Readers of the first issue of volume 60 of the Journal of African History will be pleased to learn that they do not need to choose between work and happiness to keep up with current historical scholarship on the African continent. As the title of Keri Lambert’s insightful article on the Cold War politics of agricultural development in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana suggests, they can have both. Nor did children in Cote d'Ivoire need to choose between going to school and watching television, as Elisa Prosperetti demonstrates. Rather, the Ivorian state pioneered teaching through television, in a vast and ultimately unsuccessful modernizing experiment. The early ambitions of neighboring postcolonial states provide a common theme linking these two articles.
In a pair of essays on southern Africa a century earlier, deeply researched articles by Hlonipha Mokoena and Ettore Morelli demonstrate divergent approaches to the continent's past. Both contest historical paradigms and previous scholarship. Mokoena offers an incisive re-reading of a key text in which John W. Colenso relied on a nuanced understanding of Zulu law to defend Langalibalele against accusations of rebellion against the British Crown. She interrogates the nature of Colenso's authority and the motivations behind the poor reception of his argument. Morelli, on the other hand, draws on a wide body of sources, mostly those of less-than sympathetic missionaries, to offer a novel re-interpretation of forms of social subordination on the Southern African Highveld. Read together, this pair of articles suggests that debates over this period of the South African past are far from being settled.
Meanwhile, in a heroic effort at reconstructing a narrative from fragmentary evidence, Øystein H. Rolandsen and Nicki Kindersley deliver a compelling history of insurgency in the extreme south of what was then Sudan. The hitherto shadowy history of the war around the garrison town of Torit comes into focus through a meticulous reconstruction of scattered and previously unavailable sources. This history, in which the limits of legitimate violence continually eroded — notably in the targeting of civilians — provides a bitter book-end to the better-known postcolonial ambitions of West African states. Nonetheless, such locally grounded histories of violence merit both narration and analysis of the kind offered here.
Work and happiness return to the fore in a rich selection of book reviews, in which work on East Africa figures prominently. Ato Quayson reviews Neil Carrier’s history of Nairobi's ‘Little Mogadishu’, while Paul Ocobock considers Kenda Mutongi’s Matatu, a study of the origins and operations of Nairobi's mini-bus transport system. Kenya's colonial history inspired Ocobock’s monograph on age and masculinity in Kenya, reviewed by Jay Straker; colonial rule also informs Julia MacArthur’s analysis of ethnic politics in western Kenya, which is evaluated by Kara Moskowitz. Farming and agricultural change in Ethiopia is the topic of Getnet Bekele’s monograph, here assessed by Habtamu Mengistie Tegegne. Other books in this section highlight Africa's global connections, including Lorelle Semley’s To Be Free and French, on which Jennifer Palmer writes, and an edited volume by Dorothy Hodgson and Judith Byfield, reviewed by Jeremy Prestholdt. These are only a few of several other insightful reviews of exciting new work in African history featured in this issue.
Book reviewing is not an exact science, and a number of processes involving authors, editors, presses, and reviewers must fall into place for a review to reach publication in a timely fashion. Various circumstances can intervene to slow or even halt that process — books do not arrive; reviewers face other demands on their time; and editors, who are not infallible, must balance the broad chronological and geographical ambit of this journal with the exigencies of publication schedules. There are, in short, many reasons why a review may take some time to reach publication. Those challenges make us all the more grateful, as editors, for the time, energy, and intellectual curiosity of book authors and their reviewers.
This issue serves as yet another testament to the continued vibrancy of the field of African history. We thank our contributors, reviewers, and readers for their commitment to innovative scholarship and to peer review.
The Editors
