The History of Malindi. A Geographical Analysis of an East African Coastal Town. By E. R. Bradley. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau1973. Pp. xvi + 301.

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-426
Author(s):  
T. O. Beidelman
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Peter Leman

The introductory chapter establishes a critical framework for reading oral jurisprudence in East Africa in relationship to narratives of temporality in British colonial law, colonial and postcolonial literatures, and modern law generally. I begin with a brief analysis of the 2012 trial Mutua and others v. The Foreign Commonwealth Office to illustrate the relationship between law and time and the lasting effects of the British Empire’s “crisis of modernity,” or simultaneous promotion of and retreat from modernity as it faced resistance in the colonies. I then theorize the oral-legalistic strategies that colonial subjects developed to exploit this crisis and restore, imaginatively at first, what was lost in the encounter with colonial time. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has argued that orature, in particular, “played the most important role” in anti-colonial struggles, and this is so because of its relationship to the deep history of colonial law, which unwittingly empowered legalistic orature with the force of subversion as well as restoration. I conclude with a discussion of East Africa’s important but misunderstood place in the history and development of modern law.


Transfers ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Michael Pesek

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.”


The Lake Rudolf Rift Valley Expedition was designed to carry out many different lines of investigation in the Lake Rudolf Basin. One of the chief of these was a study of the geological history of that part of the East African Rift Valley. The expedition was assisted financially by The Royal Society, The Geological Society of London, The Royal Geographical Society, The Percy Sladen Trustees and the Geographical and Geological Sections of the British Association. A general description of the activities of the Expedition was given in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society (Fuchs 1935). Owing to the tragic loss of two members of the expedition, Dr W. S. Dyson and Mr W. R. H. Martin, two fruitless months were spent searching for them. Consequently a great amount of the work planned for the east side of the lake had to be abandoned. Nevertheless, the considerable distance travelled within the 50,000 sq. miles of the Rudolf Basin has enabled me to make out the chief events of its geological history. I am very much indebted to all those who assisted us in the field and at home, in particular to the Kenya Government, the Officers of the King’s African Rifles, and Mr H. L. Sikes of the Public Works Department; I would also like to thank Mr A. M. Champion, Provincial Commissioner of Turkana, who wholeheartedly assisted us in every way possible both in the field and at home, for he has placed at my disposal his own excellent topographical maps and his extensive observations on the geology of the area. I am also deeply indebted to Professor O. T. Jones, Mr Henry Woods and Mr W. Campbell Smith for their criticisms. Mr Campbell Smith has also given me provisional identifications of the rocks.


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