University of Ghana Wednesday Morning History Seminars

I have now put together the list of presentations for the Wednesday morning seminars at the History Department at the University of Ghana in Legon. The seminars are at 9:30 am in the History Department library.

History Department Seminars

Fall  2014

Date	Speaker	Title
08-10-14	J. Otto Pohl	Special Settlement vs. Apartheid: A Comparison of Soviet and South African Ethnos Theory and Practice
15-10-14	Hermann Wilhelm Von Hesse	Reconstruction of Accra's Architectural and Urban History through 19th Century Photographs: A Critical Appraisal.
22-10-14	Larry W. Yarak	"Creative [and] Expedient Misunderstandings": Elmina-Dutch Relations on the Gold Coast in the Nineteenth Century."
29-10-14	Samuel Ntewusu	The Road to Development: The Construction and Use of Ghana's Great North Road, 1900-2000
05-11-14	Humphrey Asamoah Agyekum	The Cyclical Evolution in Ghana's Civil-Military Relations
12-11-14	Philip Atsu Afeadie	Work Anguish, Pleasure and Concern in Colonial Civil Servants in Northern Nigeria
19-11-14	Knut Oyangen	TBA
26-11-14	Victoria Smith	Writing for Reading Aloud: Radio Ghana and a New National Literature.
03-12-14	Philip Kumahor	Sanitation in Accra

SHARK MOVE - my life

Indonesian Rock from 1970.

News from here

The Cedi has officially gained over 9% against the dollar in the last month. Of course you can't buy any dollars at the official exchange rate. The actual rate you pay to buy dollars is still around 3.8 rather than the official 3.55 and be as high as 4.1. But, at least the currency has stopped falling. It should hold steady at about 4 for the dollar as the real exchange rate for the next few months. Or at least I hope it remains stable or goes up. So it looks like Ghana will avoid a complete collapse of its currency like Weimar Germany/Zimbabwe. That is good news. In more good news the Nigerians are resuming gas exports to Ghana. But, there is alas some bad news as well. The risk of getting fatal diseases from eating off the street seems to be going up rather than down. A student at University Cape Coast recently died of food poisoning after eating some contaminated wakaaye over the weekend. So I am going back to not eating at the night market after having lunch there once this weekend before I read about the UCC student dying of food poisoning.

The Dark Continent Gets Darker

The power outages are getting more frequent and longer now. The water level in the Akosombo Dam is exceptionally low this year. The recent decision by Nigerian authorities to cut off supplies of gas to Ghana has seriously exacerbated the problem. I had no power all night Tuesday, all night Wednesday, and this morning in my flat. The local news predicts that things will continue to get worse now that the Nigerian gas supplies to Ghana have been stopped. The discovery of oil and gas in Ghana like in Nigeria decades earlier has not prevented Ghana from having consistent and prolonged black outs.

Things Fall Apart

Yesterday the strap on my hand bag broke. The day before that the straps on my right sandal broke. Both the bag and the sandals were purchased in Kyrgyzstan and made in China. For some reason Chinese goods exported to Central Asia are really shoddy. They only last a couple of months before falling apart. I am hoping that the new shoes and bag I purchased here in Ghana will last a bit longer, but I am not optimistic.

It Really is the Dark Continent

Not only is the street I live on very poorly lit, we have street lights, but they don't work, but my flat frequently has no electricity. Tuesday night evidently is one of the days that Adenta has scheduled black outs. I have not had electricity there ever on a Tuesday night. Since it gets pitch dark here near the equator every single night of the year by about 6:30 pm that means much or maybe even most of my time is spent in darkness. I probably should invest in some alternative forms of light besides the tiny torch on my mobile. This weekend I will see about buying some more battery powered lighting. Today, I had to buy an emergency pair of shoes after the ones I was wearing broke. That is not a good thing when you have to walk in the dark along unpaved roads divided by multiple drainage ditches.

Harold Alexander-Tite Rope

Africa can be dangerous

Saturday night walking home from the tro tro station I stepped in a small ditch and scraped up my shin. I have since liberally applied rubbing alcohol and a topical anti-biotic ointment to the wound to prevent it from becoming infected. I don't expect that I will ever again be living somewhere with good street lighting so I should learn to walk more carefully after it gets pitch dark here at about 6:30pm or so every day.

Ghana should be a net food exporter not an importer

Ghana and other African countries are perfectly capable of producing enough food to feed themselves and having a surplus left over to export. Unfortunately in Ghana most everything including food is now imported from outside of the African continent. If you go to a shop to buy biscuits they are from Sri Lanka. If you want fruit juice it is from South Africa. If you want mayonnaise it is imported from the United Arab Emirates. Ketchup is from Brunei. Even rice which used to be grown in abundance in Ghana is now mostly imported from Thailand. Just about the only two processed foods produced in Ghana that I see on a regular basis are shito sauce and bissap. If I ever do see imported shito sauce though I am pretty sure that is a sign that the Ghanaian economy has no hope what so ever. Agriculture and food processing seem like a logical place to start for an import substitution program to reduce the flow of foreign exchange out of the country. I noticed this summer when I was in Bishkek that locally produced condiments such as ketchup, mayonnaise, and hot sauce could be found in just about every grocery store at prices much lower than imported versions. Except for shito sauce that is not the case here. You can't find Ghanaian ketchup and mayonnaise for the most part at any price yet alone ones that seriously undercut imports from Brunei and the UAE. A buy Ghanaian campaign is only going to work if there are Ghanaian manufactured goods available in the stores to buy at competitive prices. So far policies to effect such a situation have eluded the Ghanaian government.

First Classes of the Semester

Today I finally taught my first classes of the semester. Only two students showed up to the first one and they were over 40 minutes late. The second class had better attendance, but still seemed to be missing the majority of students. For some reason a lot of students here don't think that they have to attend the first class of the semester. I am not sure where this idea came from. But, all my attempts to disabuse students of the notion that the first class of the semester doesn't count have come to nought.

Дос-Мукасан - Бетпак Дала (1976)

Kazakh psych rock from 1976.

African Geography and Race

This map shows both the Arabian and Iberian peninsulas as separate from Africa. But, there were times in the past when both were politically joined to parts of Africa. Like all other continents Africa is an ideological construct and the version in color to the right has problems. For instance why are the Arab dominated states of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and Mauritania considered African, but Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and others just to the east are not? Now granted the north African states of Morocco, Libya, Algeria, and Egypt are often grouped with the rest of the Arab world as part of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). But, why does this designation frequently exclude Arab dominated Mauritania and Sudan? The fact is that many people in Libya including its former leader in the years before his death think of themselves as linked with the rest of Africa rather than with the Arab states east of the Red Sea. Likewise in Sudan many people including the current leadership consider Sudan an Arab, not an African state. So why do western scholars more often than not group Libya with the Middle East and North Africa and Sudan with sub-Saharan Africa rather than the other way around? Is it just because of skin color? Does the fact many of the people claiming to be Arabs in Sudan and Mauritania have darker skin than the Berbers in Libya mean that the former will always be "Black" Africans and the latter "Middle Eastern Arabs" in the eyes of western scholars? How does this jibe at all with the fact that these same people claim race is constructed when they essentialize and reify pigmentation in this way? There is obviously a "White" vs. "Black" divide across northern Africa. But, to impose a scheme of constructing racial differences between different groups of Arabic speaking Africans based solely upon pigment and to ignore the local social, cultural, and historical contexts existing in the region just seems so typical of American "progressives."

More on why I hate tro tros

The wait for a tro tro first going to my destination and then one in which a crowd of people do not rush in front of me to grab every available seat seems to be getting longer and longer. Last night it took me over an hour and a half to get a seat on a tro tro going from Legon to Andenta. This is a major reason why I have always preferred to live within walking distance of work. Unfortunately, it is not possible here because the area around the university is specifically zoned for commercial and not residential use for a radius of over 15 km. I was fortunate for a while in getting to live on campus for free, but if you look at the older terms of service of the university at one time everybody was guaranteed free housing on the university for as long as they worked for it. Then the university built almost no new faculty housing after 1966 and as a result the vast majority of faculty have to live off campus at least 20km or more away now. So it takes me about an hour and a half to get to work in the morning now and two and a half hours to get home every day.

Ghanaian Radio

This weekend I spent some time listening to Ghanaian radio. A lot of stations of course play high life music. Others play hip life which is a fusion of hip hop and high life. Still others play straight up hip hop. Then there is jazz, rhythm and blues, and other genres. But, the most interesting station I found and it only lasted a couple of hours before I lost it was a country western station and not just any country western station. But, a country western station that played a lot of clearly narrated and very depressing old school type country western songs about divorce, alcoholism, and other typically depressing tropes of country western music. None of the songs were ones that I had ever heard before, but I am pretty sure that they were American and not Ghanaian. Unfortunately, after a couple of hours it seemed to disappear to be replaced with a station playing upbeat, but rather mundane African-American popular music from the late 1970s and early 1980s that I have heard over and over again since the songs first came out. That is okay as back ground music, but the country station made me really pay attention to the lyrics and the stories they were telling.

Any Suggestions for Books on African History?

One of my minor goals before I die is to have read at least one book on the history of each country in Africa. I am a long way from achieving that goal, but currently I am working on reading a book on Sudan and one on Libya. The last African theme book I finished reading was on Algeria. Other countries on the completed list are Congo, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Western Sahara. Since I am not a specialist on Africa and the people I work with almost all specialize in Ghana I am taking suggestions here on works that deal with the individual histories of other African states. So if you have any suggestions put them in the comments.

UTAG Strike to End

According to today's Daily Graphic the government and UTAG reached an agreement yesterday and the strike will end this week. The government has agreed to pay us our Book and Research Allowance for 2013-2014. The book component is $1,500 dollars and the research part 400 GH. Unfortunately, they will be paying us using an averaged exchange rate of 2013 when the cedi was worth double what it is today and 2014. So at most we will probably only get $1,000 after taxes, maybe even less. The government is also still adamant about permanently ending the Book and Research Allowance after this year in favor of a research fund where it will determine who gets funding. UTAG has been strongly opposed to such a scheme in the past. The potential for such a fund to be used as a means of political patronage is immense.

Another UTAG Strike update

We are still on strike, but the government and UTAG may come to some agreement this week that would allow us to go back to teaching. Both my main campus classes are on Friday morning. Everybody else says wait until next week to start. But, I am going to teach before then if the strike ends and the university opens this week. We have a short semester compared to the US to begin with and days already lost to the strike make it even shorter. Under normal circumstances each class consists of only eleven two hour lectures for the entire semester. This semester we have already lost two weeks so instead of twelve weeks, eleven for lectures and one for a midterm examination, we only have ten left. This is a major reason I cover everything that will be in all of the lectures in a summary fashion on the first day of class.

On Kazakh Statehood

Of course there were forms of statehood in Kazakhstan run by the indigenous population before the territory finally became completely absorbed into the Russian Empire in the 19th century. But, the modern Kazakh state is a direct successor of the Kazakh SSR formalized in 1936. The actual borders of the Kazakh SSR had already been finalized in 1932 when it was still the Kazakh ASSR (formed in 1924) and the Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast was detached from Kazakhstan and made part of the RSFSR. Four years later in 1936 the Karakalpak ASSR was transferred from the RSFSR to the Uzbek SSR. The creation of Kazakhstan as a modern nation state starts in 1920 with the creation of the Kirgizstan ASSR in its territory. At that time the Soviet government like the earlier Tsarist regime still wrongly referred to the Kazakhs as Kirgiz and the Kyrgyz as Kara-Kirgiz. This first republic did not encompass much of the southern and eastern territory of modern day Kazakhstan including the area around Almaty. These territories only became part of Kazakhstan with the formation of the Kazakh ASSR in 1924. These national territories, the Kirgizstan ASSR, Kazakh ASSR, and most of all the Kazakh SSR had many of the trappings of the modern nation state, although they lacked the key attribute of political independence. The Kazakh SSR had national borders, national symbols, a national history, and a national cadre of leaders. By 1991 the only thing it lacked to make it a functioning state was political independence. The state structures inherited by the Republic of Kazakhstan in 1991 were all entirely constructed during the Soviet era and drew almost no influence at all from earlier forms of Kazakh statehood. The creation of the current Kazakh state and indeed the transformation of the Kazakh people into a modern nation along European lines only occurred in the 20th century. So while one can clearly point to earlier Kazakh state formations perhaps as early as the 16th century, these forms of statehood were very different from the modern nation state that is the model for present day Kazakhstan. They were not models or influences for the later development of Kazakh statehood under Soviet rule. Kazakh statehood as it stands today is a project that the Soviet government embarked on starting in 1920 and as such is relatively new.

Thoughts on Gaza

Insurgencies have an advantage over their opponents in that they do not have to actually militarily defeat them in order to win their political objectives. They just have to not completely lose long enough and they will eventually win. They can in fact militarily lose every single battle and still win the war as happened with the communist victory against the US in Vietnam. Insurgencies can not be defeated by purely military means unless one wishes to commit complete genocide and kill nearly every last single member of the population in revolt. But, this rarely happens, especially in the 20th and 21st  centuries. Even the French in Algeria and the British in Kenya could not go this far. So if there is no political solution acceptable to the colonized population then counter-insurgency can not succeed. A situation develops where the occupier will face sustained guerrilla and terrorist resistance until they give up and go home. Military solutions short of near total annihilation of the occupied population can at best delay such an inevitable defeat. Even total ethnic cleansing like the Soviet deportation of the Chechens can not ultimately succeed if most of the population physically survives as the revival of Chechen armed resistance in the 1990s demonstrates. The Israelis, however, seem to have copied every stupid mistake the French made in Algeria from 1954 to 1959 with even greater incompetence than the original model. So rather than buying time as the Soviet and later Russian actions have done in Chechnya, the Israelis have merely brought themselves closer to ceasing to exist as a state. Even at their most oafish not even the apartheid government in South Africa was as stupid as the current Israeli leadership. Until a few years ago I believed that it was possible for the Israelis to still reach a South African style solution with the Palestinians. The possibility of a two state solution permanently ceased almost two decades ago. But, now after the latest Israeli assault on Gaza which is a clear political victory for the Palestinians, I believe we have entered a phase where the end outcome will look a lot more like Algeria's "the suitcase or the coffin" than South Africa's "one man, one vote." It will still be many years before there is a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea, but I now believe it will happen in my lifetime.

Another Salaita Petition Update

I have sent another supplemental list of signatures attached to the original statement to Chancellor Wise. I have reproduced it below.

Dear Chancellor Wise: 

As members of history departments from around the world we are deeply concerned by the recent decision to prevent Steven Salaita from assuming his appointment to the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. We believe that the university's revocation of an already accepted offer due to the tone and content of political statements on social media about recent events in Gaza is a violation of academic freedom and sets a very negative precedent for intellectual diversity in academia. Until such time as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign decides to allow Dr. Salaita to take the position he was offered and accepted we refuse to participate in any events on its campus including academic conferences. Listed institutions are for identification purposes. The individual scholars signing this petition represent only their own personal views and not those of their employers.  

Sincerely, 

67.  Eric Schuster, Loyola University Chicago
68. David Ludden, New York University
69. David Stein, Queens College
70. Rececca E. Karl, New York University
71. Isaac Curtis University of Pittsburgh
72. Manu Goswami, New York University
73. Daniel J. Walkowitz, New York University
74. Ruth Mostern, University of California, Merced
75. Yanni Kotsonis, Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia
76. Karen Graubart, University of Norte Dame
77. Ada Ferrer, New York University
78. David Prochaska, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
79. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, New York University
80. Alan Bachers, Neurofeedback Foundation
81. Jefferey Wasserstrom, University of California Irvine
82. Heather Vrana, Southern Connecticut State University
83. Zach Sell, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
84. Elizabeth Bishop, Texas State University
85. Matthew Countryman, University of Michigan
86. Gregory Kaster, Gustavus Adolphus College
87. Daniel Wickberg, University of Texas at Dallas
88. Jason Fossell, Harris-Stowe State University
89. Roxanne Dunbar-Oritz, California State University East Bay
90. Gabriel Winant, Yale University
91. Raymond Haberski, IUPUI
92. Eric Caplan, Independent Scholar
93. Erik Loomis, University of Rhode Island

The 73rd Anniversary of the Deportation of the Volga Germans

It has been 73 years since the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz 21-160 ordering the deportation of the Volga Germans. This decree put an official stamp of approval on the decision by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Council of Peoples's Commissars (SNK) to deport all of the ethnic Germans from the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast. The earliest evidence for the origins of this initial decree is a letter dated 25 August 1941 from Beria to the Central Committee of the CPSU referring to a draft of the decree issued by the CPSU and SNK on 26 August 1941. The sudden decision to deport them thus took the Volga Germans by surprise. Despite the claims by the Soviet government that the Volga Germans were harboring "tens of thousands of diversionists and spies", the NKVD had only managed to find two spies among the entire population in the months between the Nazi invasion of the USSR and 10 August 1941. Ukaz 21-160 was published in both German and Russian on 30 August 1941. The deportation of the Volga Germans and the subsequent liquidation of the Volga German ASSR on 7 September 1941 clearly violated the 1936 USSR, 1937 RSFSR, and of course the 1937 Volga German ASSR constitutions. The actual deportation of the Volga Germans took place between 3 September 1941 and 20 September 1941 and was extremely brutal. It was followed up by the subsequent deportation of ethnic German communities throughout western regions of the USSR to Kazakhstan and Siberia. The 28th of August is observed throughout the world by people of Russian German heritage as the day to commemorate the deportations and later repressions inflicted upon them by the Stalin regime during World War II.

The Po Po Arrested My Tro Tro Driver

Today on the way to work the police arrested my tro tro driver. That meant everybody had to get off the tro tro and find an alternate means of getting to their destinations. I wasn't too far from work, about an extra twenty minute walk, so I decided to make the rest of the trip on foot. Most other people seemed to have decided to catch another tro tro going towards Accra. But, I didn't want to pay the extra money to get another ride when walking was an option. This is the first time I have ever been on public transportation and the driver of the vehicle has actually been arrested by the police. Usually they let them off with a "fine."

A Partial Victory

It looks like we will at least get our book and research allowance for last year, 2013-2014 before October. This is a good start. But, that is money they have owed us for a full year now and they are not paying interest and penalties as they should be required to do. They also owe us this year's book and research allowance and their contractual obligation is to pay it before the start of the academic year not months after it has finished as they have been doing. Between overseeing the destruction of the cedi and systematically refusing to pay its contractual obligations to public employees I will be surprised if the NDC can hold on to power after the next elections in 2016. Of course stranger things have happened and people routinely vote against their own economic interests in Ghana and elsewhere.

UTAG Update

The strike has still not ended. Currently, I am not sure if I will be teaching classes again on Friday or not. But, it is not looking likely. The university may reopen on Wednesday. However, that in itself will not effect the strike by UTAG. That will only end when the issue of our outstanding book and research allowance payment has been resolved. The government is still refusing to pay our book and research allowance. UTAG has now taken the government to court over the issue. The linked story has the most recent statement by the UTAG leadership over the strike and the continued nonpayment of our book and research allowance by the government. Since the book and research allowance is calculated in US dollars rather than the rapidly plummeting cedi, it is the only part of our compensation that will be worth anything at all soon. This is probably the main reason why the government wants to take it away from us.

Signatures for the Salaita Statement

I keep getting a couple of new signatures each day, but not a lot. So as long as they keep coming I will send them off to Chancellor Wise every Friday.

Snakes Alive, Snakes Alive, 1974, Australia, Jazz / Rock, ...

A musical interlude.

75 Years Since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Seventy five years ago the USSR and Nazi Germany carved up Europe into spheres of influence. Ultimately, the two dictatorships apportioned Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Moldova, and eastern Poland to the USSR and western Poland to Berlin. This pact directly led to the Nazi invasion of western Poland on 1 September 1939 and the later Soviet occupations of eastern Poland, the Baltic states, Moldova, and eastern Finland. The total human costs from the initial Soviet occupation of these regions from 17 September 1939 when the USSR invaded eastern Poland until the Nazi attack on the USSR on 22 June 1941 is still unknown, but I did this partial calculation five years ago. It shows a mortality rate of 50% by 1 October 1945 for deportees from the Baltic States and Moldova during 1940 and 1941.

Here is the post I put up last year on this date.

Life in a time of Cholera

Although Ghana has managed to avoid Ebola for the most part so far, Accra has been suffering from a cholera epidemic since June. So far more than 5000 people have gotten sick and 67 have died. I have been trying to avoid eating food off the street since I got back. Although I have eaten a few roasted plantains straight off the charcoal, I figured they were safe. This has led to a change in my diet. Instead of buying jollof or waakeye from street vendors I have been eating dinner at home. Sometimes I have Afromie. But, a lot of times I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat since they are cheap and easy to make. I also eat them for breakfast. For lunch I usually eat at the dining hall at Akuafo and have jollof, plantains, salad, beans, sauce, and spaghetti. I can still get a big vegetarian lunch there for under 4 GH. I figure Akuafo is a lot safer than the vendors on the street. Last night I purchased a pepperoni pizza at a place down the block from me for 19 GH. It was pretty good. I ate three fourths of it last night for dinner and the remaining quarter I put in my fridge and ate cold for breakfast this morning.

At least the weather is nice here

Even though the economy of Ghana is rapidly disintegrating, it is still a beautiful day today. No matter what happens they can't take my African sun away from me. On the other hand I am not a plant and can not eat solar radiation. Like other members of the animal kingdom I require a different form of nourishment. One that is getting increasingly expensive to acquire as the Ghanaian Cedi continues to lose value.

Salaita Petition Update

I have sent a supplemental list of signatures attached to the original statement to Chancellor Wise. I have reproduced it below.

​Dear Chancellor Wise: 

As members of history departments from around the world we are deeply concerned by the recent decision to prevent Steven Salaita from assuming his appointment to the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. We believe that the university's revocation of an already accepted offer due to the tone and content of political statements on social media about recent events in Gaza is a violation of academic freedom and sets a very negative precedent for intellectual diversity in academia. Until such time as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign decides to allow Dr. Salaita to take the position he was offered and accepted we refuse to participate in any events on its campus including academic conferences. Listed institutions are for identification purposes. The individual scholars signing this petition represent only their own personal views and not those of their employers.  

Sincerely, 

56. James Gustafon, Indiana State University
57. Andrew Needham, New York University
58. Grey Anderson, Yale University
59. Mark Lause, University of Cincinnati
60. Mathew Payne, Emory University
61. Nabil Al-Tikriti, University of Mary Washington
62. Steve Tamari, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
63. Elizabeth Irwin, Columbia University
64. Pamela Voekel, University of Georgia
65. Andrew Feffer, Union College
66. Christopher Ebert, Brooklyn College of CUNY

Will Ghana go the full Zimbabwe?

The rapid immolation of the value of the cedi this year is now starting to inflict significant pain upon the population of Ghana. In Kumasi a number of businesses report that sales have slumped by over 50% as a result. Even here in Accra children that once had enough to eat are now going hungry as a result of the loss of purchasing power due to the collapse of the cedi. There is a real possibility that the cedi which has plunged from 2.2 to the dollar in December 2013 to 3.9 to the dollar today may go to 10 cedis to the dollar before the end of the year.  After that it is possible that the cedi will go the full Zimbabwe and become replaced by other currencies due to the force of the market rather than a more gentle switch to a more stable currency as happened in Ecuador.

Finally it is being discussed (Getting rid of the Cedi and going to the Dollar)

The long term solution to Ghana's economic problems are to create a manufacturing base. This article has an excellent analysis of the long term economic problems faced by Ghana as a result of exporting only cheap raw materials and importing expensive manufactured goods in a continuation of economic patterns established during colonial rule. But, in the short to medium term the Cedi is collapsing much faster than any possible industrialization or even agricultural import substitution can possibly be implemented. One possible solution I have advocated on the basis of its success in Ecuador has been to get rid of the Cedi and adopt the US Dollar as the national currency of Ghana. Now, an economist at Yale University has also started supporting this position. While there is opposition to this position among the elite in Ghana, such a change would be overall positive for the economic situation of the country as a whole.

I got this comment on an older blog post yesterday

Otto,
I am glad to see that an accomplished academic is still giving light to the Soviet deportation of minority groups. Too little is known about Stalinist atrocities in the west. I have gathered as much information about the Kalmyk deportations as I could that was published in English. 
I am a Kalmyk born in Germany from the refugees of the revolution that escaped into Eastern Europe and emigrated to the US in 1951 at the age of six.
The true stories of our travels and travails are few as many of the elders hid their roles during WWII to be able to emigrate to the US and have since died off.
Please keep up your blog and publications. Your course syllabi and notes have been very useful to me. 
Thank You,Basan Nembirkow

Another update on the Salaita petition

For those who signed after I sent the petition off to Chancellor Wise on Friday morning, I will send another list of signatures later this week.

List of Signatures for the Salaita Petition

Dear Chancellor Wise:

As members of history departments from around the world we are deeply concerned by the recent decision to prevent Steven Salaita from assuming his appointment to the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. We believe that the university's revocation of an already accepted offer due to the tone and content of political statements on social media about recent events in Gaza is a violation of academic freedom and sets a very negative precedent for intellectual diversity in academia. Until such time as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign decides to allow Dr. Salaita to take the position he was offered and accepted we refuse to participate in any events on its campus including academic conferences. Listed institutions are for identification purposes. The individual scholars signing this petition represent only their own personal views and not those of their employers. 

Sincerely,

1. J. Otto Pohl, University of Ghana, Legon

2. Karen Miller, LeGuardia Community College

3. David Gutman, Manhattenville College

4. Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University

5. C.G. Estabrook, Harvard University

6. Matt Karush, George Mason University

7. Osman Khalil, Syracuse University

8. Jesse Lemisch, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

9. Ben Alpers, University of Oklahoma

10. Greg Grandin, New York University

11. Marc Becker, Truman State University, Missouri

12. Kristin Tassin, University of Texas, Austin

13. Hussein Omar, Oxford University

14. John Abromeit, SUNY, Buffalo State

15. Paul Sedra, Simon Fraser University

16. Diana Paton, New Castle University

17. Kevin Jon Heller, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

18. Omnia El Sharkiy, University of California, Davis

19. Matthew Davidson, Independent Scholar

20. Jay Driskell, Hood College

21. Lyle Rubin, University of Rochester

22. Daniel Pope, University of Oregon

23. Derek Sayer, Lancaster University

24. Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington University

25. Doug Rossinow, Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, Minnesota 

26. Rosalyn Baxandall, SUNY, Old Westbury

27. Steven Pierce, University of Manchester

28. Indrani Chaterjee, University of Texas, Austin

29. Richard Shain, Phildelphia University

30. Margaret Power, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago

31. David Bensman, Rutgers 

32. Rachel Goshgarian, Lafayette

33. Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University

34. Sherifa Suhur, SSI, US Army War College

35. David Roediger, University of Kansas

36. Samer Ali, University of Texas, Austin

37. Mona L. Russel, East Carolina University

38. Genevieve McCoy, University of Maryland

39. Jonathan Dresner, Pittsburg State University, Kansas

40. Benjamin H. Johnson, Loyola University, Chicago

41. Sara Pursley, Princeton University

42. Barbara Winslow, Brooklyn College

43. Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara

44. Theresa Runstedtler, American University, Washington DC

45. David Sartorius, University of Maryland

46. Nadya Sbaiti, Mount Holyoke College

47. Michael J. Lansing, Augsburg College

48. Rula Jurdi Abisaab, McGill University

49. Larry Goldsmith, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

50. Rich Gibson, San Diego State University

51. Derek Elliot, Cambridge University

52. Seth Ackerman, Cornell

53. Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, University of Texas, Austin

54. Kurt Newman, University of California, Santa Barbara

55. Ramon E. Duarte, University of Arizona

Ebola

Ebola is currently a major concern for people in Ghana. There have been hundreds of cases in nearby Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone as well as some cases in Nigeria. Coming into the airport on Saturday night I noticed that there were absolutely no medical precautions being taken to screen people coming into the country for ebola. Apparently, the borders of Ghana are equally unprotected. It looks like two Liberians infected with the disease have been admitted to the hospital in Ghana already. The government has now banned international conferences in Ghana for the next three months to prevent the spread of the disease.

Update on Salaita Petition

I have now collected 45 signatures from historians in North America, Latin America, Europe and Africa. All those that signed here on the blog should now show up in the comments. I have to approve them to prevent commercial spam. From about 5:00 pm to 8:30 am Ghanaian time I am away from the Internet. If you e-mailed me then you should have gotten a response back from me acknowledging the addition of your name to the petition. I am going to e-mail the petition to Chancellor Wise before 5:00 pm 15 August 2014.

Petition for Steven Salaita

The revocation of an already accepted offer to Steven Salaita to teach in the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign solely due to his expressed political opinions about the events in Gaza has gathered a lot of protest. One form of  protest has been petitions by academics pledging not to visit the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign for any conferences or other events until they reverse this decision. The petitions have been organized by discipline. So far there has not been any for history. So I am taking the task upon myself. If you wish to sign the statement you can leave a comment here or email me at jopohl@ug.edu.gh.

Dear Chancellor Wise:

As members of history departments from around the world we are deeply concerned by the recent decision to prevent Steven Salaita from assuming his appointment to the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. We believe that the university's revocation of an already accepted offer due to the tone and content of political statements on social media about recent events in Gaza is a violation of academic freedom and sets a very negative precedent for intellectual diversity in academia. Until such time as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign decides to allow Dr. Salaita to take the position he was offered and accepted we refuse to participate in any events on its campus including academic conferences. Listed institutions are for identification purposes. The individual scholars signing this petition represent only their own personal views and not those of their employers. 

UTAG Strike Update

The university opening has been delayed due to the UTAG strike over payment of our book and research allowance. So far there has been nothing definite about when or even if the government will pay us our allowance for last year and this year. I have been coming to campus everyday from my new flat in Adenta, but have not yet gotten any information about when the actual teaching of classes will begin. Last academic year got pushed back to September due to a strike over payment of the 2012-2013 book and research allowance. I hope that we get paid the allowance before September this year, but I am not optimistic.

The current Ghanaian economic crisis

The loss of value of the Ghanaian cedi has not only made buying dollars very expensive, but since so much is imported and paid for in dollars it has also fuelled general inflation. The price of everything except labor has gone up dramatically in recent months. Wages and salaries in contrast have stagnated which in real terms especially when measured in dollars, pounds, or euros means they have plummeted. I am making less in terms of dollars now than I was in January 2011 when I started working in Ghana. This crisis is the result of importing expensive manufactured goods and exporting cheap raw materials with inelastic demand. Currently cocoa is the main export of Ghana and it's price compared to manufactured goods is low and subject to collapse as has happened recently.The demand for the product is inelastic so a lower price does not result in a larger volume of exports. There are only two ways out of this perennial problem. The first is to change the currency. That means getting rid of the cedi and using the dollar, euro, the CFA, the yuan, or some other larger currency which has a manufacturing base behind it like the US, Germany, France, or China. Ecuador got rid of its currency and went to the US dollar and it solved a great many of its economic problems. This is unlikely to happen in Ghana even though it is the quicker and easier solution. The other solution is to create a domestic manufacturing and agricultural base to either substitute for imports or to provide exports to pay for imports. This is also unlikely to happen in Ghana even though people have talked about its necessity for over fifty years.

Back in Ghana

I arrived back in Ghana two days ago. I moved into a new flat over in Adenta. It is quite nice. We are still on strike. The decline in value of the cedi has seriously eroded the actual worth of my salary. By my calculation I am earning 75% less in terms of dollars than I would have been if the exchange rate had remained constant since I started working here in 2011. It looks like both my main campus classes are on Friday morning from 7:30 am to 9:20 am and 9:30 am to 11:20 am. It is good they are both on the same day. But, 7:30 am means I have to get up pretty early now that I have to commute from Adenta to Legon.

A Map of the World

Finally, I Have Legalized My Marriage

Today after over  four years of struggle with Soviet era red tape I finally successfully registered my marriage with my Kyrgyz partner of nearly seven years at the ZAGS on Sovetskaya in Bishkek. The Kyrgyz authorities rejected my first four attempts at various points along the way. That is the cover of the marriage certificate to the right. According to the US Embassy website on the issue, "Marriages which are legally performed and valid in the Kyrgyz Republic are also legally valid in the United States." If there is a country where it is harder for a US citizen who is not connected to the military or powerful people like Soros to get married to one of their citizens, I don't know what it is. But, I finally did it. Unfortunately, for all the talk of marriage equality, it is not a reality. Somebody like me who manages to overcome all the hurdles to marry a Kyrgyz woman still has an even greater uphill battle to get her a visa to come to the US as can be seen by the information in the link above to the  website of the US embassy in Bishkek.

Once Again We Are On Strike Over Our Book and Research Allowance (UTAG)

On Thursday, 24 July 2014, UTAG (University Teachers Association of Ghana) called an indefinite strike over the issue of nonpayment of book and research allowances. The Ghanaian government as usual has responded with an arrogant refusal to abide by its legal contractual obligations to its employees. This blog has very few readers, but to those who do read it I have a favor to ask. Labor issues in Africa particularly those involving academic labor get very little coverage outside the continent. This is despite the fact that the largest such actions actually occur in Africa and not in the US or even Europe. So to anybody reading this that has the means and that means just about everybody with a blog, a Facebook account, or any other means of communication please spread the word. It is time that people knew.

Red Racisms

Apparently, Ian Law wrote a book specifically on racism in the socialist world called Red Racisms that came out two years ago. It is part of a larger series published on race by Palgrave MacMillan. The part on how racism developed during Tsarist Russia continued to exist in institutional form in the USSR can be read in its entirety here. It was rather disappointing to me both on a practical and theoretical level. He has almost nothing on Stalin's mass deportation of nationalities and the imposition of apartheid like restrictions upon them. Policies and institutions that effected whole groups of people based solely upon their ancestry or blood. Indeed the whole era where much of the Stalin regime's repression was based specifically upon natsional'nost, 1937-1953 is glossed over in a single paragraph with only a single sentence making reference to "ethnic and national purges." Rather it mostly refers to racial continuities in Tsarist and Soviet rule over Central Asia building upon work first pioneered by Geoffrey Wheeler. Instead following in the lines of Hirsch he focuses the section on the USSR on the work of Soviet physical anthropologists during the 1920s that studied racial differences, but had no influence on either Soviet policy or its ideological justification. Although unlike Hirsch he argues that the Soviet government created and enforced racial hierarchies. The post-Stalin period is equally glossed over and there is no mention of Yulian Bromley and ethnos theory at all despite its importance in providing an ideological justification for Soviet nationality policies along lines of racialized ethnicity. Instead there is a cursory treatment of Soviet media coverage of Africa and Africans and an equally brief synopsis of Soviet policy towards the Roma. Indeed most of the chapter does not deal with the Soviet Union at all, but rather first with Imperial Russia and then with the Russian Federation after 1991. Overall the section on the USSR is greatly marred by sins of omission. How institutional racism functioned legally in the USSR and on a day to day basis is almost completely lacking. The manner is which the life chances of ethnic Germans or Crimean Tatars were actually restricted is not discussed at all. Nor is the ethnos theory which justified the racialization of ethnicity and hence practice of racial discrimination by the regime. Instead we are left with just a few generalities about ill treatment of Muslims, Africans, and Roma as the sum of racial discrimination described during the Soviet era. Given the systematic denial of racism in the USSR both by the regime itself  in the past and Western scholars still today the topic deserves a much more thorough and detailed treatment than Law has given it.

New Publication on Blacks in the USSR Out

In addition to being one of the co-editor's of this collection I also have a chapter in it: “Is there a Black Eurasia?: Ghanaian and other African Diasporic Populations in the USSR in Comparative Perspective.” I have reproduced the abstract for the article below.

The population of African ancestry in the USSR exhibited certain diasporic characteristics despite its small population, fragmented settlement, and high levels of acculturation. It also differed considerably both in its legal status and cultural cohesion from other larger European and East Asian diasporas in the USSR such as the Germans, Jews, Poles, Finns, Greeks, and Koreans. Nonetheless it shared with these better researched diasporas the experience of being viewed by most of Soviet society as being alien to the territory of the Russian Empire and USSR. This chapter seeks to place the history of Soviet citizens of African descent into the larger history of how the Soviet government and society at large treated diasporic populations. In particular it compares people of African origins with Germans, Jews, Poles, Greeks, and Koreans. It is hoped that such a comparison can shed greater historical light upon the questions of diaspora and race in the USSR.

Soviet Postage Stamps with African Themes

Labor Unrest in Ghana and UTAG

Labor unrest in Ghana and strikes by UTAG (University Teachers Association of Ghana) are not new. UTAG was one of many Ghanaian unions that went on strike in 2013. While they have not yet gone on strike in 2014 as have other unions there have been statements that if the book and research allowance is not paid for both 2103/2014 and 2014/2015 in September that UTAG will again strike.  Last year as a result of the strike the 2012/2013 allowance was paid in September. But, in 2012 the 2011/2012 allowance was not paid until December. The government response so far is that it does not owe university lecturers any allowances. UTAG, however, has stated that they will not concede on this issue.  Two years of research and book allowance for lecturers of my rank currently comes to $3000.

Kyrgyz Foods

It appears that my most popular post recently is the one dealing with Ghanaian food. I couldn't find any great links to videos on Kyrgyz food. But, since I have been here I have had the following dishes. I am sure I am missing some, but this is what I can remember off the top of my head.

Borscht

Chinese

Fried fish and potatoes

Gamburger

Ganfan

Lagman

Manti

Pelmeni

Plov

Shorpo

Shwarma

Uzgen Plov

Tony raves about Ghanaian food : Video : Travel Channel

Tony raves about Ghanaian food : Video : Travel Channel

The Ghanaian "Asylum" Seekers in Brazil

The recent claims for political asylum by 200 Ghanaians that went to Brazil to watch the World Cup has come as a shock to me. By all accounts Ghana is politically a freer country than Brazil and has a much better human rights record in recent years. The news stories say the Ghanaians requesting asylum are Muslims fleeing conflict in the north. But, when I left Ghana on 14 June 2014 to come to Kyrgyzstan for the summer I had not heard of any such conflicts during the more than three years I have lived there. What is true is that on a per person basis Brazil is about four times richer than Ghana. This rather than any political or religious reasons would appear to be the real reason that 200 Ghanaian tourists in Brazil so far have applied for "asylum" and many news sources speculate the number could grow to be as high as 1000. While there are some very wealthy people in Brazil, there is also a lot of extreme poverty. It is not necessarily guaranteed that a Ghanaian immigrant in Brazil will have a higher standard of living in Sao Paulo than he would in Accra. There are also reports that a number of these "asylum" seekers want to use Brazil as a way station to the US, believing that it will be easier for them to obtain a visa to the US there than in Ghana. As a US citizen working in Ghana I can assure the Ghanaians in Brazil that there are no jobs in the US even for US citizens and that they are much better off going back to Ghana than being unemployed in the US.

Stalinist Terror in Kyrgyzstan

According to the official history text book used here in Kyrgyzstan, Stalinist repression during the 1930s was quite severe. The most readily available and easily accessible version of this text goes by the title of Istoriia Kyrgyzstana (s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei) 100 ekzamenatsionnykh otvetov: Ekspress-spravochik (Bishkek: Mezgil, 2014). But, the author, O. Dzh. Osmonov has produced a number of different versions of the text. This particular version of the text has four pages (205-209) devoted to massive repression in the 1930s including dekulakization in 1931-1933 and the Great Terror of 1937-1938. This particular version of the text has absolutely nothing on the mass deportation of Karachais, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Meskhetian Turks to Kyrgyzstan in 1943-1944. But, I have seen another version of this textbook that does have a small section on the special settlers deported to the republic during the war. Osmonov puts the number of people forcibly deported from Kyrgyzstan to Ukraine and the North Caucasus as kulaks and bais during August to September 1931 at 6,000 families. He notes that a further 2,113 households were repressed within Kyrgyzstan in 1933. Finally, he states "A significant part of the innocent rural population suffered from mass repression." (p. 207). During 1937-1938 he notes that 40,000 people were repressed including 13,000 executions in the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic out of a total population of 1.4 million people. (p. 209). This means that including those deported and otherwise dispossessed during dekulakization that nearly 6% of the population of republic suffered from some form of state repression at the hands of the OGPU and NKVD during the 1930s. In proportional terms this would be the equivalent of 18 million people in the US today. The 13,000 people executed which included such important Kyrgyz leaders as Yusup Abdrakhmanov and notables such as the father of Chingiz Aitmatov who was buried at Chon Tash would proportionally be the equivalent of over 2.75 million people in the US today. Yet none of this is part of the popular collective memory of the Soviet era here in Kyrgyzstan, in Russia which is the legal successor state to the USSR, or among the vast majority of western scholars studying the region today. For most of these people David Satter's description "It was a long time ago, and it never happened anyways" seems to sum up the prevailing attitude.

Los Destellos - Elsa

Rich at Day After the Sabbath turned me on to this and a bunch of other great Peruvian music.

Collective Memory in the former USSR

The crimes of the Stalin regime have been almost completely forgotten in the former USSR. The surviving victims were told to be grateful that the Soviet government in some cases either pardoned or forgave them in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a brief recognition of the worst of the crimes in the early 1990s, but then the coming to terms with the past ended for most of post-Soviet society. There is a strong nostalgic longing for the Soviet past here and this reconstruction of the USSR as a golden era does not distinguish between the brutal dictatorship of Stalin and the comparatively mild Brezhnev era. The entirety of Soviet history is compressed into "Soviet times" when food according to an advertisement at a popular cafe here was always cheap, quick, and tasty. Of course in much of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s including neighboring Kazakhstan millions of people starved to death because there was no food what so ever tasty, cheap, or otherwise. Nor did such hardships end in the 1930s. The USSR suffered another famine in 1946. But, these two famines along with the one in the early 1920s, the GULag, the mass deportation of whole nationalities, and the mass executions of 1937-1938 have all been purged from popular memory. Instead everything from the USSR is glorified in a bizarre capitalist marketing campaign of a very selective and revisionist memory of Soviet state socialism.

Another Post on Soviet Racism

The number of US scholars who believe that there was ever any institutionalized racial discrimination in the USSR against anybody except Jews is extremely small. The official orthodox position is that because natsional'nost is a different word than race that there was never any racial components what so ever to Soviet treatment of people like the Russian-Germans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, or Russian-Koreans. However, I recently found one of the very few admissions of the existence of  racism against people other than Jews in the USSR by a US scholar in the last quarter century.

But, the practices of old Russia obviously did not disappear overnight. The Russian-Ukrainian national experiences did not embrace racism and genocide on the British, Spanish, or American model, but discrimination directed against minority peoples - Tatars and other orientals, Turkic peoples, Jews - stained the record of the East Slavs, and black visitors inevitably felt its blows. Because the communists usually suppressed news of racial incidents, however, we have little information on the subject.

Obviously the racism of Tsarist Russia continued in the USSR and became institutionalized in the form of the internal passport and definition of natsional'nost solely along lines of biological descent. This point about the racialization of Soviet categories has been noted by Russian anthropologist Marina Mogil'ner and vehemently denied by US scholars seeking to defend the Soviet dictatorship under Stalin from the charge of racial discrimination.

Source: Woodford McClellen, "Africans and Black American in the Comintern Schools, 1925-1934," The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1993), p. 376.

"Auxiliaries" and the 1947-1948 Rail Strike in French West Africa

I am currently reading Frederick Cooper's Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005). In it there is an analysis of the 1947-1948 rail workers strike in French West Africa. He notes that:

As of 1946, the railway employed 478 Europeans, 1,729 Africans in the various cadres, and 15,726 auxiliaries. Many auxiliaries - treated as temporary workers even after years of service - did the same work as members of the cadres, but they lacked job security, paid housing, and other indemnities. (p. 220). 

To me the auxiliaries sound a lot like various forms of contingent labor still used today including adjuncts at US universities. The primary demand of the strike was for the implementation of "a single, nonracial job hierarchy, with the same benefits package for all members, including the complicated supplements for local cost of living and family obligations." (p. 218). That is that all rail workers including the African auxiliaries as well as the African cadres be given the same pay and benefits as European workers. The incorporation of African auxiliary workers into the single cadre with European levels of compensation did not take place overnight after resolving the strike. But, by 1950 a full 30% of rail workers had been incorporated versus only 12% in 1947. (p. 225). The differential treatment of cadres and auxiliaries had been a key policy of colonial economic policy. The strike had been about forcing the French to institute in practice its officially proclaimed commitment to racial equality in the empire by transforming the colonial rail employment structure to the type that existed in metropolitan France (p. 225). The idea of permanent workers in the US, the cadres, striking to incorporate auxiliaries into their own level of compensation and benefits today seems far fetched. The idea of tenured "progressive" faculty at US universities striking like the African cadre did to incorporate adjuncts into their ranks is unimaginable.

Bishkek News Tonight

Tonight on the local Bishkek news the top three stories were the following.

1. A young man murdered and dismembered his mother in the city.

2. There has been an increase in cases of food poisoning due to eating bad watermelon.

3. The president met with a delegation from Switzerland.

Kyrgyzstan Unveils Statue of Former Communist Leader

They just unveiled a statue in Osh to Absamat Masaliyev the head of the Communist Party in Kyrgyzstan from 1985 until his death in 2004 except for a brief period from April to August 1991. He was the second to last First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic before the break up of the USSR. This has been the big news story on television tonight. For some reason it made me think of this.

Kanykei - Город

A song about Bishkek.

Happy Independence Day to the US

To anybody in the US happening to read this have a very happy Independence Day. The last July Fourth I spent in my home country of the US was in 2007. Since then I have spent most of them in Kyrgyzstan. Although I did spend 4 July 2011 in Ghana.

Gaza bombed again and again and again

The recent Israeli collective punishment of the population of Gaza through mass bombings is not surprising. The indiscriminate use of violence against the whole population of Gaza has become a rather regular occurrence and an important part of Israeli strategy for preventing the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. In a very real sense Palestine including the Gaza Strip which lacks control over its own borders, air space, and coastal waters remains one of the world's last actual colonies. What is surprising is how little concern this latest attack has generated despite the fact that 2014 is International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Perhaps people have just grown tired of the never ending Israeli repression of the Palestinians and the resulting Palestinian resistance, a dynamic that is usually termed conflict in US sources to obscure the extreme power differential between the two sides. On the other hand the continued use of Gaza as a bombing range populated with a large number of civilians by the Israeli military every couple of years is not morally sustainable in much of the world outside the US. Eventually there will be serious economic consequences to the Israelis for their actions and they are in a much worse position than South Africa or even Rhodesia to withstand such isolation from important world markets.

No gas for a month

Evidently most of Bishkek including my flat will have no gas for a month. Since our stove is gas that is a major inconvenience.