Nomads in the Shadows of Empires
Nomads in the Shadows of Empires

Author: Gufu Oba

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9004255222

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In Nomads in the Shadows of Empires Gufu Oba presents accounts of why the legacies of banditry and ethnic conflicts have proved so difficult to resolve along the southern Ethiopian and northern Kenyan frontier. Using interpretative and comparative methods to dialogue the relationships between different political actors on both sides of the frontier, the work captures the dynamics of political events related to imperial contests over borders and trans-frontier treaty. A complex evolution of inter-societal relations, as well as the relations between partitioned nomads and the imperial states had resulted in persistent conflicts. This work improves the understanding why frontier pastoralists continue to experience conflict over land, even after the transfer of the tribal territories to the imperial and postcolonial states. Please click here to watch an interview with the author in Oromo.

Shadow Empires
Shadow Empires

Author: Thomas J. Barfield

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0691181632

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An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years. These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony. In Shadow Empires, Thomas Barfield identifies seven kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity. What all these counterempires had in common was their interactions with existing empires that created the conditions for their development. When highly successful, these counterempires left the shadows to become the world’s largest empires—for example, those of the medieval Muslim Arabs and of the Mongol heirs of Chinggis Khan. Three former shadow empires—Manchu Qing China, Tsarist Russia, and British India—made this transformation in the late eighteenth century and came to rule most of Eurasia. However, the DNA of their origins endured in their unique ruling strategies. Indeed, world powers still use these strategies today, long after their roots in shadow empires have been forgotten. Looking afresh at the histories of important types of empires that are often ignored, Shadow Empires provides an original account of empire formation from the ancient world to the early modern period.

Climate Change Adaptation in Africa
Climate Change Adaptation in Africa

Author: Gufu Oba

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1317745906

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In the context of growing global concerns about climate change, this book presents a regional and sub-continental synthesis of pastoralists' responses to past environmental changes and reflects on the lessons for current and future environmental challenges. Drawing from rock art, archaeology, paleoecological data, trade, ancient hydrological technology, vegetation, social memory and historical documentation, this book creates detailed reconstructions of past climate change adaptations across Sahelian Africa. It evaluates the present and future challenges to climate change adaptation in the region in terms of social memory, rainfall variability, environmental change and armed conflicts and examines the ways in which governance and policy drivers may undermine pastoralists’ adaptive strategies. The book’s scope covers the Red Sea coast, Somaliland, Somalia, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and northern Kenya, part of the Ethiopian highlands and Eritrea, areas where past climate change has been extreme and future change makes it vital to understand the dynamics of adaptation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental history, human ecology, geography, climate change, environment studies, development studies, pastoralism, anthropology and African studies.

From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures
From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures

Author: Hiroyuki Hino

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 1108476600

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Offers an insightful yet readable study of the paths - and challenges - to social cohesion in Africa, by experienced historians, economists and political scientists.

Lost Lions of Judah
Lost Lions of Judah

Author: Christopher Othen

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2017-06-15

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 1445659840

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The strange, untold story of the Nazis and adventurers who fought for Ethiopia against Mussolini’s invaders.

African Environmental Crisis
African Environmental Crisis

Author: Gufu Oba

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-13

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1000055892

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This book explores how and why the idea of the African environmental crisis developed and persisted through colonial and post-colonial periods, and why it has been so influential in development discourse. From the beginnings of imperial administration, the idea of the desiccation of African environments grew in popularity, but this crisis discourse was dominated by the imposition of imperial scientific knowledge, neglecting indigenous knowledge and experience. African Environmental Crisis provides a synthesis of more than one-and-a-half century’s research on peasant agriculture and pastoral rangeland development in terms of soil erosion control, animal husbandry, grazing schemes, large-scale agricultural schemes, social and administrative science research, and vector-disease and pest controls. Drawing on comparative socio-ecological perspectives of African peoples across the East African colonies and post-independent states, this book refutes the hypothesis that African peoples were responsible for environmental degradation. Instead, Gufu Oba argues that flawed imperial assumptions and short-term research projects generated an inaccurate view of the environment in Africa. This book’s discussion of the history of science for development provides researchers across environmental studies, agronomy, African history and development studies with a lens through which to understand the underlying assumptions behind development projects in Africa.

Politics and Violence in Eastern Africa
Politics and Violence in Eastern Africa

Author: David M. Anderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1317539516

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Over the fifty years between 1940 and 1990, the countries of eastern Africa were embroiled in a range of debilitating and destructive conflicts, starting with the wars of independence, but then incorporating rebellion, secession and local insurrection as the Cold War replaced colonialism. The articles gathered here illustrate how significant, widespread, and dramatic this violence was. In these years, violence was used as a principal instrument in the creation and consolidation of the authority of the state; and it was also regularly and readily utilised by those who wished to challenge state authority through insurrection and secession. Why was it that eastern Africa should have experienced such extensive and intensive violence in the fifty years before 1990? Was this resort to violence a consequence of imperial rule, the legacy of oppressive colonial domination under a coercive and non-representative state system? Did essential contingencies such as the Cold War provoke and promote the use of violence? Or, was it a choice made by Africans themselves and their leaders, a product of their own agency? This book focuses on these turbulent decades, exploring the principal conflicts in six key countries – Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Tanzania. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia
Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia

Author: Terje Østebø

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-10

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1108839681

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Discussing an armed insurgency in Ethiopia (1963-1970), this study offers a new perspective for understanding relations between religion and ethnicity.