Category: African history
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Japan’s Empire and the Crushed Hopes of the “Colored Races” of the World
Figure 1: 1938 pamphlet issued by the Negro Commission of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA By Dr Sherzod Muminov For a few early decades of the twentieth century, Japan came to be seen as a champion of the colonized peoples around the world. Behind this image stood Japan’s meteoric rise as the…
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Black History is not just for Black History Month!
Fig. 1 Black History Month display at UEA Library How libraries – and librarians – are grappling with decolonisation and why this matters By Jenny Whitaker and Grant Young This is probably self-evident – especially to historians – but libraries are not neutral entities. They are highly constructed. They have legacies and biases and have…
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Reflections on Black History in Black History Month
Figure 1: Sketch of the life of Frederick Douglass in Special Memorial Murder (1895) By Becky Taylor Black History Month is often a time when I reflect not only on how Black British histories inform my own research on histories of marginalised and racialised groups – Gypsies and Travellers, refugees, the vilified poor and migrant…
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Egyptian? Or Nubian? Asking questions of objects
By Aaron de Souza For the last ten years or so I’ve been deeply interested in ancient Nubian cultures of the Second Millennium BCE – in particular the so-called ‘Pan-Grave’, ‘C-Group’ and ‘Kerma’ cultures.[1] I can’t tell you exactly what about them it is that intrigues me so much, but a big part is the…
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Interview with Adam Simmons on ‘Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095-1402 (Routledge, 2022’)
By Gabby Storey and Adam D. Simmons How did you get into the topic of the book? I developed my initial interest in earlier African history during my MA at KCL. I’ve always been more interested in the topics which are often not covered, to understand why not and to see how much history we…
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Ghanaian Racial Citizenship in the Soviet Union and U.S., 1957-1966
By Nana Osei-Opare On May 25, 2020, a white American police officer, Derek Chauvin, and two other police officers murdered George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man. Floyd’s murder sparked global outrage and a reckoning on anti-Black racism. Even right-wing television evangelist Pat Robertson, a staunch pro-police supporter, criticised Chauvin’s actions. Floyd’s murder and the global…
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Will Africa be included in a global history of Covid-19?
ANNA ADIMA Over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, one would be hard-pressed to deny that future history books will record this as a global milestone in the 21st century. Every individual around the world has in some way been affected by the virus; however, mainstream – Western – media remains guilty of underreporting the pandemic…
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