Bøger af David Birmingham

David Birmingham begins this short history of Angola in 1820 with the Portuguese attempt to create a third, African, empire after the virtual loss of Asia and America. In the 19th century the most valuable resource extracted from Angola was agricultural labour. The colony was managed by a few marine officers, white political convicts and black Angolans who had adopted Portuguese language and culture. The hub was the harbour city of Luanda which grew to be a dynamic metropolis of several million people. The export of labour was gradually replaced when an agrarian revolution enabled white Portuguese immigrants to drive black Angolan labourers to produce sugar-cane, cotton, maize and above all coffee. During the 20th century this wealth was supplemented by Congo copper, by gem-quality diamonds, and by off-shore oil. The generation of warfare finally ended in 2002 when national reconstruction could begin on Portuguese colonial foundations.

In this illuminating history, noted historian David Birmingham explains how Angola went from colony to independence, how in the 1990s the Cold War legacy turned to civil war, and how peace finally dawned in 2002.

As a new member of the EEC as well as an emerging tourist attraction, Portugal has in recent years experienced great social and economic change. This concise, illustrated history offers an introduction to its people, culture and evolving role as an imperial power in contemporary Europe.

The complete Cambridge History of Africa was intended to present the most comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of historical development on the African continent. Central Africa to 1870: Zambezia, Zaire and the South Atlantic consists of chapters written for the History by David Birmingham. They were originally published in three separate volumes.

"e;Software Development on a Leash"e; is designed as a roadmap for experienced developers and architects to align their approaches and development priorities for high reuse and innovation. Author David Birmingham's products have been successfully deployed in a variety of venues, in this context, highly complex desktop environments with rapid turnaround and high-intensity delivery deadlines. This book contrasts the application-centric development approach from the architecture-centric development approach, introducing the concept of the metamorphic super-pattern. Metamorphism is the capability of a software program to dynamically adapt to changing application requirements without rebuilding the binary executable. Birmhingham invites the reader to deploy reusable structural and behavioral building blocks, along with some powerful frameworks to gain immediate traction in any setting. The book includes a high-speed multi-dimensional toolkit to organize and deploy the building blocks, essentially weaving the application together at run-time, rather than being hard-wired in program code. Birmingham ties the building blocks together with structural and behavioral metadata, allowing simple, interpreted macros to drive everything from database access, screen layouts, and many aspects of software development normall embedded directly in the software program. The rapid deployment effect this creates allows developers to perform simple surgical application changes, or rapid sweeping rework/enhancement - without changing compiled software. The frameworks discussed include the capability of deploying/changing highly complex applications and their Visual Basic screens, without compiling program code; the capability of building dynamic data models that adapt to rapid change without software change; inter-application object sharing through sockets; dynamic error recovery and management, plus a powerful multi-dimensional toolkit.

This new biography of Kwame Nkrumah (1909-72), Ghana's first president, demonstrates how his accomplishments extend well beyond his role in Ghanaian decolonization, state-building, and the promotion of pan-Africanism to include his broader anticolonialist work toward an independent, unified Africa.

This synthesis presents an accessible introduction to one of the major themes of 20th-century world history namely, the decolonization of Africa.

Portugal was the first European nation to assert itself aggressively in African affairs. David Birmingham's Portugal and Africa, a collection of uniquely accessible historical essays, surveys this colonial encounter from its earliest roots.

An accessible and concise introduction to early European expansion overseas, explaining how and why western seafarers visited the Caribbean, South America and Africa.

Switzerland: A Village History is an account of an Alpine village that illuminates the broader history of Switzerland and its rural, local underpinnings.