Slavery and beyond

Originating as slave armies on the plantations of Portuguese East Africa, the Chikunda emerged as noted elephant hunters, daring canoe voyagers, long-distance trade porters, and state builders as slavery melted away in 19th-century East Africa. With a sensitivity for forms of cultural expression and the changing relationships between men and women, the Isaacmans lead the reader into the insecure world of East Africa as freed slaves sought new ways of supporting themselves. This monumental and sweeping work is destined to become an African History classic.

About the Author :
Allen Isaacman is Regents Professor of History and Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change/MacArthur Program at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution, (1972), The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique (1976), Mozambique from Colonialism to Revolution (1983), Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa (1995), and Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, (1995).

Review :
"This wonderful book recounts a large and important sweep of history as seen from a uniquely situated, uniquely revealing African point of viewthat of the Chikunda. It is a truism that colonial rule depended on violence. Yet the Chikunda were colonial subjects who nevertheless exercised control over the means of violence. Their interests coincided neither with those of the Portuguese nor with those of other Africans. They occupied a space betwixt and between, and yet at the nexus of force that was central to the evolving colonial experience."-Steven Feierman, Professor of History and Sociology of Science University of Pennsylvania "Allen and Barbara Isaacman have told a fascinating story about the struggles for survival by a vulnerable group within the wider, unstable world of the Zambezi Valley from the mid-nineteenth century through the tightening grip of Portuguese colonialism in the 1920s. To survive, the Chikunda made and remade themselves as they traversed the big changes of the transition from precolonial to colonial political economy. This focus on Chikunda raises important questions about the strategies of other vulnerable groups. The Isaacmans have established a model for how to study the meanings and experiences of social vulnerability in Southern Africa."-Richard Roberts, Professor and Director Center for African Studies, Stanford University ?A welcome feature of this new book is that they tease out the implications of Chikunda history for similar studies elsewhere. Their status as military slaves, for example, so unlike the situation in the American South, illuminates what has already been observed for slave regimes throughout the Middle East and in the West Indies. The emergence of Chikunda ethnicity takes its place in the established debate about the origins of tribalism and the fluidity of ethnic boundaries while, given their topic, the authors obviously have much to say about the construction of male identity. In the end though, this is a book about frontiers, a theme long present in South African history but largely ignored further to the north - except in the Isaacmans' earlier books. throughout the Mid?-Journal of African History ?Allen and Barbara Isaacman have told a fascinating story about the struggles for survival by a vulnerable group within the wider, unstable world of the Zambezi Valley from the mid-nineteenth century through the tightening grip of Portuguese colonialism in the 1920s. To survive, the Chikunda made and remade themselves as they traversed the big changes of the transition from precolonial to colonial political economy. This focus on Chikunda raises important questions about the strategies of other vulnerable groups. The Isaacmans have established a model for how to study the meanings and experiences of social vulnerability in Southern Africa.?-Richard Roberts, Professor and Director Center for African Studies, Stanford University ?This wonderful book recounts a large and important sweep of history as seen from a uniquely situated, uniquely revealing African point of viewthat of the Chikunda. It is a truism that colonial rule depended on violence. Yet the Chikunda were colonial subjects who nevertheless exercised control over the means of violence. Their interests coincided neither with those of the Portuguese nor with those of other Africans. They occupied a space betwixt and between, and yet at the nexus of force that was central to the evolving colonial experience.?-Steven Feierman, Professor of History and Sociology of Science University of Pennsylvania "A welcome feature of this new book is that they tease out the implications of Chikunda history for similar studies elsewhere. Their status as military slaves, for example, so unlike the situation in the American South, illuminates what has already been observed for slave regimes throughout the Middle East and in the West Indies. The emergence of Chikunda ethnicity takes its place in the established debate about the origins of tribalism and the fluidity of ethnic boundaries while, given their topic, the authors obviously have much to say about the construction of male identity. In the end though, this is a book about frontiers, a theme long present in South African history but largely ignored further to the north - except in the Isaacmans' earlier books. throughout the Mid"-Journal of African History