The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century
by Jonathan Miles
from Atlantic Monthly Press
Wreck of the Medusa: Mutiny, Murder, and Survival on the High Seas
by Alexander McKee
from Skyhorse Publishing
Democracy in Senegal: Tocquevillian Analytics in Africa
by Sheldon Gellar
from Palgrave Macmillan
Battling Siki: A Tale of Ring Fixes, Race, and Murder in the 1920s
by Peter Benson
from University of Arkansas Press
First biography of the controversial and misunderstood African boxer
Battling Siki (1887-1925) was once one of the four or five most recognizable black men in the world, and was written about in detail by such figures as Ring Lardner and his son John, Damon Runyon, and Westbrook Pegler. One can find his legacy in the name of a popular rock group, one of Che Guevara's lieutenants, a character on Xena, Warrior Princess, and the Battling Siki Hotel in the fighter's homeland, Senegal. Peter Benson's biography of the first African to win a world championshipin boxing delves into the complex world of sports, race, colonialism, and the cult of personality in the early twentieth century.
Born Amadu Fall, Siki was taken from Senegal to France by an actress and assumed the name Louis M'barick Fall. After an inauspicious beginning as a boxer, he served in World War I with distinction then returned to boxing and compiled a most impressive record (forty-three wins in forty-six bouts). Then, on September 24, 1922, at Paris's Buffalo Velodrome, before forty thousand stunned spectators (including a young Ernest Hemingway, who wrote about the fight), Battling Siki, employing his trademark "windmill" punch, fought and defeated the reigning world and European light heavyweight champion, Georges Carpentier.
The colorful Siki spent a fortune partying and carousing, was arrested for firing a pistol in the air, and was frequently seen on the streets of Paris, dressed in flashy clothes, walking his pet lion cubs on a leash. But he also provoked a scandal by exposing the corruption of the fight game in France, spoke out boldly against racisim, and was arrested for deliberately defying the code of racial segregation in the American South. Siki's flamboyant image was largely created by newsmen. In fact, the real Siki, while he did certainly like to party, was also an intelligent and socially conscious person, who detested the media's image of him as a simple-minded drunken savage.
Offers rushed in for him to fight in the United States, maybe even against Jack Dempsey. But in a move many have called one of the strangest a fighter ever made, he fought Irishman Mike McTigue in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day—and lost. After losing his European title he came to the United States and fought without much success. He continued to drink and get into street brawls. On the evening of December 15, 1925, at the age of twenty-eight, he was shot and killed in Hell's Kitchen in what some claimed was a gangland execution.
Peter Benson's biography beautifully captures Battling Siki's amazing boxing career and sheds new light on the scandal surrounding his marriages and public behavior, his alleged participation in ring fixes, and the mystery surrounding his death.
Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner
by DANIEL L. SCHAFER
from University Press of Florida
Anna Kingsley's life story adds a dramatic chapter to histories of the South, the state of Florida, and the African diaspora. Working from surprisingly extensive records, including information and photographs from extended-family members and descendants, Daniel Shafer reconstructs and documents one slave's remarkable story.
Both an American slave and a slaveowner--and possibly an African princess--Anna was a teenager when she was captured in her homeland of Senegal in 1806 and sold into slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a planter and slave trader from Spanish East Florida, bought her in Havana, Cuba, and took her to his St. Johns River plantation in northeast Florida, where she soon became his household manager, his wife, and eventually the mother of four of his children. Her husband formally emancipated her in 1811, and she became the owner of her own farm and twelve slaves the following year.
For 25 years, life on her farm and at the Kingsley plantation on Fort George Island was relatively tranquil. But when Florida passed from Spanish to American control, and racism and discrimination increased in the American territories, Anna Kingsley and her children migrated to a colony in Haiti established by her husband as a refuge for free blacks. Amid the spiraling racial tensions of the antebellum period, Anna returned to north Florida, where she bought and sold land, sued white people in the courts, and became a central figure in a free black community. Such accomplishments by a woman in a patriarchal society are fascinating in themselves. To have achieved them as a woman of color is remarkable.
God Alone Is King : Islam and Emancipation in Senegal : The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859-1914 (Social History of Africa)
by James F. Searing
from Heinemann
The study presents African history from an African point of view, decolonizing history through its focus on Wolof historical agency, critical readings of French sources, and a Wolof-centered chronology of historical transformation. It presents the French colonial conquest of Senegal as part of a Wolof civil war. Critical developments in this conflict were the on-going battles between Islam and monarchy that commenced with the Muslim rebellion of 1859. The author shows how the struggle between Islam and monarchy undermined and shaped institutions of colonial rule, based on an alliance between the French and Wolof aristocrats. The study also examines slavery, slave emancipation, and the peasant economy against this background of civil war. Slavery declined rapidly between 1883 and 1905 as slave resistance, aristocratic decline, and the ability of Muslim communities and peasant households to offer refuge to runaway slaves took their toll. A new peasant economy emerged from the ashes of sl The study also examines slavery, slave emancipation, and the peasant economy against this background of civil war. Slavery declined rapidly between 1883 and 1905 as slave resistance, aristocratic decline, and the ability of Muslim communities and peasant households to offer refuge to runaway slaves took their toll. A new peasant economy emerged from the ashes of slavery with cash crop agriculture providing the impetus for change. Through his command of both Wolof and archival sources, Searing has constructed a compelling reassessment of the colonial history of Senegal that clearly demonstrates the power of African agency.
Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia
by Robert M. Baum
from Oxford University Press, USA
In this groundbreaking work, Robert Baum seeks to reconstruct the religious and social history of the Diola communities in southern Senegal during the precolonial era, when the Atlantic slave trade was at its height. Baum shows that Diola community leaders used a complex of religious shrines and priesthoods to regulate and contain the influence of the slave trade. He demonstrates how this close involvement with the traders significantly changed Diola religious life.
Under the Neem Tree
Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu (African Studies)
by Michael A. Gomez
from Cambridge University Press
Bundu is an anomaly among the precolonial Muslim states of West Africa. Founded during the jihads which swept the savannah in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it developed a pragmatic policy, unique in the midst of fundamentalist, theocratic Muslim states. Located in the Upper Senegal and with access to the Upper Gambia, Bundu played a critical role in regional commerce and production and reacted quickly to the stimulus of European trade. Drawing on a wide range of sources both oral and documentary, Arabic, English and French, Dr. Gomez provides the first full account of Bundu's history. He analyzes the foundation and growth of an Islamic state at a crossroads between the Saharan and trans-Atlantic trade, paying particular attention to the relationship between Islamic thought and court policy, and to the state's response to militant Islam in the early nineteenth century.
Drawing upon a wide range of sources, both oral and documentary, Arabic, English and French, this is the first full account of Bundu, a precolonial West African state, from 1698 to 1905. It was founded during the jihads which swept the savannah in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the pragmatic policy of its ruler Malik Sy which tolerated diverse religious and social practices was unique in the midst of fundamentalist, theocratic Muslim states. Bundu played a critical role in regional commerce and production and reacted quickly to the stimulus of European trade.
Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913 (New African Histories)
by Cheikh Anta Babou
from Ohio University Press
Cheikh Anta Babou explores the forging of Murid identity and pedagogy around the person and initiative of Amadu Bamba as well as the continuing reconstruction of this identity by more recent followers. He makes a compelling case for reexamining the history of Muslim institutions in Africa and elsewhere in order to appreciate believers’ motivation and initiatives, especially religious culture and education, beyond the narrow confines of political collaboration and resistance.
Fighting the Greater Jihad also reveals how religious power is built at the intersection of genealogy, knowledge, and spiritual force, and how this power in turn affected colonial policy.
Fighting the Greater Jihad will dramatically alter the perspective from which anthropologists, historians, and political scientists study Muslim mystical orders.
+++
