Historians have long argued that humanitarianism—what Thomas Haskell once described as “alleviating the suffering of distant strangers”—first emerged in eighteenth-century Europe as part of a complex set of perceptual changes involving capitalist growth, Enlightenment ideas, and Christian values. Given these claims, it is no coincidence that humanitarianism has often been...
This dissertation examines the longue durée political history of Ateker-speaking agro-pastoralists in the semi-arid plains of today’s Uganda – Kenya – Ethiopia – South Sudan borderlands. Today’s Ateker-speaking communities include the Karimojong, Teso, Turkana, Toposa, Dodos, Jie, Nyangatom, and Jiye. Over the past millennium, Ateker-speaking communities developed a diversity of...