This book presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and urban societies of sub-Saharan Africa. African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. It presents original research and integrates historical methodologies with those of anthropology, geography, literature, art, and architecture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and cultural influences of sub-Saharan Africa. The themes include Islam and Christianity, architecture, migration, globalization, social and physical decay, identity, race relations, politics, and development. This book elaborates on not only what makes the study of African urban spaces unique within urban historiography, it also offers an-encompassing and up-to-date study of the subject and inserts Africa into the growing debate on urban history and culture throughout the world. The opportunities provided by the urban milieu are endless and each study opens new potential avenues of research. This book explores some of those avenues and lays the groundwork on which new studies can build. Contributors: Maurice NyamangaAmutabi, Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch, Mark Dike DeLancey, Thomas Ngomba Ekali, Omar A. Eno, Doug T. Feremenga, Laurent Fourchard, James Genova, Fatima Muller-Friedman, Godwin R. Murunga, Kefa M. Otiso, Michael Ralph, Jeremy Rich, Eric Ross, Corinne Sandwith, Wessel Visser. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Steven J.Salm is Assistant Professor of History, Xavier University of Louisiana.

The nineteenth century in Africa was a time of revolution and tumultuous change in virtually all spheres. Violent dry spells, the staggered abolition of the slave trade, mass migrations and an influx of new settlers characterized the century. Regional trade links grew stronger and spread further. The century also saw the beginnings of the ruthless and bloody quest for foreign dominion.

Focusing on South Africa's three main cities - Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban - this book explores South African urban history from the late nineteenth century onwards. In particular, it examines the metropolitan perceptions and experiences of both black and white South Africans, as well as those of visitors, especially visitors from Britain and North America. Drawing on a rich array of city histories, travel writing, novels, films, newspapers, radio and television programs, and oral histories, Vivian Bickford-Smith focuses on the consequences of the depictions of the South African metropolis and the 'slums' they contained, and especially on how senses of urban belonging and geography helped create and reinforce South African ethnicities and nationalisms. This ambitious and pioneering account, spanning more than a century, will be welcomed by scholars and students of African history, urban history, and historical geography.

Available again in a single volume, New Babylon, New Nineveh explores the past struggles of everyday people on the Witwatersrand, South Africa, 1886-1914. This was a period of extraordinary social, political and economic change. Charles van Onselen examines a host of practices, processes and problems which, in many ways, make for startling comparisons with modern-day South Africa. Van Onselen investigates the pervasive, but highly problematic use of alcohol and prostitution, which were used to control both black and white mine workers, by the state and the mine owners. This exploitation of the lifestyle of the single miners later gave way to the official encouragement of working-class family life. This gave rise to the advent of domestic servants and the introduction of a systematic programme of suburbanisation and cheap public transportation. We see how not even these developments were able to protect the poorest and weakest South Africans of the time. Van Onselen explains how Afrikaner unemployment and an affinity for trade unionism were paralleled by further marginalisation, black unemployment and the resultant formation of prison gangs, which flourish even to the present day.

Until now there has been no single text that brings together the material that reveals the unfolding geography of Johannesburg, South Africa. This books describes the history of the city from its days as a mining camp to its position of premier metropolis in Africa. The present geography of Johannesburg, and the problems and dysfunctions that is hat exhibited at various stages in its history since 1886, cannot be understood without a firm grasp of what has evolved of the past 120 years.