This volume focuses on the cultural memory and mediation of the 1964 Zanzibar revolution, analyzing it’s continuing reverberations in everyday life. The revolution constructed new conceptions of community and identity, race and cultural belonging, as well as instituting different ideals of nationhood, citizenship, sovereignty. As the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the revolution revealed, the official versions of events have shifted significantly over time and the legacy of the uprising is still deeply contested. In these debates, the question of Zanzibari identity remains very much at stake: Who exactly belongs in the islands and what historical processes brought them there? What are the boundaries of the nation, and who can claim to be an essential part of this imagined and embodied community? Political belonging and power are closely intertwined with these issues of identity and history—raising intense debates and divisions over precisely where Zanzibar should be situated within the national order of things in a postcolonial and interconnected world. Attending to narratives that have been overlooked, ignored, or relegated to the margins, the authors of these essays do not seek to simply define the revolution or to establish its ultimate meaning. Instead, they seek to explore the continuing echoes and traces of the revolution fifty years on, reflected in memories, media, and monuments. Inspired by interdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, history, cultural studies, and geography, these essays foreground critical debates about the revolution, often conducted sotto voce and located well off the official stage—attending to long silenced questions, submerged doubts, rumors and secrets, or things that cannot be said.

This collection offers insights into how the people of the Indian Ocean islands of Zanzibar, Madagascar, Mauritius and the Comoros negotiate their social and political belonging in these societies, created through waves of migration across the ocean.

Zanzibar Was a Country traces the history of a Swahili-speaking Arab diaspora from East Africa to Oman. In Oman today, whole communities in Muscat speak Swahili, have recent East African roots, and practice forms of sociality associated with the urban culture of the Swahili coast. These "Omani Zanzibaris" offer the most significant contemporary example in the Gulf, as well as in the wider Indian Ocean region, of an Afro-Arab community that maintains a living connection to Africa in a diasporic setting. While they come from all over East Africa, a large number are postrevolution exiles and emigrés from Zanzibar. Their stories provide a framework for the broader transregional entanglements of decolonization in Africa and the Arabian Gulf. Using both vernacular historiography and life histories of men and women from the community, Nathaniel Mathews argues that the traumatic memories of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 are important to nation-building on both sides of the Indian Ocean.

Bringing together historians, political scientists, and literary analysts, this volume shows how biographical narratives can shed light on alternative, little known or under-researched aspects of state power in African politics. Part 1 shows how biographical narratives breathe new life into subjects who, upon decolonization, had been reduced to silence - women, workers, and radical politicians. The contributors analyze the complex relationship between biographical narratives and power, questioning either the power of biographical codes peculiar to western, colonial origins, or the power to shape public memory. Part 2 reflects on the act of (auto-)biography writing as an exercise of power, one that blurs the lines between truth and invention. (Auto-)biographical narratives appear as politicized, ambiguous stories. Part 3 focuses on female leadership during and after colonization, exploring on how women gained, lost, or reinvented "power". Brought together, the contributions of this volume show that the function of biographical narratives should no longer oscillate between romanticized narratives and historical evidence; their varied formats all offer fruitful opportunities for a multidisciplinary dialogue. This book will be of interest to scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds working on the African postcolonial state, the decolonization process, women’s and gender studies, and biography writing.

Blending autobiography and history, James Green reflects on 30 years as an activist, educator and historian. He recounts how he became immersed in political process and in recovering and preserving the history of progressive social movements, demonstrating how the two are linked.

In this book, Simpson offers a reflective and theoretical explanation of the ways in which unionists conceive of the past in the present post-conflict environment. He considers the ways in which scholarly literature has often painted an outdated and inaccurate portrait of a highly complex people.

Annotation Gur-Ze'ev's compelling text takes to task the ideological education in Israel which, he argues, suppresses acknowledgment of the realities and histories of the Other, including the Palestinians, and ultimately is responsible for injustice. The process of education in Israel is pinpointed in eleven different contexts, both Israeli and Palestinian, to show the ways in which ideology is indoctrinated in areas that include transportation, the army, and the academy. The theoretical foundations of the book can be applied beyond Israel to all instances of ideology being used to suppress intellectual autonomy and the need for what Gur-Ze'ev (philosophy of education, U. of Haifa, Israel) calls a counter-education. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The challenge taken on in this book is to confront a division that has separated Europe by an Iron Curtain for over 40 years. The contributions deal with the historical background of this division and its impact on Eastern European biographies. Empirical and theoretical investigations of transformations in people's lives since 1989 are highlighted relating to Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Yugoslavia, as well as the German Democratic Republic. The historical period covered by the articles in this book extends from the Soviet Revolution of 1917 to the present.