The Shaping of Africa

The Shaping of Africa PDF Author: Francesc Relaño
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351761390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2002. When did Africa emerge as a continent in the European mind? This book aims to trace the origins of the idea of Africa and its evolution in Renaissance thought. Particular attention is given to the relationship between the process of acquiring knowledge through travel and exploration, and its representation within a discourse which also includes previously acquired cosmographical elements. Among the themes investigated are: How did the image of Africa evolve from the conception of a symbolic space to a Euclidean representation? How did the Renaissance rediscovery of Antiquity interact with the Portuguese discoveries along the African coast? And once Africa was circumnavigated, how was the inner landmass depicted in the absence of first-hand knowledge? Also, overall, in this whole process what was the interplay of myth and reality?

The Shaping of Africa

The Shaping of Africa PDF Author: Francesc Relaño
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351761390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2002. When did Africa emerge as a continent in the European mind? This book aims to trace the origins of the idea of Africa and its evolution in Renaissance thought. Particular attention is given to the relationship between the process of acquiring knowledge through travel and exploration, and its representation within a discourse which also includes previously acquired cosmographical elements. Among the themes investigated are: How did the image of Africa evolve from the conception of a symbolic space to a Euclidean representation? How did the Renaissance rediscovery of Antiquity interact with the Portuguese discoveries along the African coast? And once Africa was circumnavigated, how was the inner landmass depicted in the absence of first-hand knowledge? Also, overall, in this whole process what was the interplay of myth and reality?

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840.

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840. PDF Author: Richard Elphick
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819573760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 646

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Book Description
History is a powerful aid to the understanding of the present, and those who are concerned with the escalating crisis in South Africa will find this an invaluable source book. This is the story of the evolution of a society in which race became the dominant characteristic, the primary determinant of status, wealth, and power. Cultural chauvinism of the first European colonists – primarily the Dutch – merged with economic and demographic developments to create a society in which whites relegated all blacks – free blacks, Africans, imported slaves – to a systematic pattern of subordination and oppression that foreshadowed the apartheid of the twentieth century. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the new empire-builders, the British, reinforced the racial order. In the next century and a half the industrialized South Africa would become firmly integrated into the world economy. Published originally in South Africa in 1979 and updated and expanded now, a decade later, this book by twelve South African, British, Canadian, Dutch, and American scholars is the most comprehensive history of the early years of that troubled nation. The authors put South Africa in the comparative context of other colonial systems. Their social, political, and economic history is rich with empirical data and rests on a solid base of archival research. The story they tell is a complex drama of a racial structure that has resisted hostile impulses from without and rebellion from within.

Shaping the African Savannah

Shaping the African Savannah PDF Author: Michael Bollig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110848848X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
A history of 150 years of social-ecological transformations in the arid savannah landscape of Namibia.

Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights

Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights PDF Author: Derrick M. Nault
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192603361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Africa throughout its postcolonial history has been plagued by human rights abuses ranging from intolerance of political dissent to heinous crimes such as genocide. Some observers consequently have gone so far as to suggest that human rights are a concept alien to African cultures. The International Criminal Court (ICC)'s focus on Africa in recent years has reinforced the region's reputation as a hotspot for human rights violations. But despite Africa's notoriety concerning human rights, Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights argues that the continent has been pivotal in helping to shape contemporary human rights norms and practices. Challenging prevailing Eurocentric interpretations of human rights' origins and evolution, it demonstrates that from the colonial era to the present Africa's peoples have drawn attention to and prompted novel ways of thinking about human rights through their encounters with the world at large. Beginning with the depredations of King Leopold II in the Congo Free State in the 1880s and ending with the ICC's current activities in Africa, it reveals how African events, personalities, groups, and nations have influenced the trajectory of human rights history in intriguing and critical ways, in the end enlarging and universalizing a major discourse of our time.

Africa and China

Africa and China PDF Author: Aleksandra W. Gadzala
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442237767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The China-Africa relationship has so far largely been depicted as one in which the Chinese state and Chinese entrepreneurs control the agenda, with Africans and their governments as passive actors exercising little or no agency. This volume examines the African side of the relation, to show how African state and non-state actors increasingly influence the China-Africa partnership and, in so doing, begin to shape their economic and political futures. The influx of public and private sector Chinese actors across the African continent has led to a rise of opportunities and challenges, which the volume sets out to examine. With case studies from Nigeria, Angola, Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Zambia, and across the technology, natural resource, manufacturing, and financial sectors, it shows not only how African realities shape Chinese actions, but also how African governments and entrepreneurs are learning to leverage their competitive advantages and to negotiate the growing Chinese presence across the continent.

Shaping the New World

Shaping the New World PDF Author: Eric Nellis
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 144260557X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Between 1500 and the middle of the nineteenth century, some 12.5 million slaves were sent as bonded labour from Africa to the European settlements in the Americas. Shaping the New World introduces students to the origins, growth, and consolidation of African slavery in the Americas and race-based slavery's impact on the economic, social, and cultural development of the New World. While the book explores the idea of the African slave as a tool in the formation of new American societies, it also acknowledges the culture, humanity, and importance of the slave as a person and highlights the role of women in slave societies. Serving as the third book in the UTP/CHA International Themes and Issues Series, Shaping the New World introduces readers to the topic of African slavery in the New World from a comparative perspective, specifically focusing on the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch slave systems.

Institutions and Democracy in Africa

Institutions and Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107148243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Offers new research on the vital importance of institutions, such as presidential term-limits in the African democratisation processes.

Ethnic Ambiguity and the African Past

Ethnic Ambiguity and the African Past PDF Author: Francois G Richard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315428997
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The collective inquiries in this volume address ethnicity in ancient Africa as social fact and political artifact along numerous dimensions. Is ethnicity a useful analytic? What can archaeology say about the kinds of deeper time questions which scholars have asked of identities in Africa? Eleven authors engage with contemporary anthropological, historical and archaeological perspectives to examine how ideas of self-understanding, belonging, and difference in Africa were made and unmade. They examine how these intersect with other salient domains of social experience: states, landscapes, discourses, memory, technology, politics, and power. The various chapters cover broad geographic and temporal ground, following an arc across Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and East Africa, spanning from prehistory to the colonial period.

Developing States, Shaping Citizenship

Developing States, Shaping Citizenship PDF Author: Erin Hern
Publisher: African Perspectives
ISBN: 0472054147
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
In fledgling democracies marked by patronage, ethnic politics, and elite capture, what motivates citizens to participate in politics?

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 PDF Author: Richard Elphick
Publisher: Wesleyan
ISBN: 9780819552099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 623

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Book Description
Updated edition of a 1979 book by 12 international authors on the early development of South Africa. A social, political, and economic history of a racial structure that has resisted hostile impulses from without and rebellion from within. Cloth edition $43.00 not seen. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR