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The Lost Cities of Africa
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.
366 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
About the author
Basil Davidson
102 books73 followersBasil Risbridger Davidson was an acclaimed British historian, writer and Africanist, particularly knowledgeable on the subject of Portuguese Africa prior to the 1974 Carnation Revolution .
He has written several books on the current plight of Africa. Colonialism and the rise of African emancipation movements have been central themes of his work.
He is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
From 1939, Davidson was a reporter for the London "Economist" in Paris, France. From December 1939, he was a Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)/MI-6 D Section (sabotage) officer sent to Budapest (see Special Operations Europe, chapter 3) to establish a news service as cover. In April 1941, with the Nazi invasion, he fled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In May, he was captured by Italian forces and was later released as part of a prisoner exchange. From late 1942 to mid-1943, he was chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Yugoslav Section in Cairo, Egypt, where he was James Klugmann's supervisor. From January 1945 he was liaison officer with partisans in Liguria, Italy.
After the war, he was Paris correspondent for "The Times," "Daily Herald" ,"New Statesman", and the "Daily Mirror."
Since 1951, he became a well known authority on African history, an unfashionable subject in the 1950s. His writings have emphasised the pre-colonial achievements of Africans, the disastrous effects of the Atlantic Slave Trade, the further damage inflicted on Africa by European colonialism and the baleful effects of the Nation State in Africa.
Davidson's works are required reading in many British universities. He is globally recognized as an expert on African History.
He currently lives in Staffordshire.
He has written several books on the current plight of Africa. Colonialism and the rise of African emancipation movements have been central themes of his work.
He is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
From 1939, Davidson was a reporter for the London "Economist" in Paris, France. From December 1939, he was a Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)/MI-6 D Section (sabotage) officer sent to Budapest (see Special Operations Europe, chapter 3) to establish a news service as cover. In April 1941, with the Nazi invasion, he fled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In May, he was captured by Italian forces and was later released as part of a prisoner exchange. From late 1942 to mid-1943, he was chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Yugoslav Section in Cairo, Egypt, where he was James Klugmann's supervisor. From January 1945 he was liaison officer with partisans in Liguria, Italy.
After the war, he was Paris correspondent for "The Times," "Daily Herald" ,"New Statesman", and the "Daily Mirror."
Since 1951, he became a well known authority on African history, an unfashionable subject in the 1950s. His writings have emphasised the pre-colonial achievements of Africans, the disastrous effects of the Atlantic Slave Trade, the further damage inflicted on Africa by European colonialism and the baleful effects of the Nation State in Africa.
Davidson's works are required reading in many British universities. He is globally recognized as an expert on African History.
He currently lives in Staffordshire.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 14, 2012
Grabbed a copy of this to replace the one I remembered enjoying many years ago. Davidson was a good writer and really admirable in his advocacy of Africans, but unfortunately his advocacy was based on the dominant paradigms of "civilization," technology and political organization: Africans are just as good as Europeans because they developed city-states and mastered metallurgy. Only at the very end of the book does he suggest that they might also have cultivated admirable and durable ethical practices in their daily lives.
The problem with judging people as civilized vs. uncivilized is that civilization means whatever you want it to mean. To Davidson it means technology and politics; to humanists it means the arts; at its root it simply means urbanized. If you praise people for their technology and politics, it means you're praising them for their technologists and politicians, the kinds of people who start wars, build weapons of mass destruction in secret, and tell us we need nuclear power. And sure enough, these metal-working African city-states all collapsed. Pyramids and space stations are not measures of greatness.
There have been plenty of insightful historians and anthropologists all along who have avoided the great and powerful and focused on the way societies take care of their poorest members and their natural habitats - unfortunately Davidson was not one of them.
The problem with judging people as civilized vs. uncivilized is that civilization means whatever you want it to mean. To Davidson it means technology and politics; to humanists it means the arts; at its root it simply means urbanized. If you praise people for their technology and politics, it means you're praising them for their technologists and politicians, the kinds of people who start wars, build weapons of mass destruction in secret, and tell us we need nuclear power. And sure enough, these metal-working African city-states all collapsed. Pyramids and space stations are not measures of greatness.
There have been plenty of insightful historians and anthropologists all along who have avoided the great and powerful and focused on the way societies take care of their poorest members and their natural habitats - unfortunately Davidson was not one of them.
November 18, 2022
According to the pioneering scholar of African history Basil Davidson, the study of African history is “the rediscovery of humanity.” In “The Lost Cities of Africa,” Davidson takes his first stab at removing the racist veil that European colonialism placed over African people and civilizations. In doing so, Davidson should be commended as one of the first white historians of his generation to go against the standard belief that “Africa has no history.” Nevertheless, this book was written in the late 1950s, and there is a lot of outdated, misleading, and flatly incorrect information in it. Further, Davidson’s focus on “civilizations” leads him to almost singularly directing his attention and efforts on iron-age development, thereby ignoring any study of the numerous African societies that developed in non-conventional ways.
There are a few main themes in this book that convey valuable information despite the inevitable shortcomings stemming from research limitations of the time. First, Davidson makes clear that the story of Africa and African people is a story of migration. Societies rose and fall as African people moved about the continent, mixing and mingling with one another and creating new cultures and sociopolitical formations in the process. Notably, Davidson was one of the earliest non-Black historians in the 20th Century to acknowledge the direct influence that Nubian / Sudanese civilizations and culture had on the development of Pharaonic Egypt. Davidson asserts that there was a “two-way” trafficking of ideas between Egypt to the North and Nubia to the South, and the “provenance of these ideas was undoubtedly more African than Asian.” Here, as in other places throughout the book, Davidson gives credit to Indigenous African people for the greatness discovered on the African continent, as opposed to non-African people who have typically been credited for such greatness in the past.
The second major theme of the book, relatedly, concerns continental unity, both political and cultural. Davidson recognizes and highlights the cultural continuity of African people from East to North to West to Central to South, cemented by the migratory patterns of African people over the centuries and millennia. However, he also rightfully acknowledges that various forces colluded to stifle the development true political unity, ensuring a sense of fragmentation that ultimately mirrors what we have today. Finally, Davidson seeks to make clear that Africa is indeed a historical and living place, contrary to the white supremacist ideals of Euro-American imperialists. This is an admirable and valuable endeavor that I believe was properly geared toward the white audience of the time that typically held a paternalistic and rudimentary attitude toward Africa. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a feel for an attempted honest—albeit limited and outdated—retelling of African history.
There are a few main themes in this book that convey valuable information despite the inevitable shortcomings stemming from research limitations of the time. First, Davidson makes clear that the story of Africa and African people is a story of migration. Societies rose and fall as African people moved about the continent, mixing and mingling with one another and creating new cultures and sociopolitical formations in the process. Notably, Davidson was one of the earliest non-Black historians in the 20th Century to acknowledge the direct influence that Nubian / Sudanese civilizations and culture had on the development of Pharaonic Egypt. Davidson asserts that there was a “two-way” trafficking of ideas between Egypt to the North and Nubia to the South, and the “provenance of these ideas was undoubtedly more African than Asian.” Here, as in other places throughout the book, Davidson gives credit to Indigenous African people for the greatness discovered on the African continent, as opposed to non-African people who have typically been credited for such greatness in the past.
The second major theme of the book, relatedly, concerns continental unity, both political and cultural. Davidson recognizes and highlights the cultural continuity of African people from East to North to West to Central to South, cemented by the migratory patterns of African people over the centuries and millennia. However, he also rightfully acknowledges that various forces colluded to stifle the development true political unity, ensuring a sense of fragmentation that ultimately mirrors what we have today. Finally, Davidson seeks to make clear that Africa is indeed a historical and living place, contrary to the white supremacist ideals of Euro-American imperialists. This is an admirable and valuable endeavor that I believe was properly geared toward the white audience of the time that typically held a paternalistic and rudimentary attitude toward Africa. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a feel for an attempted honest—albeit limited and outdated—retelling of African history.
June 26, 2024
A NON-TECHNICAL OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Basil Risbridger Davidson (1914-2010) was a British journalist and historian. He wrote in the Preface to the revised 1970 edition of this 1959 book, “I wrote [this book] in order to make a beginning… with the general description and elucidation of the history of the Africans who live south of the Sahara… In more ways than one, [this book] was conceived and written during the ‘Middle Ages’ of African historiography. Today, happily, we are well into its Renaissance, and the fact and scope of Africa’s long historical development need no longer be defended… A widening interest in modern Africa goes hand in hand with a widening awareness of historical Africa, and each gains from the other… New research into Stone Age sequences… has done much to clarify the confused picture as it stood in the middle years of our century… Then, so far as the nature of Africa’s indigenous population and cultures is concerned, the ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ is today dead and buried… If there has been a change of emphasis during the 1960s, it has been mainly toward righting a balance of appreciation of the so-called ‘stateless societies’---of all those many polities which preferred to get along without political chiefs or kings or central governments…”
He wrote in the Introduction, “The African, many have thought, is a man without a past. Black Africa---Africa south of the Sahara desert---is on this view a continent where man … have never raised themselves much above the level of the beasts… Africans, on this view, had never evolved civilizations of their own; if they possessed a history, it could scarcely be worth the telling… this belief that Africans had lived in universal chaos or stagnation until the coming of Europeans … [was] exceedingly convenient in high imperial times… This view of African achievement … is now with increasing knowledge seen to rest on no … solid a foundation in truth … The world is changing its mind about the past of Africa…”
He continues, “I have tried to steer between the rock of prejudice and the whirlpool of romance… Some have thought … to fill their charts of the African past with tales of Sheba and Ophir, of strange Phoenicians building cities in Rhodesia… Other romantics… have come to grief through writing ‘high civilizations’ into the continental African past where evidence for them is entirely lacking. African south of the Sahara contributed in no small measure to the great civilizations of the Nile Valley; but south of the Nile Valley it no more enjoyed in antiquity what modern convention has agreed to call a high civilization than did northern Europe or northern America.”
In the first chapter, he explains, “For many years… anthropologists argued the existence of another ancient stock which they called Hamite. These ‘Hamites’ were said to have a ‘white morphology’ deriving … from ‘Europeans’---although this was so long ago that nothing secure could be said about them… Today no serious writer will any longer accept this ‘Hamitic hypothesis,’ and the work of the 1960s has gone far towards finally burying it as just another ‘white’ illusion.” (Pg. 9)
He goes on, “in western Africa, the distinctions are largely those of language and anthropological convention. They imply… nothing at all as to ‘inferiority’ or ‘superiority.’ The point is worth emphasizing if only because an imagined superiority of Hamite over Negro---read white over black---has often been… ‘the inarticulate major premise.’ This premise has no foundation in the facts…” (Pg. 10) He adds, “The problems of backwardness and progress---even when and where these really exist, and are more than the illusion of Europocentric frames of thought---cannot be explained along these simple lines. They cannot be explained along any racial lines. Environment, not race, provides the key.” (Pg. 11)
He explains, “Across this inhospitable continent---difficult, intemperate, lacking many of the stable vegetables that sustained mankind elsewhere---these peoples spread themselves thinly, and survived… this migratory process certainly discouraged social growth from one form of society to another. Always able to move further on, since the land was so wide and its inhabitants so few, these moving peoples were seldom … faced with the social and economic crises which helped to promote change in narrower and more densely populated lands… Yet the record is very far from one of stagnation. These were pioneering peoples. They tilled where none had tilled before. They mined where there was no one to show them how… they acquired a range of technique and a mastery of art, a philosophy and attitude and temperament and religion, that were unique to themselves…” (Pg. 20-21)
He points out, “Only in the last few years have anthropologists turned to a systematic study of the interwoven fabric of belief and thought that lies behind the apparently simple structure of tribal life in continental Africa… Increasingly one sees that the ‘stagnant centuries’ of tribal Africa have been only a figment of the imagination.” (Pg. 64)
He asks, “If the civilizations of middle Africa did not greatly decline in their social and economic structure, but continued onward at about the same level, why did they so continue instead of moving to newer and more ‘modern’ levels?” (Pg. 116) He continues, “though Moorish ravages may explain a good deal in the course of Sudanese eclipse, there were other reasons too. One of these was the decline of Moorish civilization itself… the Sudan became isolated from the post-medieval world, the world of technical advance and industrial revolution.” (Pg. 121)
He notes, “Here again Europeans would afterwards believe that the Africans they found had lived in savage cruelty and chaos before the gently civilizing hand of Europe had come to stay their murdering conflict; the truth, in fact, was otherwise, just as it was otherwise in India.” (Pg. 200)
He observes, “Is African religion ‘primitive’? On the contrary; many African peoples… have systems of belief about themselves and the universe that are subtle and developed… Very often, though, the opposition between ‘primitive’ and ‘nonprimitive’ is thought of in purely technological terms… The early Portuguese, one may remark, had no contempt for these African states they found and traded with.” (Pg. 287-288)
He states, “Accumulation by chiefs or priests… never reached the point where written records could have become necessary; and we are on safe ground in saying that these early civilizations were illiterate except along the coast… These inland people had no means of writing; any more than a need of writing… the medieval peoples of northern Europe were not in much better case… The peoples of medieval northern Europe did not invent the wheel either, and they used it very little until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” (Pg. 294-295)
He concludes, “solving a whole wide range of contrasting problems, these early civilizations asserted once again a dominant African theme of unity in diversity, continuity in isolation. We cannot at present understand them clearly… Yet they pushed civilization into the empty lands.” (Pg. 307)
This book will be of great interest to those studying (at a ‘popular’ level) the history of Africa.
Basil Risbridger Davidson (1914-2010) was a British journalist and historian. He wrote in the Preface to the revised 1970 edition of this 1959 book, “I wrote [this book] in order to make a beginning… with the general description and elucidation of the history of the Africans who live south of the Sahara… In more ways than one, [this book] was conceived and written during the ‘Middle Ages’ of African historiography. Today, happily, we are well into its Renaissance, and the fact and scope of Africa’s long historical development need no longer be defended… A widening interest in modern Africa goes hand in hand with a widening awareness of historical Africa, and each gains from the other… New research into Stone Age sequences… has done much to clarify the confused picture as it stood in the middle years of our century… Then, so far as the nature of Africa’s indigenous population and cultures is concerned, the ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ is today dead and buried… If there has been a change of emphasis during the 1960s, it has been mainly toward righting a balance of appreciation of the so-called ‘stateless societies’---of all those many polities which preferred to get along without political chiefs or kings or central governments…”
He wrote in the Introduction, “The African, many have thought, is a man without a past. Black Africa---Africa south of the Sahara desert---is on this view a continent where man … have never raised themselves much above the level of the beasts… Africans, on this view, had never evolved civilizations of their own; if they possessed a history, it could scarcely be worth the telling… this belief that Africans had lived in universal chaos or stagnation until the coming of Europeans … [was] exceedingly convenient in high imperial times… This view of African achievement … is now with increasing knowledge seen to rest on no … solid a foundation in truth … The world is changing its mind about the past of Africa…”
He continues, “I have tried to steer between the rock of prejudice and the whirlpool of romance… Some have thought … to fill their charts of the African past with tales of Sheba and Ophir, of strange Phoenicians building cities in Rhodesia… Other romantics… have come to grief through writing ‘high civilizations’ into the continental African past where evidence for them is entirely lacking. African south of the Sahara contributed in no small measure to the great civilizations of the Nile Valley; but south of the Nile Valley it no more enjoyed in antiquity what modern convention has agreed to call a high civilization than did northern Europe or northern America.”
In the first chapter, he explains, “For many years… anthropologists argued the existence of another ancient stock which they called Hamite. These ‘Hamites’ were said to have a ‘white morphology’ deriving … from ‘Europeans’---although this was so long ago that nothing secure could be said about them… Today no serious writer will any longer accept this ‘Hamitic hypothesis,’ and the work of the 1960s has gone far towards finally burying it as just another ‘white’ illusion.” (Pg. 9)
He goes on, “in western Africa, the distinctions are largely those of language and anthropological convention. They imply… nothing at all as to ‘inferiority’ or ‘superiority.’ The point is worth emphasizing if only because an imagined superiority of Hamite over Negro---read white over black---has often been… ‘the inarticulate major premise.’ This premise has no foundation in the facts…” (Pg. 10) He adds, “The problems of backwardness and progress---even when and where these really exist, and are more than the illusion of Europocentric frames of thought---cannot be explained along these simple lines. They cannot be explained along any racial lines. Environment, not race, provides the key.” (Pg. 11)
He explains, “Across this inhospitable continent---difficult, intemperate, lacking many of the stable vegetables that sustained mankind elsewhere---these peoples spread themselves thinly, and survived… this migratory process certainly discouraged social growth from one form of society to another. Always able to move further on, since the land was so wide and its inhabitants so few, these moving peoples were seldom … faced with the social and economic crises which helped to promote change in narrower and more densely populated lands… Yet the record is very far from one of stagnation. These were pioneering peoples. They tilled where none had tilled before. They mined where there was no one to show them how… they acquired a range of technique and a mastery of art, a philosophy and attitude and temperament and religion, that were unique to themselves…” (Pg. 20-21)
He points out, “Only in the last few years have anthropologists turned to a systematic study of the interwoven fabric of belief and thought that lies behind the apparently simple structure of tribal life in continental Africa… Increasingly one sees that the ‘stagnant centuries’ of tribal Africa have been only a figment of the imagination.” (Pg. 64)
He asks, “If the civilizations of middle Africa did not greatly decline in their social and economic structure, but continued onward at about the same level, why did they so continue instead of moving to newer and more ‘modern’ levels?” (Pg. 116) He continues, “though Moorish ravages may explain a good deal in the course of Sudanese eclipse, there were other reasons too. One of these was the decline of Moorish civilization itself… the Sudan became isolated from the post-medieval world, the world of technical advance and industrial revolution.” (Pg. 121)
He notes, “Here again Europeans would afterwards believe that the Africans they found had lived in savage cruelty and chaos before the gently civilizing hand of Europe had come to stay their murdering conflict; the truth, in fact, was otherwise, just as it was otherwise in India.” (Pg. 200)
He observes, “Is African religion ‘primitive’? On the contrary; many African peoples… have systems of belief about themselves and the universe that are subtle and developed… Very often, though, the opposition between ‘primitive’ and ‘nonprimitive’ is thought of in purely technological terms… The early Portuguese, one may remark, had no contempt for these African states they found and traded with.” (Pg. 287-288)
He states, “Accumulation by chiefs or priests… never reached the point where written records could have become necessary; and we are on safe ground in saying that these early civilizations were illiterate except along the coast… These inland people had no means of writing; any more than a need of writing… the medieval peoples of northern Europe were not in much better case… The peoples of medieval northern Europe did not invent the wheel either, and they used it very little until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” (Pg. 294-295)
He concludes, “solving a whole wide range of contrasting problems, these early civilizations asserted once again a dominant African theme of unity in diversity, continuity in isolation. We cannot at present understand them clearly… Yet they pushed civilization into the empty lands.” (Pg. 307)
This book will be of great interest to those studying (at a ‘popular’ level) the history of Africa.
September 2, 2025
At its core, The Lost Cities of Africa is a powerful rebuttal to the colonial myth of an uncivilised, stagnant Africa. Davidson argued that Europeans, in their quest to justify conquest and exploitation, had deliberately ignored or destroyed evidence of complex African societies. He demonstrated that the ruins of places like Great Zimbabwe were not built by foreigners but were the work of indigenous African people.
The book details the history of great African kingdoms and empires, such as the Ghana, Mali, and Songhay empires in West Africa, as well as the coastal trading cities of East Africa. Davidson highlighted the impressive achievements of these civilizations in areas like architecture, trade, metallurgy (particularly ironworking), and governance. He showed that these societies had extensive trade networks, connected not only across the continent but also with the wider world, including the Middle East and Asia.
By documenting the vibrancy of pre-colonial Africa, Davidson implicitly critiques the devastating impact of colonialism and the slave trade. He argued that these external forces disrupted and, in many cases, destroyed the existing, self-sufficient African civilizations, leading to a long period of decline and "underdevelopment."
The Lost Cities of Africa was a seminal work that helped transform the study of African history. Published just as many African nations were gaining independence, the book gave a voice to the continent's past, providing a source of pride and intellectual foundation for new generations of African scholars and political leaders. Davidson's work was instrumental in legitimizing African history as a serious field of academic study, influencing a new generation of historians to re-evaluate the continent's place in world history. While some of his specific interpretations have been refined or challenged by later scholarship, the book's central thesis—that Africa had a rich and complex history of its own making—remains a cornerstone of African historiography. It is recognized for its significant role in decolonizing the study of history and introducing African history to a wider, popular audience.
The book details the history of great African kingdoms and empires, such as the Ghana, Mali, and Songhay empires in West Africa, as well as the coastal trading cities of East Africa. Davidson highlighted the impressive achievements of these civilizations in areas like architecture, trade, metallurgy (particularly ironworking), and governance. He showed that these societies had extensive trade networks, connected not only across the continent but also with the wider world, including the Middle East and Asia.
By documenting the vibrancy of pre-colonial Africa, Davidson implicitly critiques the devastating impact of colonialism and the slave trade. He argued that these external forces disrupted and, in many cases, destroyed the existing, self-sufficient African civilizations, leading to a long period of decline and "underdevelopment."
The Lost Cities of Africa was a seminal work that helped transform the study of African history. Published just as many African nations were gaining independence, the book gave a voice to the continent's past, providing a source of pride and intellectual foundation for new generations of African scholars and political leaders. Davidson's work was instrumental in legitimizing African history as a serious field of academic study, influencing a new generation of historians to re-evaluate the continent's place in world history. While some of his specific interpretations have been refined or challenged by later scholarship, the book's central thesis—that Africa had a rich and complex history of its own making—remains a cornerstone of African historiography. It is recognized for its significant role in decolonizing the study of history and introducing African history to a wider, popular audience.
January 30, 2018
The book details the advances and cultures of the many empires and countries in Africa and zooms in on the origin of the fall of these empires and how we view Africa as a whole today.
March 23, 2016
After getting through the history of African-Americans and their migration tracks, I went straight into reading this book as a supplementary material to the previous one. Although, from the onset I sort of perceived that the study is a bit dated and the tone, quite clinical despite the narrative structure of the work. Until I found out that most of the data are from the 1960s. Perhaps it would have been more powerful if there were more information regarding the way that people lived and how some of the cultures could have interacted instead of what they have merely left.
Still, Davidson was able to lay down the historiography of ancient cities in the African continent--from Uganda to Sudan, parts of Namibia, Zambia, and delves into the similarities and differences between East, West, and North Africa. Davidson can also be commended on the fact that he championed the fact that prior to the coming of the Europeans, African cultures have mastered metallurgy as a primary means of trade, aesthetic, among others and more importantly, had developed city-states, codes of structures, and above all, had rich traditions.
Still, Davidson was able to lay down the historiography of ancient cities in the African continent--from Uganda to Sudan, parts of Namibia, Zambia, and delves into the similarities and differences between East, West, and North Africa. Davidson can also be commended on the fact that he championed the fact that prior to the coming of the Europeans, African cultures have mastered metallurgy as a primary means of trade, aesthetic, among others and more importantly, had developed city-states, codes of structures, and above all, had rich traditions.
January 24, 2013
There is a lot of information in this book, especially for a complete newbie to the ancient history of Africa. I wish there had been a few more maps and a couple time lines to help me orient myself. Overall, though, this is a very well research book, even though it is and "outline" as the author wrote. This edition was published in the early 60s. There must be an updated version, which would be exciting to read. Throughout the book, Davidson mentions how more research and exploration was needed. His later books must cover much of that information.
September 10, 2009
Got this book for Christmas a dozen years ago and finally got around to reading it. This is a survey of African archealogy and written records (mostly by Arabs and Portuguese) of Iron Age African Civilizations and Cities. Anyone interested in Archeaology, history, cultural exchange and the medieval period will like this. Despite being 50 years old, it is a well written, quick read..
November 16, 2007
I was fascinated with Great Zimbabwe in high school. I think it might have been what got me hooked on anthropology - the realization that I'd heard so much about most of the Great Civilizations in Asia, Europe and Latin America and nothing about the ones in pre-colonial Africa.
August 7, 2016
Exceptionally and respectively researched, I found this book informative and interesting. Considering it's publication date, I would welcome any suggestions as to a follow-up. Is there a similar book with a recent perspective?
April 3, 2013
Had high hopes for this book, thought it might give more in depth on African civilizations. Unfortunately, very dated with little solid info. Oh well.
Want to read
May 26, 2014Basil Davidson was the first person in the West to publicly suggest that Africa had a history and a culture.
June 19, 2015
An overview of African History written from a British colonial perspective.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews