Books
Precolonial Black Africa by ISBN: 0882081888Publication Date: 1985-10-01
The Unity of African Ancient History 3000 BC to AD 50 by
In one the first studies to ensemble data from as many related disciplines as possible ? linguistics and etymology, anthropology and rock art, and drawing on new archaeological findings and re-readings of historical documents, the author traces the contours of ancient cultural and trade links between the various peoples and polities of ancient Africa. The aim is to discern patterns of peopling and history of the continent, and rediscover unknown cultural systems and dynamics of ancient sub-Saharan Africa. By demonstrating how Africa people developed culturally, exchanged knowledge and migrated, the study challenges denials of early African cultural sophistication, setting an important agenda for future research directions.
ISBN: 9781904855828Publication Date: 2002-10-01
Researching Africa's Past by
These seventeen papers were presented at a conference on African archaeology, held at St Hugh's College, Oxford, in April 2002. The topics span nineteen countries, from Morocco in the far northwest of the continent to Lesotho, Madagascar and South Africa in the south, from Mauritania in the west to Ethiopia and Kenya in the east. Together they show the strength of research in African archaeology being undertaken at the present time by British-based academics, and the relevance of Africa to a whole range of archaeological debates, including: early hominid evolution and the recent appearance and expansion of our own species, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, the early development of food-production, the development of metallurgy, the formation of complex societies, and the sociopolitical impacts of long-distance trade.
ISBN: 0947816585Publication Date: 2003-12-01
Problems in African History by
A study of problems in African history during the pre-colonial era. The author guides the reader through a range of theories and interpretations concerning issues relating to: Africa and Egypt; Bantu origins and migration; African states and trade; Islam in Africa; women; and slavery.
ISBN: 1558760598Publication Date: 1992-11-01- The Civilizations of Africa by
With his focus on precolonial Africa, Christopher Ehret provides in The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 a remarkably complete and original overview of African history during the long periods sparsely covered in most other general histories of the continent. He examines African inventions and civilizations from 16,000 BCE to 1800 CE from the northern tip of Tunisia to the Cape of Good Hope in the south. Logically organized by topic and era, Ehret's heavily illustrated and easily accessible text reveals the diversity of African history. It explores the wide range of social and cultural as well as technological and economic change in Africa, and it depicts African agricultural, social, political, cultural, technological, and economic history in relation to developments in the rest of the world. Designed to address the glaring lack of texts concentrating on Africa before 1800, this book can be fruitfully combined with histories of Africa since 1800 to build a full and well-rounded understanding of the roles of Africa's peoples in human history.
ISBN: 0813920841Publication Date: 2002-04-29
Lost Cities of Africa by
Combining archeological evidence and scholarly research, Davidson traces the exciting development of the rich kingdoms of the lost cities of Africa, fifteen hundred years before European ships first came to African shores.
ISBN: 0316174319Publication Date: 1988-11-28
Afro-Latino Voices by
With judicious commentary by several of the leading experts in the field, this book dramatically expands the canon of texts used to study the black Atlantic and the African diaspora, and captures the tenor of the 'black voice' as it collectively engaged the power of colonial institutions. In no uncertain terms, Afro-Latino Voices will prove to be a remarkable pedagogical tool and an influential resource, inspiring deeper comparative work on the African diaspora. --Ben Vinson III, Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University
ISBN: 9781603842945Publication Date: 2009
Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa by
An unapologetically African-centered monograph that reveals physical and spiritual forms and systems of female power and leadership in African cultures. Nwando Achebe's unparalleled study documents elite females, female principles, and female spiritual entities across the African continent, from the ancient past to the present. Achebe breaks from Western perspectives, research methods, and their consequently incomplete, skewed accounts, to demonstrate the critical importance of distinctly African source materials and world views to any comprehensible African history. This means accounting for the two realities of African cosmology: the physical world of humans and the invisible realm of spiritual gods and forces. That interconnected universe allows biological men and women to become female-gendered males and male-gendered females. This phenomenon empowers the existence of particular African beings, such as female husbands, male priestesses, female kings, and female pharaohs. Achebe portrays their combined power, influence, and authority in a sweeping, African-centric narrative that leads to an analogous consideration of contemporary African women as heads of state, government officials, religious leaders, and prominent entrepreneurs.
ISBN: 9780821440803Publication Date: 2020-07-14
A Fistful of Shells by
By the time the "Scramble for Africa" among European colonial powers began in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for centuries. Its gold had fueled the economies of Europe and the Islamic world for nearly a millennium, and the sophisticated kingdoms spanning its west coast had traded with Europeans since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies--most importantly, cowrie shells imported from the Maldives and nzimbu shells imported from Brazil. But, as the slave trade grew, African kingdoms began to lose prominence in the growing global economy. We have been living with the effects of this shift ever since. With A Fistful of Shells, Toby Green transforms our view of West and West-Central Africa by reconstructing the world of these kingdoms, which revolved around trade, diplomacy, complex religious beliefs, and the production of art. Green shows how the slave trade led to economic disparities that caused African kingdoms to lose relative political and economic power. The concentration of money in the hands of Atlantic elites in and outside these kingdoms brought about a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa, parallel to the upheavals then taking place in Europe and America. Yet political fragmentation following the fall of African aristocracies produced radically different results as European colonization took hold. Drawing not just on written histories, but on archival research in nine countries, art, oral history, archaeology, and letters, Green lays bare the transformations that have shaped world politics and the global economy since the fifteenth century and paints a new and masterful portrait of West Africa, past and present.
ISBN: 9780226644578Publication Date: 2019-03-21
African Dominion by
A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book, the first on this period of the region's history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Scholars have long held that such distinctions arose during the colonial period, but Gomez shows they developed much earlier. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces the exchange of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. Islam's growth in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A major preoccupation was the question of who could be legally enslaved, which together with other factors led to the construction of new ideas about ethnicity, race, gender, and caste--long before colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Telling a radically new story about early Africa in global history, African Dominion is set to be the standard work on the subject for many years to come.
ISBN: 9780691177427Publication Date: 2018-01-01
Head, African Studies Library
Beth Restrick
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Subjects: African Studies