New publications

Nationalism is often seen as emerging from European historical developments, also in postcolonial countries outside Europe. Yet the precolonial Kingdom of Barue in what is now Mozambique already showed characteristics generally associated with nationalism, giving the country great resilience against colonial encroachment. Postcolonial Mozambique, on the other hand, has so far not succeeded in creating national coherence. This book by André van Dokkum has been published in the Afrika-Studiecentrum Series by Brill.

Spouses in Eastern Province, Zambia, are willing to compromise household-level earnings in order to maintain individual control over money. Wives, but not husbands, are more likely to compromise household-level earnings in order to maintain individual control over money, when they can keep that money and their actions hidden from their spouses. These are some of the preliminary findings of the project 'Financial decision-making, gender and social norms in Zambia' by Prof. Marleen Dekker and others.

On the occasion of the Africa 2020 year, the ASCL has created Infosheets about the countries that became independent in 1960. Of the seventeen colonies gaining independence in that year, Madagascar was the fourth one: on June 26th. Madagascar had been a French colony from the 1890s.

The Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa (CFIA), in which the ASCL participates, has started a new series of blogs that focuses on the role of frugality and frugal innovation in times of Corona in different parts of the world. The first blog is written by André Leliveld, Associate Director of CFIA and senior researcher at the ASCL. He pleads for a frugal approach to cope with the resource constrained situation in the medical world.

This volume, published by Brill in the African Dynamics series and edited by Klaas van Walraven, investigates the development of biographical study in African history and historiography. In addition to methodological insights, the book offers many case studies, e.g. of Abdullah Abdurahman (first South African politician of colour elected to public office), Cornelius Badu (born in 1847 in Elmina, Gold Coast, current Ghana), and politicians like Barthélémy Boganda (CAR) and Laurent Kabila (DRC).

This book, edited by Duncan Money and Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, showcases new research on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa. It demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region.