Revolution In Zanzibar

Revolution In Zanzibar PDF Author: Donald Petterson
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786747641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The Cold War exploded in Zanzibar in 1964 when African rebels slaughtered one of every ten Arabs. Led by a strange, messianic Ugandan, Cuban-trained factions headed the rebels, making Zanzibar (in the eyes of Washington) a potentially cancerous base for the communist subversion of mainland Africa. Exotic Zanzibar -- fabled island of spices, former slave-trading entrept, and stepping-off point for 19th century expeditions into the vast interior of the Dark Continent -- had succumbed to the terror of 20th century revolution and Cold War intrigue. In the vivid, eyewitness tradition of The Bang Bang Club and The Skull beneath the Skin , Donald Petterson weaves an engrossing tale of human drama played out against a background of violence and horror. As the only American in Zanzibar throughout the revolution, Petterson reports with the inside authority of a highly placed diplomatic observer, illuminating how the current troubles in Zanzibar are rooted in the Cold War and the revolution of 1964.

Revolution In Zanzibar

Revolution In Zanzibar PDF Author: Donald Petterson
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786747641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The Cold War exploded in Zanzibar in 1964 when African rebels slaughtered one of every ten Arabs. Led by a strange, messianic Ugandan, Cuban-trained factions headed the rebels, making Zanzibar (in the eyes of Washington) a potentially cancerous base for the communist subversion of mainland Africa. Exotic Zanzibar -- fabled island of spices, former slave-trading entrept, and stepping-off point for 19th century expeditions into the vast interior of the Dark Continent -- had succumbed to the terror of 20th century revolution and Cold War intrigue. In the vivid, eyewitness tradition of The Bang Bang Club and The Skull beneath the Skin , Donald Petterson weaves an engrossing tale of human drama played out against a background of violence and horror. As the only American in Zanzibar throughout the revolution, Petterson reports with the inside authority of a highly placed diplomatic observer, illuminating how the current troubles in Zanzibar are rooted in the Cold War and the revolution of 1964.

Revolution in Zanzibar

Revolution in Zanzibar PDF Author: John Okello
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Zanzibar
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar

Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar PDF Author: G. Thomas Burgess
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821418513
Category : Human rights movements
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Zanzibar has had the most turbulent postcolonial history of any part of the United Republic of Tanzania, yet few sources explain the reasons why. The current political impasse in the islands is a contest over the question of whether to revere and sustain the Zanzibari Revolution of 1964, in which thousands of islanders, mostly Arab, lost their lives. It is also about whether Zanzibar's union with the Tanzanian mainland--cemented only a few months after the revolution--should be strengthened, reformed, or dissolved. Defenders of the revolution claim it was necessary to right a century of wrongs. They speak the language of African nationalism and aspire to unify the majority of Zanzibaris through the politics of race. Their opponents instead deplore the violence of the revolution, espouse the language of human rights, and claim the revolution reversed a century of social and economic development. They reject the politics of race, regarding Islam as a more worthy basis for cultural and political unity. From a series of personal interviews conducted over several years, Thomas Burgess has produced two highly readable first-person narratives in which two nationalists in Africa describe their conflicts, achievements, failures, and tragedies. Their life stories represent two opposing arguments, for and against the revolution. Ali Sultan Issa traveled widely in the 1950s and helped introduce socialism into the islands. As a minister in the first revolutionary government he became one of Zanzibar's most controversial figures, responsible for some of the government's most radical policies. After years of imprisonment, he reemerged in the 1990s as one of Zanzibar's most successful hotel entrepreneurs. Seif Sharif Hamad came of age during the revolution and became disenchanted with its broken promises and excesses. In the 1980s he emerged as a reformist minister, seeking to roll back socialism and authoritarian rule. After his imprisonment he has ever since served as a leading figure in what has become Tanzania's largest opposition party As Burgess demonstrates in his introduction, both memoirs trace Zanzibar's postindependence trajectory and reveal how Zanzibaris continue to dispute their revolutionary heritage and remain divided over issues of memory, identity, and whether to remain a part of Tanzania. The memoirs explain how conflicts in the islands have become issues of national importance in Tanzania, testing that state's commitment to democratic pluralism. They engage our most basic assumptions about social justice and human rights and shed light on a host of themes key to understanding Zanzibari history that are also of universal relevance, including the legacies of slavery and colonialism and the origins of racial violence, poverty, and underdevelopment. They also show how a cosmopolitan island society negotiates cultural influences from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

Social Memory, Silenced Voices, and Political Struggle

Social Memory, Silenced Voices, and Political Struggle PDF Author: Bissell, William Cunningham
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
ISBN: 998708317X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
This volume focuses on the cultural memory and mediation of the 1964 Zanzibar revolution, analyzing it’s continuing reverberations in everyday life. The revolution constructed new conceptions of community and identity, race and cultural belonging, as well as instituting different ideals of nationhood, citizenship, sovereignty. As the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the revolution revealed, the official versions of events have shifted significantly over time and the legacy of the uprising is still deeply contested. In these debates, the question of Zanzibari identity remains very much at stake: Who exactly belongs in the islands and what historical processes brought them there? What are the boundaries of the nation, and who can claim to be an essential part of this imagined and embodied community? Political belonging and power are closely intertwined with these issues of identity and history—raising intense debates and divisions over precisely where Zanzibar should be situated within the national order of things in a postcolonial and interconnected world. Attending to narratives that have been overlooked, ignored, or relegated to the margins, the authors of these essays do not seek to simply define the revolution or to establish its ultimate meaning. Instead, they seek to explore the continuing echoes and traces of the revolution fifty years on, reflected in memories, media, and monuments. Inspired by interdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, history, cultural studies, and geography, these essays foreground critical debates about the revolution, often conducted sotto voce and located well off the official stage—attending to long silenced questions, submerged doubts, rumors and secrets, or things that cannot be said.

Zanzibar

Zanzibar PDF Author: Helen-Louise Hunter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313361967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
In the late 1950s, Communists decided that Zanzibar offered them a particular favorable opportunity for expanding their influence.

A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar

A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar PDF Author: Norman R. Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315411156
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the fertile islands of Zanzibar and Pemba became of central importance to East Africa’s growing contact with the international economy as the ruling dynasty encouraged trade in cloves, slaves and ivory. This book, first published in 1978, provides an account of the history of Zanzibar from those early days of trade up to independence and the Revolution that removed the Arab ruling class in 1964.

The Threat of Liberation

The Threat of Liberation PDF Author: Amrit Wilson
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745334073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Threat of Liberation focuses on the tumultuous years of the Cold War, when, in a striking parallel with today, imperialist powers were seeking to institute 'regime change' and install pliant governments. Using iconic photographs, declassified US and British documents, and in-depth interviews, Amrit Wilson examines the role of the Umma Party of Zanzibar and its leader, the visionary Marxist revolutionary, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu. Drawing parallels between US paranoia about Chinese Communist influence in the 1960s with contemporary fears about Chinese influence, it looks at the new race for Africa's resources, the creation of AFRICOM and how East African politicians have bolstered US control. The book also draws on US cables released by Wikileaks showing Zanzibar's role in the 'War on Terror' in Eastern Africa today. The Threat of Liberation reflects on the history of a party which confronted imperialism and built unity across ethnic divisions, and considers the relevance of such strategies today.

Zanzibar Uhuru

Zanzibar Uhuru PDF Author: Anne M. Chappel
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781505511840
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
It is 1964, a month after independence celebrations in the spice islands of Zanzibar, off the east coast of Africa. A brutal uprising takes place apparently led by a shadowy figure, John Okello. In the capital, Stone Town, a British official, Mark Hamilton, struggles to help the Sultan's government survive while protecting his young family. In the countryside, Ahmed al-Ibrahim, a Zanzibari Arab father, faces annihilation and a terrible decision. Fatima is his twelve-year-old daughter, and her life is changed forever by the violence that now sweeps across the islands. Fatima's survival through this chaos and the thirty years of rule by despotic Presidents takes all her courage and the kindness of other families. Elizabeth, Mark Hamilton's young daughter, also remembers the day of the Revolution and their escape across the seas. Her story too is touched by tragedy. Fatima and Elizabeth are connected in a way that takes almost fifty years to be revealed. Elizabeth will return to Zanzibar to fulfil her father's final request. The life journeys of the two women are different. The common link is the day of the Revolution and the act of a desperate man.

Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule

Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule PDF Author: Abdul Sheriff
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Zanzibar stands at the center of the Indian Ocean system's involvement in the history of Eastern Africa. This book follows on from the period covered in Abdul Sheriff's acclaimed Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. The first part of the book shows the transition of Zanzibar from the commercial economy of the nineteenth century to the colonial economy of the twentieth century. The authors begin with the abolition of the slave trade in 1873 that started the process of transformation. They show the transition from slavery to colonial "free" labor, the creation of the capitalist economy, and the resulting social contradictions. They take the history up to formal independence in 1963 with a postscript on the 1964 insurrection. In the second part the authors analyze social classes. The landlords and the merchants were dominant in the commercial empire of the nineteenth century and had difficulties in adjusting to the colonial condition. At the same time the development of capitalist farmers and a fully proletarianized working class was hindered. The conservative administration could not resolve the contradictions of colonial capitalism, and the formation of a united nationalist movement was hampered. This period culminated in the insurrection of 1964, but the revolution could not be consummated without mature revolutionary classes.

Language and Collective Mobilization

Language and Collective Mobilization PDF Author: Nadra O. Hashim
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739137085
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Language and Collective Mobilization analyzes the origins of communal conflict in five phases of Zanzibar's modern history. The first phase examines the implementation of British colonial control, focusing on the conversion of Zanzibar's subsistence farming economy to a cash-crop plantation complex.This first phase of colonial rule disrupted a variety of indigenous political and social institutions which traditionally promoted peace and stability. During subsequent phases of colonial rule, the British government devised political, economic and educational policies that promoted elite Arab rule at the expense of the majority Swahili- speaking population. Colonial authorities rendered illegal any attempts by Swahilis to organize political resistance, a rule which exacerbated anti-Arab animosity. Colonial rule ended in 1964, when Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris led a violent revolution against English command and Arab control. Having forced a variety of wealthy Arab and Indian communities off the island, Swahili revolutionaries allowed a small number of Indian merchants and a few Shirazi farmers to remain. Less than twenty years after the revolution, in this fifth phase of Zanzibar's political history, partisan conflict between the Shirazi and Swahili populations threatens to unleash a new rash of violence. The social climate mirrors the first phase of British rule, where economic stratification deepens and political tensions grow. The analysis offered in this book will find an audience in students, scholars, journalists, and policymakers interested in understanding so-called 'ethnic' conflict in Africa.