In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turned to new texts, practices, and religious leaders...

The vibrant Swahili coast port city of Dar es Salaam—literally, the “Haven of Peace”—hosts a population reflecting a legacy of long relations with the Arabian Peninsula and a diaspora emanating in waves from the Indian subcontinent...

In April 1955, twenty-nine countries from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East came together for a diplomatic conference in Bandung, Indonesia, intending to define the direction of the postcolonial world...

The Republic of Biafra lasted for less than three years, but the war over its secession would contort Nigeria for decades to come...

This book examines the trade, distribution, production, and consumption of pearls and mother-of-pearl in the global Indian Ocean over more than five centuries...

Foster analyzes increasingly urgent questions regarding crises of global immigration by redefining migration in terms of conscription and by studying contemporary literature...

In a world where black(ened) flesh, particularly feminine flesh, is considered the ontological zero of humanness, what interventions and complications are available from art and speculative fiction of the African disapora?

One of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar’s years as a British Protectorate is the distinctive domed building of the Zanzibar Museum...

Britain's declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, 1939, made Nigeria, like many other African societies, active participants in the war against the Axis powers...

"The Swahili World" presents the fascinating story of a major world civilization, exploring the archaeology, history, linguistics, and anthropology of the eastern coast of Africa.,,

An interview with Robin Attfield

Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth century African American cultural engagement with and literary depictions of imperial Ethiopia...

Thelwell offers a rich, well-researched, and sobering investigation of blackface minstrelsy as the “visual bedrock of a transcolonial cultural imaginary.”

Between the years 1964 and 1974, Ethiopian post-secondary students studying at home, in Europe, and in North America produced a number of journals where they explored the relationship between social theory and social change within the project of building a socialist Ethiopia...

In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines the interconnected themes of enslavement, globalization, and empire and challenges previously held conventions regarding Middle Eastern slavery and British imperialism...

On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent and the Indian Ocean...

What are the African Middle Ages? A place, certainly, and a time period, evidently. But also a “documentary regime,” argues François-Xavier Fauvelle...

Newell, along with a team of researchers across a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, explore this idea of “dirt” across the long 20th century...

An interview with Philip Drew

Angelo’s book analyses the little-studied institution of the Office of the President by studying its first postcolonial office-holder in Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.,,

Ali provides insight into the life of slave soldier Malik Ambar...

Røge charts the confluence and reciprocal impacts of ideas and policies espoused by political economists, colonial administrators, planters, and entrepreneurs to reform the French empire in the second half of the eighteenth century....

Aiyer investigates how Indian diasporic actors influenced the course of Kenya’s political history, from partnering with Europeans in their colonial mission in East Africa to political solidarity with Africans in their anticolonial struggles....

An interview with Philip Drew