Robert I Rotberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 78744 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert I Rotberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert I |
| FAMILY NAME | Rotberg |
| SIGNATURE | ROTBERG R I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 171 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 443 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 165 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 10 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1957 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Morafe
Chinua Achebe’s stunning first novel’s title told it all: Things Fall Apart (New York, 1958). The novel depicted how the coming of missionaries and colonialists to Igbo villages in southeastern Nigeria disturbed and ultimately upended traditional ways of life as well as accustomed responses to religion’s call and Indigenous hierarchical forms of rule.Moguerane’s Morafe is a family social and cultural history—much praised in South Africa—that exam…
Stealing Africa’s Past
The extent to which Kenya’s history (and that of other colonies) had been permanently relocated to Britain, never to return, came to light in 2009, when Mau Mau petitioners finally had their day in court. There they learned that thousands of files from thirty-seven erstwhile former dependencies still resided in Britain, not in the capitals or districts where they were created. Six years later, these migrated archives, or most of them, were opened…
Response to Evan Lieberman’s Review of Overcoming the Oppressors
The Lumumba Legacy and the Enduring Tragedy of the Congo
Had the first prime minister of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo lived, he might have led the Congolese people to a unified and prosperous nation post-independence. But Patrice Lumumba's aspirations were cut short by his brutal assassination in late 1960, just months after Congo gained independence from Belgian rule. His death and the enduring impact of it on the Congo's trajectory are the focus of Reid's compelling The Lumumba Plot, …
Black Heart
Black Heart
Undoing the Central African Federation
Whites and Democracy in South Africa by Roger Southall Woodbridge
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Did the cia Kill Lumumba
Williams' White Malice: The cia and the Covert Recolonization of Africa is a crusading examination of what the cia did in Africa in the 1960s, and it suggests that the cia, working closely with Congo army chief Joseph Mobutu and coordinating with secessionist leaders in Katanga, was responsible for Patrice Lumumba's assassination. Recently uncovered hard evidence from cia files reveals the Agency's connivings in, with, and against Africa and Afri…
Africa's liberation generation
Today's African political class is much more diverse in character and aspiration than the one that overcame colonial rule and inaugurated independent governments. Sons of early liberation leaders now jostle for power in a few countries (Chad, Kenya), descendants of successful autocrats perpetuate family rule in others (Gabon), several long-serving hegemons remain in control after decades in office (as in Cameroon, Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda), a …
The Great Twister
Fitzmaurice's King Leopold's Ghostwriter is a fascinating Dickensian tale of law and extreme hubris upending one of Oxford, the law, and Queen Victoria's own-Sir Travers Twiss. His failed attempt to conceal that he had married a prostitute ultimately led him to an ill-advised, and self-contradictory, endorsement of Belgian King Leopold II's establishment of the Congo Free State. Indeed, Twiss' every professional accomplishment is now subject to a…
Race Unity, World Peace, and the Perfectability of Humankind
Utopianism, wild optimism, and a spreading conviction that the many ills of the world could be remedied with just the right formulas punctuated the final decades of the Victorian era. Given the absence of outright global conflicts and pandemics, the seeming triumph of industrialism, the conquest and occupation by Europe of remote areas of the globe, and a communications revolution that knit distant regions more easily to mother countries, leading…
Charisma and History
Because charisma is a social phenomenon, not an individual trait, its analytical utility in assessing and evaluating the quality and character of political leadership remains questionable. Cultural differences influence the traits and attributes that are internalized by one set of followers and not others. At the nation-state level, political leaders do arise who mesmerize their constituents charismatically, but too frequently that appeal is epis…
Anticorruption
Winning the anticorruption battle: a guide for citizens and politicians. The phenomenon of corruption has existed since antiquity; from ancient Mesopotamia to our modern-day high-level ethical morass, people have sought a leg up, a shortcut, or an end run to power and influence. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Robert Rotberg, a recognized authority on governance and international relations, offers a definitive guide to…
Corruption in Latin America
This book is the newest and one of the very few existing examinations of the full nature of corruption throughout Central and South America. In detailed chapters written by experts with extensive in-country experience, it reveals the political and economic roots and consequences of corruption in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru. The editor's introduction and conclusion texts synthesize their work and pro…
The Jameson Raid
South Africa's Jameson Raid ultimately betrayed African rights by transferring power to white Afrikaner nationalists after helping to precipitate the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The Raid also removed Cecil Rhodes from the premiership of the Cape Colony; strengthened Afrikaner control of the South African Republic (the Transvaal) and its world-supplying gold mines; and motivated the Afrikaner-controlled consolidation of segregation in the Union of…
The 'Partnership' Hoax
British governments connived with Rhodesian settlers to transform their ‘protected’ Central African wards into junior ‘partners’ of whites in an attempt to solve a series of Africa-wide problems that threatened sustainable colonial rule. Multiracial ‘partnership’ was a ruse to divert African self-rule initiatives and to concoct a compromise that would preserve white dominance. The genesis of the federation movement in central Africa is well-known…
His Brother’s Keeper
David Livingstone’s Second Expedition to Africa (1858 to 1863) began with lavish promises and expectations and ended ignominiously, with official Britons castigating the once greatly esteemed explorer of Africa. To what extent did Charles Livingstone, an ordained Congregational minister and David’s American-trained younger brother, help to diminish the Expedition’s successes? Were David Livingstone’s promising exploring and scientific efforts com…
Accomplishing Anticorruption
The insidious practice of corruption cripples institutions, consumes communities, and cuts deeply into the very structure of people's lives. It destroys nations and saps their moral fiber. Corruption is invasive and unforgiving, degrading governance, distorting and criminalizing national priorities, and privileging acquisitive rent-seeking, patrimonial theft, and personal gains over concern for the commonweal. It also costs an estimated $1 trilli…
Canada's Corruption at Home and Abroad
The Corruption Cure
New History
The Corruption Cure
Corruption corrodes all facets of the world's political and corporate life, yet until now there was no one book that explained how best to battle it. The Corruption Cure provides many of the required solutions and ranges widely across continents and diverse cultures—putting some thirty-five countries under an anticorruption microscope—to show exactly how to beat back the forces of sleaze and graft.Robert Rotberg defines corruption theoretically a…
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Genocide" provides a useful optic with which to understand and examine purposeful purges of Mesopotamian, Alexandrine, Visogothic, Norman, Mongol, and Spanish (during the Inquisition) people, and those of more modern times. Raphaël Lemkin's cross-disciplinary arguments, developed in the crucible of an unfolding Holocaust and trimmed and refined at the United Nations, offer new insights into the actions of rulers and ruling classes, into the elimi…
Considering Corruption's Curse
Despite its main title, Mungiu-Pippidi's The Quest for Good Governance is primarily about the conceptualization, measurement, and reduction of corruption throughout history. Its wealth of provocative heuristic ideas is invaluable for contemporary social science. For readers of this journal, across several disciplines, the book offers an admirable re-thinking of many received notions that have influenced our understanding of how American, European…
Good Governance Means Performance and Results
If the object of developing and developed world leaders is to uplift their peoples continually, then it is essential to measure approximations of actual service deliveries (what we ought to mean by “governance”), not to rate nations impressionistically according to the perceived quality of their operations, their perceived impartiality (as per Rothstein), the extent of their bureaucratic autonomy (as per Fukuyama and others), or their capacity to…
Protest and Power in Black Africa
Failed States in a World of Terror
IN THE WAKE of September 1i, the threat of terrorism has given the problem of failed nation-states an immediacy and importance that transcends its previous humanitarian dimension. Since the early 199os, wars in and among failed states have killed about eight million people, most of them civilians, and displaced another four million. The number of those impoverished, malnourished, and deprived of fundamental needs such as security, health care, an…
Protest and Power in Black Africa
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Genocide" provides a useful optic with which to understand and examine purposeful purges of Mesopotamian, Alexandrine, Visogothic, Norman, Mongol, and Spanish (during the Inquisition) people, and those of more modern times. Raphaël Lemkin's cross-disciplinary arguments, developed in the crucible of an unfolding Holocaust and trimmed and refined at the United Nations, offer new insights into the actions of rulers and ruling classes, into the elimi…
Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896-97
When States Fail
Protest and Power in Black Africa
The new nature of nation‐state failure
Only a handful of the world's nation‐states can be categorized as failed or collapsed. Several dozen more, however, are serious candidates. What does it take to drive a failing state into collapse? Here is what to watch to determine who is in danger of failing next
International News and Foreign Correspondents
The Welensky Papers
Africa and Its Explorers
What We Owe Iraq
Journal Article What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building Get access What we Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building by Noah Feldman. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2004. 200 pp. $19.95. Robert I. Rotberg Robert I. Rotberg Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 120, Issue 1, Spring 2005, Pages 133–134, https://doi.org/10.1002…
Protest and Power in Black Africa
The 'Partnership' Hoax
British governments connived with Rhodesian settlers to transform their ‘protected’ Central African wards into junior ‘partners’ of whites in an attempt to solve a series of Africa-wide problems that threatened sustainable colonial rule. Multiracial ‘partnership’ was a ruse to divert African self-rule initiatives and to concoct a compromise that would preserve white dominance. The genesis of the federation movement in central Africa is well-known…
Social Capital and Political Culture in Africa, America, Australasia, and Europe
January 01 1999 Social Capital and Political Culture in Africa, America, Australasia, and Europe Robert I. Rotberg Robert I. Rotberg Co-editor of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, President of the World Peace Foundation, and Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Robert I. Rotberg Co-editor of The Journal of Interdi…
East Africa and the Orient
It is now apparent that East Africa cannot be viewed in isolation if its early history is to be adequately understood. Arabic, Indian, and Chinese influences have been discovered in the East African cultures, and evidence has shown that from about 100 B.C. the coastal fringe of eastern Africa was economically and culturally an integral part of the Indian Ocean basin. The available evidence relating to these early con-tacts is so scattered, howeve…
Northwest Tanzania under German and British Rule
On Improving Nation-State Governance
African Nationalism
In common usage, African nationalism is descriptive shorthand for an assembly ofseparate and distinct phenomena, some of which have already taken on the protective colouring of popular understanding. Africans generally agree that they have experienced nationalism; they know the tree of nationalism when they see it and have tasted some, at least, of its fruits. For many of them, and for students of recent African events, its manifestations are obv…
Plymouth Brethren and the Occupation of Katanga, 1886–1907
The first white persons to settle permanently in Katanga, a highland plateau region geographically isolated from the low-lying Congo basin, were missionaries collectively styled Plymouth Brethren. They were preceded—along the geographical and commercial routes which linked Katanga to Bié and Benguela and to Mweru and Zanzibar—by David Livingstone, who visited the Upper Congo in 1871, and by Verney Lovett Cameron, who traversed the region three ye…
Black Mineworkers in Central Africa
Rebellion in Black Africa
Strengthening African Leadership
Truth V. Justice
Leaders, the Led, and the Law
Journal Article Leaders, the Led, and the Law: A Case Study in Social Change Get access MELVIN M. TUMIN, MELVIN M. TUMIN Melvin Tumin is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Princeton University and Faculty Director of the study reported here. Robert Rotberg is now a Rhodes Scholar in England. At the time this study was done he was a graduate student in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton Search for other works by this author o…
The Rise of African Nationalism
It is all too often assumed that African nationalism is a product of very recent manufacture. One supposes that World War II and its aftermath brought about new forces of change, loosely called “nationalism,” which in a few short years swept African prison graduates into undreamed of positions of power and world importance. To some extent, of course, this presumption is correct: those elements of change unleashed by the war and by the subsequent …
The Teaching of African History
AFRICAN history is a relatively recent addition to university curriculums. Now that it is taught as a subject in its own right, rather than as an aspect of European expansion, innumerable problems of organization and of syllabus selection have necessarily beset those who have ventured to give survey courses on the traditional European or American models. With the aid of few syntheses we have had to take account of a large body of new literature, …
The federation movement in British East and Central Africa 1889–1953
The Origins of Nationalist Discontent in East and Central Africa
The Image of Africa
In this encyclopedic work of intellectual history, Philip D. Curtain sought to discover the British image of Africa for the years 1780 1850.
Plymouth Brethren and the Occupation of Katanga, 1886–1907
The first white persons to settle permanently in Katanga, a highland plateau region geographically isolated from the low-lying Congo basin, were missionaries collectively styled Plymouth Brethren. They were preceded—along the geographical and commercial routes which linked Katanga to Bié and Benguela and to Mweru and Zanzibar—by David Livingstone, who visited the Upper Congo in 1871, and by Verney Lovett Cameron, who traversed the region three ye…
Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa. James S. Coleman , Carl G. Rosberg, Jr
Harvard University
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, currently offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars that concern themselves exclusively with the history, government, and social organization of the peoples of northern and sub-Saharan Africa. The Department of Tropical Public Health in the School of Public Health, the Law School, and the School of Business Administration also find a place …
Nigerian Odyssey
Race Relations and Politics in Colonial Zambia
It is no use blinking our eyes to the fact that a strong and efficient colour bar exists at present and to the probability that the Europeans will do their best to preserve it. [Africans] are becoming increasingly conscious of it and everything is set for a struggle between the races, which is certain to come eventually, unless an unexpected change in the European attitude takes place or the managements are in a position to resist pressure from t…
History of East Africa, Volume II
A Preface to Modern Nigeria
The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa
A Political History of Tropical Africa
Modern African Studies
AS the revived study of the politics of tropical Africa by Americans enters its second decade,1scholars have on the whole tempered youthful enthusiasm with an adolescent awareness of the complexity of their subject
The Politics of Modernization
African Nationalism
In common usage, African nationalism is descriptive shorthand for an assembly ofseparate and distinct phenomena, some of which have already taken on the protective colouring of popular understanding. Africans generally agree that they have experienced nationalism; they know the tree of nationalism when they see it and have tasted some, at least, of its fruits. For many of them, and for students of recent African events, its manifestations are obv…
Colonialism and Christian Missions, by Stephen Neill
Journal Article Colonialism and Christian Missions, by Stephen Neill Get access Colonialism and Christian Missions by Stephen Neill. New York, Toronto, and London, McGraw-Hill, 1966.— 445 pp. $7.95. Robert I. Rotberg Robert I. Rotberg Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 82, Issue 3, September 1967, Pages 469–470, https://doi.org/10.2307/2146789 Published: …
Strike a Blow and Die A Narrative of Race Relations in Colonial Africa
greatly, and so did Nyasaland, but at the expense of Northern Rhodesia. The most powerful reasons for the break-up of the federation were political, however, and no amount of economic success could have persuaded the northern territories to remain linked to white-dominated Southern Rhodesia. For Nyasaland the most satisfactory economic arrangement would have been to be linked simply to Zambia, but politics made this also impossible and the Britis…
Zambia's Struggle for Independence
Missions to the Niger
Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896-97
Strike a Blow and Die
Your Friend Lewanika
Political science (128 works) · Law (79 works) · History (74 works) · Politics (66 works) · Sociology (65 works) · Geography (57 works) · African history and culture studies (53 works) · Economics (44 works) · Law (39 works) · Development economics (29 works)