Jah Kingdom - by Monique A Bedasse (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Jah kingdom, Bedasse tells the story of how a group of Rastafarians led by Ras Bupe Karudi worked with scholars, activists, and politicians in the 1970s and 1980s to make pilgrimage and repatriation to Africa a possibility. Years of activism resulted in the Tanzanian government granting legal status to returning Rastafarians in 1985, and even giving the movement's adherents land in 1989. In time, friction between migrants and the struggling Tanzanian state would ultimately make repatriation impractical, but the decades of concerted activism and outreach offer a fascinating window into the political and intellectual ferment of the African diaspora during the era of decolonization"--

Book Synopsis

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 nonstate 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 postindependence period.

Review Quotes

"Adds to a growing body of scholarship that seeks to forge new paradigms for the history of black internationalism. . . . An essential text."--Journal of African American History

"Presents a study of a very small group of people whose actions represent a very large leap of faith with huge implications for global history. . . . An interesting and provocative work."--American Historical Review

"Jah Kingdom is the work of a talented, imaginative historian whose innovative approach to Rastafari and black internationalism captures a neglected stream in the long history of Pan-African political aspirations and anticolonial struggles. Through prodigious research, oral interviews, and a conceptually rich historiographical engagement, Monique Bedasse reveals a wide range of alternative political imaginaries that ultimately facilitated Tanzania assuming a central place in African diasporic politics and Rastafarian decolonial aspirations."--Minkah Makalani, University of Texas at Austin

"Adds to a growing body of scholarship that seeks to forge new paradigms for the history of black internationalism. . . . An essential text."--Journal of African American History

"Presents a study of a very small group of people whose actions represent a very large leap of faith with huge implications for global history. . . . An interesting and provocative work."--American Historical Review

About the Author

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