Identity, Land and Revolt in Egyptian Earth: An Ecofeminist Reading

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jihan Zakarriya
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Period ◽  
Rural Culture ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Common People ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
Cultural Isolation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Egypt

Abstract This article rethinks the representation of Egyptian rural culture and peasant participation in the nationalist struggle against British colonialism in Abdel Rahman al-Sharqaawi’s well-known novel Egyptian Earth, Al-Ard (1954). It specifically examines the concepts of identity, land, and revolt in Egyptian Earth from an ecofeminist perspective, relating peasants’ resistance against corrupt feudal-imperialist injustices in early twentieth-century Egypt to the dominant patriarchal cultural attitudes towards women’s and nature’s positions in the pre- and post-1952 revolutionary Egypt. It argues that although al-Sharqaawi’s Egyptian Earth gives marginalized Egyptian peasants the opportunity to participate in an important transitional period in the history of modern Egypt, it discusses the invisible psycho-cultural, environmental and social reasons and circumstances that hinder democratic transition in post-1952 revolution, with a particular focus on Egyptian countryside. Within this context, Egyptian villagers in Egyptian Earth are not just colonized people fighting colonial violence and discriminations through reconnecting to their land. They also stand for a patriarchal place and land suffering complicated, deep-seated problems of cultural isolation, sexism, and tribalism. In this way, Egyptian Earth develops ecofeminist ethics that condemn the colonial rule and the nationalist discourse, as both maintain hierarchical relationships between the urban and the rural, the male and the female, culture and nature, and authority and common people.

Islam and Colonial Rule in Lagos

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Olakunle A. Lawal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Islam And Politics ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Process Of Urbanization

IntroductionThis essay provides an explanation of the dynamics of the interactionbetween Islam and politics by placing emphasis on the role played byMuslims in the collision of traditionalism and British rule as colonialismtook root in Lagos. The focus is on the development of a political schismwithin the nascent Muslim community of metropolitan Lagos at the startof the twentieth century up until the end of the 1940s. It highlights therole of Islam in an emerging urban settlement experiencing rapid transformationfrom a purely rural and traditional center into a colonial urbancenter. The essay is located within the broader issues of urban change andtransition in twentieth-century tropical Africa. Three major developments(viz: the central mosque crisis, the Eleko affair, and the Oluwa land case)are used as the vehicles through which the objectives of the essay areachieved.The introduction of Islam into Lagos has been studied by T. G. O.Gbadamosi as part of the history of Islam in southwestern Nigeria. Thisepic study does not pay specific attention to Lagos, devoted as it is to thegrowth of Islam in a far-flung territory like the whole of modem southwesternNigeria. His contribution to a collection of essays on the historyof Lagos curiously leaves out Islam’s phenomenal impact on Lagosianpolitics during the first half of the twentieth century. In an attempt to fillthis gap, Hakeem Danmole’s essay also stops short of appreciating the fundamentallink between the process of urbanization, symbolized in this caseby colonial rule, and the vanguard role played by Muslims in the inevitableclash of tradition and colonial rule in Lagos between 1900 and 1950.

Law in Common

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Common People ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Economic Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
Late Medieval England

There were tens of thousands of different local law-courts in late-medieval England, providing the most common forums for the working out of disputes and the making of decisions about local governance. While historians have long studied these institutions, there have been very few attempts to understand this complex institutional form of ‘legal pluralism’. Law in Common provides a way of apprehending this complexity by drawing out broader patterns of legal engagement. The first half of the book explores four ‘local legal cultures’ – in the countryside, towns and cities, the maritime world, and Forests – that grew up around legal institutions, landscapes, and forms of socio-economic practice in these places, and produced distinctive senses of law. The second half of the book turns to examine ‘common legalities’, widespread forms of social practice that emerge across these different localities, through which people aimed to invoke the power of law. Through studies of the physical landscape, the production of legitimate knowledge, the emergence of English as a legal vernacular, and the proliferation of legal documents, it offers a new way to understand how common people engaged with law in the course of their everyday lives. Drawing on a huge body of archival research from the plenitude of different local institutions, Law in Common offers a new social history of law that aims to explain how common people negotiated the transformational changes of the long fifteenth century through legality.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Skreslet Hernandez
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Interdisciplinary Methods ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Egypt

This introduction sets out the scope of the book’s argument and explains why Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī is such an interesting figure in the history of Islamic legal thought. It describes the reception of al-Suyūṭī’s work at home in Cairo and abroad as well as his lasting legacy. It outlines the analytical framework and the importance of interdisciplinary methods, including discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, anthropology, history, religious studies, and literary criticism to the argument of the book. An explanation of how al-Suyūṭī’s life can inform our understanding of the current situation in modern Egypt is followed by a review of the secondary literature and a full outline of each chapter.

Daily Encounters That Make History: History from Below and Archival Collaboration

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-143
Author(s):  
Hanan Hammad
Keyword(s):  
Nile Delta ◽  
Red Light ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Factory Worker ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Egypt ◽  
Red Light District

What does a casual confrontation in a rundown shack between a landlady and her factory-worker tenant tell us about the history of gender and class relations in modern Egypt? Could a lost watch in a red-light district in the middle of the Nile Delta complicate our understanding of the history of sexuality and urbanization? Can an unexpectedly intimate embrace on a sleeping mat illuminate a link in the history of class, gender, and urbanization in modern Egypt?

Cosmopolitan Capitalists and Colonial Rule. The business structure and corporate culture of the Swiss merchant house Volkart Bros., 1850s–1960s

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
CHRISTOF DEJUNG
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Positive Interactions ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Private Company ◽  
European Firm ◽  
Business Goals ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article examines the history of the Swiss merchant house Volkart Bros., which was one of the most important exporters of Indian raw cotton and one of the biggest trading firms in South Asia during the colonial period. The study allows for a fresh look at Indian economic history by putting forth two main arguments. First, it charts the history of a continental European firm that was active in South Asia to offer a better understanding of the economic entanglements of the subcontinent with the wider world, which often had a reach beyond the empire. This ties in with recent research initiatives that aim to examine the history of imperialism from a transnational perspective. Second, the history of a private company helps in developing a micro-perspective on the often ambiguous relation between the business goals of individual enterprises and colonial rule. The article argues that this may be evidence of the fact that capitalism and imperialism were two different, although sometimes converging, spatial structures, each with a distinct logic of its own. What is more, the positive interactions between European and Indian businessmen, fostered by a cosmopolitan attitude among business elites, point to the fact that even in the age of empire, the class background of actors could be more important for the establishing of cooperative ventures than the colour of their skin or their geographical origin. It is argued that this offers the possibility of examining the history of world trade in terms of global social history.

Litigating Honor, Defamation, and Shame in Southern Rhodesia

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Allison K. Shutt
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Government Employees ◽  
Court Records ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
Special Protection

Abstract:This article reviews the history of defamation cases involving Africans in Southern Rhodesia. Two precedent-setting cases, one in 1938 and the other in 1946, provided a legal rationale for finding defamation that rested on the ability of litigants to prove they had been shamed. The testimony and evidence of these cases, both of which involved government employees, tracks how colonial rule was altering hierarchy and changing definitions of honor, often to the bewilderment of the litigants themselves. Importantly, both cases concluded that African employees of the state deserved special protection from defamation. The article then traces how the rules and ambiguities resulting from the legal logic of the 1938 and 1946 cases gave a wider group of litigants such as clerks, police, clergy, and teachers room to maneuver in the courtroom where they also claimed their professional honor. Such litigants perfectly understood the expectations of the court and performed accordingly by recounting embarrassing, even painful, experiences, all to validate their personal and professional honor in court. Such performances raise the question of how we might use court records to write a history of the emotional costs to people who used astute strategies that rested on dishonorable revelations to win their cases.

The Garvey Movement in British West Africa

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. Okonkwo
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
The West ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Blacks ◽  
Garvey Movement ◽  
African Nationalism

The paper seeks to present new information concerning the activities of the West African branches of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The author has included biographical profiles of the British West African Garveyites to integrate the Garvey movement into the history of West African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.It is argued that Garveyism was welcomed in British West Africa by the older cultural nationalists who saw Garveyism as an extension of Blyden's ideas. Pan-African sentiments of racial unity and solidarity of African and American blacks, pride in the history of the race, and self-help projects had wide circulation in West Africa from the latter part of the nineteenth century, as a result of Blyden's influence. Joining the branches of the U.N.I.A. was a practical demonstration of a long-standing commitment to cultural and racial nationalism among the West African elite.The Garvey movement also marked the beginning of a new era in West African nationalism. Garvey's radical pronouncements on freeing Africa from colonial rule were unacceptable to the older cultural nationalists who dominated the Garvey groups. They disavowed any interest in organizing a central nation for the race. However, Garvey's ideas may have had long-term effects. By the 1930s the idea of independence from colonial rule seemed more attractive to the West African nationalists. Garvey was one of the first to speak out boldly for freedom from colonialism.The concrete achievements of the West African branches of the U.N.I.A. were small indeed. Nigeria had the most Garveyite activity in British West Africa. There was an agent for the Black Star Line in Lagos and a branch of the U.N.I.A. and A.C.L. The Gold Coast had the least Garveyite activity, probably because of their involvement in the National Congress of British West Africa and also because of their more critical attitude towards co-operation with American blacks. They believed that Africans were best qualified to lead any joint efforts for intra-racial co-operation.

scholarly journals A Truly Free State in the Congo: Slavery and Abolition in Global Historical Perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-76
Author(s):  
John Donoghue
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
History Of

The differences between slavery now and then are less important than the historical links that bind them, links in an awful chain of bondage that bind the history of the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the resurgence of slavery in Africa today. As this article illustrates, nowhere is this truer, both in historical and contemporary terms, than in the Congo. The links binding the Congo to the history of human bondage were first forged in the crucible of early modern capitalism and they have been made fast by the proliferation of “free market reform” today, which despite the fundamentalist cant of its advocates, has hardly proven to be a force of human liberation; instead, placing the last 500 years of the Congo region in global context, we can see how capitalism has proven to be the world’s greatest purveyor of human bondage. The article concludes with an argument that the reconstruction of civil society in the Democratic Republic of Congo after decades of war, dictatorship, and neo-colonial rule depends crucially on the continued success of an already impressive Congolese abolitionist movement. Without making an end to slavery, once and for all, civil society can hardly prosper in a country where slavery has historically brought about its destruction.

scholarly journals Approaches to the review of the Khotyn Uprising in 1919 in soviet and contemporary Ukrainian historiography

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (50) ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Tetyana Dubitska
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Historiography

The Khotyn Uprising was an event that became one of the most striking pages in the history of the region in the XX century. Considerable attention was paid to the study of the history of this issue during the Soviet period, but interpretation of the rebellion has changed several times because of the increasing influence of ideology on the research of Soviet scientists. With the proclamation of Ukraine's Independence, it became possible to objectively cover these events, which led to a process of rethinking the scientific works of Soviet researchers. The presence of different approaches in covering this issue necessitates a detailed analysis of the transformations that took place in the interpretation of the Khotyn uprising. The article explores the specific features of the main approaches to the coverage of the Khotyn uprising in Soviet and contemporary Ukrainian scientific historical literature. It is established that in the 20th – 40th of the XX century the Khotyn uprising was reported as a spontaneous peasant rebellion against the Romanian invaders. According to the Representatives of this approach, one of the main causes of the defeat of uprising was the absence of a Bolshevik insurgency organisation. It is revealed that 50th of the XX century became a transitional period between the previous interpretation of the Khotyn uprising and the new coverage of events, as scientists still emphasized that the uprising was peasantry, but began to provide a significance to revolutionary elements among them. Since the 60th of the XX century the situation is changed: ideology has become a decisive element in research of the uprising and, therefore, all events related to the uprising have been covered in according to the ideology. Thus, the Khotyn uprising is reported as prepared by the communist-led committee, had a well-planned commencement and aimed at restoring Soviet power in the Khotyn region. It is established that with the proclamation of Ukraine's Independence in the coverage of the uprising, there are dramatic changes related to the nature and purpose of the uprising, the political orientations of its leaders, etc. In contemporary Ukrainian science, for example, the Bolshevik character of the uprising and the struggle for power of the Soviets is refuted; instead, the emphasis was made on national liberation; it was confirmed the thesis about the orientation of some of the organizers of the uprising to the Ukrainian People's Republic in Kiev. The neutrality of the UPR’s Directory is explained because of the threat of war with Romania. Keywords: Khotyn uprising, Soviet historiography, contemporary Ukrainian historiography.

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