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This paper examines claims about a purported “third force,” individuals and organizations that operated in South Africa during the “transitional period,” from 1990 to1994, who aimed to destabilize the country and prevent a democratic election. This paper focuses on the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and testimony contained in the official Amnesty Committee’s transcripts of former Colonel Eugene de Kock. This paper argues that the “third force” was not a designated government agency and former President F.W. de Klerk did not order “third force” violence. This paper further argues that numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations worked collectively to disrupt a transfer of power.

This project traces the historical evolution of warfare and military recruitment in the Senegambia region. It investigates the conscription and recruitment of indigenous troops and their service in royal and jihādist forces, irregular armed groups, and the French colonial military. Whether through the ceɗɗo armies protecting the states of the former Jolof Empire, the sòfa soldiers who fought in jihāds in the interior, or the French-recruited tirailleurs sénégalais, engaging in regular warfare was one of few paths to personal autonomy. Men who embraced a corporate military identity within the caste systems of Senegambia gained power through complex patron-client relationships with civil and religious authorities. For those whose lives were defined by kinship networks, soldiers formed their own stable social category. A second line of inquiry identifies a subset of soldiers known as volontaires sénégalais, professional soldiers who were so integral to the success of the French colonial army in campaigns in the region that they were given compensation and rations on par with European troops, a de facto admission of their military importance. Enlisted Senegalese men became interpreters, porters, recruiters, spies, policemen, soldiers, and non-commissioned officers, playing a decisive role in combat in the territory that would become modern-day Senegal as well as other West African states and kingdoms, particularly Dahomey. Further, this study asks questions about colonial as well as indigenous power relations and caste identity, examining the ways in which access to political and military power structures affected ethnic, caste, and class relationships. It considers the caste identity of Senegalese men who fought in the various realms that make up present-day Senegal and provides a re-examination of their status as “slaves.” Moreover, it focuses on the development of military culture within these groups, the tactics employed in inter-state conflicts and between indigenous states and a burgeoning French colonial army, and the emergence of war making as a vocation. Drawing on studies of martial and organizational culture, this project reorients our understanding of patron-client relationships and provides a new lens through which to view the development of military identity among indigenous troops from Senegambia.

Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi started a religious revolution in the Egyptian Sudan in 1881. The idea of a Messiah called al-Mahdi had been known among the Moslems for a long time. Social, economic and political conditions in both Egypt and the Sudan were favourable to the success of the Revolution. The rule in the Sudan was oppressive, the Egyptian Empire was too large and unwieldy, the financial policy of Khedive Ismail resulted In increasing influence of European powers, and a mutiny in the army had brought about the British occupation. Al-Mahdi won brilliant successes over the Egyptian Government in the Sudan before the British occupation, because of the religious fanaticism of his followers and the inefficiency of the Egyptian soldiers; the latter were handicapped by the fact that they were Moslems fighting against an expected Messiah. Immediately after the British occupation, the Egyptian Government fitted out an expedition composed of soldiers from the disbanded army, but they were defeated by al-Mahdi. The attitude of the British was neutral towards the question of the Sudan, but after the annihilation of the above expedition by al-Mahdi, they decided that Egypt should evacuate the Sudan, General Gordon was sent to carry out the policy of evacuation, but he was trapped in Khartum and besieged for several months. Gladstone's Government, after much hesitation, ordered an expedition for his relief. However, Khartum fell, and Gordon was killed before the relief could reach him. The British Government first decided on smashing al-Mahdi's power, in spite of Gordon's death, but finally evacuated that part of the country which they had occupied. Their decision was partly due to the fact that they had no special interests in the Sudan, and partly to their difficulties with Russia over Afghanistan.

After the Franco-Prussian War, France acquired many colonial territories. In all these areas, Britain's position as a colonial power was affected. This thesis describes the attitude and policies of successive British governments towards French colonial development from 1875 to 1887, and the effect of overseas difficulties with France on British foreign policy. Anglo-French colonial rivalry in this period was far greater than has usually been supposed. In West Africa, French expansion conflicted with Britain's commercial interests and brought about the Oil Rivers and Niger Protectorates. On the Somali Coast, Britain's concern for the route to India dictated counter-measures to French activities, partly for the same reason, Britain disapproved of the French campaigns in Madagascar, though the English public was more concerned with the missionary factor. British interests were not immediately affected by the French protectorate in Tonkin, but the prospect of overland trade with China and the need to safeguard Lower Burma and India made Britain sensitive about French influence in Indo-China and hastened the annexation of Upper Burma. In the Pacific, there were constant Anglo-French difficulties for which Australian policy was largely responsible; the convict settlement in New Caledonia caused irritation, and Australian pressure prevented an exclusively French regime in the New Hebrides. Only over Tunis was the British Government bound to acquiescence, because of Salisbury's assurances in 1878. The manner in which the Protectorate was achieved, however, provoked strong criticism in England, and the subsequent negotiations regarding consular jurisdiction reveal Granville's determination to protect British interests. The Anglo-French 'alliance' of the 'seventies broke down not only because of Egypt, but because of incompatibility of colonial aims. For Britain, the Mediterranean Agreements of 1887 substituted involvement with the Central Powers for the lost entente with France.

Mission societies provided most education in British West African dependencies in 1900. Education followed a different pattern in the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria because Lugard, short of money and men, preserved the Mohammedan emirates in the system known as Indirect Rule, Mohammedan dislike of Christianity and his own insecurity led Lugard to promise non-interference with the Mohammedan religion, a promise later used to exclude missionaries from emirates. Indirect Rule requires at least educated governing and clerical classes. Lugard disliked on principle Government-supported mission education for Mohammedans, and he feared from past experience the disruptive effect on the social fabric of African life of mission stations. Yet financial difficulties compelled his interest in Dr. Miller's (C.M.S.) Zaria Schools plan. This plan was too secular by C.M.S. standards end yet condemned by Administration for over-great religious bias. Girouard, Lugard's successor, determined on a Government Education Department as the only alternative, and he seconded Vischer - a political officer by temperament and experience sympathetic to Indirect Rule - to Education. Vischer wished to lessen the strain of the culture-clash in Northern Nigeria and to use "adapted" education as part of the evolutionary process whereby Indirect Rule would eventually give way to self-government. Slow, sure progress was made in education from 1909 to 1914, Mohammedan suspicion was lulled. Meanwhile some emirates had become Native Administrations with Treasuries, and mission expansion was considered more dangerous than ever to the political experiment. Education, religion and politics were so bound together any action resulted in a complex chain of reactions. After the amalgamation in 1914 of Northern and Southern Nigeria, the Colonial Office insisted on Vischer's education system being safeguarded in the Education Ordinance of 1916 and by subsequent legislation. On political groups this attitude was acceptable to many Residents. War checked progress. Yet the Education Department opened new schools and in its 1918 Report "adapted" education was shown to be an evolutionary process rather than a static method. From 1923 to 1939 Vischer was secretary to the Colonial Office's Advisory Council on Education, and from 1926 to 1945 to the International African Institute. He preached the doctrine of mutual enrichment through culture-clash without the disruption of either society. The ultimate choice in West Africa lay, he realized, with the African.

This dissertation is about commercial agriculture in nineteenth-century Liberia. Based primarily on the archives of the American Colonization Society (founder of Liberia), it examines the impact of environmental and demographic constraints on an agrarian settler society from 1822 to the 1890s. Contrary to the standard interpretation, which linked the poor state of commercial agriculture to the settlers' disdain for cultivation, this dissertation argues that the scarcity of labor and capital impeded the growth of commercial agriculture. The causes of the scarcity were high mortality, low immigration and the poverty of the American "Negroes" who began to settle Liberia in 1822. Emigration to Liberia meant almost certain death and affliction for many immigrants because they encountered a new set of diseases. Mortality was particularly high during the early decades of colonization. From 1822 to 1843, about 48 percent of all immigrants died of various causes, usually within their first year. The bulk of the deaths is attributed to malaria. There was no natural increase in the population for this early period and because American "Negroes" were unenthusiastic about relocation to Liberia, immigration remained sparse throughout the century. Low immigration, combined with the high death rate, deprived the fledgling colony of its potential human resource, especially for the cultivation of labor-intensive crops, like sugar cane and coffee. Moreover, even though females constituted approximately half of the settlers, they seldom performed agricultural labor. The problem of labor was compounded by the scarcity of draft animals. Liberia is in the region where trypanosomiasis occurs. The disease is fatal to large livestock. Therefore, animal-drawn plows, common in the United States, were never successfully transplanted in Liberia. Besides, the dearth of livestock obstructed the development of the sugar industry since many planters depended on oxen-powered mills because they could not afford to buy the more expensive steam engine mills. Finally, nearly half of the immigrants were newly emancipated slaves. Usually these former bondsmen arrived in Liberia penniless. Consequently, they lacked the capital to invest in large-scale plantations. The other categories of immigrants (e.g., those who purchased their freedom), were hardly better off than the emancipated slaves.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / The main objective of this study is to reexamine and evaluate current cultural frameworks employed in the discourse on Aksumite culture. The critical study of these frameworks (involving the scrutiny of radiometric, numismatic, historical and archaeological evidence) reveals that only a few are reliable. A revised cultural framework constructed from reliable sources shows that Aksumite culture has undergone an unbroken sequence of social development from the late second millennium BC to the late first millennium AD, with manifestations of the culture appealing several centuries earlier than previously thought. Moreover, models of Aksumite state formation are examined in light of this new framework, and reveal the importance of local processes in the rise of the Aksumite state.

Land ownership remains an important and contested issue in contemporary South African politics. Drawing inspiration from Hernando de Soto’s work, especially his book, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000), which sees equitable and private land ownership as a key factor for economic growth and development, this thesis details South Africa’s own landed past in order to better understand its political present. Its central research question asks: What role did South Africa’s land and agricultural policies from 1860-1920 play in the country’s unequal development over time? This thesis traces historical transitions in land ownership patterns from the four weak and underdeveloped settler colonies (The Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State and the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek) to the rapidly industrialising, but racialised, South African state and the eventual emergence of white commercial farming by 1920. The thesis engages with a long heritage of South African historical writing on political economy as a central methodology, from its early liberal roots with W.M. Macmillan’s writings on rural poverty in the 1920s, to more radical, neo-Marxist writings of the 1970s and 1980s. This thesis argues that the racialised land and labour policies from 1860-1920 produced a white oligarchy of landowners, which led to an unequal distribution of wealth over time and following De Soto, therefore inhibited economic growth and development. The thesis ultimately speaks to the validity of De Soto’s work, as well as the importance of land and agricultural policies in South Africa today. / Dissertation (MScoSci (History))--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. / Historical and Heritage Studies / MSocSci (History) / Unrestricted

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