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My students taught me that everything was personal - history, politics, foreign relations - but this approach creates boundaries as well as connections

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John Lonsdale

John Lonsdale is emeritus professor of modern African history and fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. Among his books are (as co-author) Unhappy Valley: conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, 1992) and (as co-editor) of Mau Mau and Nationhood (James Currey, 2003); he is also the author of seventy articles or book chapters on Kenyan and African history

 

Recent articles


Kenya: ethnicity, tribe, and state

The key to the post-election crisis in Kenya lies in the changing role of the post-colonial state in relation to the country's ethnic terms of political trade, says John Lonsdale.

How to study Africa: from victimhood to agency

Why do most westerners see “Africa” as feckless victim and “the west” as a rescue service, and how far are Africa specialists responsible for this misperception? The scholar John Lonsdale argues that a renewed focus on African agency is essential to a deeper understanding that can help redress local and global structures of inequality, injustice, and misrule.