Honour in African History

2005 History

Author : John Iliffe
Release : 2005
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 859/5 ( reviews)

Book Synopsis Honour in African History by : John Iliffe

Download or read book Honour in African History written by John Iliffe. This book was released on 2005. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first published account of the role played by ideas of honour in African history from the fourteenth century to the present day. It argues that appreciation of these ideas is essential to an understanding of past and present African behaviour. Before European conquest, many African men cultivated heroic honour, others admired the civic virtues of the patriarchal householder, and women honoured one another for industry, endurance, and devotion to their families. These values both conflicted and blended with Islamic and Christian teachings. Colonial conquest fragmented heroic cultures, but inherited ideas of honour found new expression in regimental loyalty, respectability, professionalism, working-class masculinity, the changing gender relationships of the colonial order, and the nationalist movements which overthrew that order. Today, the same inherited notions obstruct democracy, inspire resistance to tyranny, and motivate the defence of dignity in the face of AIDS.

Fighting for Honor

2021-04-12 Social Science

Author : T. J. Desch-Obi
Release : 2021-04-12
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 937/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Fighting for Honor by : T. J. Desch-Obi

Download or read book Fighting for Honor written by T. J. Desch-Obi. This book was released on 2021-04-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking investigation into the migration of martial arts techniques across continents and centuries The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch-Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Desch-Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline. Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Desch-Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Desch-Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Desch-Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor. Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history.

A History of African Societies to 1870

1997-04-13 History

Author : Elizabeth Isichei
Release : 1997-04-13
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 992/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis A History of African Societies to 1870 by : Elizabeth Isichei

Download or read book A History of African Societies to 1870 written by Elizabeth Isichei. This book was released on 1997-04-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive and detailed exploration of the African past, from prehistory to approximately 1870, is intended to provide a fully up-to-date complement to the Cambridge History of Africa. Reflecting several emphases in recent scholarship, it focusses on the changing modes of production, on gender relations and on ecology, laying particular stress on viewing 'history from below'. A distinctive theme is to be found in its analyses of cognitive history. The work falls into three sections. The first comprises a historiographic analysis, and covers the period from the dawn of prehistory to the end of the Early Iron Age. The second and third sections are, for the most part, organised on regional lines; the second section ends in the sixteenth century; the third carries the story on to 1870. A second volume, now in preparation, will cover the period from 1870 to 1995. This book attempts a more rounded view of African history than most of the other textbooks on the subject addressed to a (largely) undergraduate level student. Earlier histories have tended to ignore some of the current foci in the scholarly literature on Africa, generally not reflected in the textbooks: these include discussions of topical issues like ecology and gender. Isichei's book is also more radical.

The African Poor

1987-12-25 History

Author : John Iliffe
Release : 1987-12-25
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 775/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis The African Poor by : John Iliffe

Download or read book The African Poor written by John Iliffe. This book was released on 1987-12-25. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. Its thesis, derived from histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been individuals incapacitated for labour, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. There has emerged the distinct poverty of those excluded from access to productive resources. Natural disaster brought widespread destitution, but as a cause of mass mortality it was almost eliminated in the colonial era, to return to those areas where drought has been compounded by administrative breakdown. Professor Iliffe investigates what it was like to be poor, how the poor sought to help themselves, how their counterparts in other continents live. The poor live as people, rather than merely parading as statistics. Famines have alerted the world to African poverty, but the problem itself is ancient. Its prevailing forms will not be understood until those of earlier periods are revealed and trends of change are identified. This is a book for all concerned with the future of Africa, as well as for students of poverty elsewhere.

Popular eBooks

Honour in African History

A History of African Societies to 1870

The African Poor

You may also like...