Recently added articles from The International Journal of African Historical Studies:
Introduction: Historical and Regional Perspectives on Landscape Transformations in Northeastern Tanzania, 1850-2000*
Sep 01, 2008; ... Studies of land use and of landscapes as expressions of human activities, in space and time, are gaining increasing attention in a variety of disciplines. This focus has relevance both for our understanding of society, culture, and nature, and for research on food security, land cover change, ...
Regional Political Ecology and Intensive Cultivation in Pre-Colonial and Colonial South Pare, Tanzania
Sep 01, 2008; ... Introduction1 Over the last two decades scholars working within the political ecology approach have revealed how economic differentiation and marginal ization resulting from capitalist incorporation have lead to unsustainable land use in rural, third world societies. However, there are ...
The Expansion of Traditional Irrigation in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
Sep 01, 2008; ... Introduction The largest cluster of the stream diversion irrigation systems known as "hill furrows" in eastern Africa is found on the southern slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The history of this extensive furrow system is relevant to the debate on the history and geography of intensive ...
Crafting Identity in Zimbabwe and Mozambique
Sep 01, 2008; ... Crafting Identity in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. By Elizabeth MacGonagle. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. 2007. Pp. 192. $75.00 / £45.00. A historiographical consensus about the "invention of tradition" and the construction of ethnicity during colonial rule in southern Africa ...
The Darfur Sultanate: A History
Sep 01, 2008; ... The Darfur Sultanate: A History. By R. S. O'Fahey. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Pp. xx, 357; maps, diagrams, bibliography, index, glossary. $60.00. This masterful and timely study traces the history of Dar Fur from the medieval foundations of the realm to its ultimate loss ...
Haillom in the Etosha Region: A History of Colonial Settlement, Ethnicity, and Nature Conservation
Sep 01, 2008; ... Haillom in the Etosha Region: A History of Colonial Settlement, Ethnicity, and Nature Conservation. By Ute Dieckmann. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2007. Pp. xiv, 398. CHF 55 paper. In this published doctoral thesis from the University of Cologne, Ute Dieckmann explores how the ...
War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa
Sep 01, 2008; ... War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa. By Richard Reid. Eastern African Studies. Athens: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey, 2007. Pp. xvi, 256; maps, bibliography, glossary, index. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. Richard Reid's monograph on warfare in eastern Africa is a welcome and ...
The Sexual Demon of Colonial Power: Pan-African Embodiment and Erotic Schemes of Empire
Sep 01, 2008; ... The Sexual Demon of Colonial Power: Pan-African Embodiment and Erotic Schemes of Empire. By Greg Thomas. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press, 2007. Pp xii, 195. $21.95 paper. This is an important book that issues a number of challenges to scholars working in the fields ...
Mastering the Landscape? Sisal Plantations, Land, and Labor in Tanga Region, 1893-1980s
Sep 01, 2008; ... Nobody who would have visited German East Africa right before the war and had familiarized himself with its life, which visibly carries the imprints of sisal production, would have ever imagined that 22 years earlier no sisal agave nor any other fibrous agave existed in German East Africa .... It ...
Tanzanian Ritual Perimetrics and African Landscapes: The Case of Dracaena*
Sep 01, 2008; ... Whenever I encountered the dracaena plant when hiking through the forests of North Pare, Tanzania, my companions found it significant. "Ah, here we see an old homestead," they would say, or "this must be an old grave." This shrub, which has green sword-shaped leaves growing from central stalks, ...
Northeast Tanzania's Disappearing Rangelands: Historical Perspectives on Recent Land Use Change*
Sep 01, 2008; ... In the nineteenth century, and during most of the twentieth century, Northeast Tanzania was a region dominated by two distinct types of food producing landscapes- intensively cultivated areas and the pastoral grazing lands of the Maasai Plains.1 However, in the last few decades a new distinct ...
Changes in Political Economy and Ecology in West-Usambara, Tanzania: ca. 1850-1950
Sep 01, 2008; ... Introduction: West-Usambara is located in present-day northeastern Tanzania. This densely populated highland has a relatively cool climate, and a high rainfall. It belongs to the so-called "Islands of intensive agriculture" of pre-colonial eastern Africa.1 Although a visitor today, ...
Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity
Sep 01, 2008; ... Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity. By Cynthia J. Becker. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 225. $45.00. Cynthia J. Becker's book is a pioneering work. It is the first scholarly endeavor to draw out the complex ties that link Berber women, art, and identity ...
Gouverner les villes d'Afrique: État, gouvernment local et acteurs privés/Villes d'Afrique: Exploration en histoire urbaine/Parcours administratifs dans un État en faillite: Récits populaires de Lubumbashi (RDC)
Sep 01, 2008; ... Gouverner les villes d'Afrique: État, gouvernment local et acteurs privés. Edited by Laurent Fourchard. Paris: Éditions Karthala and CEAN, 2007. Coll. "L'Afrique politique." Pp. 181 ; bibliography. Villes d'Afrique: Exploration en histoire urbaine. Edited by Jean-Luc Vellut. Paris: ...
Preserving the New Tanzania: Conservation and Land Use Change*
Sep 01, 2008; ... Introduction Consider the facts. Tanzania has the largest protected area estate in Africa, both absolutely and relatively. Tanzania at independence inherited a large protected area estate, it has been vigorously expanding it ever since, and particularly so in recent years. Table 1, drawn ...
A Failed Eldorado: Colonial Capitalism, Rural Industrialization, African Land Rights in Kenya, and the Kakamega Gold Rush, 1930-1952
Sep 01, 2008; ... A Failed Eldorado: Colonial Capitalism, Rural Industrialization, African Land Rights in Kenya, and the Kakamega Gold Rush, 1930-1952. By Priscilla Shilaro. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008. Pp. 270. $39.00 paper. Priscilla Shilaro's A Failed Eldorado is an exceptionally ...
Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958
Sep 01, 2008; ... Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958. By Elizabeth Schmidt. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Pp. ix, 310. $55.00 cloth, $26.95 paper. Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea is a welcome addition to the few English language book-length studies on the history of Guinea. This ...
The Word of Wisdom and the Creation of Animals in Africa
Sep 01, 2008; ... The Word of Wisdom and the Creation of Animals in Africa. By Shelagh Ranger. Cambridge: James Clarke, and Chambersburg, Penn.: Lutterworth Press, 2007. Pp. 255. $50.00 paper. Shelagh Ranger, the wife of historian Terence Ranger, begins this book by demonstrating the connection between ...
Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War
Sep 01, 2008; ... Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War. By Stephen C. Lubkemann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. v, 401; map, notes, bibliography, references, index. $63.00/£33.00 cloth, $25.00/£ 13.00 paper. Stephen C. Lubkemann's Culture in Chaos: An ...
Autochthony and Ethnic Cleansing in the Post-Colony: The 1966 Tombel Disturbances in Cameroon*
May 01, 2008; ... Introduction Since the 1990s growing attention has been paid in the literature to the rapid spread of autochthony discourses on the African continent, leading to the sometimes violent exclusion of supposed "strangers" and to various forms of ethnic cleansing.1 Most authors tend to ...