1960s
1980s
20th century
A01=Luise White
africa
african
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Luise White
automatic-update
autonomy
britain
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJH
Category=JHMC
Category=NHH
citizenship
colonial
colonization
COP=United States
decolonization
decolonizing
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
empire
empirical
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
era
freedom
government
independence
Language_English
leadership
majority rule
nationalism
nationalist
PA=Available
philosophical
philosophy
place
political
politics
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
race
racism
racist
rhodesia
softlaunch
sovereign
time period
zimbabwe
Product details
- ISBN 9780226235059
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 23 Mar 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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In 1965 the white minority government of Rhodesia (known after 1980 as Zimbabwe) issued a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain, rather than negotiate a transition to majority rule. In doing so, Rhodesia became the exception, if not anathema, to the policies and practices of the end of empire. In Unpopular Sovereignty, Luise White shows that the exception that was Rhodesian independence did not, in fact, make the state that different from new nations elsewhere in Africa: indeed, this history of Rhodesian political practices reveals some of the commonalities of mid-twentieth-century thinking about place and race and how much government should link the two. White locates Rhodesia's independence in the era of decolonization in Africa, a time of great intellectual ferment in ideas about race, citizenship, and freedom. She shows that racists and reactionaries were just as concerned with questions of sovereignty and legitimacy as African nationalists were and took special care to design voter qualifications that could preserve their version of legal statecraft.
Examining how the Rhodesian state managed its own governance and electoral politics, she casts an oblique and revealing light by which to rethink the narratives of decolonization.
Luise White is professor of history at the University of Florida. She is the author of four books, including The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
