The African poor : a history / John Iliffe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Iliffe, John, author.

Series:

African studies series ; 58.

African studies series ; 58

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poor--Africa--History.

Poor.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 387 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. Its thesis, derived from histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been individuals incapacitated for labour, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. There has emerged the distinct poverty of those excluded from access to productive resources. Natural disaster brought widespread destitution, but as a cause of mass mortality it was almost eliminated in the colonial era, to return to those areas where drought has been compounded by administrative breakdown. Professor Iliffe investigates what it was like to be poor, how the poor sought to help themselves, how their counterparts in other continents live. The poor live as people, rather than merely parading as statistics. Famines have alerted the world to African poverty, but the problem itself is ancient. Its prevailing forms will not be understood until those of earlier periods are revealed and trends of change are identified. This is a book for all concerned with the future of Africa, as well as for students of poverty elsewhere.

Contents:

The comparative history of the poor

Christian Ethiopia

The Islamic tradition

Poverty and power

Poverty and pastoralism

Yoruba and Igbo

Early European initiatives

Poverty in South Africa, 1886-1948

Rural poverty in colonial Africa

Urban poverty in tropical Africa

The care of the poor in colonial Africa

Leprosy

The growth of poverty in independent Africa

The transformation of poverty in southern Africa.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780511097294

0511097298

9780511584121

0511584121

Publisher Number:

2027/heb02604 hdl