scholarly journals Another World? East Africa, Decolonisation, and the Global History of the Mid-Twentieth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Ismay Milford ◽  
Gerard McCann ◽  
Emma Hunter ◽  
Daniel Branch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Global History ◽  
East African ◽  
Pan African ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Postcolonial States

Abstract This article proposes that there is a gap in our current understanding of the globalising and deglobalising dynamics of mid-twentieth-century East Africa, one that might be addressed by consolidating and taking forward recent developments in the historiography of decolonisation. Recent work by international historians has recovered the connected world of the 1940s to 1960s: the era of new postcolonial states, the ‘Bandung moment’, pan-African cooperation, and the early Cold War. Yet East Africa is less prominent in these histories than we might expect, despite the vibrancy of current work on this period in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Bringing these two fields into dialogue, through an explicitly regional East African framework and with a particular focus on individual lives, expands our understanding not only of the ‘globalisation of decolonisation’ but also of the deglobalising dynamics of the following decades that are frequently reduced to a history of global economic crisis.

scholarly journals FEDERATION, PARTNERSHIP, AND THE CHRONOLOGIES OF SPACE IN 1950s EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 1325-1348
Author(s):  
ISMAY MILFORD
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
East African ◽  
Chronological Change ◽  
Pan African ◽  
Regional Projects ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
National Borders

AbstractThis article assesses the relationship between the imposed Central African Federation (1953–63) and the ways in which East and Central African thinkers and leaders conveyed and pursued the possibilities of decolonization. Existing literature on federalism in twentieth-century Africa fails to place regional projects in dialogue, studying in isolation East Africa and Central Africa, ‘utopian’ and oppressive regionalisms. But such clear dividing lines were not articulated in the four discursive ‘sketches’ of East and Central Africa that this article brings to light: those of anti-Federation organizations in Nairobi and Ndola in 1952; students at Makerere College (Kampala) in 1953; mobile Malawian activists in regional and pan-African forums around 1955–8; and East African party publicity representatives around 1958–60. At each of these critical moments, thinkers creatively constructed various relationships between geographical space and chronological change, through the lens of a broader, interdependent East and Central Africa, as a means to fend off perceived threats to a precarious advancement towards a democratic future. Attending to the evolution of these ideas shows not only how the Central African Federation placed material constraints on regional solidarity, but how ‘thinking regionally’ could support the case for national borders, even before decolonization.

The War of Legs

Transfers ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Michael Pesek
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
World War ◽  
East African ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Belgian Congo

This article describes the little-known history of military labor and transport during the East African campaign of World War I. Based on sources from German, Belgian, and British archives and publications, it considers the issue of military transport and supply in the thick of war. Traditional histories of World War I tend to be those of battles, but what follows is a history of roads and footpaths. More than a million Africans served as porters for the troops. Many paid with their lives. The organization of military labor was a huge task for the colonial and military bureaucracies for which they were hardly prepared. However, the need to organize military transport eventually initiated a process of modernization of the colonial state in the Belgian Congo and British East Africa. This process was not without backlash or failure. The Germans lost their well-developed military transport infrastructure during the Allied offensive of 1916. The British and Belgians went to war with the question of transport unresolved. They were unable to recruit enough Africans for military labor, a situation made worse by failures in the supplies by porters of food and medical care. One of the main factors that contributed to the success of German forces was the Allies' failure in the “war of legs.”

scholarly journals The Local versus the Global in the history of relativity: The case of Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
First World War ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.

scholarly journals Mission or money?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aileen Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Scholarly Publishing ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Keynote Presentation ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
Circulation Of Knowledge

Keynote presentation. The current debates about the future of academic publishing have generated much discussion about the most appropriate way to support financially the widespread circulation of knowledge. Yet there have been debates about this since at least the 1890s. Drawing upon my historical research, I will describe how scholarly publishing has a long history of not making money. Indeed, until the mid-twentieth century, its costs were frequently sponsored (i.e. subsidised) by learned societies, by universities, by government and by private donors. It was only in the early Cold War years, in a time of expanding output of research, that mission-driven publishers began to seriously focus on sales income as a means of covering costs; and then, later, as a means of generating income. Should publishing be treated as mission, or as a means to mission? My talk will seek to untangle the historical relationship between publishing, money-making and scholarly mission.

The global process of thinking global literature: from Marx’s Weltliteratur to Sarkozy’s littérature-monde

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jernej Habjan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global Approach ◽  
Global History ◽  
Global Literature ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

AbstractThis article outlines the history of research in global literature as a history that is itself global. This kind of global history of the theorization of global literature demands a departure from the existing accounts and their nascent gap between heated theoreticist debates and pacifying historicist anthologies. A global approach to the problematic can bridge this gap because it considers not only what the most influential studies on global literature say, but also where and when they say it. Whether these be Romantic assertions of world literature, post-war pleas for cosmopolitan literature, Cold War polemics about ‘Third World’ literature, or millennial theories of transnational, post-national, planetary, and, indeed, global literature, the article considers not only the object of these studies but also the studies themselves as an object; not only the text but also the context. Hence, a historicization of literary theories of globalization in effect bleeds into a historicization of globalization itself.

scholarly journals Looted Art and Restitution in the Twentieth Century – Towards a Global Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-518
Author(s):  
Bianca Gaudenzi ◽  
Astrid Swenson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Introducing the Journal of Contemporary History Special Issue ‘The Restitution of Looted Art in the 20th Century’, this article proposes a framework for writing the history of looting and restitution in transnational and global perspective. By comparing and contextualizing instances of looting and restitution in different geographical and temporal contexts, it aims to overcome existing historiographical fragmentations and move past the overwhelming focus on the specificities of Nazi looting through an extended timeframe that inserts the Second World War into a longer perspective from the nineteenth century up to present day restitution practices. Particular emphasis is put on the interlinked histories of denazification and decolonization. Problematizing existing analytical, chronological and geographical frameworks, the article suggests how a combination of comparative, entangled and global history approaches can open up promising new avenues of research. It draws out similarities, differences and connections between processes of looting and restitution in order to discuss the extent to which looting and restitution were shaped by – and shaped – changing global networks.

Masai and Kikuyu: An Historical Analysis of Culture Transmission

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Lawren
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
East African ◽  
Relative Population ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Damage ◽  
Cultural Features

The tendency of East African Bantu tribes to borrow cultural features from pastoral or semi-pastoral ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ peoples has often been observed, but thus far only two serious attempts have been made to explain this phenomenon. Herskovits first put forward the idea that the tribes of East Africa formed a ‘cattle complex’ epitomized and shaped by the ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ pastoralists. In a more limited study, LeVine and Sangree concluded that the proclivity of a Bantu tribe to borrow from a ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ group was dependent upon the relative population size of the peoples in question, the success or failure of the Bantu group in defending itself against attack, and the need of the Bantu to ally themselves with a ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ tribe.The tentative history of relations between the Bantu Kikuyu and the ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ Masai established in this paper suggests that both these theories err. Beginning with the first meeting of the two tribes about 1750, the Masai inflicted great damage on the Kikuyu while both were resident on the plains near Mount Kenya. When the Kikuyu secluded themselves in the forests after about 1800, they began to experience a significant degree of success in warding off the Masai, without any need for allies. Yet borrowing went on almost without interruption throughout both periods.The actual nature of that borrowing was very different from the process which Herskovits imagined. Rather than being influenced by the way in which cattle functioned in Masai society, the Kikuyu were much impressed with the Masai as militarists, and this is reflected by the fact that the Kikuyu borrowed far more from the Masai military system than from anything relating to cattle.

MODERN ANGLOPHONE PHILOSOPHY: BETWEEN THE SEMINAR ROOM AND THE COLD WAR

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRUCE KUKLICK
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Seminar Room ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scott Soames ◽  
The Cold War

George A. Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic (Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005)Scott Soames, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1, The Dawn of Analysis; Vol. 2, The Age of Meaning (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003)Although How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science is narrower in scope, the two books included in this review by and large cover the same ground—the history of anglophone philosophy in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the two authors occupy two different universes, and it is instructive to examine the issues and styles of thought that separate their comprehension of analytic philosophy.

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