This Very Short Introduction looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented, both in Africa and beyond. The author illustrates important aspects of Afric
This short history of history is an ideal introduction for those studying or teaching the subject as part of courses on the historian's craft, historical theory and method, and historiography. Spanning the earliest known forms of historical writing in the ancient Near East right through to the present and covering developments in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, it also touches on the latest topics and debates in the field, such as 'Big History', 'Deep History' and the impact of the electronic age. It features timelines listing major dynasties or regimes throughout the world alongside historiographical developments; guides to key thinkers and seminal historical works; further reading; a glossary of terms; and sample questions to promote further debate at the end of each chapter. This is a truly global account of the process of progressive intercultural contact that led to the hegemony of Western historiographical methods.
This short history of history is an ideal introduction for those studying or teaching the subject as part of courses on the historian's craft, historical theory and method, and historiography. Spanning the earliest known forms of historical writing in the ancient Near East right through to the present and covering developments in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, it also touches on the latest topics and debates in the field, such as 'Big History', 'Deep History' and the impact of the electronic age. It features timelines listing major dynasties or regimes throughout the world alongside historiographical developments; guides to key thinkers and seminal historical works; further reading; a glossary of terms; and sample questions to promote further debate at the end of each chapter. This is a truly global account of the process of progressive intercultural contact that led to the hegemony of Western historiographical methods.
Prehistory covers the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history, when our earliest ancestors, the Australopithecines, existed in Africa. But this is relatively recent compared
In the 1870s Britain dominated the coast of east Africa by informal influence exerted from Zanzibar through the renowned consul-general, Sir John Kirk. This unchallenged position ended with the decision of Bismarck to back Carl Peters in his treaty-making activities and the mainland opposite Zanzibar was partitioned in 1886 into British and German spheres. The British government was not willing to assume the responsibility and expense involved in administration of its area of influence and it assigned control to the Imperial British East Africa Company headed by William Mackinnon. The company's life was short and inglorious. The government attributed its failure to the ineffectuality of Mackinnon and the Company's directors blamed the government for using the Company to advance political objects and not providing it with proper support. Professor Galbraith's book considers this episode in British Imperial History, the factors involved and Mackinnon's part in it. The book considers the
This book examines the ways in which racial and economic stratification were brought to coincide in pre-industrial South Africa by describing in detail the history of one group, the Griquas of Philippolis and Kokstad. These people, of very mixed origins, were central, both physically and symbolically, to the processes of South African history in the nineteenth century. They were able to gain control over a very large area of the southern Orange Free State, where they established what was, for a time, a prosperous little state. Very many Griquas became Christian, although this did not mean that they were dominated by the missionaries – rather the reverse. A substantial number were literate. Moreover, they made use of all possible means of developing their own wealth, first as ivory hunters and then as successful horse and sheep ranchers. In short, they fulfilled all the criteria for acceptance into the ruling class of white South Africa. except that they were not white.
Africa’s newest nation has a long history. Often considered remote and isolated from the rest of Africa, and usually associated with the violence of slavery and civil war, South Sudan has been an aren
This is a short, entertaining and illuminating introduction to the history and culture of coffee, from the humble origins of the bean in northeast Africa over a millennium ago, to what it is today, a
Reginald Heber (1783–1826), had for a long time been interested in the Church of England's overseas missions when he was appointed second Bishop of Calcutta in 1823. The diocese had been established only in 1814, and included India, Southern Africa and Australia; Heber's short episcopate involved much travelling around his scattered flock. His widow, Amelia published his Sermons and Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India (also available in this series), before writing this two-volume biography, published in 1830 and also containing previously unpublished writings by Heber. Volume 1 focuses on Heber's early life and career, including travels across Scandinavia and Russia, and describes how he became active in literary as well as church matters, publishing poetry and the hymns for which he is now best remembered, and working with the Church Missionary Society. His unfinished History of the Cossaks is included in an appendix.
This is the first emotional history of the British Empire. Joanna Lewis explores how David Livingstone's death tied together British imperialism and Victorian humanitarianism and inserted it into popular culture. Sacrifice and death; Superman like heroism; the devotion of Africans; the cruelty of Arab slavery; and the sufferings of the 'ordinary man', generated waves of sentimental feeling. These powerful myths, images and feelings incubated down the generations - through grand ceremonies, further exploration, humanitarianism, Christian teaching, narratives of masculine endeavour and heroic biography - inspiring colonial rule in Africa, white settler pioneers, missionaries and Africans. Empire of Sentiment demonstrates how this central African story shaped Britain's romantic perception of itself as a humane power overseas when the colonial reality fell far short. Through sentimental humanitarianism, Livingstone helped sustain a British Empire in Africa that remained profoundly Victoria
This is the first emotional history of the British Empire. Joanna Lewis explores how David Livingstone's death tied together British imperialism and Victorian humanitarianism and inserted it into popular culture. Sacrifice and death; Superman like heroism; the devotion of Africans; the cruelty of Arab slavery; and the sufferings of the 'ordinary man', generated waves of sentimental feeling. These powerful myths, images and feelings incubated down the generations - through grand ceremonies, further exploration, humanitarianism, Christian teaching, narratives of masculine endeavour and heroic biography - inspiring colonial rule in Africa, white settler pioneers, missionaries and Africans. Empire of Sentiment demonstrates how this central African story shaped Britain's romantic perception of itself as a humane power overseas when the colonial reality fell far short. Through sentimental humanitarianism, Livingstone helped sustain a British Empire in Africa that remained profoundly Victoria
A History Book Club Reading SelectionThis omnibus edition brings together concise and up-to-date biographies of Steve Biko, Emperor Haile Selassie, Patrice Lumumba, and Thomas Sankara.African Leaders
The Soweto uprising was a true turning point in South Africa’s history. Even to contemporaries, it seemed to mark the beginning of the end of apartheid. This compelling book examines both the underlyi
Volume VIII of the second edition of The Cambridge Ancient History, like its counterpart in the first edition, deals with the comparatively short but eventful period in which Rome acquired effective political mastery of the Mediterranean lands. From the Carthaginians in Spain, the Second Punic War and the first Roman involvement across the Adriatic, the advance of Roman power is traced through the conquests in Cisalpine Gaul, Spain and Africa in the west and through the conflicts in the east with Macedonia, the Seleucid empire, and finally the Greeks. Interspersed with these themes are chapters on the Seleucids and their rivals and on the Greeks of Batria and India, on the internal political life of Rome, and on developments in Rome's relationship with her allies and neighbours in Italy. In conclusion, two chapters explore the interaction between the Roman and Italian tradition and the Greek world, the first dealing mainly with intellectual and literary developments, the Second Punic W
The Iohannis, an epic poem of the mid-sixth century, narrates the wars of a Roman general against Berber rebels in north Africa. The subject-matter is of considerable interest both for the history of the period and for what it reveals of the ethnography of north Africa in late antiquity. The poem is also of literary interest because of its numerous debts to earlier Latin poetry. It is in the establishment of a reliable text, however, in the field emendatio, that the importance of this 1970 edition lies. The editors have purged the text so far as possible from error; and in their numerous conjectures they have had to decide what abnormalities should be ascribed to the changed Latinity of the age, what to scribal error. The apparatus is thus full of imaginative and scholarly touches: it can be approached as a 'bank' of ideas and suggestions for scholars of late Latin. There are a short praefatio on the history of the text and the usual indexes.
