Product Description
New Guinea, the world's largest tropical island, is a land of great contrasts, ranging from small glaciers on its highest peaks to broad mangrove swamps in its lowlands and hundreds of smaller islands and coral atolls along its coasts. Divided between two nations, the island and its neighboring archipelagos form Indonesia's Papua Province (or Irian Jaya) and the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, both former European colonies. Most books on New Guinea have been guided by these and other divisions, separating east from west, prehistoric from historic, precontact from postcontact, colonial from postcolonial. This is the first work to consider New Guinea and its 40,000-year history in its entirety.

The volume opens with a look at the Melanesian region--the basic physical geography and prehistoric periods of settlement, agricultural development, and expansion and the nature of trade networks and population movements--arguing that interlocking exchange systems and associated human interchanges are the "invisible government" through which New Guinea societies operate. Succeeding chapters review the history of encounters between outsiders and New Guinea's populations. They consider the history of Malay involvement with New Guinea over the past two thousand years, demonstrating the extent to which west New Guinea in particular was incorporated into Malay trading and raiding networks prior to Western contact. The European incursion--beginning with the Portuguese and Spanish in the early sixteenth century, the Dutch a century later, and the British from the late 1700s--is examined in light of early trading engagements and the development of more formal trade networks, the history of the Melanesian labor trade, and the role of violence in European and New Guinean relations. The impact of colonial rule, economic and social change, World War II, decolonization, and independence are discussed in the final chapter.

Ambitious and wide-ranging, New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History effectively challenges conventional thinking about the region and will be read with great interest by students and scholars of Pacific and Indonesian history, anthropology, and prehistory. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Between 1997 and 2001 an extensive series of Dutch-language interviews was recorded with the aim of documenting "the end of the Netherlands colonial presence in Asia." These interviews concentrated on experiences in what is called "The East" from the 1930s until the early 1960s. They present a broad spectrum of material, depicting fear, anger, and courage in a turbulent historical period. But they also provide a vivid window on ordinary day-to-day life, at home and at work.

The Foundation for the Oral History of Indonesia (SMGI) was established especially for this project. It organized and conducted interviews with 724 individuals, among them Dutch, Indo-Europeans, Chinese, Moluccans, Menadonese, and Javanese. A sound archive comprising 2,800 hours of recording is available for consultation at the KITLV (Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology) in Leiden. The abstracts presented in this volume are an introduction to this very rich source of information. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ultimately, Hundreds of Pages of Frustration
This is a wise and positive purchase for the serious and active scholar and student.It's also a devilishly enticing yet ultimately frustrating collection of unrealized stories for the casual reader, even one familiar with Dutch colonialism and Southeast Asia in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.

The stated purpose of the book is so that readers "can have some idea of the scale and character of the collection.""The collection" is the tapes and assorted databasing and archives of the (Dutch) Foundation for the Oral History of Indonesia project.The project itself was designed to address "what was life like in the final decades of Dutch colonialism and during the first years of Indonesian independence."The seven-page introduction is direct and to the point, and thoroughly describes the project's purpose, its methodology, and some of the clearly implied "why's" and "wherefore's."It's clear and concise, and tells what the entire project is about, giving a good feel for the massive scope, long term, and dedicated participation of the scholars and interviewees involved.The introduction is just right.

The abstracts are the core of this book, 578 pages of single-paragraph synopses from 1189 interviews of 724 people who had been in Holland's "East."The first abstract is from a housewife who married a Dutch colonial soldier; the last is from a school teacher who taught a prominent occupying Japanese official how to speak Malay.In between are stories of privileged colonial life, captivity, torture, deprivation, occupation, uncertainty in time of civil/revolutionary war, and above all transition and uncertainty.The stories come from bakers, soldiers, businessmen, husbands and wives, spies, engineers, public servants, students, and hundreds more.The scope is wide-ranging and highly varied, each abstract standing as a separate and distinct story, a non-fiction memoir.

Overall, the book is incredibly frustrating.Each individual story is a window into a unique and fascinating life which, due to the necessary brevity of the abstracts, is closed as quickly as it opens, in an average of maybe twenty lines.There are fascinating stories of death and heartbreak, family reunion, love, deceit, and conflict, but there is never any amplifying narrative.The abstract is all there is.The only way to complete the story is to learn Dutch, travel to the Netherlands, and sit through the original tapes, since not even transcripts were made of these conversations.As I read through the hundreds of pages of hundreds of abstracts, with a new source and entirely new existence at least once per page, I couldn't help but wish for a genuine story, a beginning, middle, and end.In almost every abstract the basic elements were there, but there was never any resolution, never any amplification.

The only real value this book and its collection of abstracts has is to the professional researcher.This being said, the way the book and its information is arranged does not necessarily assist one bent on research.There is a clear methodology to the interviews, and each source named, with a source number, interview details, and occupation and locational data in Southeast Asia.But nowhere in the book is all of the hard data contained in the 1189 abstracts collated and organized into a tabular or other form to make it easier to search.There is an index of geographical names, and there is a general index, as well as a listing of the proper names of each of the interviewees.Where is the index of proper/personal names to complement the listing of the names of those interviewed--the interviewees are not the only individuals mentioned by name, not by a long shot.There is no general thematic index, the most logical and common basic starting point for any kind of research.The index of geographical names is sadly incomplete, with dozens and dozens of places mentioned in the text not included.The same is true of the general index, a pitifully paltry effort of only twelve pages for over 570 pages of information.Dozens of places, concepts, persons, organizations, businesses, government offices and elements have failed to be listed.The weak general and geographical indices, and the list of interviewees are not cross-referenced at all.For an effort of this magnitude, and with word processing technology available 2002, there is no excuse for anything short of a comprehensive, detailed, and thoroughly cross-referenced grouping of indices.This is especially egregious fault in a book that is so clearly geared to the serious researcher.Short of doing extensive library/online research or even going to Holland to research the collection personally, this book should be the simple, accessible, and above all comprehensive entry point for further use of the overall collection.No, this is not the stated purpose of the book (as quoted above), but making the data readily available to those who wish to take advantage is clearly a responsibility of those who undertook the project in the first place.

In conclusion, this book is best purchased and actively utilized by the dedicated researcher, the scholar and/or student who is actively engaged in the subjects touched upon by this oral history project (late Dutch colonialism, Japanese World War II occupation in Southeast Asia, Indonesian nationalism and revolution, and the early days of Indonesian independence).This book sadly is not a good choice for a casual reader, even one who is interested in and well-read in the Dutch colonial experience, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, etc.The casual reader will be increasingly annoyed and frustrated by the parade of hundreds of fascinating personal stories of adventure, tragedy, and triumph, brutally truncated into maddeningly short abstracts.
... Read more

Product Description
The Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) led Guinea to independence in 1958, advancing a wave of decolonization that ultimately swept across Africa. Schmidt attributes the RDA's overwhelming success to its ability to form a broad ethnic, class, and gender alliance, whose strength lay in its solid support among the non-literate masses. Key to the party's prowess was its focus on groups already engaged in struggle against the state: military veterans, urban workers, peasants, and women. It was their grievances that drove the nationalist agenda and their energies that were harnessed in the struggle for independence. The source of the party's strength was also the root of its greatest weakness. Disputes over ethnicity, class, and gender, and eruptions of ethnically based political violence, were a constant threat to the nationalist movement. Ultimately, it was the RDA's radical base that rejected junior partnership in the French Community, pushing the party leadership to endorse immediate independence. Based on previously unexamined archival records and oral interviews with rank-and-file RDA members, this book reinterprets nationalist history by approaching it from the bottom up. It illuminates the ways in which grassroots activists shaped the movement's vision, objectives, and strategies. The significance of Schmidt's work extends far beyond Guinea. It raises important theoretical and methodological issues that transform our understanding of anti-colonial nationalism in the non-Western world. ... Read more

Product Description
Equatorial Guinea: Country Study Guide ... Read more

Product Description
A Short History of Papua New Guinea is a concise book describing the quick and steady growth of the many small, isolated and self-sufficient societies that made up the fledgeling British Papua and German New Guinea colonies towards the end of the last century. The book traces how the British and German colonies grew and the effects that each administration had on health, religion, education and trade up to and beyond independence. ... Read more

Product Description
This text is the history of the Portuguese island of Sao Tome from its discovery in 1470 to 1655 - its internal social and economic development and changing relations with the African mainland and the world trade system. Settled by Portuguese criminals, prostitutes, children of Jews, and African slaves, their mulatto descendents became a wealthy sugar-growing planter class, Europe's leading sugar suppliers in the 16th century. This study illustrates how the too-perfect adaptation of a small-scale society to its original economic relationships, issues of race, and the lack of alternatives caused by an entrenched ruling class which had lost its economic justification for rule, combine to create a destructive rigidity that can lead to social collapse and make effective amelioration impossible. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

History about Sao Tome Islands
Updates about Sao Tome economics ... Read more

Product Description
The first English voyages solely to Guinea were previously known mainly through accounts in Eden and Hakluyt. They can be seen here through the wills of 90 men who died on the voyages. These wills depict in detail the shipboard life of Tudor sailors, and provide the earliest records of any English long-distance seafaring. Of the 1,000 or so men serving on these voyages, some 400 are named in the wills. The wills are printed in full, with extensive annotation. An introduction deals with the Guinea voyages, 16th-century will-making, and the shipboard life of seamen - terms of service, manning, provenances, possessions aboard (especially clothing), indebtedness and the shipboard economy, and evidences of social networks. Apart from throwing further light on the earliest contacts between England and Black Africa, the volume contributes to both the marine and social history of Tudor England. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
An indispensable reference tool for the research community in the Republic of Guinea (Conakry) and for the next generation of outside scholars, this edition offers an introductory narrative accounting of Guineas political and economic history, a chronology that spans the earliest known history of the area to the present day Republic of Guinea, more thandictionary entries covering the personalities and events that made contemporary Guinea, and an extensive bibliography of current publications. ... Read more

Product Description

Walter Rodney is revered throughout the Caribbean as a teacher, a hero, and a martyr. This book remains the foremost work on the region.

Product Description
Paul E. Isert, a Dane, arrived in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) in 1783, taking advantage of an opening in the slave trade between Guinea and the West Indies. He was appointed as chief surgeon to the Danish establishments on the Guinea Coast. In 1786 he sailed to the West Indies with a cargo of slaves, who revolted. His experiences in Ghana and the West Indies resolved him to end the trans-Atlantic slave abuse. This book is written in the form of letters to his father. An elusive character, it is clear that he nonetheless had an unreservedly positive attitude towards Africa and its indigenous peoples, and an equally negative attitude towards the Europeans on the Guinea coast. An admirer of Rousseau's philosophy, he was concerned about the corrupting influence of the European "civilisation" on the "Blacks". His writing attempts at objectivity, seeking to find the common humanity. He claims that the "Black" was, at least equal to tat of the "European",which was not shared by his Danish predecessors. This is the first English language edition of his original Danish letters, previously published in German, Dutch, French, and Swedish. ... Read more

Product Description
Selena Axelrod Winsnes has been engaged, since 1982, in the translation into English, and editing of Danish language sources to West African history, sources published from 1697 to 1822, the period during which Denmark-Norway was an actor in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It comprises five major books written for the Scandinavian public. They describe all aspects of life on the Gold Coast [Ghana], the Middle Passage and the Danish Caribbean islands [US Virgin Islands], as seen by five different men. Each had his own agenda and mind-set, and the books, both singly and combined, hold a wealth of information - of interest both to scholars and lay readers. They provide important insights into the cultural baggage the enslaved Africans carried with them to the America's. One of the books, L.F. R¯mer's A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea was runner-up for the prestigious International Texts Prize awarded by the U.S. African Studies Association. ... Read more

Product Description
The third edition of this standard reference work brings the history of Equatorial Guinea into the second Nguemist dictatorship, which began with the August 1979 coup of Obiang Nguema. It explains the continuity of the Nguema dynasty, marked by violence, disregard for human rights, nepotism, corruption, drug trafficking, and the confiscation of oil profits by high ranking members of the Clan of Mongomo. This edition also adds essential detail to the Report on Human Rights Practices that was submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, January 30, 1998. ... Read more

Product Description
This work deals with those forces, which, at the end of the 19th century in the Senegambian region of West Africa, combined to reshape the indigenous societies. The factors of change included the abolition of the slave trade; new emphasis on "legitimate commerce"; and efforts to colonize Africa. ... Read more

Product Description
Selena Axelrod Winsnes has been engaged, since 1982, in the translation into English, and editing of Danish language sources to West African history, sources published from 1697 to 1822, the period during which Denmark-Norway was an actor in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It comprises five major books written for the Scandinavian public. They describe all aspects of life on the Gold Coast [Ghana], the Middle Passage and the Danish Caribbean islands [US Virgin Islands], as seen by five different men. Each had his own agenda and mind-set, and the books, both singly and combined, hold a wealth of information - of interest both to scholars and lay readers. They provide important insights into the cultural baggage the enslaved Africans carried with them to the America's. One of the books, L.F. R¯mer's A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea was runner-up for the prestigious International Texts Prize awarded by the U.S. African Studies Association. ... Read more