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  3. Eastern Africa Series

This established series, like our Western Africa series, embraces a range of disciplines: history, politics and economics, development studies, gender studies, anthropology and the social sciences. While the focus has been on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the series also includes the Great Lakes, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, and stretches its coverage towards the north, with titles on Egypt, Kivu and the eastern Congo. We encourage submissions that are comparative, across country, time and discipline. Some titles are published in association with the British Institute in East Africa.

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32 results in Eastern Africa Series

Page 2 of 2

Ethiopian Warriorhood
  • Defence, Land and Society 1800–1941
  • Tsehai Berhane-Selassie
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2019
    Print publication:
    19 October 2018
  • The history of the often-overlooked chewa Ethiopian warriors and their crucial role in defending their homeland against invasion, as well as their strong influence on political identity and the social infrastructure.

Hawks and Doves in Sudan's Armed Conflict
  • Al-Hakkamat Baggara Women of Darfur
  • Suad M.E. Musa
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    12 October 2019
    Print publication:
    20 April 2018
  • Analyses the involvement of the agro-pastoral al-Hakkamat Baggara women of Darfur in Sudan's recent civil wars and the implications of this for conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Land, Migration and Belonging
  • A History of the Basotho in Southern Rhodesia c. 1890–1960s
  • Joseph Mujere
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    26 March 2019
    Print publication:
    15 February 2019
  • A new history of the Basotho migrants in Zimbabwe that illuminates identity politics, African agency and the complexities of social integration in the colonial period.

Land Tenure Security
  • State-peasant Relations in the Amhara Highlands, Ethiopia
  • Edited by Svein Ege
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    26 March 2019
    Print publication:
    15 March 2019
  • An alternative analysis of the impact of the 1975 land reforms on peasant land rights, rural inequality and development in Ethiopia's Amhara highlands; essential reading for those engaged in research and policymaking in peasant studies, land and agriculture.

Ploughing New Ground
  • Food, Farming & Environmental Change in Ethiopia
  • Getnet Bekele
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    31 August 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2017
  • In October 2016, the Ethiopian administration declared a State of Emergency in response to anti-Government demonstrations and mass riots. While the Government claimed the riots stemmed from subversive activities among large diasporic populations in the West, the evidence suggests that they were provoked by widespread internal dissatisfaction. Land deals by the Government with foreign investors, the building of vast hydroelectric dams, sugar estates and industry parks, and urban sprawl have put pressure on agricultural, rural areas. Today, dispossessions, drought and social unrest surround fears of the worst food shortages in decades. Examining these developments in Ethiopia's lake region, the author shows how transformations in state-society relations and the organization of production and exchange have impacted on a population of smallholder farmers for whom agriculture is not only the mainstay of the economy but a way of life.Getnet Bekele is Associate Professor of History at Oakland University, MI, where he teaches African History and the Environmental and Economic History of Africa and the Global South.

The Eritrean National Service
  • Servitude for 'the common good' and the Youth Exodus
  • Gaim Kibreab
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    11 August 2017
    Print publication:
    11 August 2017
  • The Eritrean National Service (ENS) lies at the core of the post-independence state, not only supplying its military, but affecting every aspect of the country's economy, its social services, its public sector and its politics. Over half the workforce are forcibly enrolled into it by the government, driving the country's youth to escape national service by seeking employment and asylum elsewhere. Yet how did the ENS, which began during the 1961-91 liberation struggle as part of the idea of the "common good" - in which individual interests were sacrificed in pursuit of the grand scheme of independence and the country's development - degenerate into forced labour and a modern form of slavery? And why, when Eritrea no longer faces existential threat, does the government continue to demand such service from its citizens? This book provides for the first time an in-depth and critical scrutiny of the ENS's achievements and failures and its overarching impact on the social fabric of Eritrea. The author discusses the historical backdrop to the ENS and the rationales underlying it; its goals and objectives; its transformative effects, as well as its impact on the country's defence capability, national unity, national identity construction and nation-building. He also analyses the extent to which the national service functions as an effective mechanism of transmitting the core values of the liberation struggle to the conscripts and through them to the rest of country's population. Finally, the book assesses whether the core aims and objectives of the ENS proclaimed by various governments have been or are in the process of being accomplished and, drawing on the testimony of the hitherto voiceless conscripts themselves, its impact on their lives and livelihoods. GAIM KIBREAB is Professor of Research and Director of Refugee Studies, School of Law and Social Science, London South Bank University. He is the author of Eritrea: A Dream Deferred (James Currey, 2009) and People on the Edge in the Horn (James Currey, 1996).

Foundations of an African Civilisation
  • Aksum and the northern Horn, 1000 BC - AD 1300
  • David W. Phillipson
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    31 August 2012
  • Focuses on the Aksumite state of the first millennium AD in northern Ethiopia and southern Eritrea, its development, florescence and eventual transformation into the so-called medieval civilisation ofChristian Ethiopia. This book seeks to apply a common methodology, utilising archaeology, art-history, written documents and oral tradition from a wide variety of sources; the result is a far greateremphasis on continuity than previous studies have revealed. It is thus a major re-interpretation of a key development in Ethiopia's past, while raising and discussing methodological issues of the relationship between archaeology and other historical disciplines; these issues, which have theoretical significance extending far beyond Ethiopia, are discussed in full.
    The last millennium BC is seen as a time when northern Ethiopia and parts of Eritrea were inhabited by farming peoples whose ancestry may be traced far back into the local 'Late Stone Age'. Colonisation from southern Arabia, towhich defining importance has been attached by earlier researchers, is now seen to have been brief in duration and small in scale, its effects largely restricted to élite sections of the community. Re-consideration of inscriptions shows the need to abandon the established belief in a single 'Pre-Aksumite' state. New evidence for the rise of Aksum during the last centuries BC is critically evaluated.
    Finally, new chronological precision is provided for the decline of Aksum and the transfer of centralised political authority to more southerly regions. A new study of the ancient churches -both built and rock-hewn - which survive from this poorly-understood period emphasises once again a strong degree of continuity across periods that were previously regarded as distinct.

    David W. Phillipson is Emeritus Professor of African Archaeology and former Director of the University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Cambridge. In 2014 he was made an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.

    Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa.

    Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University Press

The African Garrison State
  • Human Rights and Political Development in Eritrea
  • Kjetil Tronvoll, Daniel R. Mekonnen
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
  • When Eritrea gained independence in 1991, hopes were high for its transformation. In two decades, however, it became one of the most repressive in the world, effectively a militarised "garrison state". This comprehensive and detailed analysis examines how the prospects for democracy in the new state turned to ashes, reviewing its development, and in particular the loss of human rights and the state's political organisation. Beginning with judicial development in independent Eritrea, subsequent chapters scrutinise the rule of law and the court system; the hobbled process of democratisation, and the curtailment of civil society; the Eritrean prison system and everyday life of detention and disappearances; and the situation of minorities in the country, first in general terms and then through exploration of a case study of the Kunama ethnic group. While the situation is bleak, it is not without hope, however: the conclusion focuses on opposition to the current regime, and offers scenarios of regime change and how the coming of a second republic may yet reconfigure Eritrea politically. Kjetil Tronvoll is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Bjoerknes College, founding and senior partner of the International Law and Policy Institute, Oslo, and a former Professor of Human Rights at the University of Oslo; Daniel R. Mekonnen is Senior Legal Advisor, International Law and Policy Institute, Oslo, and former Judge of the Zoba Maekel Provincial Court in Eritrea.

The Quest for Socialist Utopia
  • The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 1960-1974
  • Bahru Zewde
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 April 2014
    Print publication:
    15 January 2014
  • In the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s, the Ethiopian student movement emerged from rather innocuous beginnings to become the major opposition force against the imperial regime in Ethiopia, contributing perhaps more than any other factor to the eruption of the 1974 revolution, a revolution that brought about not only the end of the long reign of Emperor Haile Sellassie, but also a dynasty of exceptional longevity. The student movement would be of fundamental importance in the shaping of the future Ethiopia, instrumental in both its political and social development. Bahru Zewde, himself one of the students involved in the uprising, draws on interviews with former student leaders and activists, as well as documentary sources, to describe the steady radicalisation of the movement, characterised particularly after 1965 by annual demonstrations against the regime and culminating in the ascendancy of Marxism-Leninism by the early 1970s. Almost in tandem with the global student movement, the year 1969 marked the climax of student opposition to the imperial regime, both at home and abroad. It was also in that year that students broached what came to be famously known as the 'national question', ultimately resulting in the adoption in 1971 of the Leninist/Stalinist principle of self-determination up to and including secession. On the eve of the revolution, the student movement abroad split into two rival factions; a split that was ultimately to lead to the liquidation of both and the consolidation of military dictatorship as well as the emergence of the ethno-nationalist agenda as the only viable alternative to the military regime. Bahru Zewde is Emeritus Professor of History at Addis Ababa University and Vice President of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. He has authored many books and articles, notably A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1974 and Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century.

Dealing with Government in South Sudan
  • Histories of Chiefship, Community and State
  • Cherry Leonardi
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 September 2013
    Print publication:
    20 June 2013
  • South Sudan became Africa's newest nation in 2011, following decades of armed conflict. Chiefs - or 'traditional authorities' - became a particular focus of attention during the international relief effort and post-war reconstruction and state-building. But 'traditional' authority in South Sudan has been much misunderstood. Institutions of chiefship were created during the colonial period but originated out of a much longer process of dealing with predatory external forces. This book addresses a significant paradox in African studies more widely: if chiefs were the product of colonial states, why have they survived or revived in recent decades? By examining the long-term history of chiefship in the vicinity of three towns, the book also argues for a new approach to the history of towns in South Sudan. Towns have previously been analysed as the loci of alien state power, yet the book demonstrates that these government centres formed an expanding urban frontier, on which people actively sought knowledge and resources of the state. Chiefs mediated relations on and across this frontier, and in the process chiefship became central to constituting both the state and local communities. Cherry Leonardi is a Lecturer in African History at the University of Durham, a former course director of the Rift Valley Institute's Sudan course, and a member of the council of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Islam and Ethnicity in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia
  • Günther Schlee, Abdullahi A. Shongolo
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 September 2013
    Print publication:
    15 March 2012
  • The recent ethnic violence in Kenya has been preceded by a process of territorialization and politicization of ethnicity. This study examines a marginalized part of Kenya, the semi-arid north inhabited by pastoralists of three language groups - speakers of Oromo, Somali, and Rendille. It spans different periods of time, from early processes of ethnic differentiation between groups, through the colonial period when differences were reflected in administrative policies, to recent times, when global minority discourses, particularly those related to Islam, are tapped by local political agents and ethnic entrepreneurs. A companion volume to Pastoralism and Politics in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia, this book is based on over thirty-four years of field research and synthesizes findings from history and political anthropology. Günther Schlee is director of the Department of 'Integration and Conflict', Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany; Abdullahi Shongolo is an independent scholar based in Kenya.

Pastoralism and Politics in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia
  • Günther Schlee, Abdullahi A. Shongolo
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 September 2013
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012
  • Focuses on pastoralism, politics, policies and development in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. It is based on anthropological field research over a period of thirty-four years and attempts a synthesis of historical findings and political anthropology, including studies carried out from a perspective of development intervention. Presenting a detailed ethnographic view of recent events of ethnic violence in Kenya, the authors analyse how local patterns of conflict among pastoralists were influenced by both national and regional politics, which have encouraged an increased tendency of territorialized ethnicity. The authors then discuss ways of getting out of the ethnic trap and revitalizing a mobile livestock economy in a region where other forms of land use are impossible or much less effective. A companion volume to Islam and Ethnicity in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia, it will be of particular interest to political anthropologists, students of nomadism, pastoral economy ecology, and globalization. Günther Schlee is director of the Department of 'Integration and Conflict', Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany; Abdullahi Shongolo is an independent scholar based in Kenya.

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