Download or read book Themes in West Africa s History written by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-15 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has long been a need for a new textbook on West Africa’s history. In Themes in West Africa’s History, editor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and his contributors meet this need, examining key themes in West Africa’s prehistory to the present through the lenses of their different disciplines. The contents of the book comprise an introduction and thirteen chapters divided into three parts. Each chapter provides an overview of existing literature on major topics, as well as a short list of recommended reading, and breaks new ground through the incorporation of original research. The first part of the book examines paths to a West African past, including perspectives from archaeology, ecology and culture, linguistics, and oral traditions. Part two probes environment, society, and agency and historical change through essays on the slave trade, social inequality, religious interaction, poverty, disease, and urbanization. Part three sheds light on contemporary West Africa in exploring how economic and political developments have shaped religious expression and identity in significant ways. Themes in West Africa’s History represents a range of intellectual views and interpretations from leading scholars on West Africa’s history. It will appeal to college undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in the way it draws on different disciplines and expertise to bring together key themes in West Africa’s history, from prehistory to the present.
Download or read book Cloth in West African History written by Colleen E. Kriger and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2006-06-08 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this holistic approach to the study of textiles and their makers, Colleen Kriger charts the role cotton has played in commercial, community, and labor settings in West Africa. By paying close attention to the details of how people made, exchanged, and wore cotton cloth from before industrialization in Europe to the twentieth century, she is able to demonstrate some of the cultural effects of Africa's long involvement in trading contacts with Muslim societies and with Europe. Cloth in West African History thus offers a fresh perspective on the history of the region and on the local, regional, and global processes that shaped it. A variety of readers will find its account and insights into the African past and culture valuable, and will appreciate the connections made between the local concerns of small-scale weavers in African villages, the emergence of an indigenous textile industry, and its integration into international networks.
Download or read book African Dominion written by Michael A. Gomez and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book History of West Africa written by K. B. C. Onwubiko and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book West Africa written by Eugene L. Mendonsa and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introductory book covers West Africa's history, social organization, and contemporary setting. It analyzes the many present-day problems facing West Africans such as the lack of development, dependency on economic relations with wealthy countries, poor governance, interference by the military in civilian affairs, corruption, and the lack of functioning democratic governments. This book also shows how West African indigenous civilization developed its humanitarian, democratic, and communalistic nature. Traditional political processes and ancestral customs are put forth as ways of solving West Africa's modern problems. Divided into three main parts: "The Setting and Social Organization," "The History of West Africa," and "The Modern Era," the main objective of this textbook is to teach students about the depth of African civilization and how its principles can be used to address modern-day problems in West Africa. Mendonsa expresses the opinion that in order to solve current problems plaguing the region, a knowledge of history, African culture, and ancient African beliefs is crucial. The Teacher's Manual includes chapter outlines and summaries, key points, sample questions, and suggested films and websites.
Download or read book An Economic History of West Africa written by A. G. Hopkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the standard account of the economic history of the vast area conventionally known as West Africa. Ranging from prehistoric time to independence it covers the former French as well as British colonies.
Download or read book A Thousand Years of West African History written by J. F. Ade Ajayi and published by . This book was released on 1990-12-31 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by historians, tracing the course of West African history up to 1960.
Download or read book A History of Race in Muslim West Africa 1600 1960 written by Bruce S. Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mobilization of local ideas about racial difference has been important in generating, and intensifying, civil wars that have occurred since the end of colonial rule in all of the countries that straddle the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. From Sudan to Mauritania, the racial categories deployed in contemporary conflicts often hearken back to an older history in which blackness could be equated with slavery and non-blackness with predatory and uncivilized banditry. This book traces the development of arguments about race over a period of more than 350 years in one important place along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert: the Niger Bend in northern Mali. Using Arabic documents held in Timbuktu, as well as local colonial sources in French and oral interviews, Bruce S. Hall reconstructs an African intellectual history of race that long predated colonial conquest, and which has continued to orient inter-African relations ever since.
Download or read book A Fistful of Shells written by Toby Green and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Topics in West African History written by A. Adu Boahen and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1986 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Topics in West African History has been thoroughly revised and updated to meet the requirements of senior secondary and first year university students. This edition contains.-24 chapters cover the entire history of West Africa from the spread of Islam to the present day.-New maps illustrate the major themes of west African history.-Main political facts of Wet Africa since independence are summarized in an easy-to-remember table.
Download or read book Ancient West African Kingdoms written by Jane Shuter and published by Heinemann-Raintree Library. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an overview of the culture and civilizations of the ancient West African Kingdoms of Mali, Ghana, and Songhai.
Download or read book A Textbook of West African History written by Adekunle Ojelabi and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-11 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PREFACE: The need to provide the West African students of History, with an objective analysis of the activities of the peoples who occupy the Western zone of the continent of Africa, has motivated this publication. This book has been specially prepared to meet the demands of the West African School Certificate examinations in history; the special history paper for candidates offering General Certificate of Education examinations at Advanced level; and the Higher School Certificate examinations. It has also been written to provide the general reader with a direct communion with the traditions and culture of our peoples.To the students and the general readers alike is addressed this note of warning: You must not expect all your historical problems to be solved solely by this book. Other books, journals and current magazines should be read to supplement and enrich your historical experience. In such a quest, you are bound to come across some other ideas about historical writing and the study of history; particularly our own history, African history. Some historians erroneously believe that African history consists of European activities in Africa. This is utterly nonsense and baseless. Such historians persist in their mistakes because their views of African history are based on the European Imperialist-colonialist activities in Africa during the 19th and the 20th centuries. These simple questions which destroy their myth and expose their error must be asked: Does it mean that there were no people in Africa before the advent of the Europeans? Did the Portuguese not find highly organised communities in Africa during their Atlantic exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries? Did such explorers not find Africans in useful and rewarding trade, and other economic activities? Were the people then without indigenous religion outside Christianity and Islam? Or, are we to regard the ancient Egyptian civilization as European? Or else, what then is history? No one would contest the fact that compact biographies of European nationalities can be compiled into a single book and called "History of European Activities in Africa". But it is the height of intellectual dishonesty to call such a compilation "a history of Africa". European influence in Africa is only a part of the foreign of our cultural relations. Therefore, it cannot be a substitute to the whole entity. Among other problems that may confront teachers, students and the general readers are the difficulties of securing adequate periodization and valid justification for our historiography. Here, some attempts may be made to evince some thoughts among other historians on these items. Recent research and archaeological excavations have increasingly pointed the way to an acceptable classification of the periods on African history along the following lines.1.Pre-Historic - Before 4000 BC 2. Ancient - 4000 BC - 300 A.D. 3. Medieval - 300 A.D. - 1800 A.D. 4. Modern - 1800 A.D. Upwards Much can be said in favour of this classification but would be fully expatiated upon in another work. The generalisation that African History heavily relies on the use of oral tradition for its primary source, and therefore its facts cannot be reliable is untrue and illogical. From periodization above, it is obvious that periods (1), (2), and partly (3) are likely to lean on oral tradition. The use to which African scholars have put oral tradition for the recovery of the past is sound and offers a novelty in the history of historiography. Cont.
Download or read book The Portuguese in West Africa 1415 1670 written by Malyn Newitt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670 brings together a collection of documents - all in new English translation - that illustrate aspects of the encounters between the Portuguese and the peoples of North and West Africa in the period from 1400 to 1650. This period witnessed the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews, the emigration of Portuguese to West Africa and the islands, and the beginnings of the black diaspora associated with the slave trade. The documents show how the Portuguese tried to understand the societies with which they came into contact and to reconcile their experience with the myths and legends inherited from classical and medieval learning. They also show how Africans reacted to the coming of Europeans, adapting Christian ideas to local beliefs and making use of exotic imports and European technologies. The documents also describe the evolution of the black Portuguese communities in Guinea and the islands, as well as the slave trade and the way that it was organized, understood, and justified.
Download or read book West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century written by Daryll Forde and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1967 this volume presents studies of 10 West African kingdoms which have played an important part in the economic, political and cultural life of the region. Ranging geographically from the kingdom of Benin in southern Nigeria to the Wolof kingdom of Kayor in Senegal, they inlcude the Oyo Yoruba, Dahomey, Hausa, Maradi, Kom in West Cameroon, the Mossi, Ashanti and Gonja and the Mende chiefdoms of Sierra Leone. Each outlines the historical origins and development of the kingdom and analyses its organization in the nineteenth century. It includes accounts of the economic basis and resources of the state and the significance of tribute and trade, of the social categories among its population, the administrarive machinery and communnications, the judicial and military organization and external relations. It also considers the importance of the ideology and rituals of kingship.
Download or read book West Africa before the Colonial Era written by Basil Davidson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a survey of pre-colonial West Africa, written by the internationally respected author and journalist, Basil Davidson. He takes as his starting point his successful textA History of West Africa 1000-1800, but he has reworked his new text specially for a wider international readership. In the process he offers a fascinating introduction to the rich societies and cultures of Africa before the coming of the Europeans.
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 West Africa in History written by W. F. Conton and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
