Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya

Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya
Author: Myles Osborne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107061040

This work analyses the ethnicity in Kenya over the past two hundred years, focusing on the Kamba ethnic group that inhabits eastern Kenya.

Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya

Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya
Author: Myles Osborne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316061639

This book is about the creation and development of ethnic identity among the Kamba. Comprising approximately one-eighth of Kenya's population, the British considered the Kamba East Africa's premier 'martial race' by the mid-twentieth century: a people with an apparent aptitude for soldiering. The reputation, indeed, was one that Kamba leaders used to leverage financial rewards from the colonial state. However, beneath this simplistic exterior was a maelstrom of argument and debate. Men and women, young and old, Christians and non-Christians, and the elite and poor fought over the virtues they considered worthy of honor in their communities, and which of their visions should constitute 'Kamba' identity. Based on extensive archival research and more than 150 interviews, Ethnicity and Empire is one of the first books to analyze the complex process of building and shaping 'tribe' over more than two centuries. It reveals new ways to think about themes crucial to the history of colonialism: soldiering, 'loyalty', martial race, and indeed the nature of empire itself.

The Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics
Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 786
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198815697

The Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics provides a comprehensive and comparative overview of the Kenyan political system as well as an insightful account of Kenyan history from 1930 to the present day.

Romanland

Romanland
Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2019-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674239695

A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons. Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium’s ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously. In the Middle Ages, he explains, people of the eastern empire were labeled “Greeks,” and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and became “Byzantine.” Only when we understand that the Greek-speaking population of Byzantium was actually Roman will we fully appreciate the nature of Roman ethnic identity. We will also better understand the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign and minority groups into the dominant ethnic group, the Romans who presided over the vast multiethnic empire of the east.

From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures

From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures
Author: Hiroyuki Hino
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2019-08-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108476600

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

A Companion to African History

A Companion to African History
Author: William H. Worger
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1119063574

Covers the history of the entire African continent, from prehistory to the present day A Companion to African History embraces the diverse regions, subject matter, and disciplines of the African continent, while also providing chronological and geographical coverage of basic historical developments. Two dozen essays by leading international scholars explore the challenges facing this relatively new field of historical enquiry and present the dynamic ways in which historians and scholars from other fields such as archaeology, anthropology, political science, and economics are forging new directions in thinking and research. Comprised of six parts, the book begins with thematic approaches to African history—exploring the environment, gender and family, medical practices, and more. Section two covers Africa’s early history and its pre-colonial past—early human adaptation, the emergence of kingdoms, royal power, and warring states. The third section looks at the era of the slave trade and European expansion. Part four examines the process of conquest—the discovery of diamonds and gold, military and social response, and more. Colonialism is discussed in the sixth section, with chapters on the economy transformed due to the development of agriculture and mining industries. The last section studies the continent from post World War II all the way up to modern times. Aims at capturing the enthusiasms of practicing historians, and encouraging similar passion in a new generation of scholars Emphasizes linkages within Africa as well as between the continent and other parts of the world All chapters include significant historiographical content and suggestions for further reading Written by a global team of writers with unique backgrounds and views Features case studies with illustrative examples In a field traditionally marked by narrow specialisms, A Companion to African History is an ideal book for advanced students, researchers, historians, and scholars looking for a broad yet unique overview of African history as a whole.

Politics of the Womb

Politics of the Womb
Author: Lynn Thomas
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2003-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520936647

In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Indians in Kenya

Indians in Kenya
Author: Sana Aiyar
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2015-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674425928

Working as merchants, skilled tradesmen, clerks, lawyers, and journalists, Indians formed the economic and administrative middle class in colonial Kenya. In general, they were wealthier than Africans, but were denied the political and economic privileges that Europeans enjoyed. Moreover, despite their relative prosperity, Indians were precariously positioned in Kenya. Africans usually viewed them as outsiders, and Europeans largely considered them subservient. Indians demanded recognition on their own terms. Indians in Kenya chronicles the competing, often contradictory, strategies by which the South Asian diaspora sought a political voice in Kenya from the beginning of colonial rule in the late 1890s to independence in the 1960s. Indians’ intellectual, economic, and political connections with South Asia shaped their understanding of their lives in Kenya. Sana Aiyar investigates how the many strands of Indians’ diasporic identity influenced Kenya’s political leadership, from claiming partnership with Europeans in their mission to colonize and “civilize” East Africa to successful collaborations with Africans to battle for racial equality, including during the Mau Mau Rebellion. She also explores how the hierarchical structures of colonial governance, the material inequalities between Indians and Africans, and the racialized political discourses that flourished in both colonial and postcolonial Kenya limited the success of alliances across racial and class lines. Aiyar demonstrates that only by examining the ties that bound Indians to worlds on both sides of the Indian Ocean can we understand how Kenya came to terms with its South Asian minority.

Race and Empire

Race and Empire
Author: Chloe Campbell
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2007-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719071607

Race and Empire tells the story of a short-lived but vehement eugenics movement that emerged among a group of Europeans in Kenya in the 1930s, unleashing a set of writings on racial differences in intelligence more extreme than that emanating from any other British colony in the twentieth century. The Kenyan eugenics movement of the 1930s adapted British ideas to the colonial environment: in all its extremity, Kenyan eugenics was not simply a bizarre and embarrassing colonial mutation, as it was later dismissed, but a logical extension of British eugenics in a colonial context. By tracing the history of eugenic thought in Kenya, the books shows how the movement took on a distinctive colonial character, driven by settler political preoccupations and reacting to increasingly outspoken African demands for better, and more independent, education. The economic fragility of Kenya in the early 1930s made the eugenicists particularly dependent on British financial support. Ultimately, the suspicious response of the Colonial Office and the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, backed up by a growing expert concern about race in science, led to the failure of Kenyan eugenics to gain the necessary British backing. Despite this lack of concrete success, eugenic theories on race and intelligence were widely supported by the medical profession in Kenya, as well as powerful members of the official and non-official European settler population. The long-term failures of the eugenics movement should not blind us to its influence among the social and administrative elite of colonial Kenya. Through a close examination of attitudes towards race and intelligence in a British colony, Race and Empire reveals how eugenics was central to colonial racial theories before World War Two.

Education and Race from Empire to Brexit

Education and Race from Empire to Brexit
Author: Sally Tomlinson
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-03-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1447345851

Covering the period from the height of Empire to Brexit and beyond, this book shows how the vote to leave the European Union increased hostilities towards racial and ethnic minorities and migrants. Concentrating on the education system, it asks whether populist views that there should be a British identity - or a Scottish, Irish or Welsh one - will prevail. Alternatively arguments based on equality, human rights and economic needs may prove more powerful. It covers events in politics and education that have left most white British people ignorant of the Empire, the often brutal de-colonisation and the arrival of immigrants from post-colonial and European countries. It discusses politics and practices in education, race, religion and migration that have left schools and universities failing to engage with a multiracial and multicultural society.