Historical study of social change and cultural change in Africa South of Sahara, with particular reference to East Africa and Central Africa - refers to the period prior to the 20th century, and covers geographical aspects, political aspects, tribal peoples, demographic aspects and cultural factors, leadership, tradition, migrations, religion, languages, family and social structures, the role of European countries, etc. Bibliography pp. 325 to 327 and maps.

Professor Shepperson says of this regional economic history of East Central Africa that it is a "refreshing combination of a scholarly survey of a relatively new field of African history and of a contribution to an important controversy on African underdevelopment." Alpers has written a history of the penetration and changing character of international trade in East Central Africa from the fifteenth to the later nineteenth century. His study focuses on a vast and little known region that includes southern Tanzania, northern Mozambique, and Malawi, with extension north along the Swahili coast and west as far as the Lunda state of the Mwata Kazembe. He examines both the competition between traders and their internal impact on the various societies of East Central Africa. Alpers' main concern is to demonstrate that the historical roots of underdevelopment in the area are to be found 'in the system of international trade which was initiated by Arabs in the fifteenth century, seized and extended by the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dominated by a complex mixture of Indian, Arab and Western capitalisms in the nineteenth century'. Thus this readable and original book places East African trading systems within the larger Western Indian Ocean system and in the world capitalist system. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Examines the history of central and eastern Africa, including an overview of each of the countries that comprise this area of the continent.

Much writing about 19th-century East Africa has been distorted by the legacy of post-Enlightenment thought as well as by more insidious racist ideologies. Humanitarian lobbies throughout Western Europe, strongly influenced by positivist ideas, and campaigning to highlight the ravages of the slave trade, condemned Africa in their writings and propaganda to the periphery, outside universal history. Africa was reduced to a continent of slavery, in which the market, entrepreneurship and free wage labour could not exist. These ideas penetrated scholarly works and still survive in some guises. The consequence is that a variety of initiatives and forms of labour organization associated with the long distance trades in ivory and imported cloth have been overlooked by scholars, while the slave paradigm received widespread attention. Utilizing the conceptual tool of crew culture, Rockel documents a large-scale African migrant labour system. Nyamwezi caravan porters from the interior, as well as coastal Zanzibaris and Waungwana, forged a unique way of life in which market values and experience of wage labour and the caravan safari combined with customary standards and notions of honour derived from innovative reconceptualizations of tradition. The safari experience, commercial change, and interactions with peasant and pastoral communities along the trade routes, all contributed to the emergence of a unique East Africa modernity. This book can be read on a variety of levels It is a journey, a labour history, a story of African initiative and adaptation to modernity, and a contribution to a history of Tanzania and East Africa that gives due attention to intersocietal linkages, and networks. Rockel utilizes a variety of methodologies and theoretical approaches derived from neo-Marxist and postcolonial perspectives, as well as Africanist innovations in oral historiography and labour and gender studies. Drawing on such insights, Carriers of Culture develops and expands our understanding of the way workers invent new and unique cultures to make sense of and control the labour process, create support networks including collective leisure activities, maximize and protect economic interests, and manage the labour market. The book is clearly written, and is illustrated with late-19th-century photographs and artwork.

Africa at the beginning of the nineteenth century : issues and prospects / J.F.A. Ajayi -- Africa and the world-economy / I. Wallerstein -- New trends and processes in Africa in the nineteenth century / A.A. Boahen -- The abolition of the slave trade / S. Daget -- The Mfecane and the rise of new African states / L.D. Ngcongco -- The impact of the Mfecane on the Cape Colony / E.K. Mashingaidze -- The British, Boers and Africans in south Africa, 1850-80 / N. Bhebe -- The countries of the Zambezi basin / A.F. Isaacman -- The East African coast and hinterland, 1800-45 / A.I. Salim -- The East African coast and hinterland, 1845-80 / I.N. Kimambo -- Peoples and states of the Great Lakes region / D.W. Cohen -- The Congo Basin and Angola / J.L. Vellut -- The renaissance of Egypt, 1805-81 / A. Abdel-Malek -- The Sudan in the nineteenth century / H.A. Ibrahim -- Ethiopia and Somalia / R. Pankhurst -- Madagascar 1800-80 / P.M. Mutibwa -- New trends in the Maghrib : Algeria, Tunisia and Libya / M.H. Cherif -- Morocco from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 1880 / A. Laroui -- New patterns of European intervention in the Maghrib / N. Ivanov -- The Sahara in the nineteenth century / S. Baier -- The nineteenth-century Islamic revolutions in West Africa / A. Batran -- The Sokoto caliphate and Borno / M. Last -- Massina and the Torodbe (Tukuloor) empire until 1878 / M. Ly-Tall -- States and peoples of Senegambia and Upper Guinea / Y. Person -- States and peoples of the Niger Bend and the Volta / K. Arhin and J. Ki-Zerbo -- Dahomey, Yorubaland, Borgu and Benin in the nineteenth century / A.I. Asiwaju -- The Niger delta and the Cameroon region / E.J. Alagoa -- The African diaspora / F.W. Knight -- Conclusion : Africa on the eve of the European conquest / J.F.A. Ajayi.