A History of the African People - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Concentrating on the recent era - the last century and a half - of Africa's long-lived past, July particularly emphasizes the problems of the almost two score newly independent nations created within scarcely a dozen years and now hard at work becoming vital modern societies. Beginning in the nineteenth century, a series of massive developments, both internal and external, shook the African continent, setting in motion forces the understanding of which is essential to any comprehension of the present-day African scene. Moreover, our current knowledge of the more remote past is still imperfect and incomplete. Further, it is the modern period which gives meaning to what we see unfolding in Africa today.
Next, although Africa is and always has been a part of the wider world, this is a history of Africa's own people, not the story of the external image of a mysterious and remote continent. Therefore July has dealt mainly with the Africans themselves, most of whom built their civilizations over thousands of years without reference to Europe or Asia. Where Africa was confronted with intruders from other worlds, he has focused, not on the stranger's view, but on the response and the perspective of the African himself.
Social and political phenomena and events also come in for inclusion, for they go to the heart of life, in Africa as in all the world's continents.
Finally, this is a history primarily of black Africa, with North Africa treated chiefly in terms of its relations with the great sub-Saharan continent.

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