Africans : the history of a continent

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Title:

Author:

Iliffe, John.

ISBN:

9780521482356

9780521484220

Personal Author:

Iliffe, John.

Publication Information:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995 (1996 printing)

Physical Description:

xi, 323 p. : maps ; 26 cm.

Series:

African studies series ; 85

Series Title:

African studies series ; 85

Contents:

1. The frontiersmen of mankind -- 2. The emergence of food-producing communities -- 3. The impact of metals -- 4. Christianity and Islam -- 5. Colonising society in western Africa -- 6. Colonising society in eastern and southern Africa -- 7. The Atlantic slave trade -- 8. Regional diversity in the nineteenth century -- 9. Colonial invasion -- 10. Colonial change, 1918-1950 -- 11. Independent Africa -- 12. Industrialisation and race in South Africa.

Abstract:

In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the South African general election of 1994, John Iliffe refocuses African history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure survival and maximise numbers. These institutions enabled them to survive the slave trade and colonial invasion, but in the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This demographic growth has lain behind the collapse of colonial rule, the disintegration of Apartheid, and the instability of contemporary nations. The history of the continent is thus a single story binding living Africans to their earliest human ancestors.

Geographic Term:

Africa -- History.

Electronic Access:

Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam022/94036698.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam026/94036698.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015744929	960 I.29A 1995	1	Searching... Unknown
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015760859	960 I.29A 1995	2	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

This is a history of Africa from the origins of mankind right up to the South African general election of 1994. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature in an overwhelmingly hostile environment, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure survival and maximise numbers. These institutions enabled them to survive the slave trade and colonial invasion, but in the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This demographic growth has lain behind the collapse of colonial rule, the disintegration of apartheid, and the instability of contemporary nations. Thus Iliffe depicts the history of the continent as a single story, binding today's Africans to the earliest human ancestors.