Overview

From its beginnings in 1930s Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement has become a global presence. While the existing studies of the Rastafarian movement have primarily focused on its cultural expression through reggae music, art, and iconography, Monique A. Bedasse argues that repatriation to Africa represents the most important vehicle of Rastafari's international growth. Shifting the scholarship on repatriation from Ethiopia to Tanzania, Bedasse foregrounds Rastafari's enduring connection to black radical politics, and establishes Tanzania as a critical site to explore gender, religion, race, citizenship, socialism and nation. Beyond her engagement with how the Rastafarian idea of Africa translated into a lived reality, she demonstrates how Tanzanian state and non-state actors not only validated the Rastafarian idea of diaspora, but were also crucial to defining the parameters of Pan-Africanism. Based on previously undiscovered oral and written sources from Tanzania, Jamaica, England, the United States, and Trinidad, Bedasse uncovers a vast and varied transnational network - including Julius Nyerere, Michael Manley, and C. L. R James - revealing Rastafari's entrenchment in the making of Pan-Africanism in the post-independence period.

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9781469633596

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Reviews

"""Bedasse gives us an enlightening insight in still too rare research of South-South networks. Jah Kingdom is an excellent analysis of how Rastafarians situated themselves in the eclectic interplay of pan-Africanism and Tanzanian nationalism and sheds more light on the global pan-African movement and the opportunities it created. Apart from the more evident readership who will have a background in Rastafarianism or post-independent Tanzania, this book will be of interest for any historian researching on questions of pan-Africanism, race and citizenship."" — H/Soz/Kult"

Bedasse gives us an enlightening insight in still too rare research of South-South networks. Jah Kingdom is an excellent analysis of how Rastafarians situated themselves in the eclectic interplay of pan-Africanism and Tanzanian nationalism and sheds more light on the global pan-African movement and the opportunities it created. Apart from the more evident readership who will have a background in Rastafarianism or post-independent Tanzania, this book will be of interest for any historian researching on questions of pan-Africanism, race and citizenship. - H/Soz/Kult

Author Information

Monique A. Bedasse is assistant professor of history and African and African American studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

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