Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This tour de force could only be written by someone with a vast library at his disposal, and Iliffe has used his sources well indeed." Journal of Developing Areas"John Iliffe has written a very important book." American Historical Review"Iliffe provides us with a useful compilation of fascinating anecdotes and data organized by geography, chronology, religion, and ethnicity. He tells us who the poor were and what Ethiopian emperors, Christian missionaries, the King of the Kuba, and social welfare civil servants thought of the poor." Irving Leonard Markovitz, Queens College and Graduate Center of CUNY, in the American Journal of Sociology
Synopsis
Professor Iliffe traces the history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa from the thirteenth-century Ethiopia to the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s.
Synopsis
The permanent poverty of the dispossessed as well as the temporary poverty of famine victims is depicted through an account of the African poor that begins in the monasteries of thirteenth century Ethiopia.
Table of Contents
Preface; 1. The comparative history of the poor; 2. Christian Ethiopia; 3. The Islamic tradition; 4. Poverty and pastoralism; 6. Yoruba and Igbo; 7. Early European initiatives; 8. Poverty in South Africa, 1886-1948; 9. Rural poverty in colonial Africa; 10. Urban poverty in tropical Africa; 11. The care of the poor in colonial Africa; 12. Leprosy; 13. The growth of poverty in independent Africa; 14. The transformation of poverty in southern Africa; Notes; Bibliography; Index.