History Commons^™

“God Was With Us:” Child Labor In Colonial Kenya, 1922 - 1950s, Samson K. Ndanyi

Journal of Retracing Africa

Contentious debates about the allowable minimum age of child laborers informed the discourse of child labor in colonial Kenya between 1922 and the 1950s. Beginning with the Harry Thuku Uprising of 1922 that instigated the discussion over labor policy concerning juvenile wage laborers and heightened the tension between the British colonial administration and African adult workers, the British government in Kenya struggled to forge coherent labor policies concerning the ages of African child workers. Frequent changes in labor laws made it easier for labor recruiters and employers to manipulate the system by recruiting younger children for work thus drawing them …

"Town Of God": Ota Benga, The Batetela Boys, And The Promise Of Black America, Karen Sotiropoulos

Karen Sotiropoulos

No abstract provided.

"Town Of God": Ota Benga, The Batetela Boys, And The Promise Of Black America, Karen Sotiropoulos

Karen Sotiropoulos

No abstract provided.

The First Globalization: Portugal, The Age Of Exploration, And Engaging The “Other” In The Fifteenth And Sixteenth Centuries, Peter Ellerkamp

History Theses

In Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Portugal was the first European power to initiate encounters between Muslims and Christians, Europeans and Africans, and Asians and Americans, on a truly global scale. In some instances, the Portuguese explicitly imposed their culture onto the natives, and in others, they formed casados—intermarriage and residence with locals. Relationships with the “other”—non-Portuguese agents encountered on the Voyages of Discovery—were tied to the economic realties of expansion. Between 1415-1580, the Portuguese acted as pirates, diplomats, middle-men, righteous saviors, and friends, because race relations were experimental. The further that the Portuguese ventured from metropolitan Portugal, the …

Introduction: Sustainable Livelihoods, Conflicts, And Transformation, Brandon D. Lundy, Akanmu G. Adebayo

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Introduction to the Journal of Global Initiatives Volume 10, Number 2 "Sustainable Livelihoods and Conflict."

Citizenship, Belonging, And Political Community In Africa: Dialogues Between Past And Present, Emma Hunter

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Africa, it is often said, is suffering from a crisis of citizenship. At the heart of the contemporary debates this apparent crisis has provoked lie dynamic relations between the present and the past, between political theory and political practice, and between legal categories and lived experience. Yet studies of citizenship in Africa have often tended to foreshorten historical time and privilege the present at the expense of the deeper past.

Citizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa provides a critical reflection on citizenship in Africa by bringing together scholars working with very different case studies and with very different understandings …

Obama And Kenya: Contested Histories And The Politics Of Belonging, Matthew Carotenuto, Katherine Luongo

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Barack Obama’s political ascendancy has focused considerable global attention on the history of Kenya generally and the history of the Luo community particularly. From politicos populating the blogosphere and bookshelves in the U.S and Kenya, to tourists traipsing through Obama’s ancestral home, a variety of groups have mobilized new readings of Kenya’s past in service of their own ends.

Through narratives placing Obama into a simplified, sweeping narrative of anticolonial barbarism and postcolonial “tribal” violence, the story of the United States president’s nuanced relationship to Kenya has been lost amid stereotypical portrayals of Africa. At the same time, Kenyan state …

Marriage By Force? Contestation Over Consent And Coercion In Africa, Annie Bunting, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Richard L. Roberts

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

With forced marriage, as with so many human rights issues, the sensationalized hides the mundane, and oversimplified popular discourses miss the range of experiences. In sub-Saharan Africa, the relationship between coercion and consent in marriage is a complex one that has changed over time and place, rendering impossible any single interpretation or explanation.

The legal experts, anthropologists, historians, and development workers contributing to Marriage by Force? focus on the role that marriage plays in the mobilization of labor, the accumulation of wealth, and domination versus dependency. They also address the crucial slippage between marriages and other forms of gendered violence, …