Colonial Africa

Hamburg 1888: After thirty prosperous years, coffee importer Peter Hansen & Sons faces hard times - and certain bankruptcy - unless three brothers can make savvy moves to save the faltering business after their father’s untimely death. For Robert Hansen, that means meeting changing demands by following the future from Vienna to Africa. He relocates his family to the German colony of Cameroon and takes ownership of a cocoa plantation. With a spirit as adventurous as her father’s, Robert’s fifteen-year-old daughter Luise discovers an exciting new world.

The author looks at the imperial conquest of Africa and the devastating impact it has had and continues to have on her people. It includes conquest of the mind which, he contends, is the worst form of imperial subjugation. The work is also about the destiny of Africa which is being partly shaped by the forces of globalisation beyond the capacity of Africans to resist or control. The author contends this is the era of a new form of imperialism – “globalisation” its euphemism – dominated by the big powers and other industrialised nations to the detriment of Africa's wellbeing.

This is a study of statecraft and nation building in Africa in the post-colonial era.Subjects covered include early years of independence, statehood and nationhood, autocracy, state legitimacy, the unitary state, constitutional primacy, federalism, confederalism, institutional transformation, political stability, quest for democracy, ethnonationalism, ethnopluralism, economic development, national integration, consolidation of the state, decentralisation, devolution, reconfiguration of the post-colonial state, and others.It focuses on case studies whose relevance is continental in scope.

This work is a study of Uganda as a nation during the post-colonial era. Godfrey Mwakikagile looks at the problems the country faced during its first years of independence including the constitutional crisis following the abolition of the kingdoms; the demand by the Buganda kingdom for federal status and its refusal to accept a unitary state; the ouster of Kabaka Mutesa II from the presidency and his subsequent exile to Britain; the paradoxical nature of the demand by Buganda kingdom for federal status under a unitary state and of having a hereditary ruler, Mutesa, the king of Buganda, ...

This is an autobiographical work covering a wide range of subjects including a number of major events relevant to Africa and the African diaspora.

A Historical Adventure Book Set in Southern Africa During the Late 19th and Early 20th Century "A Scotsman in Africa" is a spell-binding and richly detailed work of historical fiction. Journey across continents as you follow the life of a spirited young lad named Davie Crawford, born and raised in the humble town of Kirkcaple, Scotland, who ventures into the unforgiving landscapes of Southern Africa. An encounter with a mysterious black minister practicing strange rites by the sea sets off a chain of events, deeply connecting Davie to the exotic and perilous landscapes of Africa. As Davie ...

From 1754 to 1755, the slave ship Hare completed a journey from Newport, Rhode Island, to Sierra Leone and back to the United States - a journey that transformed more than 70 Africans into commodities, condemning some to death and the rest to a life of bondage in North America. In this engaging narrative, Sean Kelley painstakingly reconstructs this tumultuous voyage, detailing everything from the identities of the captain and crew to their wild encounters with inclement weather, slave traders, and near-mutiny.

On Sunday, September 9, 1739, 20 Kongolese slaves armed themselves by breaking into a storehouse near the Stono River south of Charleston, South Carolina. They killed 23 white colonists, joined forces with other slaves, and marched toward Spanish Florida. There they expected to find freedom. One report claims the rebels were overheard shouting, "Liberty!" Before the day ended, however, the rebellion was crushed, and afterwards many surviving rebels were executed.

In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that large - 12 feet tall, 15 feet wide - had to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for 11 generations. Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, a pearl of 8,000 acres caught between the North and South Forks of Long Island, the manor had dwindled to 243 acres.

Joshua Hempstead was a well-respected farmer and tradesman in New London, Connecticut. As his remarkable diary - kept from 1711 until 1758 - reveals, he was also a slave owner who owned Adam Jackson for over thirty years. In this engrossing narrative of family life and the slave experience in the colonial North, Allegra di Bonaventura describes the complexity of this master/slave relationship and traces the intertwining stories of two families until the eve of the Revolution.

In the popular imagination the picture of slavery, frozen in time, is one of huge cotton plantations and opulent mansions. However, in over a hundred years of history detailed in this book, the hard reality of slavery in Mississippi's antebellum world is strikingly different from the one of popular myth. It shows that Mississippi's past was never frozen, but always fluid. It shows too that slavery took a number of shapes before its form in the late antebellum mold became crystalized for popular culture.

A stirring and compelling story, full of adventure, set against the background of the move to freedom in Africa. In the face of opposition, hatred, violence and death, the gentler human feelings of friendship and love are nonetheless maintained. Joseph Mahoney is the last Colonial Commissioner in the Kariba Gorge, faced with easing the transition to new rule. To complicate matters, his servant Samson has been accused of murder, and he is drifting apart from Suzie, whom he loves very deeply. Yet personal matters apart, he must deal with the simmering undercurrent of violence and revenge that...

In 1656, a planter in colonial Maryland tortured and killed one of his slaves, an Angolan man named Antonio who refused to work the fields. Over three centuries later, a Detroit labor organizer named Simon Owens watched as strikebreakers wielding bats and lead pipes beat his fellow autoworkers for protesting their inhumane working conditions. Antonio and Owens had nothing in common but the color of their skin and the economic injustices they battled - yet the former is what defines them in America’s consciousness.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the White man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war.

The work focuses on the history and multicultural nature of Belize, formerly British Honduras, whose national identity is a product of multiple ethnic and cultural identities amalgamated, and sometimes fused, to form a single nation.

The saga of the Orisha people continues as they are forced to flee westward from the savage might of their Saracen persecutors, whose soul aim is for their annihilation. It is a tale of brute survival and spiritual fortitude, where strategy and deception are weapons as vital as a blade. Makeri, the ingenuous blacksmith, and the enchanting Priestess Mariami, with her magical powers, navigate the trials that come with leading a people towards their destiny. The Nine-Sided Talisman and its great magical powers, is used by the Great Spirit Hogan to bring Priestess Mariami under his spell, ...

The island of Antigua comes vibrantly to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur who makes his living along the roads that pass through the only towns he has ever seen and the graveyard where he will be buried. The sun shines squarely overhead, the ocean lies on every side, and suppressed passion fills the air. Ignoring the legacy of his father, a poor fisherman, and his mother, who took her own life, Mr. Potter struggles to live at ease amid his surroundings: to purchase a car, to have girlfriends, and to shake off the encumbrance of his daughters.