Transformations in Africa : essays on Africa's later past / edited by Graham Connah.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Connah, Graham.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Africa--History--Congresses.

Africa.

History.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xiv, 255 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; Washington, D.C. : Leicester University Press, 1998.

Summary:

The essays in this book provide important reminders of the dynamic character of Africa's later past. Rather than a continent woken from a timeless sleep by the intrusion of European colonialism, an image that dies hard in the Western world's imagination, we are given a series of insights into major elements of change over the last few thousand years and some indication of the interplay of change and continuity during that period. Each contributor presents a discussion arising arising from his or her own research, throwing important light on some of the multi-faceted complexity of Africa's later past.

Contents:

1. Static image: dynamic reality / Graham Connah 1

2. African hunter-gatherers: history and the politics of ethnicity / Richard B. Lee, Robert K. Hitchcock 14

3. The ecology of food production in West Africa / Joanna Casey 46

4. Before the Empire of Ghana: pastoralism and the origins of cultural complexity in the Sahel / K. C. MacDonald 71

5. African urbanism: scale, mobility and transformations / Roland Fletcher 104

6. Climate and history in West Africa / George E. Brooks 139

7. Iron in Africa: metal from nowhere / James Woodhouse 160

8. Precolonial trading systems of the East African interior / Henry W. Mutoro 186

9. City states of the East African coast and their maritime contacts / George H. O. Abungu 204

10. The Europeans in West Africa: culture contact, continuity and change / Christopher R. DeCorse 219.

Notes:

Ten essays, seven of which are rev. papers of a conference held in the Humanities Research Centre, at the Australian National University, Canberra, in June 1995.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0718501373

0718501381

OCLC:

37341311