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Women in vaKaranga society of the 15th to 17th centuries have been portrayed as oppressed by an "extremely patriarchal" system, but the reality, while still fitting the simple classification of a 'patriarchal' monarchy, indicates quite a bit more negotiation of gendered powers than women, as a class, experienced in the Mediterranean or East Asia. The vaKaranga were the architects of Great Zimbabwe, the capital of a growing state, colonizing their cousins of the Zambezi river, which their Kusi-Mashariki Bantu forefathers had traversed southward a millennium before. Civil war had (apparently) split one nation into two states, Mutapa (Monomotapa) and Khami (Torwa, Toroa, Changamire) immediately before Portuguese ships arrived at Sofala in 1502. Statements like "women are dust, one does not count dust" have been used to illustrate the traditional social outlook of the Shona, descendants of the vaKaranga and a major population in present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and central Moçambique. However, close reading of early Portuguese-language sources on women in vaKaranga society suggests that, prior to influence from these original European colonists, vaKaranga women negotiated everyday and political power in a near-even exchange with men, predicated on the imbalance of power women held in the metaphysical dimension, their control of industries from gold production to staple crop production and a strategy for minimizing economic risk for a king transacting a brideprice or 'rovora' exchange. In this, vaKaranga women are exceptions to the theory that societies must become more gender imbalanced as they begin to form classes and state-level monarchies.

This dissertation examines global shifts in medical and religious thinking about leprosy, using the southern African kingdom of Swaziland as a case study from the start of British rule in 1902 to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Involving a wide variety of both local and international actors, these encounters were frequently characterized by highly unequal power dynamics, especially between Swazis and Western doctors, bureaucrats, and missionaries. However, it is a central theme of this work that Swazis often turned Western scientific and religious preoccupations with leprosy into assets for their own benefit. Understanding the reasons why and under what circumstances Swazis did so illuminates the processes by which peoples of different cultures adapt themselves to shifting circumstances. Rather than abandoning local cultural ideas in favor of those of more powerful outsiders, I argue that the adaptations enacted by Swazis were coherent within their own cultural perspectives and are best understood as evolutions of local ideas instead of the byproduct of a foreign value system. Influenced by the narrative approach of microhistory, this project correlates evidence from three major archival collections, representing chiefly the perspective of British colonial figures and medical missionaries from the Church of the Nazarene, with insights derived from oral interviews conducted with both medical personnel and former leprosy patients in Swaziland. In so doing, it investigates themes related to the transfer of stigma across social and cultural boundaries; the clashing expectations of cultures divided by geography, language, education, and more; the limits of Western science and bureaucracy when attempting to exercise control over other cultures; and the continual negotiations through which all parties pursued their particular agendas. In analyzing the interplay between the primarily scientific and political concerns of the British colonial government and the chiefly spiritual concerns of the Nazarene medical missionaries, the story makes possible an understanding of how Swazis created advantageous spaces for themselves. I argue that they did this primarily by entering into relationships of social dependency, which they understood as creating bonds of mutual obligation between themselves and Westerners.

This dissertation examines the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of the Aedes aegypti mosquito and the viral illnesses chikungunya and dengue from the Indian Ocean port town of Durban, South Africa. Histories of Ae. aegypti and yellow fever in the Atlantic World occupy an unmistakable niche in medical and environmental historiographies. Studies of this mosquito at home in Africa and abroad in the Indian Ocean World are lacking. This dissertation addresses that lacunae. A globally integrated industrial economy, mushrooming urban growth in tropical and subtropical regions, absent or overwhelmed municipal water supplies, faster forms of transportation, and rising levels of interconnection increase the likelihood of epidemics of viral illness transmitted by Ae. aegypti. Durban offers a vantage point to examine these transformations during the era of the New Imperialism. The Ae. aegypti mosquito casts Durban as the southwest corner of the Indian Ocean rimlands; East Africa’s southernmost urban center; and a humid subtropical settler society port and sugar region perched on the edge of ‘Neo-Europe.’ Facing the Indian Ocean World, I argue that explosive pandemics during the mid-1820s and early 1870s—traditionally attributed to dengue—were more likely chikungunya. Further, the absence of similar pandemics attributable to dengue suggests that virus was already endemic in the region’s leading ports, an indirect indication of Ae. aegypti’s presence in the region. This contests hypotheses suggesting this mosquito reached Asia via the Suez Canal. In Durban, epidemics of chikungunya and dengue during the 1870s reflect the port town’s connection to the Indian Ocean World and signal the presence of human-biting Ae. aegypti. I argue that clearing coastal forest for sugar production and town-building destroyed the ecological niche of indigenous sylvatic Ae. aegypti, while the agroecology of sugar and built environment of early Durban encouraged vector domestication and abundance in intimate proximity to people. Durban’s chikungunya and dengue past is largely forgotten. A study of the city’s history with Ae. aegypti is, therefore, timely. In an era marked by zoonoses and emerging and reemerging infectious diseases environmental histories must grapple with the entangled agencies of human and nonhuman actors—pests, pathogens, and people. / 2023-06-08T00:00:00Z

The Universal theme of Water, both the Sea as well as the Rain in literature reaches a dimension of Cult in Cape Verdean literature and it is an important part of the Cape Verdean identity. Water is of the utmost importance at several levels for Cape Verde: an archipelago surrounded by water and yet about half of its population has to immigrate due to the lack of rain. These two facts play an important role in the complex bi-polar Cape Verdean identity struggling between the desire to emigrate connoted with the Sea and the desire to stay connoted with the Rain. The present study aims to analyze, compare and contrast the major literary works of Cape Verdean Literature from the Claridade period (1936) to Post-Colonial period (1975) and extends until 1990 with the publication of Germano Almeida first novel O Testamento do Sr. Napumoceno da Silva Araújo which coincides with the end of the mono party system in Cape Verde. The other authors and works focused on this study are: Jorge Barbosa: Arquipélago (1935), Ambiente (1941), Caderno de um Ilhéu (1956); Manuel Lopes: Poemas de quem ficou (1949), Crioulo e outros poemas (1964), Chuva Braba (1956), Os Flagelados do Vento Leste (1960), Galo Cantou na Baía (1959); Corsino Fortes: Pão & Fonema (1974), Árvore & Tambor (1986), Pedras de Sol & Substância (2001); Baltasar Lopes: Chiquinho (1947), Os Trabalhos e os Dias (1987). This study also makes references to four authors before the Claridade period: Eugénio Tavares, Pedro Monteiro Cardoso, Januário Leite and José Lopes.

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This project investigates.the political and economic development of Ghana and Malaysia and identifies key factors that led to their divergent development paths - specifically Malaysia's relative success and Ghana's setbacks. Both Malaysia and Ghana are former British colonies that gained their independence in the same year. Although they had similar economic conditions at independence, over the course of 40 years, they have experienced very different economic and political development. Thus, this study begins with a most similar systems design but winds up employing a most different systems model. The factors explored in this thesis include gross domestic product (GDP), GDP growth rate, foreign direct investment, electrical power consumption, and external debt. This study aims to identify patterns for successful and unsuccessful development using Malaysia and Ghana as archetypes.