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"Great Britain Colonies Africa Economic conditions."
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Lineages of despotism and development
Traditionally, social scientists have assumed that past imperialism hinders the future development prospects of colonized nations. Challenging this widespread belief, Matthew Lange argues in Lineages of Despotism and Development that countries once under direct British imperial control have developed more successfully than those that were ruled indirectly. Combining statistical analysis with in-depth case studies of former British colonies, this volume argues that direct rule promoted cogent and coherent states with high levels of bureaucratization and inclusiveness, which contributed to implementing development policy during late colonialism and independence. On the other hand, Lange finds that indirect British rule created patrimonial, weak states that preyed on their own populations. Firmly grounded in the tradition of comparative-historical analysis while offering fresh insight into the colonial roots of uneven development, Lineages of Despotism and Development will interest economists, sociologists, and political scientists alike.
eBook
Chinese labour in South Africa, 1902-10 : race, violence, and global spectacle
This book explores the decision of the British Empire to import Chinese labour to southern Africa despite the already tense racial situation in the region. It enables a clearer understanding of racial and political developments in southern Africa during the reconstruction period and places localised issues within a wider historiography.
eBook
land has changed
A century ago, agriculture was the dominant economic sector in much of Africa. By the 1990s, however, African farmers had declining incomes and were worse off, on average, than those who did not farm. Colonial policies, subsequent 'top-down' statism, and globalization are usually cited as primary causes of this long-term decline. In this unprecedented study of the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria, Chima Korieh points the way to a more complex and inclusive approach to this issue. Using agricultural change as a lens through which to view socio-economic and cultural change, political struggle, and colonial hegemony, Korieh shows that regional dynamics and local responses also played vital roles in this era of transformation. British attempts to modernize the densely populated Igbo region were focused largely on intensive production of palm oil as a cash crop for export and on the assumption of male dominance within a conventional western hierarchy. This colonial agenda, however, collided with a traditional culture in which females played important social and political roles and male status was closely tied to yam cultivation. Drawing on an astonishing array of sources, including oral interviews, newspapers, private journals, and especially letters of petition from local farmers and traders, Korieh puts the reader in direct contact with ordinary people, evoking a feeling of what it was like to live through the era. As such, the book reveals colonial interactions as negotiated encounters between officials and natives and challenges simplistic notions of a hegemonic colonial state and a compliant native population.
eBook
Farmers and the state in colonial Kano
In Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano, Steven Pierce examines issues
surrounding the colonial state and the distribution of state power in northern
Nigeria. Here, Pierce deconstructs the colonial state and offers a unique reading of
land tenure that challenges earlier views of the role of indirect rule. According to
Pierce, land tenure was the means the colonial government used to rule the local
population and extract taxes from them, but it was also a political logic with a
fundamental flaw and a Western bias. In Pierce's view, colonial representations of
land tenure claimed to reflect precolonial systems of rule, but instead,
fundamentally misrepresented farmers' experience. He maintains that this
misrepresentation created a paradox at the core of the colonial state which persists
into the present and helps to explain contemporary problems in African states. In
this sweeping and eloquent account of African history, readers will find an extended
genealogy of land law and taxation as well as rich material on the power of
indigenous knowledge and the persistence of colonial systems of rule.
eBook
Colonial meltdown : Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression
Historians of colonial Africa have largely regarded the decade of the Great Depression as a period of intense exploitation and colonial inactivity. In Colonial Meltdown, Moses E. Ochonu challenges this conventional interpretation by mapping the determined, at times violent, yet instructive responses of Northern Nigeria's chiefs, farmers, laborers, artisans, women, traders, and embryonic elites to the British colonial mismanagement of the Great Depression. Colonial Meltdown explores the unraveling of British colonial power at a moment of global economic crisis.
Ochonu shows that the economic downturn made colonial exploitation all but impossible and that this dearth of profits and surpluses frustrated the colonial administration which then authorized a brutal regime of grassroots exactions and invasive intrusions. The outcomes were as harsh for Northern Nigerians as those of colonial exploitation in boom years.
Northern Nigerians confronted colonial economic recovery measures and their agents with a variety of strategies. Colonial Meltdown analyzes how farmers, women, laborers, laid-off tin miners, and NorthernNigeria's emergent elite challenged and rebelled against colonial economic recovery schemes with evasive trickery, defiance, strategic acts of revenge, and criminal self-help and, in the process, exposed the weak underbelly of the colonial system.
Combined with the economic and political paralysis of colonial bureaucrats in the face of crisis, these African responses underlined the fundamental weakness of the colonial state, the brittleness of its economicmission, and the limits of colonial coercion and violence. This atmosphere of colonial collapse emboldened critics of colonial policies who went on to craft the rhetorical terms on which the anticolonial struggle of the post–World War II period was fought out.
In the current climate of global economic anxieties, Ochonu's analysis will enrich discussions on the transnational ramifications of economic downturns. It will also challenge the pervasive narrative of imperial economic success.
eBook
Colonial Kenya Observed
The coast of East Africa was considered a strategically invaluable region for the establishment of trading ports, both for Arab and Persian merchants, long prior to invasion and conquest by Europeans. In the initial stages of the scramble for Africa in the 18th century, control of the area was an aspiration for every colonial nation in Europe - but it was not until 1895 that it was finally dominated by a sole power and proclaimed The Protectorate of British East Africa. In the early 20th century, the coast was brimming with vitality as immigrants, colonisers and missionaries from Arabia, India and Europe poured in to take advantage of growing commercial opportunities - including the prospect of enslaving millions of native Africans. The development of Kenya is an exceptional tale within the history of British rule - in perhaps no other colony did nationalistic feeling evolve in conditions of such extensive social and political change. In 1911, S.H. Fazan sailed to what later became the Republic of Kenya to work for the colonial government. Immersing himself in knowledge of traditional language and law, he recorded the vast changes to local culture that he encountered after decades of working with both the British administration and the Kenyan people. This work charts the sweeping tide of social change that occurred through his career with the clarity and insight that comes with a total intimacy of a country. His memoirs examine the fascinating complexity of interaction between the colonial and native courts, commercial land reform and the revolutionised dynamic of labour relations. By further unearthing the political tensions that climaxed with the Mau Mau Revolt of 1952-1960, this invaluable work on the European colonial period paints a comprehensive and revealing firsthand account for anyone with an interest in British and African history. Fazan's story provides a quite unparalleled view of colonial Africa and the conduct of Empire across half a century.
eBook
Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870
In a compelling example of the cultural history of South Africa, Robert Ross offers a subtle and wide-ranging study of status and respectability in the colonial Cape between 1750 and 1850. His 1999 book describes the symbolism of dress, emblems, architecture, food, language, and polite conventions, paying particular attention to domestic relationships, gender, education and religion, and analyses the values and the modes of thinking current in different strata of the society. He argues that these cultural factors were related to high political developments in the Cape, and offers a rich account of the changes in social identity that accompanied the transition from Dutch to British overrule, and of the development of white racism and of ideologies of resistance to white domination. The result is a uniquely nuanced account of a colonial society.
eBook
Colonial Land Policies in Palestine 1917-1936
This book focuses on the way in which the Palestine Mandate was part of a broader British imperial administration — a fact often masked by Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. The book's research reveals clear links to colonial practice in India, Sudan, and Cyprus amongst other places. It argues that land officials’ views on sound land management were derived from their own experiences of rural England, and that this was far more influential on the shaping of land policies than the promise of a Jewish National Home. The book reveals how the British were intent on preserving the status quo of Ottoman land law, which (when few Britons could read Ottoman or were well grounded in its legal codes) led to a series of translations, interpretations, and hence new applications of land law. The sense of importance the British attributed to their work surveying and registering properties and transactions is captured in the efforts of British officials to microfilm all of their records at the height of the Second World War. Despite this, however, land policies remained in flux.
eBook
The land has changed : history, society and gender in colonial Eastern Nigeria / Chima J. Korieh
\"A century ago, agriculture was the dominant economic sector in much of Africa. By the 1990s, however, African farmers had declining incomes and were worse off, on average, than those who did not farm. Colonial policies, subsequent 'top-down' statism, and globalization are usually cited as primary causes of this long-term decline. In this unprecedented study of the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria, author Chima Korieh points the way to a more complex and inclusive approach to this issue. Using agricultural change as a lens through which to view socio-economic and cultural change, political struggle, and colonial hegemony, Korieh shows that regional dynamics and local responses also played vital roles in this era of transformation. British attempts to modernize the densely populated Igbo region were focused largely on intensive production of palm oil as a cash crop for export and on the assumption of male dominance within a conventional western hierarchy. This colonial agenda, however, collided with a traditional culture in which females played important social and political roles and male status was closely tied to yam cultivation. Drawing on an astonishing array of sources, including oral interviews, newspapers, private journals, and especially letters of petition from local farmers and traders, Korieh puts the reader in direct contact with ordinary people, evoking a feeling of what it was like to live through the era. As such, the book reveals colonial interactions as negotiated encounters between officials and natives and challenges simplistic notions of a hegemonic colonial state and a compliant native population.\"--Page 4 of cover.
eBook