58 results
Scientific access into Mercer Subglacial Lake: scientific objectives, drilling operations and initial observations
- John C. Priscu, Jonas Kalin, John Winans, Timothy Campbell, Matthew R. Siegfried, Mark Skidmore, John E. Dore, Amy Leventer, David M. Harwood, Dennis Duling, Robert Zook, Justin Burnett, Dar Gibson, Edward Krula, Anatoly Mironov, Jim McManis, Graham Roberts, Brad E. Rosenheim, Brent C. Christner, Kathy Kasic, Helen A. Fricker, W. Berry Lyons, Joel Barker, Mark Bowling, Billy Collins, Christina Davis, Al Gagnon, Christopher Gardner, Chloe Gustafson, Ok-Sun Kim, Wei Li, Alex Michaud, Molly O. Patterson, Martyn Tranter, Ryan Venturelli, Trista Vick-Majors, Cooper Elsworth, The SALSA Science Team
-
- Journal:
- Annals of Glaciology / Volume 62 / Issue 85-86 / September 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 June 2021, pp. 340-352
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
The Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) Project accessed Mercer Subglacial Lake using environmentally clean hot-water drilling to examine interactions among ice, water, sediment, rock, microbes and carbon reservoirs within the lake water column and underlying sediments. A ~0.4 m diameter borehole was melted through 1087 m of ice and maintained over ~10 days, allowing observation of ice properties and collection of water and sediment with various tools. Over this period, SALSA collected: 60 L of lake water and 10 L of deep borehole water; microbes >0.2 μm in diameter from in situ filtration of ~100 L of lake water; 10 multicores 0.32–0.49 m long; 1.0 and 1.76 m long gravity cores; three conductivity–temperature–depth profiles of borehole and lake water; five discrete depth current meter measurements in the lake and images of ice, the lake water–ice interface and lake sediments. Temperature and conductivity data showed the hydrodynamic character of water mixing between the borehole and lake after entry. Models simulating melting of the ~6 m thick basal accreted ice layer imply that debris fall-out through the ~15 m water column to the lake sediments from borehole melting had little effect on the stratigraphy of surficial sediment cores.
A history of high-power laser research and development in the United Kingdom
- Part of
- Colin N. Danson, Malcolm White, John R. M. Barr, Thomas Bett, Peter Blyth, David Bowley, Ceri Brenner, Robert J. Collins, Neal Croxford, A. E. Bucker Dangor, Laurence Devereux, Peter E. Dyer, Anthony Dymoke-Bradshaw, Christopher B. Edwards, Paul Ewart, Allister I. Ferguson, John M. Girkin, Denis R. Hall, David C. Hanna, Wayne Harris, David I. Hillier, Christopher J. Hooker, Simon M. Hooker, Nicholas Hopps, Janet Hull, David Hunt, Dino A. Jaroszynski, Mark Kempenaars, Helmut Kessler, Sir Peter L. Knight, Steve Knight, Adrian Knowles, Ciaran L. S. Lewis, Ken S. Lipton, Abby Littlechild, John Littlechild, Peter Maggs, Graeme P. A. Malcolm, OBE, Stuart P. D. Mangles, William Martin, Paul McKenna, Richard O. Moore, Clive Morrison, Zulfikar Najmudin, David Neely, Geoff H. C. New, Michael J. Norman, Ted Paine, Anthony W. Parker, Rory R. Penman, Geoff J. Pert, Chris Pietraszewski, Andrew Randewich, Nadeem H. Rizvi, Nigel Seddon, MBE, Zheng-Ming Sheng, David Slater, Roland A. Smith, Christopher Spindloe, Roy Taylor, Gary Thomas, John W. G. Tisch, Justin S. Wark, Colin Webb, S. Mark Wiggins, Dave Willford, Trevor Winstone
-
- Journal:
- High Power Laser Science and Engineering / Volume 9 / 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 27 April 2021, e18
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
The first demonstration of laser action in ruby was made in 1960 by T. H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories, USA. Many laboratories worldwide began the search for lasers using different materials, operating at different wavelengths. In the UK, academia, industry and the central laboratories took up the challenge from the earliest days to develop these systems for a broad range of applications. This historical review looks at the contribution the UK has made to the advancement of the technology, the development of systems and components and their exploitation over the last 60 years.
Nutritional regulation of long-chain PUFA biosynthetic genes in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)
- Melissa K. Gregory, Robert O. Collins, Douglas R. Tocher, Michael J. James, Giovanni M. Turchini
-
- Journal:
- British Journal of Nutrition / Volume 115 / Issue 10 / 28 May 2016
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 18 March 2016, pp. 1721-1729
- Print publication:
- 28 May 2016
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
Most studies on dietary vegetable oil in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) have been conducted on a background of dietary EPA (20 : 5n-3) and DHA (22 : 6n-3) contained in the fishmeal used as a protein source in aquaculture feed. If dietary EPA and DHA repress their endogenous synthesis from α-linolenic acid (ALA, 18 : 3n-3), then the potential of ALA-containing vegetable oils to maintain tissue EPA and DHA has been underestimated. We examined the effect of individual dietary n-3 PUFA on the expression of the biosynthetic genes required for metabolism of ALA to DHA in rainbow trout. A total of 720 juvenile rainbow trout were allocated to twenty-four experimental tanks and assigned one of eight diets. The effect of dietary ALA, EPA or DHA, in isolation or in combination, on hepatic expression of fatty acyl desaturase (FADS)2a(Δ6), FADS2b(Δ5), elongation of very long-chain fatty acid (ELOVL)5 and ELOVL2 was examined after 3 weeks of dietary intervention. The effect of these diets on liver and muscle phospholipid PUFA composition was also examined. The expression levels of FADS2a(Δ6), ELOVL5 and ELOVL2 were highest when diets were high in ALA, with no added EPA or DHA. Under these conditions ALA was readily converted to tissue DHA. Dietary DHA had the largest and most consistent effect in down-regulating the gene expression of all four genes. The ELOVL5 expression was the least responsive of the four genes to dietary n-3 PUFA changes. These findings should be considered when optimising aquaculture feeds containing vegetable oils and/or fish oil or fishmeal to achieve maximum DHA synthesis.
Contributors
-
- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Africans, Arabs, and Islamists: From the Conference Tables to the Battlefields in the Sudan
- Robert O. Collins
-
- Journal:
- African Studies Review / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / September 1999
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 May 2014, pp. 105-123
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
This essay traces the military and diplomatic stalemate in the Sudan from 1955 to the present, with special attention directed to events of the past decade. Today, the Sudan government appears determined to maintain itself in power at whatever cost. Yet the Northern Sudanese opposition has sought a reconciliation with their former enemies from the South who with their experienced military forces now hold the balance of power within the opposition forces. The history of the abortive negotiations during this past decade appears only to lead to a resolution on the field of battle which cannot be accomplished by enemies too weak to vanquish one another.
G. Norman Anderson. Sudan in Crisis: The Failure of Democracy. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. xviii + 272 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. Cloth.
- Robert O. Collins
-
- Journal:
- African Studies Review / Volume 43 / Issue 3 / December 2000
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 May 2014, pp. 188-189
-
- Article
- Export citation
List of contributors
-
- By Bjarne F. Alsbjoern, Caroline M. Apovian, Danny Collins, Roland N. Dickerson, Timothy Eden, Peter Faber, Andrew J. Ferguson, David C. Frankenfield, Dympna Gallagher, Maria Gabriella Gentile, Wilson I. Gonsalves, Andrew M. Hetreed, Michael H. Hooper, Jan O. Jansen, Aminah Jatoi, Ying Ji, Ilya Kagan, Andrew J. Kerwin, Dong Wook Kim, Andrew A. Klein, Alistair Lee, Shaul Lev, Peter K. Linden, Paul E. Marik, Robert Martindale, Peter McCanny, Paolo Merlani, Shay Nanthakumaran, Michael S. Nussbaum, Andreas Perren, Carla Prado, Jean-Charles Preiser, Minha Rajput-Ray, Sumantra Ray, Nils Siegenthaler, Mario Siervo, Jonathan A. Silversides, Pierre Singer, John A. Tayek, Euan Thomson, Krista L. Turner, Malissa Warren, Stephen T. Webb, Patricia Wiesen
- Edited by Peter Faber, Mario Siervo, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
-
- Book:
- Nutrition in Critical Care
- Published online:
- 05 April 2014
- Print publication:
- 06 March 2014, pp viii-xii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
25 - Cold War Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 366-376
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The decade of hope was followed by two decades of crisis. Much of the optimism that had greeted independence evaporated as economic development stalled, living standards declined, and African states faced new challenges to their stability. There had been warnings of the coming crises almost from the moment colonial flags were run down their poles. The appearance of a one-party state in Ghana, the bloody and failed secession movements in the Katanga (Congo) and Biafra (Nigeria), and the massacre of ethnic minorities shortly after independence in Rwanda were all the harbingers of future political conflict and humanitarian disasters. During the 1970s most African states were racked by some form of insurrection, coup d’état, or civil war. These internal conflicts continued in the 1980s, often exacerbated by drought, epidemic, and famine. During these two decades, a second era of decolonization developed in southern Africa, as white rule in Portuguese Africa, Rhodesia, and eventually in South Africa came to an end. At the same time, the states that had achieved independence during the 1950s and 1960s were overwhelmed by a bewildering array of political and economic problems in which ethnic – or “tribal” – identities emerged to challenge national unity. When governments proved incapable, or unwilling, to deal effectively with these challenges, opposition to political ineptitude, tyranny, and corruption coalesced along ethnic lines. The specter of tribal separatism hung over many African states from their inception, and some leaders used the threat as an excuse to dismantle democratic institutions and suppress dissent. Minorities that could not be suborned or coopted by the ruling party frequently faced discrimination, persecution, and, in some cases, ethnic cleansing.
Index
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 391-405
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Part III - Imperial Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 247-248
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
21 - The colonial legacy
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 308-328
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The colonial enterprise in Africa has been condemned as exploitative and praised as constructive. The West Indian scholar Walter Rodney asserted that European pressure distorted African economic growth and led to the underdevelopment of the continent. Rodney's critics counter that colonialism drew capital and investment into the continent that ultimately built an infrastructure that proved beneficial to the African peoples. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, controversy continues without respite, but there are two aspects of European colonialism in Africa on which the antagonists agree: European colonialism dramatically transformed Africa, and the Africans played a critical role in shaping the nature of colonialism and exposing its limitations.
The colonial experience in Africa can be roughly divided into two periods. At the end of the nineteenth century, the beginning of European colonialism was characterized by the imposition of imperial administrations accompanied by violent economic expropriation which imposed tremendous hardships on their African subjects. By the end of the First World War, most European states had indicated that the excessive abuse of Africans that had taken place during the preceding decades would no longer be tolerated, but during the interwar years, the British and French found it difficult to maintain coherent colonial policies. Their efforts were complicated by the world economic depression of the 1930s and then the Second World War, which found them allied with the anti-imperialist powers of the United States and the Soviet Union. To respond to the growing criticism of colonial rule, Britain in 1940 and France in 1946 launched programs for development that would mobilize African resources to restore their own economies but also provide employment and improved conditions for African wage laborers. When it became increasingly clear that these plans for economic revitalization drafted in London and Paris had failed to transform the colonial economic structure, European rulers were faced with the choice of either using massive force to suppress unrest or undertaking dramatic political reforms within their colonies. In most cases, the colonial powers determined that the latter option was the lesser of two evils.
26 - Africa at the beginning of the twenty-first century
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 377-390
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
After traversing more than three millennia of the African past, it is time to pause and take stock, to look back in history as well as forward, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Over the past half-century, scholars have scoured archaeological sites, colonial archives, published works, and oral traditions; utilized social science methodologies – anthropology, linguistics, and demography; and developed an appreciation of African art, music, and literature, to construct a new paradigm for understanding the continent's past. We hope that readers of this text will have recognized the themes in the last several thousand years of the African past that thread their way through the text into the twenty-first century. They are indeed the themes of this book, and they will most certainly reappear – in different forms, to be sure – in the twenty-first century.
Environment continues to shape the lives of the African peoples. As seen in the previous chapters, population has long been tied to the interaction between humans and the unique African environment. In relation to its landmass, Africa has, historically, been under populated. Two thousand years ago, Africa south of the Sahara had only an estimated population one-fifth that of China or the Roman Empire. During the next 1,500 years, this ratio continued to decline so that by 1500, Africa contained less than an estimated 15 percent of the world's human beings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Africa accounted for only about 1 percent of the 2 billion people inhabiting the earth. The reasons for this low rate of growth remain unclear to this day. Was this creeping rate of reproduction caused by a harsh climate, disease, poor soils, conflict, and slavery? One can only reflect and suggest that the reasons lie in the complex interaction between humanity and nature in Africa.
1 - The historical geography of Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 7-22
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
So Geographers in Africa-Maps
With Savage-Pictures fill their Gaps;
And o'er unhabitable Downs
Place Elephants for want of Towns.
Jonathan Swift, “On Poetry: A Rapsody”The history of the African people has been indelibly stamped by their continent's geography – its deserts, Sahel, savanna, swamps, rainforests, plateaus, mountains, rivers, and lakes have shaped both the evolution of humankind in the geologic past and the historical development of African societies in the past several millennia. Africa's diverse geology and geography are reflected in the varied histories of its people.
Africa is an enormous landmass, 12 million square miles, larger than North America and four times the size of the United States. It is also the oldest continent, from which Europe, Asia, and the Americas floated away on tectonic plates many millions of years ago. They left in their wake a solid, vast, uplifted flat plateau 2,000 to 4,000 feet above sea level, which slept in its geologic continuity. Its rocks and sediments remained horizontal throughout millions of years, undisturbed by the gigantic metamorphic upheavals of the Himalayas, European Alps, and the American and Andean cordillera on the new continents.
11 - The peoples and states of southern Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 159-172
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Southern Africa is a region of high savanna, the veld (Afrikaans, “field”), mountains, and narrow coastal plain severed by short rivers lying south of the Zambezi River and comprising the modern states of Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland, and the Republic of South Africa, which surround the independent kingdom of Lesotho. Although Europeans had established stations along the coast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly the strategic Dutch colonial station at Cape Town near the southernmost point of the continent, they knew little of the interior of southern Africa until the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, although it is relatively new to Europeans, it is in fact geologically the oldest region of the African continent. Rocks formed more than 1 billion years ago still lie in their horizontal plane, untouched by the upheavals that have elsewhere shaped the configuration of the global landmass. Here in southern Africa, protruding upward from the molten core of the earth, is the massive plug of rock called the Kaapvaal Craton, which resisted the geologic turbulence that floated the other continents away to their present locations. When the African continent became stabilized about 500 million years ago, the Kaapvaal Craton, 234,000 square miles of southern Africa, remained undisturbed, along with its prodigious mineral wealth.
Part IV - Independent Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 329-330
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
19 - Southern Africa, 1486–1910
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 279-294
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
At the end of the fifteenth century, southern Africa was populated by peoples who spoke languages of either the Khoisan or Bantu families. Some of the Khoisan-speakers were hunter-gatherers, whereas others lived in small communities, raising livestock. The Bantu speakers clustered roughly into two cultural groups: the Sotho-Tswana, who occupied the highveld, and the Nguni, who had settled on the coast. The Khoisan-speaking herders lived along the fertile valleys of the Cape Peninsula. Although the enormous landmass of this southern subcontinent of Africa seemed very large for the Khoisan and Bantu-speaking peoples, they had successfully exploited its diverse environment – the arid Karoo of the San (often pejoratively called Bushmen), the grasslands of the Khoi (often pejoratively called Hottentots), and the moist grasslands of the coast and drier savanna of the highlands of the Bantu speakers. This was the world into which the first Portuguese mariners made landfall in southern Africa in 1486, to be followed in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias, who rounded the Cape of Good Hope as far as Algoa Bay, and on his return voyage discovered the safe and strategic anchorage of Table Bay, modern Cape Town.
12 - The arrival of Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 175-189
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Although Africa north of the Sahara and the coasts of the Red Sea and East Africa were well known to the ancient Mediterranean world, Africa south of the desert was not. By the fifteenth century, European perceptions of the land and people of sub-Saharan Africa were shrouded in myth, distorted by legends of ferocious peoples with bizarre physical features. Africans were collectively called Ethiopians, a pejorative term having nothing to do with the Ethiopians of northeast Africa. From the middle of the fifteenth century, the dramatic discovery of Africa by Europe was made possible by the Portuguese voyages of exploration around the African coast. These voyages were carefully planned, but their execution down the African coast was painfully slow. The long, inhospitable western African coast had few natural harbors and dangerous shores, shoals, and ocean currents that required methodical exploration to understand and chart accurate nautical maps; this could only be achieved by substantial innovations in shipbuilding, seamanship, and navigation, which required more than six decades to devise before the Portuguese captains could round the Cape of Good Hope.
22 - Nationalism and the independence of colonial Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 331-343
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In 1915, a Baptist minister, John Chilembwe (c. 1871–1915), led an ill-fated insurrection against British rule in Nyasaland (Malawi). As a young man, he had believed that colonial rule would “civilize” his native Nyasaland by introducing Christian values and British liberalism. In 1892, he came under the influence of the popular radical Baptist missionary Joseph Booth (1851–1932), whom he accompanied to the United States, where he studied at the black Baptist seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. Upon his return in 1900, he established the Providence Industrial Mission where, inspired by Booker T. Washington, he preached the gospel of hard work, cleanliness, and respect for the colonial authorities. He became increasingly critical, however, of the harsh treatment and brutality of white settlers toward African laborers on their plantations and the indifference of British officials to these abuses. Convinced that his colonial government would never make good on the promise of social equality he found in English law and the Christian Bible, Chilembwe published a letter in the Nyasaland Times on November 26, 1914, that ran under the heading “The Voice of the African Natives in the Present War,” in which he laid out his complaints against colonial policies. His message of African grievances and hopes was ignored, and two months later, on January 29, 1915, Chilembwe and two hundred of his followers launched their uprising to establish an independent African state. The colonial authorities retaliated swiftly and ruthlessly. Two weeks later, Chilembwe and many of his supporters were dead and their brick mission church razed to the ground.
6 - Empires of the plains
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 78-95
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In the eleventh century, reports circulated in the bazaars of North Africa of a powerful African monarch who reigned far to the south, beyond the expanse of the Sahara Desert. His empire sent gold and slaves across to the Maghrib, where they percolated into the economy of the burgeoning Islamic world. This mysterious ruler, known as the ghana, was reputed to be the most powerful king in all of Africa. His wealth, and that of his successors, became legendary.
The ghana was not a myth but the ruler of an African kingdom called Wagadu, the capital of which, Koumbi Saleh, lay on the desert's edge in modern Mauritania. From there the rulers of Wagadu dominated a vast commercial empire that stretched from the Niger River in the south to the desert's edge in the north, and from the Senegal River valley in the west to the inland Niger delta in the east. Later it would be eclipsed by an even larger empire, Mali, which in time would itself be supplanted by the still larger empire of Songhai. Between and around the borders of these empires mushroomed an array of cities and states, all connected in a commercial web that stretched north to the Atlantic and south to the tropical forests of Central Africa.
18 - The European conquest of Africa
- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, Clemson University, South Carolina
-
- Book:
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 25 November 2013, pp 263-278
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
After four hundred years during which Europe had displayed little or no interest in Africa beyond its coastline, suddenly – in the twenty years between 1878 and 1898 – the European states partitioned and conquered virtually the entire continent. To observers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this sudden conquest was a frantic, often unseemly, and largely unexpected scramble for territory in a continent about which the Europeans knew little and for which most cared nothing. Their sentiments were encapsulated in the famous remark by the English historian John H. Seeley that his generation had conquered half of the world “in a fit of absence of mind.” Today, however, with the advantage of hindsight historians have perceived several fundamental causes and events that combined to upset four hundred years of equilibrium between Africa and Europe and precipitate the European conquest of virtually the entire continent. The Industrial Revolution created demands for new raw materials from Africa, and made Africa an attractive potential market for European manufactured goods. Moreover, the new technologies produced by the Industrial Revolution provided the instruments that upset the long-standing balance of power between Africa and Europe. Imperialism was propelled as well by popular nationalism, which pressed European statesmen into pursuing expansionist policies in the name of imperial defense. Changing terms of trade required European merchants to seek political stability in Africa, where for centuries they had profited from the instability that had fostered the slave trade. European Christianity was also changing in the nineteenth century, as the new and powerful Evangelical movement inspired aggressive missionary activity, which in the past had been largely confined to the African coast, deeper into the continent.