Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T14:39:51.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

21 - Africa in world history

from Part IV - World regions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

J. R. McNeill
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Kenneth Pomeranz
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access

Summary

The depth of Africa's past became an argument for its liberation in the twentieth century. For some Europeans, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Africans were the enslaveable other, exploitable at will. Some of the most important recent studies of the Atlantic slave trade have focused on its origins and found them in the intersection of networks that connected different worlds. Looking at Africa over the course of the century, what stands out is the complex relationship of new connections to new boundaries, of integration to marginalization, of inclusion to distinction-making. Research is increasingly revealing just how unstable the place of colonies, and how uncertain the place of Africa, was in the world order. Post-colonial critique, itself following years in which colonialism was considered a mere sidelight to national histories, tended to treat colonial rule as an all-embracing grid of power imposed on Africans, underscored by strong racial hierarchy.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further reading

Allina, Eric. Slavery by Any Other Name: African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique. Charlottesville, va: University of Virginia Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Allman, Jean Marie. The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York: Norton, 2005.Google Scholar
Austin, Gareth. Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807–1956. Rochester, ny: University of Rochester Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Bayart, Jean-François. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Beinart, William. Twentieth-century South Africa, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Bruce, and Lonsdale, John. Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, 2 vols. London: James Currey, 1992.Google Scholar
Bernault, Florence. Démocraties ambiguës en Afrique Centrale: Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon: 1940–1965. Paris: Karthala, 1996.Google Scholar
Berry, Sara. “Hegemony on a shoestring: indirect rule and access to agricultural land.” Africa 62:3 (1992), 327355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Sara. No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Branche, Raphaëlle. La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie. Paris: Gallimard, 2001.Google Scholar
Burbank, Jane, and Cooper, Frederick. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Cain, P. J., and Hopkins, A. G.. British Imperialism, 1688–2000. Harlow: Longman, 2002.Google Scholar
Cohen, Abner. “Cultural strategies in the organization of trading diasporas.” In Meillassoux, Claude, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa. Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 266284.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. University of Chicago Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conklin, Alice. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Conklin, Alice. In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960. Princeton University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, and Packard, Randall, eds. International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, and Stoler, Ann Laura, eds. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. Les Africaines: histoire des femmes d’Afrique noire, du XIXe au XXe siècle. Paris: Éditions Desjonquères, 1994.Google Scholar
Dike, K. O. Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta. Oxford University Press, 1956.Google Scholar
Diop, Cheikh Anta. Nations nègres et culture: De l’antiquité nègre égyptienne aux problèmes culturels de l’Afrique Noire d’aujourd’hui. Paris: Éditions Africaines, 1954.Google Scholar
Dubois, W. E. B. The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa has Played in World History. New York: Viking, 1946.Google Scholar
Eltis, David. Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin. The Political Economy of a Pre-colonial African State: Ibadan, 1830–1900. Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven. Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Freund, Bill. The African City: A History. Cambridge University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giliomee, Hermann. The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. Charlottesville, va: University of Virginia Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jonathon. Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 1995.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jonathon. War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Green, Toby. The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589. Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane. Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 1995.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Carolyn, ed. The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Carolyn, Mbenga, Bernard, and Ross, Robert, eds. The Cambridge History of South Africa, Vol. 1: From Early Times to 1885. Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Harries, Patrick. Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860–1910. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 1994.Google Scholar
Heywood, Linda, and Thornton, John, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Hiskett, Mervyn. The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio. Oxford University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Iliffe, John. Africans: The History of a Continent, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaacman, Allen. Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938–1961. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 1996.Google Scholar
Jerven, Morten. “African growth recurring: an economic history perspective on African growth episodes, 1690–2010.” Economic History of Developing Regions 25:2 (2010), 127154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerven, Morten. Poor Numbers: How We are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Klein, Martin. Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa. Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriger, Norma. Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices. Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Last, Murray. The Sokoto Caliphate. New York: Humanities Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Lindsay, Lisa. Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria. Westport, ct: Heinemann, 2003.Google Scholar
Lindsay, Lisa, and Miescher, Stephan, eds. Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 2003.Google Scholar
Lodge, Tom. Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945. New York: Longman, 1983.Google Scholar
Lodge, Tom. Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Lydon, Ghislaine. On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-century Western Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manchuelle, François. Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960. Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Mann, Greg. Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century. Durham, nc: Duke University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Mann, Kristin, and Roberts, Richard, eds. Law in Colonial Africa. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 1991.Google Scholar
Manning, Patrick. Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades. Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Marseille, Jacques. Empire colonial et capitalisme français: histoire d’un divorce, new edn. Paris: Albin Michel, 2005.Google Scholar
McCann, J. C. Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800–1990. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 1999.Google Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante. Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
McKittrick, Meredith. To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 2003.Google Scholar
Miers, Suzanne, and Roberts, Richard, eds. The End of Slavery in Africa. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul. Africa Since Independence. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nwokeji, G. Ugo. The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World. Cambridge University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochonu, Moses. Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression. Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborn, Emily. Our New Husbands are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule. Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek. Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 2004.Google Scholar
Posel, Deborah. The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priestley, Margaret. West African Trade and Coast Society: A Family Study. Oxford University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence. “Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 30:2 (2004), 215234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranger, Terence. Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–97: A Study in African Resistance. Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Reid, Richard. Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda. Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Robinson, David. The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Robinson, David. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Robinson, Ronald, and Gallagher, John. Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Robert, Mager, Anne, and Nasson, Bill, eds. The Cambridge History of South Africa, Vol. 2: 1885–1994. Cambridge University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruedy, John. Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation, 2nd edn. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Saada, Emmanuelle. Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur. University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searing, James F. West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860. Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seekings, Jeremy, and Nattrass, Nicoli. Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Sheriff, Abdul. Slaves, Spices, and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873. Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thénault, Sylvie. Histoire de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne. Paris: Flammarion, 2005.Google Scholar
Thomas, Lynn. Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilley, Helen. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950. University of Chicago Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trapido, Stanley. “Landlord and tenant in a colonial economy: the Transvaal 1880–1900.” Journal of Southern African Studies 5:1 (1978), 2658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Beusekom, Monica. Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920–1960. Portsmouth, nh: Heinemann, 2002.Google Scholar
van Onselen, Charles. The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894–1985. New York: Hill & Wang, 1996.Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan. Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom. Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Megan. Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Megan. The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in Twentieth-century Malawi. Cambridge University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise. Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilks, Ivor. Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Willis, Justin. Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Worger, William. South Africa’s City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867–1895. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zewde, Bahru. A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991, 2nd edn. Athens, oh: Ohio University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×