A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600-1960
A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600-1960

Author: Bruce S. Hall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-06-06

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9781107002876

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The mobilization of local ideas about racial difference has been important in generating, and intensifying, civil wars that have occurred since the end of colonial rule in all of the countries that straddle the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. From Sudan to Mauritania, the racial categories deployed in contemporary conflicts often hearken back to an older history in which blackness could be equated with slavery and non-blackness with predatory and uncivilized banditry. This book traces the development of arguments about race over a period of more than 350 years in one important place along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert: the Niger Bend in northern Mali. Using Arabic documents held in Timbuktu, as well as local colonial sources in French and oral interviews, Bruce S. Hall reconstructs an African intellectual history of race that long predated colonial conquest, and which has continued to orient inter-African relations ever since.

Africanistan
Africanistan

Author: Serge Michailof

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-29

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0199092702

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In Africa, progress can be seen across the board. But the important question is whether this so-called progress is sustainable. The continent is a powder keg: the powder is demographics and unemployment the detonator. By 2050, the number of young people of working age in Africa is expected to be three times that of China’s. But will there be enough jobs for them? What is troubling for the continent is even more dramatic for the Sahel, a huge region of about 100 million inhabitants where insecurity is spreading like a bushfire. Despite major differences in geography and culture, there are huge similarities between the Sahel and Afghanistan: a demographic impasse, stagnating agriculture, widespread rural misery, high unemployment, deep ethnic and religious fault lines, weak states, regional instability, drug trafficking, and the spread of radical Islam. And unfortunately the same recipes that failed in Afghanistan are being rolled out in the Sahel. Are we headed to a ‘Sahelistan’ and to an ‘Africanistan’? Serge Michailof helps us find the answer to this important question.

Disputed Desert
Disputed Desert

Author: Baz Lecocq

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-11-15

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9004190287

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This book deals with the relation between the Malian state and the Tuareg people in the late 20th century, which has been characterized by three violent uprisings against Malian authority by Tuareg nationalists: between 1963 and 1964, between 1990 and 1996, and again between 2006 and 2009. In presenting a detailed history of this conflict between an African state and a people inhabiting it involuntarily, a number of social and political tensions are brought to the fore which haunt all of the Sahel today: the heritage of slavery, local and European concepts of race and the racialisation of social and political relations, colonial rule, the inchoate process of decolonisation, and the presence of competing nationalist forces in one postcolonial state.

Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa
Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa

Author: Charles G. Thomas

Publisher: ISSN

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9781773851266

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Wars fought for political separation have become omnipresent in post-colonial Africa. From the division of Sudan, to the continued fragmentation of Somalia, and the protracted struggles of Cabinda and Azawad, conflict over seccession and separation continues to the present day. This is the first single volume to examine the historical arc of secession and secessionist conflict across sub-Saharan Africa. Paying particular attention to the development of secessionist conflicts and their evolving goals, Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa draws on case studies and rigorous research to examine three waves of secessionist movements, themselves defined by international conflict and change. Using detailed case studies, the authors offer a framework to understand how secession and separation occur, how these are influenced by both preceding movements and global political trends, and how their ongoing legacies continue to shape African regional politics. Deeply engaging and thoroughly researched, this book presents a nuanced and important and important new overview of African separatist and secessionist conflicts. It addresses the structures, goals, and underlying influences of these movements within a broader global context to impart a rich understanding of why these conflicts are waged, and how they succeed or fail.

The Anthropology of Slavery
The Anthropology of Slavery

Author: Claude Meillassoux

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0226519120

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This controversial examination of precolonial African slavery looks at the various social systems that made slavery on such a scale possible and argues that the institutions of slavery were far more complex and pervasive than previously suspected.

The Tuaregs and the 2012 Rebellion in Mali
The Tuaregs and the 2012 Rebellion in Mali

Author: Yusuf Ibrahim Gamawa

Publisher: Partridge Africa

Published: 2017-06-27

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1482878097

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As this book goes to print, the BBC is reporting an attack on a luxury tourist resort in Mali by Tuareg and Islamists militants. A very short while back, in 2012, in fact, the rebellion in the North came within a whisker of seizing Mali. If it had not been for the timely armed intervention of France, Mali might have become the first state to fall totally into the hands of elements the West and African governments are still battling in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia and who unleash terror on Europe on an almost daily basis. The story of ancient Mali, once one of the greatest empires Africa has ever seen, colonized by the French and now an independent African state, and its never-ending clashes with the Tuareg people in the North of the country, is as gripping and as dramatic today as then. What is really happening? Who are the Tuareg? What makes them so different? Are they really the descendants of the Almoravids, who conquered Spain and left the stunning beauties of the Alhambra and Granada as testimonies of their greatness? Unique, with their own proud and romantic culture, dominating all they come in contact with, the Tuareg refuse to be ruled. In The Tuaregs and the 2012 Rebellion in Mali, Ibrahim Yusuf Gamawa compellingly tells a story that is not yet ended. But he brings it up to date and future waits in the wings to unfold the next no doubt tragic but compelling chapters. It is an ancient story, as contemporary as tomorrows headlines.

The Sahara
The Sahara

Author: Jeremy Keenan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1317970012

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This collection examines the Sahara holistically from the earliest (prehistoric) times through the ‘historical’ period to the present and with political direction into the future. The contributions cover palaeoclimatology, history, archaeology (cultural heritage), social anthropology, sociology, politics and international affairs. Structured chronologically, the volume can almost be read as a narrative of the Sahara from the earliest times to the present, i.e. from the past climates of the Sahara in prehistoric times to the current ‘war on terror’ and its implications for the peoples of the Sahara. Importantly, the collection shows how the region must be approached ‘holistically’, highlighting the importance of each of these subject areas (palaeo-climates, history, politics, etc.) in relation to each other. Indeed, the first contribution is a remarkable (and unique) paper, bringing together the work of some 8-9 internationally recognised scientists to tell the story and show the relevance to the present day of the Sahara’s past climates etc. Nearly all the contributions stand in their own right at the cutting edge of research in their respective fields (e.g. archaeology, history, politics, etc.). This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of North African Studies.