Allen Isaacman

Allen Isaacman is an American historian specializing in the social history of Southern Africa. He is a Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. In 2015, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Meanwhile, from 1997 to 1998, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Zimbabwe, in Harare, Zimbabwe, and in 2009 was named an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Western Cape, located in Cape Town, South Africa.

Academic awards and honors Isaacman awards includes . His 1972 book, Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution, The Zambezi Prazos, 1750-1902, won the Melville J. Herskovits Award as the most distinguished publication on African Studies for the year 1972, while the 2013 book which he coauthored, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007, won both the Herskovits Prize and the Martin Klein award from the American Historical Association (AHA). In 2013, Isaacman received the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association.

Selected publications Monographs Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution, The Zambezi Prazos, 1750-1902 (University of Wisconsin Press, June 1972). The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique: The Zambezi Valley, 1850-1921 (Heinemann and University of California Press, 1976) Translated into Portuguese in 1979. A Luta Continua: Creating a New Society in Mozambique (Fernand Braudel Center, SUNY, 1978). Co-authored with Barbara Isaacma, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution: 1900-1982 (Westview Press, 1983). Co-authored with Fred Cooper, Florencia E. Mallon, Steve J. Stern, and William Roseberry, Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Work and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique 1938-1961 (Heinemann, 1996). Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identity in the Unstable World of South Central Africa, 1750-1920 (Heinemann, 2005). Co-authored with Barbara Isaacman, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007 (Ohio University Press, 2013) Co-authored with Barbara Isaacman, Samora Machel: A Life Cut Short (Ohio University, Press 2020)