Eastern African Studies

Decolonization & Independence in Kenya, 1940–1993

This is a sharply observed assessment of the history of the last half century by a distinguished group of historians of Kenya. At the same time the book is a courageous reflection in the dilemmas of African nationhood.…

Remapping Ethiopia

Socialism & After

Governance everywhere is concerned with spatial relationships. Modern states “map” local communities, making them legible for the purposes of control. Ethiopia has gone through several stages of “mapping” in its imperial, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary phases.…

A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991

Second Edition

Bounded by Sudan to the west and north, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the southeast, and Eritrea and Djibouti to the northeast, Ethiopia is a pivotal country in the geopolitics of the region. Yet it is important to understand this ancient and often splintered country in its own right.…

From Guerrillas to Government

The Eritrean People's Liberation Front

In 1991 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years later after a referendum in May 1993. It was the climax of a thirty-year struggle, though the EPLF itself was formed only in the early 1970s.…

Pastimes and Politics

Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945

The first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political lives of island residents were in incredible flux, framed by the abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide of urban migration.…

Empire State-Building

War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952

This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks four questions:Why was Kenya's welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies?Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor?Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down?The answers offer revealing insight into the dynamics of rule in the late colonial period in Kenya.…

Brothers at War

Making Sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War

The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment.…

Property Rights & Political Development in Ethiopia & Eritrea

This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society.…

Revolution and Religion in Ethiopia

The Growth and Persecution of the Mekane Yesus Church, 1974–85

Studies of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution have hitherto almost completely ignored religion, in spite of the commitment of a great majority of Ethiopian people to one or another religious tradition. Moreover, existing studies focus almost exclusively on the center, on national politics, and on the evolution of national institutions.…

Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits

War in Northern Uganda, 1985-97

In August 1986, Alice Auma, a young Acholi woman in northern Uganda, proclaiming herself under the orders of a Christian spirit named Lakwena, raised an army called the “Holy Spirit Mobile Forces.” With it she waged a war against perceived evil, not only an external enemy represented by the National Resistance Army of the government, but internal enemies in the form of “impure” soldiers, witches, and sorcerers.…

The Poor Are Not Us

Poverty and Pastoralism in Eastern Africa

Eastern African pastoralists often present themselves as being egalitarian, equating cattle ownership with wealth. By this definition “the poor are not us”, poverty is confined to non-pastoralist, socially excluded persons and groups.…

African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1950

This book explores the history of African womanhood in colonial Kenya. By focussing on key sociocultural institutions and practices around which the lives of women were organized, and on the protracted debates that surrounded these institutions and practices during the colonial period, it investigates the nature of indigenous, mission, and colonial control of African women.…

East African Expressions of Christianity

Christianity has been spread in Africa by Africans. It is the story of peoples seizing control of their own spiritual destinies—rather than the commonplace notion that the continent's Christian churches represent colonial and capitalist powers that helped subdue Africans to European domination.…

Controlling Anger

The Anthropology of Gisu Violence

Controlling Anger examines the dilemmas facing rural people who live within the broader context of political instability. Following Uganda's independence from Britain in 1962, the Bagisu men of Southeastern Uganda developed a reputation for extreme violence.…

Developing Uganda

Uganda's recovery since Museveni came to power in 1986 has been one of the heartening achievements in a continent where the media have given intense coverage to disasters. This book assesses the question of whether the reality lives up to the image that has so impressed the supporters of its recovery.…

Conflict, Age and Power in North East Africa

Age Systems in Transition

Age systems are involved in the competition for power. They are part of an institutional complex that makes societies fit to wage war. This book argues that in postcolonial North East Africa, with its recent history of national political conflict and civil and regional wars, the time has come to reemphasize the military and political relevance of age systems.…

Multi-Party Politics in Kenya

The Kenyatta & Moi States & the Triumph of the System in the 1992 Election

This book uses the Kenyan political system to address issues relevant to recent political developments throughout Africa. The authors analyze the construction of the Moi state since 1978. They show the marginalization of Kikuyu interests as the political economy of Kenya has been reconstructed to benefit President Moi's Kalenjin people and their allies.…

Mau Mau from Below

John Lonsdale says in his introduction: “This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau ‘Emergency’ in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.…

Kampala Women Getting By

Wellbeing in the Time of AIDS

What do ordinary women in an African city do in the face of “serious enough” infections in themselves and signs of acute illness in their young children? How do they manage? What does it take to get by? How do they maintain the wellbeing of the household in a setting without what would be considered as basic health provision in an American or European city?Professor Wallman focuses on women in a densely-populated part of Kampala called Kamwokya.…

Jua Kali Kenya

Change and Development in an Informal Economy, 1970–1995

Kenya was where the term “informal sector” was first used in 1971. During the 1980s the term “jua kali”—in Swahili “hot sun”—came to be used of the informal sector artisans, such as carworkers and metalworkers, who were working under the hot sun because of a lack of premises.…

Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History

The Case of Tanganyika, 1850–1950

This pioneering book was one of the first to place the history of East Africa within the context of the environment. It has been used continuously for student teaching. It is now reissued with an introduction placing it within the debate that has developed on the subject; there is also an updated bibliography.…