Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c.1935-1972

by Derek R. Peterson

Overview

Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival shows how, in the era of African political independence, cosmopolitan Christian converts struggled with East Africa's patriots over the definition of culture and community. The book traces the history of the East African Revival, an evangelical movement that spread through much of eastern and central Africa. Its converts offered a subversive reading of culture, disavowing their compatriots and disregarding their obligations to kin. They earned the ire of East Africa's patriots, who worked to root people in place as inheritors of ancestral wisdom. This book casts religious conversion in a new light: not as an inward reorientation of belief, but as a political action that opened up novel paths of self-narration and unsettled the inventions of tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139579544
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/24/2012
Series:	African Studies , #122
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Derek R. Peterson teaches African history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya and the editor of several books, including Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa and Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic. Peterson is a recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Modern History and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction: the pilgrims' politics; 2. The infrastructure of cosmopolitanism; 3. Religious movements in southern Uganda; 4. Civil society in Buganda; 5. Taking stock: conversion and accountancy in Bugufi; 6. Patriotism and dissent in western Kenya; 7. The politics of moral reform in northwestern Tanganyika; 8. Subjects of the law: conversion and court procedure; 9. Casting characters: autobiography and political argument in central Kenya; 10. Confession, slander, and civic virtue in Mau Mau detention camps; 11. Contests of time in western Uganda; Conclusion: pilgrims and patriots in contemporary East Africa; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

‘In this superb book, Peterson pulls off the rare feat of combining a compelling, comprehensive argument about a huge regional movement with sharply drawn, detailed documentation of the local singularity of the forms it took in seven different areas in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. The big picture positions the East African Revival as a form of critical practice, engaged in contestation with alternative, more conservative visions of society based on ethnic consolidation and the re-invention of tradition. In the documentation of local trajectories, what comes through most vividly is the converts themselves, in all their idiosyncrasy and humanity … individual voices and vignettes reveal the energy, initiative, and creativity these people brought to the radical project of convening a new kind of community. This book is a major achievement by any standards - original, convincing, deeply and broadly researched, and beautifully written.’ Karin Barber, University of Birmingham

'This is a remarkable book, admirably researched and deeply thoughtful … Few historians of Africa have equalled Peterson’s capacity to hear the people of the past talking to one another.' African Studies

'As a meticulous researcher and astute scholar, Peterson provides excellent footnotes and an extensive bibliography on the topic, including detailed descriptions of forty-six archives on three continents and 170 informants from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. This insightful and comprehensive monograph serves the scholarly purpose of stimulating further research on the Revival and its socio-political implications in late colonial Africa.' Daewon Moon, African Studies Quarterly

From the Publisher