In Nomads in the Shadows of Empires Gufu Oba presents accounts of why the legacies of banditry and ethnic conflicts have proved so difficult to resolve along the southern Ethiopian and northern Kenyan frontier. Using interpretative and comparative methods to dialogue the relationships between different political actors on both sides of the frontier, the work captures the dynamics of political events related to imperial contests over borders and trans-frontier treaty. A complex evolution of inter-societal relations, as well as the relations between partitioned nomads and the imperial states had resulted in persistent conflicts. This work improves the understanding why frontier pastoralists continue to experience conflict over land, even after the transfer of the tribal territories to the imperial and postcolonial states. Please click here to watch an interview with the author in Oromo.

An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years. These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony. In Shadow Empires, Thomas Barfield identifies seven kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity. What all these counterempires had in common was their interactions with existing empires that created the conditions for their development. When highly successful, these counterempires left the shadows to become the world’s largest empires—for example, those of the medieval Muslim Arabs and of the Mongol heirs of Chinggis Khan. Three former shadow empires—Manchu Qing China, Tsarist Russia, and British India—made this transformation in the late eighteenth century and came to rule most of Eurasia. However, the DNA of their origins endured in their unique ruling strategies. Indeed, world powers still use these strategies today, long after their roots in shadow empires have been forgotten. Looking afresh at the histories of important types of empires that are often ignored, Shadow Empires provides an original account of empire formation from the ancient world to the early modern period.

In the context of growing global concerns about climate change, this book presents a regional and sub-continental synthesis of pastoralists' responses to past environmental changes and reflects on the lessons for current and future environmental challenges. Drawing from rock art, archaeology, paleoecological data, trade, ancient hydrological technology, vegetation, social memory and historical documentation, this book creates detailed reconstructions of past climate change adaptations across Sahelian Africa. It evaluates the present and future challenges to climate change adaptation in the region in terms of social memory, rainfall variability, environmental change and armed conflicts and examines the ways in which governance and policy drivers may undermine pastoralists’ adaptive strategies. The book’s scope covers the Red Sea coast, Somaliland, Somalia, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and northern Kenya, part of the Ethiopian highlands and Eritrea, areas where past climate change has been extreme and future change makes it vital to understand the dynamics of adaptation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental history, human ecology, geography, climate change, environment studies, development studies, pastoralism, anthropology and African studies.

Offers an insightful yet readable study of the paths - and challenges - to social cohesion in Africa, by experienced historians, economists and political scientists.

The strange, untold story of the Nazis and adventurers who fought for Ethiopia against Mussolini’s invaders.