The purpose of this book is to provide for the general reader, teacher, and student a one-volume history of sub-Saharan Africa that relates the vibrant story of the African past as it is understood by contemporary scholars. There have been three concerns that have guided us in this enterprise – accuracy, clarity, and style. We have sought to introduce the reader to the central themes of African history and to clarify the debates by historians about the African past with a zest that will seduce the reader to turn the next page and reach the next chapter.

This text is the product of many decades of lecturing, writing, and teaching African history to American undergraduates and graduate students. The dedication “To our students” should not be interpreted as a gift to them but rather an acknowledgment of the interactions with our students, undergraduates and graduates, through which we developed and decided that the approach to present the African past that flows through the following volume is the most efficacious to understand the history of the African people. Historians seldom inform their readers about their qualifications except for a brief blurb on the dust jacket. We are two professors of the history of Africa who have lived, lectured, researched, and traveled in the continent during the past half-century to publish many books, articles, and essays pertaining to the African past. More germane to this particular volume is the fact that both of us together have cumulatively taught African history at five American colleges and universities and lectured in universities in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East for more than fifty years to thousands of students, colleagues, and the general public. Through a long process of trial and error, this experience has earned us some insight into the challenges of presenting Africa's history to people who know little about the subject and whose views of Africa are most often influenced by adventure films, sensational media reporting, and racial stereotypes that are usually pejorative in content and presentation.