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A captivating account of an interracial jazz opera that took apartheid South Africa by storm and marked a turning point in the nation's cultural history.In 1959, King Kong, an interracial jazz opera, swept across South Africa and became a countrywide phenomenon. Its performances sold out, its LP record was widely heard, and its cast became recognized celebrities. Featuring an African composer, cast, and orchestra but predominantly white directors and producers, this interracial production seemed completely distinct from any other theatrical production in the country's history. Despite being staged over a decade after the enacting of apartheid, the interracial collaboration met widespread acclaim that bridged South Africa's racial, political, ethnic, and class fissures. Widely considered a watershed moment within the history of South African theater and music, King Kong encapsulated key currents within South African cultural history. Author Tyler Fleming's gripping narrative unpacks the life of the musical, from the emergence of the heavyweight boxer "e;King Kong"e; Dlamini to the behind-the-scenes dynamics of rehearsals to the musical's 1961 tour of Britain and the later experience of cast members living in exile for their opposition to apartheid. Opposing Apartheid on Stage: "e;King Kong"e; the Musical explores the history of this jazz opera and its enduring legacy in both South African history and global popular culture.

Exploring issues of disability culture, activism, and policy across the African continent, this volume argues for the recognition of African disability studies as an important and emerging interdisciplinary field.While the disability rights movement of recent decades has a rich and well-documented history, it is a history mostly focused on the Global North. Disability in Africa presents an interdisciplinary approach to cultural, health, and policy challenges that disability issues have raised throughout the African continent. The volume draws on the achievements of disability studies while acknowledging the demands and challenges of particular African contexts. The authors bring diverse methodological approaches and expertise to bear on these issues, ranging from anthropology and bioethics to special education and community rehabilitation. Essays consider indigenously African definitions of disability as well as exploring disability at the intersection of poverty, geography, and globalized biopolitics. Contributors analyze the difficulties of implementing disability policy across the continent while also being mindful of successful approaches taken at local, national, and international levels. Disability in Africa thus charts new avenues for disability studies research in and about Africa.

Interrogates the development of the world's first international courts of humanitarian justice and the subsequent "e;liberation"e; of nearly two hundred thousand Africans in the nineteenth century.In 1807, Britain and the United States passed legislation limiting and ultimately prohibiting the transoceanic slave trade. As world powers negotiated anti-slave-trade treaties thereafter, British, Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian,French, and US authorities seized ships suspected of illegal slave trading, raided slave barracoons, and detained newly landed slaves. The judicial processes in a network of the world's first international courts of humanitarian justice not only resulted in the "e;liberation"e; of nearly two hundred thousand people but also generated an extensive archive of documents. Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896 makes use of theserecords to illuminate the fates of former slaves, many of whom were released from bondage only to be conscripted into extended periods of indentured servitude. Essays in this collection explore a range of topics relatedto those often referred to as "e;Liberated Africans"e;-a designation that, the authors show, should be met with skepticism. Contributors share an emphasis on the human consequences for Africans of the abolitionist legislation. The collection is deeply comparative, looking at conditions in British colonies such as Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and the Cape Colony as well as slave-plantation economies such as Brazil, Cuba, and Mauritius. A groundbreaking intervention in the study of slavery, abolition, and emancipation, this volume will be welcomed by scholars, students, and all who care about the global legacy of slavery. Richard Anderson is a lecturer at the University of Exeter. Henry B. Lovejoy is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Explores the culturally complex and cosmopolitan histories of islands off the African coastIslands and island chains like Cabo Verde, Madagascar, and Bioko are often sidelined in contemporary understandings of Africa in which mainland nation-states take center stage in the crafting of historical narratives. Yet in the modern period, these small offshore spaces have often played important if inconsistent roles in facilitating intra- and intercontinental exchanges that have had lasting effects on the cultural, economic, and political landscape ofAfrica. In African Islands: Leading Edges of Empire and Globalism, contributors argue for the importance of Africa's islands in integrating the continent into wider networks of trade and migration that links it with Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Essays consider the cosmopolitan and culturally complex identities of Africa's islands, analyzing the process and extent to which trade, slavery, and migration bonded African elements with Asian, Arabic, and European characteristics over the years. While the continental and island nations have experienced similar cycles of invasion, boom, and bust, essayists note both similarities and striking differences in how these events precipitated economic changes in the different geographic areas. This book, a much-needed broadly comparative study of the African islands, will be an important resource for students and scholars of the region and of topics such as colonialism, economic history, and cultural hybridity. TOYIN FALOLA is Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. R. JOSEPH PARROTT isAssistant Professor of History at Ohio State University. DANIELLE PORTER SANCHEZ is Assistant Professor of History at Muhlenberg College.

Looks at the politics of the Catholic Church during a turbulent period in central MozambiqueThis book is concerned with the internal diversity and complexity of the Roman Catholic Church. It aims at exploring, unpacking, and explaining how the Roman Catholic institution works, how its politics are made, and how the latter impact its environment. Using the diocese of Beira in central Mozambique as a case study, and following insights by Max Weber, author Eric Morier-Genoud takes the novel "e;horizontal"e; approach of looking at congregations within the Church as a series of autonomous entities, rather than focusing on the hierarchical structure of the institution. Between 1940 and 1980, the diocese of Beira was home to some fifteen different congregations rangingfrom Jesuits to Franciscans, from Burgos to Picpus fathers. As in many areas of the world, the 1960s brought conflict to Catholic congregations in central Mozambique, with African nationalism and the reforms of Vatican II playinga part. The conflict manifested in many ways: a bishop's flight from his diocese, a congregation abandoning the territory in protest against the collusion between church and state, and a declaration of class struggle in the church. All of these events, occurring against the backdrop of the war for Mozambican independence, make the region an especially fruitful location for the pioneering analysis proffered in this important study. ERIC MORIER-GENOUD is Senior Lecturer in African History at Queen's University Belfast.

A work of synthesis on plantation slavery in nineteenth century Sokoto caliphate, engaging with major debates on internal African slavery, on the meaning of the term "e;plantation,"e; and on comparative slaveryA large-scale study of plantation slavery in West Africa with a focus on the nineteenth-century Sokoto caliphate, this book draws on diverse sources including oral testimony, Arabic material, and extant scholarly works about the caliphal state. Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: A Historical and Comparative Study offers new views on various fundamental issues including the definition of blackness in the Sokoto caliphate, the meaning of theterm "e;plantation,"e; the significance of plantation slavery in the caliphal state, and the role of slavery in the context of African states. Author Mohammed Bashir Salau analyzes key themes in the history of plantation slavery, especially plantation management and the acquisition, treatment, and control of slaves. Building on this analysis, Salau points to previously unknown ways in which the caliphal state prevented the development of serfdom, arguing that while social and economic factors played a role in the rise of slavery in the Sokoto caliphate, conscious political choice was the major factor for the rise and maintenance of plantation slavery. This study will be of major interest to students and scholars of slavery in Africa in general and in the Sokoto Caliphate in particular; in addition, through its comparative discussion it contributes to the literature on second slavery. Mohammed Bashir Salau is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Mississippi.

Examines the importance of South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy, especially in light of Nelson Mandela's belief that cosmopolitan dreams are not only desirable but a binding duty.Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu left an enduring legacy of forgiveness, openness, and solidarity in South Africa. This book looks at how the country's historic transition to democracy has not only changed the negative narrative about South Africa but also provided a model for a new form of ethical participation in the world. In addition to Mandela and Tutu, this book considers South African cultural theorists, poets, and novelists such as J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Zakes Mda, Njabulo Ndebele, and Antjie Krog, all of whom have engaged with the struggle to overcome the legacies of apartheid and create a more humane society. Most of these figures share common cultural and moral traits with Mandela and Tutu, the most outstanding of which is their belief in the notion of global citizenship. In engaging the latter concept, this work seeks to answer the following questions: How can we understand being human in a world that is increasingly marked by hatred of others? Can Mandela's vision of his society provide us with a theory of how to live in our globalized world? This wide-ranging volume will appeal to scholars and students of history, African studies, literature, ethics, and international affairs. CHIELOZONA EZE is Professor of African literature and cultural studies at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Extraordinary Professor of Englishat Stellenbosch University, and a fellow at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa.

An innovative study of labor relations, particularly the interactions of recruitment agents and migrant workers, in the mining concessions of Wassa, Gold Coast Colony, 1879 to 1909.Recent years have seen renewed interest in the historical study of labor in Africa. Unlike those of the past, these new studies are rooted in the recognition of Africa's dynamic, expansive, and productive informal sector. While this book focuses on one of West Africa's earliest large-scale industries, namely the Wassa gold mines in the southwest Gold Coast, it is not solely concerned with the traditional working class. Rather, it explores the plurality oflabor relations that characterized the mining concessions during the period 1879 to 1909, including the presence of migrants from various parts of West Africa as well as casual and tributary laborers, both male and female.In capturing the phenomenon of labor mobility as it played out in Wassa, Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital presents one of the fullest accounts of the labor agents who regularly brought groups of migrant laborers to the mines. The narrative discusses these agents' means of employment and roles in the informalization and indentureship of labor; in addition, it explores the regional dynamics of the recruitment machinery and confronts issues of coercion and choice. Scholars interested in African history, global labor history, economic history, and women's work in Africa will find much of value in this innovative study. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen is aResearch Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Marie-Heim Vogtlin Grant) in the history department of the University of Basel.

Reexamines the first twenty years of the East African revival movement in Uganda, 1935-1955, arguing that through the movement African Christians articulated and developed a unique spiritual lifestyle.Starting in the mid-1930s, East African revivalists (or, Balokole: "e;the saved ones"e;) proclaimed a message of salvation, hoping to revive the mission churches of colonial East Africa. Frustrated by what they believed to be the tepid spiritual state of missionary Christianity, they preached that in order to be saved, converts had to confess publicly the specific sins they had committed, putting them "e;in the light."e; By "e;walking in the light"e; with other revival brethren, converts reoriented their lives, articulating this reorientation in the stark terms of light and darkness: they had left their dark past and now lived in the light of salvation. This book uses missionary and Colonial Office archives, contemporary newspapers, archival collections in Uganda, anthropologists' field notes, oral histories, and interviews by the author in order to reexamine the first twenty years of the East African revivalmovement (roughly, 1935-1955). Focusing upon the creative, controversial, and remarkable efforts of the ordinary African Christians who comprised the vast majority of the movement, it challenges previous historical analyses that have seen in the revival the replication of British evangelical holiness spirituality or, alternatively, a manifestation of late colonial dissent. Instead, this study argues, the Balokole revival was a movement through which African Christians articulated and developed a unique spiritual lifestyle, one that responded creatively to the sociopolitical contexts of late colonial East Africa. Jason Bruner is Assistant Professor of Global Christianityat Arizona State University.

Explores the range of vibrant cultural production and political activism of youth in Africa today, as expressed through art, music, theater, and online media.This edited collection focuses on the links between youth and African popular culture. Contributions by a distinguished group of scholars explore popular culture produced and consumed by young people in contemporary Africa. Essays cover a variety of cultural representations--visual, oral, written, performative, fictional, social, and virtual--created by African youth, mostly about their lives and their immediate societies, and for themselves, but also consumed by the larger public and shared locally and globally. The volume examines the range of music, art, and media African youth produce, under what conditions or contexts they produce such work, and the aesthetic dimensions of these texts as cultural artifacts. Essays further explore why these textual practices matter as social facts, as interpretive acts, and as symbols of the cultural activism of young people in a rapidly changing world-a world where the global cultural economy is the prime terrain for the relentless struggles over the meanings that come to shape political-economic and social systems.

Examines indigenous oral traditions and histories in order to explain the factors propelling sociopolitical consolidation and the emergence of chiefdoms and kingdoms in nineteenth-century southeastern Africa.This study traces the social and political history of the peoples of early precolonial southeastern Africa, including the regions of modern KwaZulu-Natal, Swaziland, southern Mozambique from Maputo Bay southward, and Lesotho. Theemergence in the early nineteenth century of well-known southern African kingdoms such as the AmaZulu, AmaSwazi, and BaSotho kingdoms was the culmination of centuries of sociopolitical developments, during which political controlwas consolidated in the ruling descent lines of small-scale chiefdoms. Providing the first comprehensive scholarly examination of recorded oral traditions from southeastern Africa, Eldredge's work chronicles the events and life stories propelling this consolidation and the advent of large-scale chiefdoms and kingdoms.. Elizabeth A. Eldredge is an independent scholar and author of The Creation of the Zulu Kingdom, 1815-1828: War, Shaka, and the Consolidation of Power.

The first widely available biography of this important black Victorian-age actor, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years, 1807-1833 details the early life and career of this New York-born thespian as he began to act on the British stage.Ira Aldridge: The Early Years, 1807-1833 chronicles the rise of one of the modern world's first black classical actors, as he ascended from an impoverished childhood in New York City to a career as a celebrated thespian onthe British stage. After a successful debut in London in 1825, Aldridge began touring the British provinces, billing himself grandiloquently as the "e;African Roscius,"e; and attracting crowds with his powerful presence and style. He received accolades not only as a tragedian in classic roles such as Othello and Oroonoko but also as a comic actor in popular farces and musicals. In 1833, when a bill to abolish slavery was being debated in Parliament, he was called back to London to perform at one of the city's most prestigious theaters, where his appearance, now under his own name but also billed as "e;a native of Senegal,"e; created a great deal of controversy. In dealing with Aldridge's emergence as a professional actor in the United Kingdom, Lindfors here records in detail the ups and downs of his itinerant existence in a world where no theatergoer had ever seen anyone like him on stage before. Aldridgewas genuinely a unique phenomenon in Britain at a pivotal point in history. Bernth Lindfors is Professor Emeritus of English and African Literatures, University of Texas at Austin, and editor of Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius (University of Rochester Press, 2007).

A detailed and compelling volume that contributes significantly to current trends in post-apartheid scholarship.Representing Bushmen draws on the work of Jacques Derrida, Edward Said, and Martin Bernal to show how the study of language was integral to the formation of racial discrimination in South Africa. Author Shane Moran demonstrates the central role of literary history to the cultural racism and ideology that fed into apartheid by tracing the ethno-aesthetic figuration of the Bushmen in W. H. I. Bleek's theory of the origin of language. Moran examines the gestation of colonial ideology, and provocatively traces aspects of the post-apartheid rhetoric of commemoration and national unity to their colonialist roots. This detailed and compelling volume contributes significantly to current trends in post-apartheid scholarship. Moran emphasizes the need for a cautious interrogation of the colonial archive and scrutiny of critical discourses used by the would-be postcolonial intellectual, and poses a timelychallenge to those committed to exorcising that legacy. Shane Moran teaches at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

An exploration of the subject of Afro-Germans, which, in recent years has captured the interest of scholars across the humanities for providing insight into contemporary Germany's transformation into a multicultural society.Since the Middle Ages, Africans have lived in Germany as slaves and scholars, guest workers and refugees. After Germany became a unified nation in 1871, it acquired several African colonies but lost them after World War I. Children born of German mothers and African fathers during the French occupation of Germany were persecuted by the Nazis. After World War II, many children were born to African American GIs stationed in Germany and German mothers. Today there are 500,000 Afro-Germans in Germany out of a population of 80 million. Nevertheless, German society still sees them as "e;foreigners,"e; assuming they are either African or African American but never German. In recent years, the subject of Afro-Germans has captured the interest of scholars across the humanities for several reasons. Looking at Afro-Germans allows us to see another dimension of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideas of race that led to the Holocaust. Furthermore, the experience of Afro-Germans provides insight into contemporary Germany's transformation, willing or not, into a multicultural society. The volume breaks new ground not onlyby addressing the topic of Afro-Germans but also by combining scholars from many disciplines. Patricia Mazon is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Reinhild Steingrover is Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

Yoruba Identity and Power Politics covers the major issues in Yoruba history and politics, offering through narratives of the past and present a solid understanding of one of the most popular ethnic groups in Africa.Yoruba Identity and Power Politics covers the major issues on Yoruba history and politics, thus offering a solid understanding of one of the most popular ethnic groups in Africa. With a careful blend of sources and methods,narratives on the past and present, the book manages to present a long history as the backdrop to complicated contemporary politics. Contributors: Tunde M. Akinwumi, Olufunke A. Adeboye, R. T. Akinyele, Aribidesi Usman, Tunde Oduwobi, Olufemi Vaughan, Abolade Adeniji, Jean-Luc Martineau, Ann O'Hear, Rasheed Olaniyi, Charles Temitope Adeyanju, Julius O. Adekunle, Funso Afolayan, Olayiwola Abegunrin. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Ann Genova is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.

Examines African debates on captivity, legal and illegal enslavement, and religious and ethnic identity in the era of West African jihads.

A groundbreaking interrogation of the myriad causes and effects of African migration, from the pre-colonial to the modern era.

An intellectual biography of a modern African artist and his immense contribution to twentieth-century art history.

An exploration of the subject of Afro-Germans, which, in recent years has captured the interest of scholars across the humanities for providing insight into contemporary Germany's transformation into a multicultural society.

Applies new approaches to the study of a small, densely populated region of West Africa, integrating them into a regional history that analyzes interactions between localities and the modern state.

A history of America's tangled involvement in the transition of British and French West African territories to statehood.

An analysis of the historical and scientific effects of technology transfer from an imperial to colonial setting.

Explores the dimensions of the coming-of-age novel in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Brazil, focusing on works by eight major Afro-Latin American writers

Explores the history of Britain's colonial army in West Africa, especially the experiences of ordinary soldiers recruited in the region.

Examines the economic and spatial importance of performance arts in West Africa through a close analysis of the masquerade culture of Calabar, the capital city of Nigeria's Cross River State.

Examines transformational moments and liberation movements in the decolonization of inherited Western academic traditions in Africa.

In this definitive study of the African diaspora in North America, Toyin Falola offers a causal history of the western dispersion of Africans and its effects on the modern world.

Examines the representations of migration in African literature, film, and other visual media, with an eye to the stylistic features of these works as well as their contributions to debates on migration

A study of the interchange between Cuba and Africa of Yoruban people and culture during the nineteenth century, with special emphasis on the Aguda community.

Diverse essays on the life and career of one of the greatest tragic actors of the nineteenth century.