The History of Gabon

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Yates
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Rentier State ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The 19Th Century

Primeval rainforest at the Equator on the west coast of Africa, the land we know as Gabon, was settled prehistorically by Pygmies during the late Stone Age, and then by Bantu-speaking migrants during the Iron Age. These culturally diverse peoples did not develop a common language or political system with one another until after their violent conquest by Europeans during the colonial era. The Age of Discovery in the 15th century brought European explorers to the coast. The Atlantic triangle trade, with its slave barracoons and entrepôts, transformed some African communities along the coast into centralized kingdoms, and turned other clan-based societies of the forested interior into hunted peoples suspicious of any and all outsiders, European or African. The Scramble for Africa brought military expeditions into Gabon in the 19th century, when French colonial rule was established. Colonialism bestowed on the ethnic groups of Gabon a protonational identity of being “Gabonese,” although this nationalist impulse was muted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the effort of French authorities and missionaries to assimilate black Africans into France’s culture and civilization. Unassimilated colonial subjects in the interior of the newly conquered territory violently resisted French colonial rule until the world wars, by which time the assimilation project had sufficiently fashioned a new coastal French-educated Gabonese elite. The two world wars weakened France and led these assimilated elites to a call for political reforms, at first taking the form of mono-ethnic-based political parties, but eventually coalescing around multiethnic coalitions, largely francophone in outlook, while retaining many elements of older precolonial identities. Independence in 1960 brought to power three authoritarian rulers—Léon Mba, Omar Bongo, and Ali Bongo—as well as consolidation of an oil-rentier state and an oxymoronic dynastic republic. “Gabonese” national identity emerged, an imagined community constructed out of African music, literature, and art, yet incorporating French as its lingua franca.

Women in Angola

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana P. Candido
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
New Policies ◽  
Internal Pressures ◽  
The 19Th Century

European colonial powers established the contemporary boundaries of Angola during the Conference of Berlin (1884–1885). However, colonialism dates to the 15th century, when Portuguese merchants first contacted the Kingdom of Kongo along the Congo River and established early settlements in Luanda (1575) and Benguela (1617). Parts of the territories that became known as Angola in the early 20th century have a long history of interaction with the outside world, and as a result European primary sources provide much of the information available to historians. The reports, official correspondence, and diaries were produced by European men and are therefore problematic. However, by reading against the grain scholars can begin to understand how women lived in Angola before the 20th century. Some, such as Queen Njinga, had access to political power, and others, such as Dona Ana Joaquina dos Santos e Silva, enjoyed great wealth. Kimpa Vita was a prophet who led a movement of political and religious renewal and was killed as a result. Most women never appeared in historical documents but were fundamental to the economic and social existence of their communities as farmers, traders, artisans, mediums, and enslaved individuals. The end of the slave trade in the 1850s led to the expansion of the so-called legitimate trade and plantation economies, which privileged male labor while relying on women’s domestic contributions. The arrival of a larger number of missionaries, colonial troops, and Portuguese settlers by the end of the 19th century resulted in new policies that stimulated migration and family separation. It also introduced new ideas about morality, sexuality, and motherhood. Women resisted and joined anticolonial movements. After independence, decades of civil war increased forced displacement, gender imbalance, and sexual violence. The greater stability at the end of the armed conflict may favor the expansion of women’s organizations and internal pressures to address gender inequalities.

Foreign Travelers in Mexico

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Garza
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Foreign Travel ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

The history of foreign travel to Mexico has been dependent on the country’s political, economic, and social conditions. Travel restrictions, banditry, the condition of transportation routes and ports, political stability, revolution, and the development of a tourist industry have all played a role in how travelers have written about Mexico. Despite periodic challenges, Mexico has proven to be an alluring destination for foreign travelers since the colonial era. Men and women have journeyed to Mexico for different reasons, some on official business and others for pleasure or to escape their lives back home, and in turn have produced numerous accounts that have served to attract more visitors and have functioned as a valuable source of information on the everyday life of Mexico’s peoples. Still others have traveled to Mexico for conquest, and while their motivations were violent, their journals have served as a guide for those interested in retracing the same routes. Travelers have depicted landscapes, communities, peoples, and practices; offered insight into important historic periods; and depicted Mexico as exotic, bountiful, primitive, or dangerous. This historical topic is divided into three distinct eras: the colonial period, the 19th century, and the 20th century. The Spanish Crown restricted foreign travel to Mexico during the colonial era (1521–1821), resulting in the relative scarcity of accounts from the period. Foreign travelers during this period were conquistadors, clerics, officials, or explorers, all with varying degrees of literacy. During the 19th century, foreign travelers came in three overlapping waves: the early republic era (1821–1840), when most were either investors or diplomats; the middle period (1830–1870), an era dominated by soldiers, travelers, and archeologists; and the Porfiriato (1876–1911), when investors and wealthy tourists flooded Mexico. The 1910 Mexican Revolution marks the beginning of Mexico’s 20th century and two distinct periods of foreign travel, both influenced by state power and violence. The revolutionary and state-building era (1910–1946) saw foreign travelers as primarily war journalists and writers exploring the effects of the revolution’s social and cultural measures. After World War II, foreign travelers encountered the tourism era (1946–1968), a period under the influence of a burgeoning state tourism industry. Despite this challenge, travelers, many of them writers, carved out their own niches.

scholarly journals Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Catana
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Method Point

Abstract This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s commentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assumption of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not find this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller (active in the second half of the 19th century) is typically regarded as the first to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having finalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone (1952) and Bonetti (1971), for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. The present analysis, then, has value for an understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads. It also explains why “pre-Bruckerian” interpretations of Plotinus appear alien to the modern reader; the analysis may even serve to make some sense of the hermeneutics employed by Renaissance Platonists and commentators, who are often eclipsed from the tradition of Platonism.

Imperialism, Race, and Therapeutics: The Legacy of Medicalizing the “Colonial Body”

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 506-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Barton
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Colonial Medicine ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Indian Medical ◽  
Gynecology And Obstetrics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Body ◽  
The 19Th Century

The BiDil controversy in America coincides with a renewed interest in the linkages between race and therapeutics, whether in the medical history of the United States itself, or in the colonial world. During the colonial era in South Asia, many anthropological and medical researchers conducted research which compared the European and “colonial” body, contrasting everything from blood composition to brain weight between the races of the Indian Empire. This, as Mark Harrison has shown, was fundamentally a phenomenon of the 19th century, arguing that “[i]t was only after 1800 that racial identities came to be fixed and that India was viewed with terror, as a reservoir of filth and disease.” Racist attitudes in British Indian colonial medicine are not hard to discover. They underpinned, for instance, campaigns to improve the appallingly high maternal and infant mortality rates in which the blame was placed squarely upon the women and the indigenous midwives who delivered them rather than the poverty in which they lived. As such, Peers Dimmock, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Calcutta Medical School, opened his address to the First Indian Medical Congress in 1894 with a diatribe against “the unclean and repulsive traditionary [sic] methods of the native midwives.”

scholarly journals Jindřichův Hradec and the Landfras Family of Printers

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 146-153
Author(s):  
František Fürbach
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Town Council ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Town

The beginning of the article briefly outlines the history of Jindřichův Hradec from its foundation through its development in the 15th century and especially in the 16th century, until the 19th century, when the Landfras printing works functioned in the town. Afterwards, the article focuses on the Landfras family of printers and its work in Jindřichův Hradec. It deals with the founder of the printing works, Josef Jan Landfras (1869–1840), as well as with his family background and his public activities. Most attention is devoted to his successor, Alois Landfras (1797–1875), who became one of the most remarkable figures in the history of Jindřichův Hradec, because he was very actively involved in social events in the town. From 1841, he was a member of the town council; ten years later, he was elected mayor and remained in the position for ten years. His private and family life is marginally mentioned as well. The last member of the family active in the 19th century was Vilém Antonín Landfras (1830–1902), who was also a member of the town council. Thanks to him, the weekly Ohlas od Nežárky [Echoes from the River Nežárka] began to be published in the town in 1871. The article further mentions his important role in the organisation of the social entertainment of burghers and his family life. The end of the paper is devoted to his son, Vilém Bohumil Landfras (1865–1931), whose work falls into the first third of the 20th century.

scholarly journals Muhammed ben Yusef: From a “Golden Cell” to the First 5-year Plan (Commemorating the 65th Anniversary of Independence of the Kingdom of Morocco)

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-67
Author(s):  
Nikolay N. Dyakov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
65Th Anniversary ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
French Protectorate ◽  
In The Beginning

Muhammed b. Yusuf (1909–1961) — a key person in political history of Morocco in the middle of the 20th C. With his intronization in the beginning of the French colonial rule Muhammed b. Yusuf started in his biography a long and winding road from a puppet sultanate as an instrument of the French Protectorate, to the leadership in the liberation movement, becoming a symbol of nationalism and a father-founder of the independent Moroccan statehood restored in 1956.

The History of Angola

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Ball
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
River Estuary ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The 19Th Century

Angola’s contemporary political boundaries resulted from 20th-century colonialism. The roots of Angola, however, reach far into the past. When Portuguese caravels arrived in the Congo River estuary in the late 15th century, independent African polities dotted this vast region. Some people lived in populous, hierarchical states such as the Kingdom of Kongo, but most lived in smaller political entities centered on lineage-village settlements. The Portuguese colony of Angola grew out of a settlement established at Luanda Bay in 1576. From its inception, Portuguese Angola existed to profit from the transatlantic slave trade, which became the colony’s economic foundation for the next three centuries. A Luso-African population and a creole culture developed in the colonial nuclei of Luanda and Benguela (founded 1617). The expansion of the colonial state into the interior occurred intermittently until the end of the 19th century, when Portuguese authorities initiated a series of wars of conquest that lasted up until the end of the First World War. During the 20th century, the colonial state consolidated military control over the whole territory, instituted an infrastructure of administration, and developed an economy of resource extraction. A nationalist sentiment developed among Luso-African thinkers in the early 20th century, and by the 1950s these ideas coalesced into a nationalist movement aimed at independence. Simultaneously, anticolonial movements developed among mission-educated elites in the Kikongo-speaking north and in the Umbundu-speaking central highlands. Portugal’s authoritarian New State leaders brutally suppressed these disparate nationalist movements during more than a decade of guerrilla war. A revolution in Portugal in 1974 ushered in negotiations leading to Angolan independence on November 11, 1975. Competing nationalist movements, bolstered by foreign intervention, refused to share governance and as a result plunged Angola into a brutal civil war that lasted until 2002.

Warfare in Spanish America

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Military

In the same way that it is possible to understand warfare as organized violence with political ends, it is also useful to think of it as a particular condition of a society: a set of radically transforming experiences of individuals and communities; an unpredictable and chaotic process that defines identities and produces new forms of common life; and the creative space of a particular culture marked by different types of relationships between the members of a community. As can be seen from several historiographical traditions, there is a direct relationship between warfare and the process of state building: the state makes war and war makes the state. The regime established in America from the end of the 15th century to the 19th century can be explained by this relationship between institutional construction and the practice of violence. Like any empire of its time, the Spanish monarchy founded its authority, part of its legitimacy, its fiscal and administrative organization, its bureaucracy, its control systems, and its trade opportunities on the ground of warfare, and with these characteristics informed the slow and problematic processes of conquest, colonization, and subjection of the New World. Approaching Spanish America through both warfare and the military offers two major advantages: on the one hand, learning the history of its institutional, social, political, economic, and cultural development, and on the other, identifying the prolific historiography that has studied it. This bibliographical selection expresses both fields: the history of warfare in Spanish America and its changing historiography. The characteristics, pretensions, contradictions, and flaws of the Spanish institutional framework that for three centuries expanded from the Caribbean and came to dominate immense regions of North, Central, and South America until it entered into crisis and collapsed, leading to the emergence of national states, can be understood from its capacity to mobilize economic and human resources for warfare. Likewise, these very diverse armed forces involved in such processes were historical expressions of the societies that produced them. The studies in this bibliography express the historical complexity of Spanish America from the perspective of organization and experience of warfare. Although the sections are thematic, as far as possible the selection seeks to include in each case the broad spectrum of the three centuries of colonial domination; the sections referring to War Experiences do evolve with a more chronological criterion from conquests to independences and the emergence of national states.

THE LANGUAGE POLICY IN TURKIC STATES AND COMMUNITIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-237
Author(s):  
Elchin Ibrahimov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
First Order ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The history of the language policy of the Turks begins with the work Divanu lugat at-turk, written by Mahmud Kashgari in the 11th century. Despite the fact that the XI-XVII centuries were a mixed period for the language policy of the Turkic states and communities, it contained many guiding and important questions for subsequent stages. Issues of language policy, originating from the work of Kashgari, continued with the publication in 1277 of the first order in the Turkic language by Mehmet-bey Karamanoglu, who is one of the most prominent figures in Anatolian Turkic history, and culminated in the creation of the impeccable work Divan in the Turkic language by the great Azerbaijani poet Imadaddin Nasimi who lived in the late XIV - early XV centuries. Later, the great Uzbek poet of the 15th century, Alisher Navoi, improved the Turkic language both culturally and literally, putting it on a par with the two most influential languages of that time, Arabic and Persian. The appeal to the Turkic language and the revival of the Turkic language in literature before Alisher Navoi, the emergence of the Turkic language, both in Azerbaijan and in Anatolia and Central Asia, as well as in the works of I. Nasimi, G. Burkhanaddin, Y. Emre, Mevlana, made this the language of the common literary language of the Turkic tribes: Uzbeks, Kazakhs-Kyrgyz, Turkmens of Central Asia, Idil-Ural Turks, Uighurs, Karakhanids, Khorezmians and Kashgharts. This situation continued until the 19th century. This article highlights the history of the language policy of the Turkic states and communities.

Archaeology in West Africa: A Review of Recent Work and a further list of Radiocarbon Dates

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. G. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Smelting ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
South Central ◽  
African Populations ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium

This article surveys the latest archaeological research and dating results for West Africa. For the Iron Age, recent fieldwork has been spread widely: especially noteworthy is that bearing on the history of ancient Ghana and Mali. Work on the Late Stone Age appears by contrast to have been rather patchy lately, although various palaeoecological researches continue to improve our understanding of the changing environments affecting West African populations over the last 10,000 years. In south-central Niger, moreover, remains of copper-smelting by a stone-using community are dated to around 2000 B.C. From the same region, as also from northern Ghana, comes further evidence for the inception of the Iron Age during the first millennium b.c.The article is prefaced by some critical comments on the citing and interpretation of radiocarbon datings in historical discussions, and on the meaning of ‘corrected’ and ‘calendar dates’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document