Nomads in the shadows of empires : contests, conflicts and legacies on the southern Ethiopian-northern Kenyan frontier / / by Gufu Oba.

• Author: Oba, Gufu.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: African social studies series ; v. 30; African Social Studies Series 30.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (388 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

In Nomads in the Shadows of Empires Gufu Oba presents accounts of why the legacies of banditry and ethnic conflicts have proved so difficult to resolve along the southern Ethiopian and northern Kenyan frontier. Using interpretative and comparative methods to dialogue the relationships between different political actors on both sides of the frontier, the work captures the dynamics of political events related to imperial contests over borders and trans-frontier treaty. A complex evolution of inter-societal relations, as well as the relations between partitioned nomads and the imperial states had resulted in persistent conflicts. This work improves the understanding why frontier pastoralists continue to experience conflict over land, even after the transfer of the tribal territories to the imperial and postcolonial states. Please click here to watch an interview with the author in Oromo.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- Pre-colonial shifting resource borders and ethnic relations, 1800-1908 -- The marking of an imperial frontier : two borders, two states, 1898-1909 -- Tax extractions, imperial relations and responses by frontier nomads, 1908-1935 -- Transfrontier grazing and watering rights : a proxy of border contests, 1908-1935 -- Tigre frontier banditry : a legacy of imperial conquest, 1908-1934 -- Negotiating ethnic conflicts : states and feuding nomads, 1911-1935 -- Fascist italy's conquest of Ethiopia : the Southern Front, 1935-1937 -- A new imperial neighbor on the frontier : the dilemma of coexistence, 1936-1939 -- War, contests and conflicts : a brief collapse of an imperial frontier, 1939-1942 -- The return to imperial frontier politics : the British and Ethiopia, 1942-1948 -- Jeegir banditry : rebellion by frontier nomads, 1941-1943 -- Compensating victims of banditry in 1943 : states and pastoralists -- Political legacies of shifting politics -- Summary.