In 1990 Namibia gained its independence after a decades-long struggle against South African rule--and, before that, against German colonialism. This book, the first new scholarly general history of Namibia in two decades, provides a fresh synthesis of these events, and of the much longer pre-colonial period. A History of Namibia opens with a chapter by John Kinahan covering the evidence of human activity in Namibia from the earliest times to the nineteenth century, and for the first time making a synthesis of current archaeological research widely available to non-specialists. In subsequent chapters, Marion Wallace weaves together the most up-to-date academic research (in English and German) on Namibian history, from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. She explores histories of migration, production and power in the pre-colonial period, the changes triggered by European expansion, and the dynamics of the period of formal colonialism. The coverage of German rule includes a full chapter on the genocide of 1904-8. Here, Wallace outlines the history and historiography of the wars fought in central and southern Namibia, and the subsequent mass imprisonment of defeated Africans in concentration camps. The final two chapters analyse the period of African nationalism, apartheid and war between 1946 and 1990. The book's conclusion looks briefly at the development of Namibia in the two decades since independence. A History of Namibia provides an invaluable introduction and reference source to the past of a country that is often neglected, despite its significance in the history of the region and, indeed, for that of European colonialism and international relations. It makes accessible the latest research on the country, illuminates current controversies, puts forward new insights, and suggests future directions for research. The book's extensive bibliography adds to its usefulness for scholar and general reader alike.

In northwest Namibia, people’s political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State. By elucidating the State through a focus on the social, historical and cultural processes that help constitute it, this study helps chart new territory for anthropology, and it contributes an ethnographic perspective to a wider set of interdisciplinary debates on the State and state processes.

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

This book studies the relationship between photography and history in colonial Southern Africa, using a series of encounters with Southern African photographic archives to reflect on photography as a distinct historical form. Through use of private and public archives, images produced by African itinerant photographers, white settlers, and colonial state institutions, this book explores the relationship between photography and history in colonial Southern Africa. Late nineteenth century Cape Colonial prison albums, police photographs from German Southwest Africa, African studio portraits, identity documents, travel permits and passports from the 1920s and 1930s, visual studies of whiteness and blackness authored by settler photographers, South African dompas photographs from the 1950s and 1960s, and aerial photography from the Eastern Cape in the mid-twentieth century are examined to highlight the ways in which photographic images cut across conventional institutional boundaries and complicate rigid distinctions between the private and the public, the political and the aesthetic, the colonial and the vernacular, or the subject and the object. Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa argues that rather than understanding photographs as a means of preserving and recreating the past in the present, we can value them for how they evoke at once the need for and the limits of historical reconstruction. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of colonial history, photographic history, visual media, and African studies.

This volume provides an accessible overview of cultural tourism in southern Africa. It examines the utilisation of culture in southern African tourism and the related impacts, possibilities and challenges from deep and wide-ranging perspectives. The chapters use case studies to showcase some of the cultural tourism which occurs in the region and link to concepts such as authenticity, commodification, the tourist gaze and ‘Otherness’, heritage, sustainability and sustainable livelihoods. The authors scrutinise both positive and negative impacts of cultural tourism throughout the book and explore issues including the definition of community, ethical considerations, empowerment, gender, participation and inequality. The book will be a useful resource for students and researchers of tourism, geography, anthropology and cultural studies.

Using literacy practices in the newly independent post-apartheid Namibia as a lens through which to examine the effects of globalisation, this broad case study looks at issues surrounding tourism, state control and the new forces of consumerism. By placing literacy at the centre of an investigation into social and cultural change as experienced by individuals, Papen shows that in times of change, reading and writing are always implicated in structures of power and inequality. The book considers language practices that can exclude some members of Namibian society and also looks at the strategies used by local people to accommodate and even embrace the onward march of global English and the influx of foreign visitors, practices and modes of commerce and interaction.