a member of Brazil's upper middle class, An...

Steven Fabian, "Making Identity on the Swahili Coast: Urban Life, Community, and Belonging in Bagamoyo" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

14 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Situated at a crossroads of trade in the late nineteenth century, and later the economic capital of German East Africa, the thriving caravan and port ...

Brandon Mills, "The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

14 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Brandon Mills is the author of The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire, published by the University of Pennsylvani...

Antoinette Burton, "Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation" (Duke UP, 2016)

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation (Duke UP,  2016), Antoinette Burton reframes our understanding...

Marissa J. Moorman, "Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931-2002" (Ohio UP, 2019)

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Marissa J. Moorman's book Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931–2002 (Ohio University Press, 2019) narrates ...

Lia Paradis, "Imperial Culture and the Sudan: Authorship, Identity and the British Empire" (I. B. Tauris, 2020)

07 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In The Empty House, Sherlock Holmes makes a dramatic reappearance in the surgery of his friend Dr Watson. Presumed dead at the bottom of the Reichen...

Oluwakemi M. Balogun, "Beauty Diplomacy: Embodying an Emerging Nation" (Stanford UP, 2020)

04 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Even as beauty pageants have been critiqued as misogynistic and dated cultural vestiges of the past in the US and elsewhere, the pageant industry is g...

Quito J. Swan, "Pauulu's Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice" (UP of Florida, 2020)

04 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Pauulu’s Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (University Press of Florida, 2020) by Quito Swan is an enchanting, magisteria...

Anne K. Bang, "Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940): Ripples of Reform" (Brill, 2014)

03 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turne...

Ned Bertz, "Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean: Transnational Histories of Race and Space in Tanzania" (U Hawaii Press, 2015)

19 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The vibrant Swahili coast port city of Dar es Salaam—literally, the “Haven of Peace”—hosts a population reflecting a legacy of long relations ...

Christopher J. Lee, "Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives" (Ohio UP, 2019)

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In April 1955, twenty-nine countries from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East came together for a diplomatic conference in Bandung, Indonesia, intending...

S. F. C. Daly, "A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

13 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Republic of Biafra lasted for less than three years, but the war over its secession would contort Nigeria for decades to come. A History of the R...

Pedro Machado, "Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds" (Ohio UP, 2020)

09 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds (Ohio University Press, 2020), co-edited by Pedro Machado, Joseph Christensen, Steve Mulli...

Ian Foster, "Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas" (UP of Mississippi, 2019)

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas (UP of Mississippi, 2019) author Chris...

Zakkiyah Imam Jackson, "Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World" (NYU Press, 2020)

03 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a world where black(ened) flesh, particularly feminine flesh, is considered the ontological zero of humanness, what interventions and complications...

Chima J. Korieh, "Nigeria and World War II: Colonialism, Empire, and Global Conflict" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Reading the petitions that resident of colonial Nigeria submitted to the government during World War II, Marquette University historian, Prof. Chima J...

Sarah Longair, "Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964" (Routledge, 2015)

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As one of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar’s years as a British Protectorate, the distinctive domed building of the Zanz...

Precariously Positioned: How Africa Must Balance Development with a Climate-Friendly Outlook

26 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In addition to battling poverty, malnutrition, and disease, African countries today find themselves also having to fend off the numerous perils of cli...

S. Wynne-Jones and A. LaViolette, "The Swahili World" (Routledge, 2017)

26 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Swahili World (Routledge, 2017) presents the fascinating story of a major world civilization, exploring the archaeology, history, linguistics, and...

Nadia Nurhussein, "Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America" (Princeton UP, 2019)

21 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth c...

Chinua Thelwell, "Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020)

20 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond (U Massachusetts Press, 2020) by Dr. Chinua Thelwell is a rich, well-researched, a...

Alexis Wick, "The Red Sea In Search of Lost Space" (U California Press, 2016)

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Red Sea has, from time immemorial, been one of the world’s most navigated spaces, in the pursuit of trade, pilgrimage and conquest. Yet this mul...

Elleni Centime Zeleke, "Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016" (Haymarket Books, 2020)

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Between the years 1964 and 1974, Ethiopian post-secondary students studying at home, in Europe, and in North America produced a number of journals whe...

Matthew S. Hopper, "Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire” (Yale UP, 2015)

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines...

Prita Meier, "Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere" (Indiana UP, 2016)

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent an...

François-Xavier Fauvelle, "The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages" (Princeton UP, 2018)

25 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What are the African Middle Ages? A place, certainly, and a time period, evidently. But also a “documentary regime,” argues François-Xavier Fauve...

Stephanie Newell, "Histories of Dirt: Media and Urban Life in Colonial and Postcolonial Lagos" (Duke UP, 2019)

24 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie Newell, Professor of English at Yale University, came to this project, which explores the concept of “dirt” and how this idea is used an...

Anais Angelo, "Power and the Presidency in Kenya: The Jomo Kenyatta Years" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Anais Angelo, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Vienna has written an exceptional book entitled Power ...

Learning from Rwanda: How 100 Days of Mass Killing Finally Led to International Reform (Part 2)

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rwanda witnessed a 100-day mass genocide back in 1994, when the ethnic Hutu government and its supporters led a campaign that left around 800,000 peop...

Omar H. Ali, "Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery across the Indian Ocean" (Oxford UP, 2016)

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Omar H. Ali’s Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery across the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press, 2016), provides insight into the life of slave soldie...

Pernille Røge, "Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa c. 1750-1802" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

11 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c. 1750-1802 (Cambridge UP, 2020), Dr. Pernille Røge c...

Sana Aiyar, "Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora" (Harvard UP, 2015)

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2015), Sana Aiyer investigates how Indian diasporic actors influenced the co...

Learning from Rwanda: How 100 Days of Mass Killing Finally Led to International Reform (Part 1)

09 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rwanda witnessed a 100-day mass genocide back in 1994, when the ethnic Hutu government and its supporters led a campaign that left around 800,000 peop...

Jacob Mundy, "Libya" (Polity Press, 2018)

07 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jacob Mundy is associate professor of PCON at Colgate University He’s written a great book titled Libya, published in 2018 in Polity Presses' "Hot ...

Jeff Schauer, "Wildlife between Empire and Nation in 20th-Century Africa" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

02 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The protection of African wildlife enjoys the support of large numbers of individuals and institutions throughout the world. In Wildlife between Empir...