The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War
Liberia has been one of Africa's most violent trouble spots. This book traces the history of the civil war that has blighted Liberia and looks at its political, ethnic and cultural roots. It focuses on the role religion and ritual have played in shaping and intensifying this brutal war.
Mohamoud's work considers the underlying causes for the breakdown of the state across both time and space. Time is considered across the triple history - the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial processes. Space is used in the sense of taking the whole of Somalia as a unit of analysis. This approach enables the discovery of different ......
The island of Mauritius lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 550 miles east of Madagascar. Uninhabited until the arrival of colonists in the late sixteenth century, Mauritius was subsequently populated by many different peoples as successive waves of colonizers and slaves arrived at its shores. The French ruled the island from the early ......
Cleopatra: kohl and vipers, barges and thrones, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We have long been schooled in the myth of the Egyptian ruler. In his new book Michel Chauveau brings us a picture of her firmly based in reality. Cleopatra VII reigned in Egypt between 51 and 30 B.C.E. Her primary goal as a ruler was to restore over the eastern ......
This study traces the rise of the Islamic Jihad, its ideological platform, and its relations with other political forces both within and outside the Palestinian arena. The study provides a basis for a wider discussion of how Palestinian Islamists deal with the challenge of peace created by the Oslo Accords, particularly the shift of the PLO from a ......
This text tells the story of how the enslavement of Africans by Berbers, Arabs and other Africans became institutionalized and legitimized throughout Muslim Africa. It provides a portrait of domestic slavery from the 10th to 19th-centuries in a wider religious, social and economic context.
Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV, was king of Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty and reigned from 1375 to 1358 B.C. E. Called the "religious revolutionary," he is the earliest known creator of a new religion. The cult he founded broke with Egypt's traditional polytheism and focused its worship on a single deity, the sun god Aten. Erik ......
This text explores the profound changes that have affected social relations in Morocco over the last 150 years, particularly those between the sexes and between linguistic identities and cultures. It provides a portrait of Morocco under colonial and post-colonial leadership.
This text is a portrait of a continent through the author's encounters with African leaders from Zaire to South Africa. Russell recounts meetings with each in an attempt to answer questions of Africa's future: can a new generation of leaders change the future or is Africa doomed to further turmoil?
