African History: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #160

by John Parker, Richard Rathbone

This Very Short Introduction looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented, both in Africa and beyond. The author illustrates important aspects of Africa's history with a range of fascinating historical examples, drawn from over 5 millennia across this vast continent. The multitude of topics that the reader will learn about in this succinct work include the unity and diversity of African cultures, slavery, religion, colonial conquest, the diaspora, and the importance of history in understanding contemporary Africa. The book examines questions such as: Who invented the idea of "Africa"? How is African history pieced together, given such a lack of documentary evidence? How did Africa interact with the world 1,000 years ago?
Africa has been known as 'the cradle of mankind', and its recoverable history stretches back to the Pharaohs. But the idea of studying African history is itself new, and the authors show why it is still contested and controversial. This VSI, the first concise work of its kind, will prove essential reading for anyone interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history.

Genres: History, Africa, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Politics, World History, Research

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

John Parker teaches African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He specializes in the history of Ghana.

Reviews

[Sean Mccarrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is perhaps the worst way I could think of introducing someone to African History, unless of course it's your intent to bore the ever loving crap out of them. The crux of this book's downfall lies in its lack of any substantial history. I realize that methodology and identity are huge subjects to tackle when addressing a subject like Africa, further more, the history of its history, how people viewed it, how it has changed over time etc. is also of crucial importance. However, to talk about all of these things, in 149 pages, in a book called African History, without giving a substantial overview of Africa's History, or even to cite major examples in history of the arguments being made on methodology and identity, is folly. Proponents of this book may cite the occasional paragraph about colonialism or the half a paragraph in which the Mahdist revolt was completely misrepresented, but all in all, there's no taking away from the fact that this book was almost entirely about method, not history. So maybe if this book was called African Methods, it would be reasonable, but to call this book history is laughable. Please do not read this book if you want to read about African History, read something by Michela Wrong, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Byron Farewell, or anyone else. Just do yourself a favor and read something that will move you, not bore the life forces out of you.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

African History In The Very Short Introductions Series

The "Very Short Introduction" series of Oxford University Press offers readers the opportunity to expand their knowledge in many directions. African history is a subject I know little about but was interested to explore in this "very short introduction" written in 2007 by John Parker, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Richard Rathbone, Honorary Professor of History, University of Aberystwth.

The authors state at the outset that their "very short introduction" is less a chronological history of Africa than a meditation upon the various ways that the African past has been thought about or imagined. Parker and Rathbone point to several difficulties in writing a straightforward historical account. In a short compass, it would be difficult to provide a history of a continent and its people over the course of over 5,000 years. During much of this time, the written historical record is scant at best. And the Africa of today includes more than 50 separate countries. The deeper question the authors raise is the sense in which Africa can be said to have a history at all, what it includes, and how it is to be researched and written. These latter themes pervade the book. The authors are careful and cautious in their approach; but on one occasion they suggest the discipline forms part of "the so-called 'cultural-linguistic turn' in the humanities associated with postmodernism". I would have considerable reluctance exploring a subject exclusively or primarily through postmodernist eyes with their biases and relativisms.

The early chapters of the book, in particular, explore the difficulties of exploring African history in terms of understanding the continent, particularly the distinction between the portions north and south of the Sahara desert and the large African diaspora. The authors raise hard questions about unity and diversity in the context of African peoples, and they question the idea of "tribalism" through which many people tend to view Africa. In a chapter titled "historical sources", the authors describe the difficulties of historical study in the absence of a written record. They discuss various alternatives to written records and they insightfully compare the differences between historical study and the types of study by cultural anthropology.

The book examines four large trends in African history in considering the role of "Africa in the world": religion, in particular the competing and almost equally-divided influences of Islam and Christianity, the slave trade, the African diaspora, and the large changes in the 19th Century resulting from European expansionism. These discussions, particular of the former two trends, are brief but highly suggestive.

There is large evidentiary material on the long history of slavery in Africa. Following the years of the slave trade, African history is documented through the age of colonialism, the end of colonialism, and the following and ongoing difficult paths towards self-government and economic growth of the African nations. While it briefly explores this large, complex history, the book is almost equally concerned with historiography -- the way in which historians in and outside of Africa conceived the nature of African history and set about writing it. The authors suggest that this history has changed and will continue to change as the needs continent and its people change. Various tensions in the nature of historical study of the sort the authors describe are not particular to Africa but are common to the enterprise. There undoubtedly also are factors that are particular to African history.

This "very short introduction" thus is more a combination of history, historiography, and the philosophy of history than a historical account. It proceeds at a high level of sophistication for an introductory book. The book includes an annotated bibliography for further reading together with an unusually large number of photographs which help to particularize the text amidst the abstractions. The book will be of most value to readers with a background in historical study (of other places or times); and, of course, to readers wanting to learn about Africa. The book made me want to learn more about Africa and its peoples; and thus, for me, it succeeded in its goal.

Robin Friedman

[R · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a book about the history of Africa. It is a book about African history as a discipline. The writing can be quite tedious and there is plenty of academic second guessing and naval gazing. The best thing about a Very Short Introduction is how it can condense a topic down to its core parts using clear and simple language. This book does the opposite, inflating the history of Africa into some mass of fragile narratives and counter narratives. There were some illuminating moments but overall I am none the wiser about African History beyond what would be useful during a postmodernist discussion in a university common room.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not an introduction to Africa's past, it's an introduction to the big questions around researching African History. I loved it.

[Lois · Rating 1 out of 5]

This starts off great but largely devolves into white supremacist and racist bullshit.
The author spends a good portion of the book defining who Africans are, why it's not ok to associate Africans with Black people and why the fact that this happens is the fault of Black Americans.
Only that's not historically accurate.
The concept of race is created by white slace owners in what is now Virginia in response to an uprising on which poor white indentured servants made cause with enslaved blacks.
Rich whites created their own category, white, and gave poor whites rights they denied Blacks-free or enslaved.
Modern racism as we know it was born.
The Americans that did that were actually part of the British Empire and they were white.
As soon as we are able to Black Intellectuals throughout the Diaspora and colonized Africa began to take control of the narrative.
It is true that much of what they thought had been since proven wrong. However 🗣SO HAS THE WHITE SUPREMACIST RACIST EUROPEAN THOUGHTS THIS CONCEPT WAS CREATED TO COUNTER.
The author just gives the response without adding the context of what this body of work grew in response to.
The racist researchers were found wrong and the Black historians were in fact much closer to the truth. The author won't acknowledge that though, lol.
This is less about history and more about white men re-establishing that history belongs to them and they will choose how to define this history as best suits their current racist needs.
There's some cool historical info in here but a good portion of this 'very short history' is just racist anger at Black American Historians having the nerve to define themselves and their history.
What a fucking cringeworthy bullshit waste of fucking time.
So much yikes!

[Amirography · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book. It's a meta-history of Africa. The author talks about the very different views on the African history, how it is conducted and how we should study it. I found it as what I expect VSI to be.
Fluency: 4/5
Style:4/5
Content: 5/5

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A very short introduction" it's a very good summary of the main topics that are needed for the elemental understanding of the historiography of Africa. It is a very useful book to have if you want to know what to research or how to begin a study on the continent's past, present and even future. It does not give you the answers, but what and how to look for them. Highly recommended.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

At last, a wee book from this very mediocre series that's actually well worth somebody's time! In fine academic prose that is actually pleasant to read, these professors provide a cogent summary of – you guessed it – African history. I learned a heckuva lot, and my future reading of African literature shall be that much more well-informed. I also want to now read African history more widely, too.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 4 out of 5]

These very short introduction books are good if your knowledge on the subject is basic. I now have a better idea of where to go from here and what I might expect from larger, more in depth text.

[Gerhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

'African societies survived the challenges of the past, and will survive those of the present. Yet the impact of this succession of traumas on the lived experience of Africans and on the formulation of the idea of Africa itself must not be underestimated. The question is how best to recover and to represent this history of suffering, of struggle, and of resilience.'

Originally published in 2007, this book desperately needs to be updated in order to remain relevant.

[Jason Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a much better book than its rating here suggests. The key is to understand that this isn’t a “very short introduction” to African history, but a “very short introduction” to African History as an academic discipline. It’s silly for anyone to come to a book this short and expect it to somehow neatly detail the history of the whole continent.

Some of the questions Parker engages with here are: What is Africa? How has the concept of Africa been historically conceived? What were some of the important movements that changed the focus or reformulated the approach to understanding “Africa” or being “African?” How differently has African identity been understood in the diaspora? In the Americas? What is the contemporary approach to making sense of “tribes?” How has the field of African history dealt with the lack of written history? How has it dealt with the slave trade? How has colonialism, post-colonialism, and the issues of dictatorship affected how different nations in the continent see themselves and their pasts? How has Marxism, Nationalism, and Liberalism, affected and perhaps complicated the understanding of Africa?

The book was written in the mid 2000s and so it isn’t updated to the present day, but it’s still definitely worth reading in order to have a better sense of the issues of African History. There’s a lot of great reference material as well if you want to learn more— just don’t expect to get a well-formed sense of the different countries’ histories from this book alone.

[Chris Rhatigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm assuming most people who would buy this book are interested in an introduction to African history, as that is the book's title. Unfortunately, this is mostly an introduction to the discipline of African history. So, while this isn't a bad book, I didn't find it particularly useful.

The section on imperial-era history is quite good.

[Kes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't a substantial history of Africa - it's an introduction to the topic of African history, as it is studied, used, and the issues surrounding it.

There are a few main issues that stood out to me:

1. What is Africa? Does it include the African diaspora? (One of the interesting things was that one of the main schools of African history was located in America.) Even on mainland Africa, there was a distinction between South Africa and North Africa (with the Sahara perhaps being the dividing line), with North Africa perhaps culturally, historically, and even geographically being closer to the Mediterranean world as it was part of Africa.

2. The issue of how the environment may have shaped development - that is, "environmental determinism", with "no milieu being deemed to be more enervating than the equatorial forest. Primeval, impenetrable, monotonous, and above all, dark, 'the jungle' was seen to have bed the most extreme primitiveness".

3. The construction of history and state building.

For the first, so-called 'nationalist' generation of professional historians, too, it was states that were all-important. Their concern was to 'decolonise' the past by demonstrating that Africa, far from being the primitive tribal real of European imperialist mythology, had a long and noble tradition of state-building.

The passage then goes on to talk about early African towns, but I found it intriguing that the hallmark of civilisation was state building.

It then ends with:

According to archaeologist Roderick McIntosh, the essence of Middle Niger civilisation was not hierarchy but pluralist 'heterarchy'. Its real genius, in other words, may have been in the ability to organise itself without recourse to coercive state power, rather than in the glorious history of empire-building.

We also cover 'acephalous' (headless) societies where the society functions without a ruler that can be identified. Authority was instead vested in representatives of segments - e.g. families, clan, age groups, etc.

4. We also cover remote societies - and I loved the observation that:

But living in the depths of the equatorial rain forest, as did the 'pygmies' of the Ituri region of the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, or in desert areas, like the San (or 'Bushmen') of the Kalahari in southern Africa, was seldom the result of accident. Isolation was frequently either the outcome of strategies devised by people unwilling to risk repeated predation by better-armed, hostile outsiders, or the consequence of being driven into marginal ecologies by more powerful peoples' capacity to confiscate richer arable land, pasture, or hunting grounds. Despite the 'new age' tendency to romanticize the San way of life, admittedly a brilliant adaptation to one of the harshest environments on the planet, most San would almost certainly have settled for a softer existence.

...

But recent research has shown that Africa's many decentralised societies were as much the products of historical forces as its great kingdoms - including active resistance on the part of independent frontiersmen and -women to would-be state-builders. As we have seen with the Middle Niger, independent communities and cultures often persevered as predatory states rose and fell.

5. Diversity & Identity - the sheer volume of diversity in African history, as well as the continuing process of borrowing from each other's culture as well as subordination or cultural exchange.

On the identity front, I loved the observation on how membership in certain classes can affect definitions of personal identity.

6. On the historical front about slavery: there's talk about the Atlantic slave trade (to the Americas) and the Muslim trade (from South Africa to North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East). I was not aware of the latter - in this aspect, the slaves were usually destined for "domestic servitude, including concubinage".

There's also talk about the involvement of African societies in the slave trade as well, though the degree of emphasis is less mentioned in modern coverage. As the author mentions: "Rather, the problem is that by stressing African agency, it becomes all too easy to lose sight of the fact that the majority of Africans involved in the making of the Atlantic world were victims."

7. Colonialism in Africa - that despite the continent officially being colonised, the real fact of the matter was the "colonial armies and bureaucracies were tiny, and huge swathes of territory remained outside any effective control." (Of course, there were still rebellions.) This resulted in diverse systems of colonial control, of which Africans participated to varying extents.

This is a good overview, and the author was able to bring out the academic threads and issues well.

[Michael Huang · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars mostly because the book is misleadingly titled. If it’s called African Historiography, then it’s a perfect little intro (which I personally don’t care about). 2/3 of the content is about the works and views of historians and their inter-relationships. Only 1/3 is about history proper (events, culture, and people). And even that 1/3 seems to be playing a supporting role on the critique of historiography. For example, you learn about Zulu, which is really a name for a little clan that later conquered larger neighboring kingdoms. Subsequently many people from these conquered regions start to identify themselves as Zulu. But this story is only told *because* the authors wanted to critique how treating tribal identity as a static concept is wrong-headed. In other words, this is almost a book intended for aspiring historians of the specialty “history of Africa”, not for lay people trying to get a quick overview of the history of Africa.

[Nicolas Name · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tricky book to review. More reading necessary on this topic from me.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I expected this to be a history of Africa: places, people, and events. Instead, I found a book on African history, in the sense of African history as a subject itself. Of course, it does cover places, people, and events. But it's more a book about understanding the themes in African history and of Africa as a symbol (or construct). Some of the reviews I've read seem to point to this as a shortcoming. I guess they also expected this to be more about events and dates, and they weren't satisfied with what they found. But I liked it.

This book is in part a historiography - writing about writing about history. It discusses some of the theories, methods, and challenges of writing the history of a topic. As expected, these challenges includes an especially limited written record prior to the last few centuries and also bias from outside, and political pressure to shape narratives from inside. As a introduction, it doesn't go too deep into the details, but it touches on events and agendas to illustrate how these themes have shaped the study of African history. As a history book it still covers many of the major events and forces that played out across the continent over time, but these are primarily explored in terms of how they fit themes of African history rather than just what happened when.

What stuck out for me: realizing own ignorance about a huge part of the world, most centered around a handful of images. I remember watching television throughout the 1990s with so many images and stories of poverty, starvation, warlords, and genocide that these are still some of the first thoughts that come to mind; I'm sure it's the same with many people in the U.S. The Rwandan genocide, South African apartheid, Kenyan Mau Mau uprising, the Algerian War of Independence, military juntas in sub-Saharan states. All examples of extreme violence, injustice, and social breakdown. But these all happened at different times, with different people, and in response to different things. From the earliest written records of Egypt and Rome there's always been violence in Africa, just like everywhere else. These events here stand out because they happened in recent memory, during the lifetime of people alive today. Furthermore, the violence are so often viewed from the perspective of countries that used to have these people as colonies, with a tinge of saying "see what happened once we left", which turning a blind eye to the violence imposed by colonialism. A related takeaway was how this book highlighted how relatively brief the colonial period was despite the relative size of its perceived role in history.

I could give a breakdown by chapter but the book is short enough and interesting enough that I recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in African history. There is one point I will highlight is "the invention of Africa," discussed as a section of the very first chapter. Africa is, of course, a continent. But when most people refer to "Africa" they're not referring to geology but to something else. But what is that something else? Is a convenient symbol, an easy way to blend so many countries and people together as a monolith entity? Is there something real and essential about African-ness? Does it make sense to talk in the same way about Asia or North America, as one homogeneous block?

[Jurij Fedorov · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 The idea of Africa
3,5/10

First thing he says is that races are not real. He also disputed many historical notes about Africa and largely just says that Africa is complicated and hard to study. But overall it's a letdown that he right away plain refused to acknowledge that races may be real. It's kinda essential for African history to understand a whole race and single ethnic groups. He probably wouldn't say anything much about this as it's clearly a topic he doesn't understand it's just a shame he refuses to even look into it.

2 Africans: diversity and unity
4/10

There is not much info here because the author has an extreme focus on Europeans instead of Africans for some reason. This is pretty much an attack on colonial powers and European backwards thinking about Africans. It's about how some terms are offensive and about how Africa is actually not some primitive tribes. This is not about Africa. And unfortunately the European history here is terrible. Everything is simplified into "they are hateful and ignorant".

It would have at least been somewhat interesting if he at least focused on Muslim or Chinese writings about Africa. This European stuff is just too well-known and there is nothing interesting here.

3 Africa’s past: historical sources
2,5/10

The author spends nearly the whole chapter stating that old European sources on Africa are racist. He never really tells us actual history. It's just a big fat warning that's not supported by any examples. He later says that women are an important source of knowledge. It's just a critical race theory analyses on a very basic level with no evidence given. Overall I'm just let down by the lack of info. It's a bunch of loose talk. It's franky a completely waste of time. I'm trying to imagine how some blank slater or left-winger may get something out of the chapter, but I frankly don't even think they will enjoy it. Maybe they will agree with it, but that's about it.

4 Africa in the world
3,5/10

This is a big step up. Unfortunately it's still not about Africa. This is about Black slaves and such. Which is frankly history you can read about in a million other books. But the chapter is not terrible. It's very biased, but there are a few facts here and there. His ideology and critical race theory is still center stage though. So unless you really love that stuff and assume it's fact based the chapter will feel hollow.

5 Colonialism in Africa
3/10

Same.

6 Imagining the future, rebuilding the past
3/10

Same.

7 Memory and forgetting, past and present
3/10

Same.

My final opinion on the book

I think the book is 1,5/5 stars. There is no reason to hate it. It's not a huge misinformation campaign. While he does misinterpret research it's not to a degree that ruins everything. It's not an intellectual or consistently fact-based book, but it's also not even a history book about Africa. It's about a progressive understanding of culture overall with some African stories.

There is pretty much no reader I would recommend this book to. But if you like academic low-tier idea philosophy this is for you.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

From this book it seems like it has a lot of similarities with Indian history insofar as they both prominently feature segmental social structures. But this isn't really about African history per se. I know so little about African history that I learned a little of that anyway, but its really about the historiography of Africa. Which is actually a more interesting subject to me anyway. Each type of history has different central questions and themes. The book does address some of them. They include: Africa as a periphery vs Africa as a liminal zone. Colonialism as European hegemony vs colonialism with Africans as active participants. The role of slavery. Religious conversion and Africanization of religion. Segmentary societies. Africa as subsaharan blacks vs Africa as all Africans + diaspora. However, the book is obviously going to be very politically correct and liberal because its from oxford university press. So it fails entirely to address some of the other questions which Africa brings up. Namely-- why did Africa have so much more slavery than anywhere else? Why did Africa fail to develop economically and technologically (it blames this on pure geography)? What are the most essential and specific attributes of African society which distinguish it from European or Asian society? I also feel that the book does too much to try and pull a revisionist move, just like subalterists do to orientalist historiography (though the author is aware of this pitfall, they do it anyway). Just because old white guys said it doesn't make it incorrect. For instance, the dismissals of the validity of the concept of race were annoying. The insistence that Africa was actually not isolated but was core to world history at all times was also dumb. Can't you just be content with the fact that it was *not as isolated* as previously thought? Anyway, as a n00b it was a nice very short intro which made me curious to learn more about specific countries in Africa.

[Ryan Lally]

Parker provides a meta-narrative of Africa and its peoples, focusing more on the historiography of the continent than anything else. The book spends the majority of the time exploring the tensions between revisionist, post-revisionist views of historical events. He reminds us, incessantly, of the importance of broaching the subject of African history with extreme care. Our lens, dictates the narrative; too euro-centric?, afro-centric?, reactionary?, constructivist?, post-modern constructivist? Etc. While I personally found this approach to make for seriously onerous reading, I must say it isn’t entirely un-useful, however it was not what I was expecting. Admittedly, perhaps it was somewhat foolish of me to have expected a concise historical account of an entire continent in a book of this size. Parker certainly poses some big questions and arguably sets the stage for delving into ‘actual’ African history. In that sense, the book might be seen as an adequate preliminary historical text.

The crux of Parker’s point can be made in one of the book’s closing pages. Frankly, you could spare yourself the slog had he just put this at the beginning and left it at that.
“Is there, then such a thing as African history, or is there just history, as it happened to unfold on the continent called Africa?”

(P.S. I still don’t fucking know)

[zack · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of this should suggest that most, if not all, generalizations about Africans past and present are doomed to fail.

I'll admit, it feels a bit strange, and perhaps ironic, that this is written by two white men from the UK. Nonetheless, it was a quite good introduction to African history, and what the term exactly means. I very much appreciated the inclusion of literature for further reading after the usual references.

It was, as it is meant to as an introduction, very educational and brought up a lot of interesting topics and events that I'm definitely going to dwell deeper into.

[Inem · Rating 1 out of 5]

Warning: This book is exactly what the modern imperial Western university wants you to believe about African continent. While trying to guise itself in some form of pseudo-objectivity, this book is rife with the most common forms of apologism for slavery and colonialism that we see in the contemporary postmodern western academy. It also slips in various casual lies that the authors assume readers will take at face value. Here are some of the issues I have with this book:

1) The authors are unable to make up their minds as to whether or not North Africa constitutes a part of the African continent, however, they INSIST that boers in South Africa are Africans and must be treated as such. The authors raise the question of whether North African history and "Sub-Saharan" African history can truly be historicized together with the authors going back and forth. At times, they reference North African history in the book as a part of African history but more often they depict and represent North Africans as foreigners on the continent when it comes to their travel accounts. The authors repeatedly refer to "Sub-Saharan Africa" as something apart from and disconnected from the North which they claim shares more with the Middle East. Let us not pretend that Imazighen--which the authors refer to as 'Berber' despite admitting in the book that the word is pejorative--have more in common with Lebanese than with Malians. The authors write, "To reject the descendants of Dutch, French, English and other 'white' settlers in southern Africa, or of Indians there and in East Africa, is arbitrary unless we are also prepared to reject those whose ancestors were part of the Omani diaspora in East Africa or of Arab expansion into North Africa." The thing is, the Europeans who came to Africa were themselves the very people who created distinct racial categories to distinguish themselves from the Indigenous African peoples they interacted with. It was the Europeans who first insisted and asserted both racial AND national differences and the European settler communities hold on to these constructs to this very day. THAT is why they are not Africans. And yes, the same can be said about Asian and Arab migrants and settlers if they refuse to accept Indigenous control over the land. But Imazighen are NOT Arabs. Basic history.

2. In a similar vein, this book is incredibly dishonest about the history of Pan-Africanism which it glosses over and lies about in passing. The push in the western academy to refrain from essentializing or homogenizing Africa pretends to be well-meaning but oftentimes is the re-perpetuation of old school divide and conquer (as we can see with the North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa divide in point 1). Don't get me wrong, Africa is very diverse with various religions, customs, cultures, languages-- we all know this. No one is denying this. But as a part of listing all of the debates within the field of African history-- these authors spend a lot of time raising the question of whether or not such a thing as 'African history' or of 'Africa' even exists. They will go on to talk about African agency (which I am about to go in on) but there is no analysis of African agency when it comes to the fact that Africans oftentimes DO willingly choose a continental identity. This almost briefly comes up towards the end but for the most part, it is dismissed in the book. Then there are all these little jabs at Pan-Africanism that are frankly dishonest. For example, the sentence, "Interest in the pan-Africanist visions of anglophone African American elites has now expanded... (85)" This jab at Pan-Africanism is dishonest and any historian of Africa should know that. The largest working-class mass organization in the history of the United States was the UNIA led by Marcus Garvey with an overwhelmingly proletariat membership and a significant international presence in Latin America (especially Cuba and Central America). Pan-Africanism simply is NOT the history of and Anglophone elite class during the era that the authors are referencing. Earlier on this same page, the authors also state, "With the rise of African nationalism in the 1950s- and with it the study of African history- the continent itself came into sharper focus. In Manning's words, 'place superseded race.' The history of Africa went one way, and that of the black diaspora the other.' Wow, I have never read a more untrue sentence in my entire life. Did this guy just forget about the history of the Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, George Padmore, the late W.E.B. DuBois (in Ghana), Shirley Graham DuBois, Paul Robeson, Kwame Ture etc. etc. etc.? Too many examples to name. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movements in the United States could not have happened without direct collaboration and exchange with the African continent. I am talking about Ghana. I am talking about Guinea Conakry. I am talking about Algeria. I am talking about Tanzania. Are these men aware that the late 20th-century market the third wordlist turn in African diaspora with a particular focus on Africa? Brazil's Movimento Negro was also directly inspired by the liberation struggles of Guinea Bissau, Cabo Verde, Angola, and Mozambique. Dr. Monique Bedasse writes about the Caribbean diaspora in Nyerere's Tanzania during this era in her book, Jah's Kingdom. Dr. James H. Meriwether writes about the massive influence that Africa had on African American politics particularly in the second half of the 20th century in Proudly We Can Be Africans.

3. This book follows the popular trend of the slave trade and colonialism apologism in the western academy by insisting on 'African agency' which we are supposed to believe is coming from a totally neutral and objective place and not a narrative that the western world has a material interest in diffusing. Look, here's the thing, we all know that Africans DID collaborate during the slave trade and during the colonial period but that is because there were CLASS CONTRADICTIONS in pre-colonial and colonial African society. This is something that the authors seem to agree with until they later completely disagree when in trying to dismiss Walter Rodney's seminal work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa they state, "In a continent with very limited industrialization or class formation, Marxist economic analysis could only go so far." Ok, first of all- Africa has had class contradictions since prior to the colonial period. Feudalism and semi-feudalism developed in Africa and it was these class contradictions that led to collaboration during the slave trade. Class still existed in Africa throughout the colonial and neo-colonial period (not postcolonial abeg)-- see 'Class Struggle in Africa' by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Second of all, dependency theory is a relevant framework through which to analyze Africa regardless of whether or not Africa is industrialized because Africa, like every other part of the world, is integrated into a capitalist WORLD economy. This is what How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is really about, Africa's integration into the capitalist world economy. I have no doubt that the authors know and understand this but in an attempt to exempt the west from a long violent imperial history that continues into the present, they have to play dumb here. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa as well as Rodney's 'A History of the Upper Guinea Coast' are much better books about slavery and Africa's early interactions with Europe than this work. Another book I recommend is Eric William's Capitalism and Slavery which exposes who really benefitted from the translatlantic slave trade. Sylviane Diouf's "Fighting the Slave Trade" is an incredibly underrated work. This whole guise of granting African's agency through pretending like Africans and Europeans are somehow equally in the wrong for slavery is so disingenuous. I mean it is not even a groundbreaking narrative, 'Africans sold each other' has been the dominant justification that Europeans have espoused for centuries now. Diouf's work in "Fighting the Slave Trade" actually IS groundbreaking because it deals with the least studied aspect of the slave trade, African resistance to it on the continent. It dismantles the narrative that the masses of African people were willing compliant collaborators happy to see their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters etc. sold away. Why is THAT not the focus of the conversation on African agency? Oh right... it's not a good look for the historians in colonial western academies sitting on a century-long legacy of intellectual production in the service of global western exploitation.

4. The book's jabs at Cheikh Anta Diop are predictable but also expose much about the real differences in how African and European historians write and analyze histories and for which purposes. I want to make it clear that it is not just about African versus European historians in some sort of biological or national sense but also in an ideological sense. There are plenty of Africans that write their own histories from a European perspective and could easily fall into the category of a Western(ized) scholar of Africa regardless of where they are located. However, this book, like much of the works that have come out of the imperial core academy dismissed Diop as some sort of bumbling afrocentric fool who believed Africans should turn to Egypt for guidance. Read Cheikh Anta Diop! The man was actually a scientific socialist who wanted to create a unified socialist African industrialized state. He had a historical materialist analysis of Africa that was actually scientific whereas these authors reject historical materialism and apparently do not even believe that classes exist in Africa. The jabs at Diop are interesting because they mention his popularity in Senegal and the fact that the university in Dakar is named after him. What they do not mention is that the institute that Diop founded, IFAN, is still a department at the University of Cheick Anta Diop and that professors are hired specifically to work in his legacy and continue scholarship in the same vein of his works. Diop is popular not just in Senegal but across Francophone Africa. This is an important point because while the authors try to insist that they as European scholars of Africa are somehow neutral and objective- we know that the way that they write and understand history may be far from how an African scholar and researcher at Diop's IFAN institute would or at Kwame Nkrumah's Institute of African Studies would even now in 2022. Pan-Africanists tend to be more honest about our ideological positions and material stakes. We want to liberate Africa. European scholars pretend like they are somehow neutral within the world economy that positions them on the top through the exploitation of those on the bottom.

5. The book never talks about the CIA. Not once. It never once uses the word "neo-colonialism." It denies the existence of western imperialim in Africa today. La Francafrique is never named. The SDECE never comes up. Félix Houmphouet Boigny is simply "a doctor and chamption of African cocoa farmers in Cote d'Ivoire," not someone responsible for assisting the west in coup d'etats and political assassinations. "The widespread popular support in Ghana for the military coup d'etat that in 1966 removed Kwame Nkrumah from power was an early indication that the promises of nationalist leaders were beginning to have a hollow ring." Yet no mention that Robert W. Komer, a National Security Council staffer, wrote in a now declassified document that, "The coup in Ghana is another example of a fortuitous windfall. Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African. In reaction to his strongly pro-Communist leanings, the new military regime is almost pathetically pro-Western." Julius Nyerere is never mentioned. I know that this is a BRIEF introduction but he is also East Africa's most important president.

The one thing I liked in this book is how the authors broke down the concept of tribe and really historicized that and showed how it became transfixed through the colonial process. I knew about this but the book did include examples that I was less familiar with and will now reference.

Let me list the books I recommend to get a different perspective than what this work has to offer, many of them already listed above:

-How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney
-A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, Walter Rodney
-Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams
- The World and Africa, W.E.B. Du Bois
-Fighting the Slave Trade, edited by Sylviane Diouf
-A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon
- Class Struggle in Africa, Kwame Nkrumah
-Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah
-Proudly We Can Be Africans, James H. Meriwether
-Jah's Kingdom, Monique Bedasse
-La Guerre du Cameroun, Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, Jacob Tatsitsa (in French)
-De Escravo a Cozinheiro: Colonialismo e Racismo em Moçambique, Valdemir Zamparoni (in Portuguese)
-Fighting Two Colonialisms, Stephanie Urdang
-White Malice, The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, Susan Williams
-Kwame Nkrumah and East Africa, Pan-Africanism and African Interstate Relations, Opoku Agyeman

Some other historians and scholars to read in general:
- Cheikh Anta Diop (actually READ him)
-Basil Davidson
-Hakim Adi
-Gerald Horne (writings on Southern Africa but also on the international impact of the Mau Mau)

[Matt Knox]

A very interesting introduction to African history that is moreso focused on the problems of African historiography and historiography more broadly. Numerous historical cultures in Africa and elsewhere produced little to no written record and what remains has often been warped and erased by conflict and colonization - historians of these cultures have had to get creative in order to uncover their lost histories. Admittedly it's kind of problematic that this is written by two white guys (a certain reviewer seemed very upset by their criticism of "Afrocentric" pseudo-histories which abound in popular discourse) though it approaches the subject matter sensitively. So far the Very Short Introduction series has yet to disappoint.

[Rita Oliveira · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I enjoyed other books in the A Very Short Introduction series, this one is really not it.
I learnt very little about the history of Africa, and instead was pretty annoyed most of the time at all the rambling about when the history of Africa started being studied, and how, and by whom. There’s quite a lot of chat about how the history of the continent isn’t just about slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism, and still most of the book is precisely about those subjects - or rather, how the study and history of those subjects has evolved. The two authors are/were British professors at SOAS, and it does read very much like an academic exercise, a.k.a. boring to most people.
In summary, if you want to learn about African history, read something else.

[Josiah Richardson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dry writing. This is a subject in which I knew so little, I was over my head. After finishing the book, I feel like I know even less.

[Kevin Keating · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a little confusing in the way it was organized. Not as helpful as I'd hoped. For instance, it explained a lot about how people considered history in Africa rather than describing the history of recent Africa. Anyway, not for me.

[Chris Hebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is decent for what it is, but sort of sticks to the methods/the state of the field as opposed to providing broad strokes of actual history. There are brief historical anecdotes, but no wide-ranging analysis.

[bojana · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don't know if i should say that i expected more from this book or something different. if i had to repeat one piece of information from it, it is that even attempting to define what african history is and how we should tackle it is extremely difficult, so we are not going to, for 150 pages.

[Emmanuel-francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is said that until the hunted put pen to paper, tell their stories, the stories of the hunt will continue to glorify the hunter. This statement, on the surface, although with general application to the entirety of the African continent quickly generates rebuttals in the mind of the informed reader. Does Rameses II, eulogised by the poet, Shelley as “Ozymandias, King of Kings ” really qualify as “hunted”? Do any of the great African empires? Perhaps the quote should be restricted to the parts of Africa long believed to have been stuck in stasis; out of history, until the caravels of the Portuguese arrived. That too does not satisfy: what is one to make of the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa or Askiya Muhammad? or the tarikhs of the Sudanese States? The chronicles and works of philosophy penned in Ge’ez by the Ethiopian clerics, does that not qualify as history?


The above is a snippet of the arguments which have long roiled the discipline of history, specifically, the history of Africa. This book does not aim to settle these debates nor does it, in this reviewer’s opinion grapple fully with the questions it raises. It, in the best tradition of the Oxford “Very Short Introduction” series, aims to provide a stimulating introduction to the subject for the general reader. It does not aim to be the final word on the subject—a doubtful project in any case. In the authors’ words, this book aims to “reflect upon the changing ways that the African past has been imagined and represented ”.

The authors trace the emergence of the idea of Africa across seven engaging chapters. They manage manfully that fine balance between granting you insight into the subject and leaving you thirsting to master it. Questions of identity on the continent, its history and historiography are covered masterfully; the authors’ choices left me with observations and perhaps, as intended, questions and disagreements.

Of the continent’s seven continents, only Europe emerged out of an act of self-conception. Everywhere else, in the words of the philosopher, V.Y. Mudimbe were “fashioned by non-Africans as a paradigm of difference” . The authors quote Mudimbe in tacit agreement; I disagree. Acceding to the premise grants logical consistency to another assertion made by the authors. They state that the history of Africa ought to include “diasporic communities beyond Africa” . With that too, I disagree.

My countervailing assertion is that the history of Africa is the history of events on the continent of Africa. Nothing more, nothing less. Although the historiography of the discipline has advanced farther than his focus on international politics, historians of Africa would do well to heed Leopold von Ranke’s words that history aim as much as possible, to show things as they were.
Engaging properly with von Ranke’s dictum would involve taking a scalpel to certain assumptions which have long driven the discipline. First would be, as I alluded to, the acceptance of boundaries: diaspora history is worth studying but it is not “African history”, any more than Norman history is Danish history or Brazilian history is Portuguese history. That they mesh in parts is unavoidable but always, it must be borne in mind that they are separate.

Second, the discipline ought to do more to situate itself in a global historical conversation, seeking to answer questions like, what role did African gold play in the wider medieval economy? Did crusading motivations drive Sultan Mansur in his invasion of Songhay?

Finally, and to its credit, the book tackles this issue bravely, Africanists must realise that ultimately, what they are doing is looking to puzzle out the past of Homo Sapiens in Africa. As a single species, humanity share attributes, cruelty for one. While detailing the effects of human cruelty, the nuance of the relationship between the two continents ought not to be reduced to black and white.

The expanse of the continent and the fact of the origins of homo sapiens and some of the earliest civilisations can tend to obscure the fact that historical study of the continent in its entirety is a relatively recent endeavour fraught with challenges. As the authors note:

"Fifty years ago, in the mid-1950s, the notion of ‘African history’ barely existed. Beyond the speculative writings of a few African American intellectuals, the collections of oral traditions published by mission-educated Africans, and a handful of equally obscure translations of old Arabic chronicles, there was little or no scholarly engagement with the history of the continent. The study of Africa was dominated by the discipline of social anthropology, whose practitioners, if often highly sympathetic to African cultures, tended to portray them as timeless and unchanging. That part of the continent that did possess an established literate culture and therefore a recoverable past, the area to the north of the Sahara desert, was generally considered to belong more to the Mediterranean or the Arab world than to ‘black Africa’ to the south. Africa, in short, was deemed to be a realm apart, a continent without a history and whose future progress rested upon the continuation of European trusteeship."

Messrs Parker and Rathbone have produced an excellent survey introduction bound to attract interest from lay-readers while correcting misconceptions about both the continent and its historical study to boot. My critiques of the overall position along which they frame the thesis of the work ought not to distract from the fact that this is a superb work of history and a credit to the scholarship of its authors. Nonetheless, specialists will be quick to spot lacunae: the long-standing trading connection with Asia is skipped over, local political institutions are not critically examined and the foraging populations of the continent get short shrift.

This excellent book will no doubt inspire more to tackle the field’s myriad challenges in the service of universal scholarship.

[Keesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple, straightforward, and "readable," this is a good introduction text to African history. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I must point out that the author took about 165 pages to say basically the same two things: African history is difficult to recapture because nothing was written down (apart from Eurocentric versions of African history, and even that only after a certain date) and African history is difficult to describe because of the outflux of the slave trade and the influx of European settlers and colonists. There you have it: the entire book in a single sentence. :)

However, that said, I did enjoy the book, and certainly feel that I learned something about Africa. I also came away with a new respect for the difficulties of historical research on a continent with no written language (up until very recently, historically speaking) and where building designs and materials preclude even the possibility of archaeological helps.

[ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked this up, I was expecting a short introduction to African history... not historiography of Africa. Parker did a decent job of summarizing trends in African historiography over the past 150 years or so, and it was accessible even to someone without a strong background in African history. However, his discussion of African historians writing about Africa was relatively thin, and his discussions of colonialism were slightly too noncritical for my taste. I know more about African historiography than I did before, and might recommend this book to someone looking for an introduction before further study, but as a standalone, this book was slightly disappointing.