Finding Books in the Library
Click on the book covers to access information about them.
Africans by
This is a history of Africa from the origins of mankind right up to the South African general election of 1994. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature in an overwhelmingly hostile environment, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure survival and maximise numbers. These institutions enabled them to survive the slave trade and colonial invasion, but in the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This demographic growth has lain behind the collapse of colonial rule, the disintegration of apartheid, and the instability of contemporary nations. Thus Iliffe depicts the history of the continent as a single story, binding today's Africans to the earliest human ancestors.
Location: African Studies Library Stacks DT20 .I45 1995ISBN: 9780521482356Publication Date: 1995-08-25
Citizen and Subject by
In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either "direct" (French) or "indirect" (British), with a third variant--apartheid--as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a "customary" mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralized despotism) set the pace for Africa; the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa. Through case studies of rural (Uganda) and urban (South Africa) resistance movements, we learn how these institutional features fragment resistance and how states tend to play off reform in one sector against repression in the other. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.
Location: Mugar Memorial Library Stacks JV246 .M35 1996ISBN: 9780691027937Publication Date: 1996-04-21
Browsing for works on colonial Africa in the BU Library Search (BULS):
Great Britain -- Colonies -- Africa
Search for Articles
- Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History This link opens in a new windowThe Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History seeks to cover the entire range and sweep of African history, from the earliest stone tool–using hominids to the most recent religious movements, and from new interpretations of the Mau Mau movement in Kenya to recent reconsideration of the Rwanda genocide and its aftermath.
- Gale in Context: World History This link opens in a new window
Covers ancient history to current events using primary sources, reference information, and multi-media content.
- Africa-Wide Information This link opens in a new window
Africa-Wide Information searches across bibliographic databases from around the world to provide citations and abstracts on all facets of Africa and African studies. This includes content from South African Studies, African Studies, and African HealthLine, which focuses on all aspects of health relating to Africa and other developing nations.
- British History Online This link opens in a new windowIncludes primary and secondary sources on the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800.
- Humanities Full Text / Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
These combined databases provide access to journal articles, book reviews, performance reviews, interviews, bibliographies and more from a broad range of humanities and social sciences journals.
- Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa This link opens in a new window
This digital collection of documents and images relating to the anti-Apartheid movement and liberation struggles of Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Materials including magazines, nationalist publications, colonial government records, newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other relevant books, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches.
- African Newspapers from the World Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
This full-text, searchable collection of 19th and early 20th century African newspapers includes titles from the following countries: Angola, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome & Principe, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
