Dr. Peter Michael Karibe Mendy

Selected Publications

2023 Amilcar Cabral: Um Nacionalista e Pan-Africanista Revolucionário. Editora Lutas Anticapital, Marília, São Paulo, Brazil.

2019 Amilcar Cabral: A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary. Athens: Ohio University Press.

2013 Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (with co-author Richard A. Lobban), Volume 4, Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.

2011 “The 2005 Presidential Elections in Guinea-Bissau: Challenged Democratization in a Precarious State,” in Abdoulaye Saine, Matt Houngnikpo & Boubacar N’Diaye (eds.) Elections and Democratization in West Africa, 1990-2009. Trenton: Africa World Press.

2010 “Amilcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau: context, challenges and lessons for effective African leadership,” in Carlos Lopes (ed.), Africa’s Contemporary Challenges: The Legacies of Amilcar Cabral. London and New York: Routledge.

2003 “Portugal’s ‘Civilizing Mission’ in Colonial Guinea-Bissau: Rhetoric and Reality, in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 36 (1)

2000 “Guinea-Bissau: State Decay and Factional Struggles, 1973-1998,” in Dani W. Nabudere (editor) Globalisation and the Post-Colonial African State, Harare, Zimbabwe: AAPS Books

1997 “The Emergence of Political Pluralism in Guinea-Bissau,” in F. Koudawo and Peter Karibe Mendy (editors), Pluralisme Politique en Guinée-Bissau, Bissau: Ediçoes INEP

1994 Colonialismo Português em Africa: A Tradiçăo da Resistência na Guiné-Bissau, 1879-1959, Bissau and Lisbon: Edições INEP/Imprensa Nacional Casa Moeda.

1993 “The Tradition of Resistance in Guinea-Bissau: The Portuguese-African Encounter in Cacheu, Bissau and ‘suas dependências’, 1588-1878,” in C. Lopes (editor) Mansas, Escravos, Grumetes e Gentio: Cacheu na Encruzilhada de Civilizações, Bissau: Ediçöes INEP.

Courses

HIST 101 Multiple Voices: Africa in the World
This course critically examines Africa’s relationship with the West from the Portuguese conquest of the North African trading center of Ceuta in 1415 to the 21st century world of advanced globalization. It addresses the following themes: Order and Authority (domestic and foreign policy); Migration and Cultural Contact; Work, Consumption, and Economic Development; Social Structure, Family, and Community; Identities: Ethnicity, Gender, and Religion; and Ideas, Ideologies, and Cultural Tradition. The course will challenge students to think critically about their own assumptions regarding Africa and the West by highlighting historical ties and common issues in the economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental domains. The historical topics include the Portuguese explorations and the early European-African encounter, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the role of Africa in the Industrialization of the West; Africa and the New Imperialism of the 19th century; Africa and the two World Wars of the 20th century; the Cold War, Decolonization and the West’s response to Africa’s crisis of development; and Africa and the challenges of globalization. The course aims to better prepare Rhode Island College students for a 21st century world that will continue to be molded by globalizing developments that lock Africa and the West in an increasingly interdependent relationship.

HIST 236 Post-Independence Africa
This course examines contemporary African history since the attainment of independence beginning in the 1950s to the present. While European colonial domination affected all fabric of African societies, the post-independence years have been a momentous time of change for Africans as they began to study and understand their own countries, take stock of their own capacities and potentials, search for solutions to the problems of development during and after the Cold War, and face the challenges of globalization, international drug and human trafficking, religious fundamentalism, and climate change. Themes examined include colonial legacies; nation-building tasks; political ideologies and the Cold War; socio-economic and political changes; the quest for political stability and national/regional/pan-African integration and unity; the military and politics; economic liberalization and democratization processes in the post-Cold War era; the role of women; the environment and impacts of climate change; drug and human trafficking; and religious fundamentalism in the post-911 world.

HIST 265 Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Africa
This Connections course examines the history of conflict and conflict resolution in particularly Africa and generally around the world since 1945. It explores the political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of violent strife. The issues of conflict and conflict resolution have always been important. Throughout human history, human beings have engaged in conflicts that often degenerated into open warfare. Conflict is part of the human condition, and it has universal characteristics. Yet, throughout human existence, human beings have also engaged in resolving their differences and co-existing peacefully. With industrialization and great technological advances in the efficiency and efficacy of weapons, the capacity of human beings to kill their own kind and destroy livelihoods and lifestyles increased exponentially and continues to expand. While violent conflicts in Europe declined significantly since 1945, it remained endemic in such regions as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Notably, these violent conflicts have been mainly revolutions, armed liberation struggles, and civil wars, rather than inter-state confrontations. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, superpower rivalry in the context of the Cold War often inflamed these violent events, particularly in countries that became proxy battlegrounds. In Africa, violent conflicts during the second half of the 20th century became epidemic. The continent has suffered devastating internal wars (including armed liberation struggles) that have persisted for more than a generation in some countries. Between 1960 and 2000, some 10 million Africans were killed in more than 35 violent conflicts around the continent. In Rwanda, in just 100 days in 1994, an estimated 800, 000 people were slaughtered in a frenzied genocide.

HIST 348 Africa under Colonial Rule
This is an upper-level course examines the political, economic, social and cultural transformations that occurred in Africa during the era of European colonization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The themes to be studied include pre-colonial African traditional institutions, the slave trade, societies and revolutions, legitimate commerce, European imperialism, colonial rule, nationalism, decolonization, and neocolonialism. The general aim of the course is to promote critical thinking in the historical analysis of the African past, through close examination of primary documents and competing/conflicting perspectives/interpretations, and the identification of biases, gaps, and inconsistencies within the available records.

HIST 361 Seminar in History
This course builds upon the students' experience in the methods courses. Emphasis is placed on issues of historiography, the identification and definition of historical problems, the researching and writing of a substantial paper, and historical criticism. The seminar focuses on the political, cultural, economic, and military relationships existing between Western and the non-Western independent states and societies of Africa during the past five decades. Seminar participants will be engaged in reading and discussing various documents that reflect different historiographical perspectives. The required readings will provide the context and departure for individual seminar papers on an aspect of the political, cultural, ideological, military, and economic relationships existing between the Western and Non-western African worlds since the end of World War II.

HIST 371 Reading Course in History
The course examines themes in African history from a comparative perspective, with assigned readings, précis written short papers, and the formulation, structuring and writing of a 12-page research paper.

HIST 552 Africa under Colonial Rule
This graduate course examines the political, economic, social and cultural transformations that occurred in Africa during the European colonization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The themes to be studied include pre-colonial African traditional institutions, the slave trade, societies and revolutions, legitimate commerce, European imperialism, colonial rule, nationalism, decolonization, and neocolonialism. The course aims to promote critical thinking in the historical analysis of the African past, through close examination of primary documents and competing/conflicting perspectives/interpretations, and the identification of biases, gaps, and inconsistencies within the available records.

HIST 561 Graduate Seminar in History
This course focuses on the development of critical research skills with respect to sources, texts, theory, and methods of inquiry regarding contemporary African History. It will encourage the exchange of ideas among students working on different themes of a non-western historical tradition.

HIST 571 Graduate Reading Course in History
The graduate course builds on the knowledge acquired from upper-level African history undergraduate courses with assigned readings, précis written short papers, and the formulation, structuring and writing of a 20-25-page research paper.

HONR 264 Connections Course: Conflict and Conflict Resolution since 1945
This course examines the history of conflict and conflict resolution in Africa and around the world since 1945. It explores the interactions and connections of the political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of violent strife and their multidimensional impacts at the national, regional and global levels. The course is an interdisciplinary and comparative course that challenges students to critically examine the various causes of violent conflicts and the variety of responses used to address them. It also aims to provide a critical understanding of the multidimensional impacts of conflicts in multi-ethnic/multiracial and culturally diverse environments that affect lives and livelihoods not only at the national level, but often at the regional and global levels as well.

Areas of Competence

History of Africa
Africa under European Colonial Rule
Portuguese Colonialism in Africa
African Resistance to European Colonialism
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery in the Americas
Contemporary African History
Government and Politics in Contemporary Africa
West African Studies
Africana Studies
Applied Development Studies
International Non-Governmental Organizations Studies
European Colonial Rule in Africa
Contemporary African History and Politics

Research Fields

Civil - Military Relations in Contemporary Africa
The Military and Politics in Guinea-Bissau
Democratization Processes in Lusophone Africa
Elections and Electoral Processes in Lusophone Africa
War-to-Peace Transitions in Lusophone Africa