Download or read book The Story of Africa written by Basil Davidson and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Fortunes of Africa written by Martin Meredith and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa has been coveted for its riches ever since the era of the Pharaohs. In past centuries, it was the lure of gold, ivory, and slaves that drew fortune-seekers, merchant-adventurers, and conquerors from afar. In modern times, the focus of attention is on oil, diamonds, and other valuable minerals. Land was another prize. The Romans relied on their colonies in northern Africa for vital grain shipments to feed the population of Rome. Arab invaders followed in their wake, eventually colonizing the entire region. More recently, foreign corporations have acquired huge tracts of land to secure food supplies needed abroad, just as the Romans did. In this vast and vivid panorama of history, Martin Meredith follows the fortunes of Africa over a period of 5,000 years. With compelling narrative, he traces the rise and fall of ancient kingdoms and empires; the spread of Christianity and Islam; the enduring quest for gold and other riches; the exploits of explorers and missionaries; and the impact of European colonization. He examines, too, the fate of modern African states and concludes with a glimpse of their future. His cast of characters includes religious leaders, mining magnates, warlords, dictators, and many other legendary figures—among them Mansa Musa, ruler of the medieval Mali empire, said to be the richest man the world has ever known. “I speak of Africa,” Shakespeare wrote, “and of golden joys.” This is history on an epic scale.
Download or read book Born in Blackness Africa Africans and the Making of the Modern World 1471 to the Second World War written by Howard W. French and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa. Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history. While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day. “Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.
Download or read book Africa s Development in Historical Perspective written by Emmanuel Akyeampong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.
Download or read book Africa in Global History written by Toyin Falola and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook places emphasis on modern/contemporary times, and offers relevant sophisticated and comprehensive overviews. It aims to emphasize the religious, economic, political, cultural and social connections between Africa and the rest of the world and features comparisons as well as an interdisciplinary approach in order to examine the place of Africa in global history. "This book makes an important contribution to the discussion on the place of Africa in the world and of the world in Africa. An outstanding work of scholarship, it powerfully demonstrates that Africa is not marginal to global concerns. Its labor and resources have made our world, and the continent deserves our respect." – Mukhtar Umar Bunza, Professor of Social History, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, and Commissioner for Higher Education, Kebbi State, Nigeria "This is a deep plunge into the critical place of Africa in global history. The handbook blends a rich set of important tapestries and analysis of the conceptual framework of African diaspora histories, imperialism and globalization. By foregrounding the authentic voices of African interpreters of transnational interactions and exchanges, the Handbook demonstrates a genuine commitment to the promotion of decolonized and indigenous knowledge on African continent and its peoples." – Samuel Oloruntoba, Visiting Research Professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University
Download or read book Out Of Africa written by Isak Dinesen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Out of Africa, author Isak Dinesen takes a wistful and nostalgic look back on her years living in Africa on a Kenyan coffee plantation. Recalling the lives of friends and neighbours—both African and European—Dinesen provides a first-hand perspective of colonial Africa. Through her obvious love of both the landscape and her time in Africa, Dinesen’s meditative writing style deeply reflects the themes of loss as her plantation fails and she returns to Europe. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.
Download or read book Tippi My Book of Africa written by Tippi Degré and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes the reader on a delightful journey into Africa and into the world of a little girl called Tippi who tells her unforgettable story on her return from Africa to France at the age of ten. Tippi is no ordinary child. She believes that she has the gift of talking to animals and that they are like brothers to her. Her world is filled with characters like Leon the Chameleon, Abu the elephant whom she calls ‘my brother’, and leopards, snakes, baboons, lions and ostriches ... ‘I speak to them with my mind, or through my eyes, my heart or my soul, and I see that they understand and answer me.’ My Book of Africa contains the words of a little girl who has the gift of reaching out and touching the people and animals of Africa. It s beautifully illustrated with over 100 magical photographs taken by her parents, French filmmakers and photographers, Sylvie Robert and Alain Degré.
Download or read book African History A Very Short Introduction written by John Parker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.
Download or read book Into Africa written by Martin Dugard and published by Crown. This book was released on 2003-05-06 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What really happened to Dr. David Livingstone? The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Survivor: The Ultimate Game investigates in this thrilling account. With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure—defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement. In the mid-1860s, exploration had reached a plateau. The seas and continents had been mapped, the globe circumnavigated. Yet one vexing puzzle remained unsolved: what was the source of the mighty Nile river? Aiming to settle the mystery once and for all, Great Britain called upon its legendary explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, who had spent years in Africa as a missionary. In March 1866, Livingstone steered a massive expedition into the heart of Africa. In his path lay nearly impenetrable, uncharted terrain, hostile cannibals, and deadly predators. Within weeks, the explorer had vanished without a trace. Years passed with no word. While debate raged in England over whether Livingstone could be found—or rescued—from a place as daunting as Africa, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the brash American newspaper tycoon, hatched a plan to capitalize on the world’s fascination with the missing legend. He would send a young journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, into Africa to search for Livingstone. A drifter with great ambition, but little success to show for it, Stanley undertook his assignment with gusto, filing reports that would one day captivate readers and dominate the front page of the New York Herald. Tracing the amazing journeys of Livingstone and Stanley in alternating chapters, author Martin Dugard captures with breathtaking immediacy the perils and challenges these men faced. Woven into the narrative, Dugard tells an equally compelling story of the remarkable transformation that occurred over the course of nine years, as Stanley rose in power and prominence and Livingstone found himself alone and in mortal danger. The first book to draw on modern research and to explore the combination of adventure, politics, and larger-than-life personalities involved, Into Africa is a riveting read.
Download or read book Feet of the Chameleon written by Ian Hawkey and published by Portico. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Best Football Book at the British Sports Book Awards and shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of The Year 2009 'Written with warmth and understanding, the book for which African football has been crying out.' FourFourTwo Featuring a new foreword by the author, Feet of the Chameleon has been newly released in digital format to coincide with 29th African Cup of Nations in January 2013. A comprehensive study of African football, Ian Hawkey traces the development of the world’s favourite sport through the tangled history and complex social and political life of this fascinating continent. Drawing on a range of sources, including interviews conducted with individuals involved in all levels of the African game, his own extensive experience and years of research, Ian Hawkey, international football correspondent for the Sunday Times, has crafted a unique and remarkable book to satisfy the surge of interest in African football. Engagingly written and comprehensively researched, drawing on a range of accounts from those at grass-roots level through to the very top tiers of African football, Feet of the Chameleon is a compelling mixture of analysis and insight that delves deep into the history of the game in a continent fragmented by history, language and politics. Ian Hawkey is a meticulous and knowledgeable guide to this complex subject, and he has produced a timely and entertaining study of African football’s colourful history, players, supporters and legends.
Download or read book African Europeans written by Olivette Otele and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling history of Africans in Europe, revealing their unacknowledged role in shaping the continent One of the Best History Books of 2021 — Smithsonian Conventional wisdom holds that Africans are only a recent presence in Europe. But in African Europeans, renowned historian Olivette Otele debunks this and uncovers a long history of Europeans of African descent. From the third century, when the Egyptian Saint Maurice became the leader of a Roman legion, all the way up to the present, Otele explores encounters between those defined as "Africans" and those called "Europeans." She gives equal attention to the most prominent figures—like Alessandro de Medici, the first duke of Florence thought to have been born to a free African woman in a Roman village—and the untold stories—like the lives of dual-heritage families in Europe's coastal trading towns. African Europeans is a landmark celebration of this integral, vibrantly complex slice of European history, and will redefine the field for years to come.
Download or read book Africa in History written by Basil Davidson and published by George Weidenfeld & Nicholson. This book was released on 1968 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the original publication of "Africa in History, " the history and development of Africa had been measured by the European concept of "civilization," applying a Eurocentric approach to African art and literature. Basil Davidson's landmark work presents the inner growth of Africa and its worldwide significance, the internal dynamic of its old civilizations and their links with Asia, Europe and America, as well as the development of specific areas, tribes and cultures. From accounts of the days of the green Sahara and the great iron age, the earliest Portuguese colonization, the coming of slavery and the subsequent legacy of violence and mistrust, the growth of Islam in the north and the cults of the Congo, the sophistication of art and architecture, and the pattern behind social and tribal mores, the entire picture of the continent emerges. This revised edition reflects the recent astonishing changes in South Africa, including the release of Nelson Mandela.
Download or read book Africa s Long Road Since Independence written by Keith Somerville and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A superb book...genuinely innovative' Jack Spence OBE, King's College London Over the last half century, sub-Saharan Africa has not had one history, but many. Histories that have intertwined, converged and diverged. They have involved a continuing process of decolonization and state-building, conflict, economic problems but also progress and the perpetual interplay of structure and agency. This new view of those histories looks in particular at the relationship between territorial, economic, political and societal structures and human agency in the complex and sometimes confusing development of an independent Africa. The story starts well before the granting of independence to Ghana in 1957, but the book also looks at Africa in the closing decades of the old millennium and opening ones of the new. This is a book, too, about the history of the peoples of Africa and their struggle for economic development against the global economic straitjacket into which they were strapped by colonial rule and decolonisation. The importance of imposed or inherited structures, whether the global capitalist system, of which Africa is a subordinate part, or the artificial and often inappropriate state borders and political systems is discussed in the light of the exercise of agency by African peoples, political movements and leaders.
Download or read book Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky written by Elphinstone Dayrell and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1968 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sun and Moon must leave their earthly home after Sun invites the Sea to visit.
Download or read book Reversing Sail written by Michael A. Gomez and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the global unfolding of the African Diaspora, the migrations and dispersals of people of African, from antiquity to the modern period. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are discussed over a wide expanse of time in ways that link as well as differentiate past and present circumstances. The experiences of Africans in the Old World, in the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, is followed by their movement into the New, where their plight in lands claimed by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonial powers is analyzed from enslavement through the Cold War. While appropriate mention is made of persons of renown, particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of working class people and their cultural efflorescence. The book also attempts to explain contemporary plights and struggles through the lens of history.
Download or read book Crossings written by James Walvin and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all know the story of the slave trade—the infamous Middle Passage, the horrifying conditions on slave ships, the millions that died on the journey, and the auctions that awaited the slaves upon their arrival in the Americas. But much of the writing on the subject has focused on the European traders and the arrival of slaves in North America. In Crossings, eminent historian James Walvin covers these established territories while also traveling back to the story’s origins in Africa and south to Brazil, an often forgotten part of the triangular trade, in an effort to explore the broad sweep of slavery across the Atlantic. Reconstructing the transatlantic slave trade from an extensive archive of new research, Walvin seeks to understand and describe how the trade began in Africa, the terrible ordeals experienced there by people sold into slavery, and the scars that remain on the continent today. Journeying across the ocean, he shows how Brazilian slavery was central to the development of the slave trade itself, as that country tested techniques and methods for trading and slavery that were successfully exported to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas in the following centuries. Walvin also reveals the answers to vital questions that have never before been addressed, such as how a system that the Western world came to despise endured so long and how the British—who were fundamental in developing and perfecting the slave trade—became the most prominent proponents of its eradication. The most authoritative history of the entire slave trade to date, Crossings offers a new understanding of one of the most important, and tragic, episodes in world history.
Download or read book Pretty Salma written by Niki Daly and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this version of "Little Red Riding Hood, " set in Ghana, a young girl fails to heed Granny's warning about the dangers of talking to strangers.
