Nomads in the Shadows of Empires

Gufu Oba, Dr Phil. (1996), is professor of Ecology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. His research is interdisciplinary, including frontier history, nomads and states in the Horn of Africa. He has published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals.

• CONTENTSList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Pre-Colonial Shifting Resource Borders and Ethnic Relations, 1800–1908 3. The Marking of an Imperial Frontier: Two Borders, Two States, 1898–1909 4. Tax Extractions, Imperial Relations and Responses by Frontier Nomads, 1908–1935 5. Transfrontier Grazing and Watering Rights: A Proxy of Border Contests, 1908–1935 6. Tigre Frontier Banditry: A Legacy of Imperial Conquest, 1908–1934 7. Negotiating Ethnic Conflicts: States and Feuding Nomads, 1911–1935 8. Fascist Italy’s Conquest of Ethiopia: The Southern Front, 1935–1937 9. A New Imperial Neighbor on the Frontier: The Dilemma of Coexistence, 1936–1939 10. War, Contests and Conflicts: A Brief Collapse of an Imperial Frontier, 1939–1942 11. The Return to Imperial Frontier Politics: The British and Ethiopia, 1942–1948 12. Jeegir Banditry: Rebellion by Frontier Nomads, 1941–1943 13. Compensating Victims of Banditry in 1943: States and Pastoralists 14. Political Legacies of Shifting Politics 15. Summary Glossary BibliographyIndex

'Oba (ecology, Norwegian U. of Life Sciences) draws not only on academic studies, but also on the experience of his own grandparents and parents, who lived through the partitioning of the frontiers region between the Empire of Ethiopia and the British East African Protectorate of Kenya. The colonial era has implications for how control was exercised over formerly free populations, he says, and the history of frontiers in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere needs to shift focus from contests between imperial states to resistance by the frontier nomads'.In: Reference & Research Book News, December 2013