Africa is witnessing dramatic urban growth on a massive scale which, in the space of this century, has reversed the rural—urban settlement patterns of the continent. Yet urbanization has been an important feature of Africa's history for over two thousand years. Towns and cities have been important arenas around which societies have organized themselves: as centres of trade, economic activity and wealth accumulation; as foci of political action and authority; as military garrisons and symbols of physical domination; as sites of ritual power and contact with the sacred; and as places of refuge, shelter and collective security in troubled times.
This survey reveals a remarkable depth of urbanization in African history. Each chapter places the city at the centre of discussion. Themes developed are unexpectedly diverse, suggesting not only a distinctive history of urbanism but offering great potential for further research. This volume is thus presented as a starting point for the writing of deeper comparative histories of Africa's urban past.
Contents:
Preface
Introduction
Urban Africa: Histories in the Making, David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone
Urban Archaeologies
Clustered Cities of the Middle Niger: Alternative Routes to Authority in Prehistory, Roderick J. Mcintosh
African City Walls A Neglected Source?, Graham Connah
Aksumite Urbanism, David W. Phillipson
Pre-colonial Towns in Transition
Mbanza Kongo/São Salvador Kongo's Holy Cry, John K. Thronton
Ouidah: a Pre-colonial Urban Centre in Coastal West Africa 1727-1892, Robin Law
Merchants, Missions & the Remaking of the Urban Environment in Buganda, 1840-1890, Richard Reid and Henri Medard
Urban Economics
"A Town of Strangers" or "A Model Modern East African Town", Arusha & the Arusha, Thomas Spear
The Cost of Living in Lagos, 1914-1945, Ayodeji Olukoju
The City of Durban Towards a Structural Analysis of the Economic Growth & Character of a South African City, Bill Freund
Becoming Urban Towns as Cultural Brokers
"But I know what I shall do" Agency, Belief & the Social Imaginary in Eighteenth-Century Gold Coast Towns, Ray Kea
Gender in the City Women, Migration & Contested Spaces in Tunis, 1830-1881, Julia Clancy-Smith
The Cultural Politics of Death & Burial in Early Colonial Accra, John Parker
"Wo pe tam won pe ba" ("You like cloth but you don't want children") Urbanization, Individualism & Gender Relations in Colonial Ghana 1900-1939, Emmanuel Akyeampong
The Politics of Urban Order
Land Alienation & the Union Growth of Bahir Dar, 1935-1974, Seltene Seyoum
Conservation & the Colonial Past Urban Planning, Space & Power in Zanzibar, William Cunningham Bissell
The Urbanism of District Six, Cape Town, Rafael Marks and Marco Bezzoli
The Political Shaping of Sacred Locality in Brazzaville, 1959-1997, Florence Bernault
Index
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