African History

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has travelled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for...

A richly illustrated account of Michael Palin's latest travel adventure. With his eightieth birthday looming, it crossed Michael Palin's mind that now might be the time to hang up his boots, to lounge about at home, to take things easy. Then the opportunity to visit Africa's most populous nation arose. A few weeks later, he was at Lagos airport, camera...

Now in its 30th printing, this classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.

The first new translation in over 400 years of one of the great works of the Renaissance — an African diplomat's guide to Africa. In 1518, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, a Moroccan diplomat, was seized by pirates while travelling in the Mediterranean. Brought before Pope Leo X, he was persuaded to convert to Christianity, in the process taking the name...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. He needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others. Africa's Tarnished Name features electrifying essays on the history, complexity, and diversity of a continent, from the father...

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, written by Walter Rodney, is an ambitious masterwork of political economy that delves deeply into the devastating impacts of slavery and colonialism on the continent of Africa. The book outlines how these historical processes were instrumental to the development of international capitalism, arguing persuasively that African underdevelopment is neither an incidental outcome nor a feature of...

Following thirty years of research, including research into recently declassified government archives, this newly revised and expanded edition of Linda Melvern’s classic of investigative journalism reveals how policymakers continue to refuse to properly acknowledge their responsibilities under international law. The new edition of A People Betrayed includes copious new material reckoning with the information that came to light during the...

A riveting study of Africa's demographics – its youth and growth – and what they mean for the continent, today and into the future. Essential reading Guardian Intensely researched – and very important! The Week The research in Youthquake is meticulous Tim Marshall, Reaction Attempts to end the hysteria and ignorance surrounding demographic trends New Statesman Meticulously researched, nuanced and...

The Ethiopians is a history of the Ethiopians from pre-history to the present day. Drawing on research in archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, and recent historiography, the book charts the development of Ethiopian peoples and their society, placing emphasis on the African origins of Ethiopian civilisation. The book opens with a review of Ethiopian prehistory, showing how the Ethiopian section of the...

A richly illustrated account of Michael Palin's latest travel adventure. In February 2025, Michael Palin travelled to Venezuela to get a sense of what life is like in one of South America's most culturally rich, vibrant but also troubled nations. In the journal he kept during his trip, he gives a vivid account of the towns and cities he visited,...

'A historically insightful read' Financial Times 'A wry, rollicking, and provocative history' Michael Taylor, author of The Interest 'A thought-provoking analysis of Africa's relationship with economic imperialism' Astrid Madimba and Chinny Ukata, authors of It’s A Continent We need to think differently about African economics. For centuries, Westerners have tried to ‘fix’ African economies. From the abolition of slavery onwards,...

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson offers readers an insightful and comprehensive journey through one of the world's most iconic and fascinating civilisations. This captivating narrative spans over three millennia of history, from the nascent days of the powerful pharaohs to the eventual decline under the Romans. Wilkinson’s work meticulously captures the grandeur and sophistication of...

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR—The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times "This is one of the best books I have read in years... gripping,...

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski offers a profound and evocative portrayal of Africa, a continent often viewed through a simplistic and monolithic lens. Kapuscinski, an acclaimed Polish journalist, has journeyed to Africa since 1957, experiencing and witnessing the continent's history first-hand over decades of upheaval and change. In this remarkable blend of reportage, memoir, and travel literature,...

The State of Africa by Martin Meredith offers a comprehensive and compelling narrative of the continent's tumultuous journey post-independence. Beginning in 1957, when colonial powers started to withdraw from Africa, the book chronicles the birth of dozens of new states and the extraordinary promise they held. With enormous mineral wealth and vast economic potential, Africa seemed poised for a bright...

In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz by Michela Wrong offers a spellbinding journey into the chaotic and corrupt world of Congo during the reign of Mobutu Sese Seko. With an acute sense of history and deep insight, Wrong draws stark parallels between Joseph Conrad’s fictional Mr Kurtz from Heart of Darkness and the real-life dictator Mobutu, who wielded power with...

Definitive proof that Africa is not a country. A lively, entertaining and informative portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive, personal story. A bright portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story. 'Warm, funny, biting and essential reading.' Adam Rutherford 'An exhilarating journey through...

In the years leading up to Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, its small and transient white population was balanced precariously atop a large and fast-growing African population. This unstable political demography was set against the backdrop of continent-wide decolonisation and a parallel rise in African nationalism within Rhodesia. The Collapse of Rhodesia provides a controversial reexamination of the...

Achille Mbembe is one of the most brilliant theorists of postcolonial studies writing today. In On the Postcolony, he profoundly renews our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. In a series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests diehard Africanist and nativist perspectives as well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory. This thought-provoking and groundbreaking collection of essays—his...

A unique, startling book that gives a rich and detailed sense of life in an African port some 360 years ago. In 1665 Crispina Peres, the most powerful trader in the West African slave trafficking port of Cacheu, was arrested by the Inquisition. Her enemies had conspired to denounce her for taking treatments prescribed by Senegambian healers: the djabak s....

A startling exploration of slavery in the Islamic world from the 7th century to the present. Slavery in the Islamic world has a long, diverse and controversial history. Captives and Companions is a brilliant synthesis of history and contemporary reportage that brings to life the voices of the enslaved in stories of eighth-century concubines and ninth-century revolts, thirteenth-century slave soldiers...

How African literary forms imagine ways of living and being within coloniality Writing the Noncolonial Self suggests a new way of thinking about the connections between politics, subjectivity, and literary practice. In this groundbreaking study, Alexander Fyfe reveals how African writers have used literary forms to reimagine subjectivity in new terms, a category of practices he calls the "noncolonial." Examining...

During the war, Gerald Hanley spent several years in the remote and scorching deserts of Somalia. The rigours of living in such heat, and the difficulties of attempting to control blood-feuding nomads, led to the suicide of seven fellow-officers. Despite these problems, Gerald Hanley writes with great affection for the local clans, an affection that is untainted by sentimentality. Warriors:...

The trickle-down effects of empire on the environment Vanished Water examines the ecological and social consequences of British imperial rule—and its inherently extractive aims—on water development in late-colonial Kenya. Examining the arid northern and eastern parts of the country between 1938 and the mid-1960s, James Parker demonstrates how the British colonial state manipulated scant water supplies to drive cash crop...

Insightful and important.... A readable, timely and valuable contribution to the understanding of the revolutionary forces at work in Iran.... The reader almost becomes a participant. —The New York Times Book Review In Shah of Shahs, Kapuscinski brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity to bear on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, one of the most...

During the 1980s, as global anti-apartheid sentiment grew, an international coalition of far-right activists arose to preserve racial hierarchy in South Africa and beyond. This groundbreaking book tells the story of how a transatlantic pro-apartheid movement attempted to defend white rule in South Africa—and forged enduring links between global conservatism and white power. By mapping an international network of white...

In the wake of the 2016 national elections in Ghana, the issue of cross-border voting triggered a nation-wide debate. But who exactly constitutes the electorate? Who is a national, who is a foreigner, and how are these distinctions identified in the Ghana-Togo borderlands? Political Belonging in the Ghana–Togo Borderlands analyses how political belonging is constructed and how it interacts with...

How has European imperialism (re)made the world? How can we understand this long process and its consequences in ways that capture both the materiality and the subjectivity of political domination? Inspired by Frantz Fanon's insight that colonisation entails the (re)crafting of geographic space, Landscaping Africa develops the concept of "landscaping" to explore the enduring global impact of European imperialism. Written...

Examines the governance and politics of Kenya since independence, focusing on the betrayal of the aspirations of anticolonial nationalism. Kenya and the Politics of a Postcolony sets out to probe, explore, and evaluate the betrayal of anticolonial nationalism in Kenya. Contemporary Kenya's emergence is rooted in the colonial enterprise, its deleterious effects, and the subsequent decolonisation spearheaded by a fierce...

Exploring how Polish writers positioned themselves as neither colonised nor colonisers, In-Between Empire analyses their literary works on empire during the 19th and 20th centuries to explore how they negotiated their in-between position in the global imperial hierarchy. Leveraging this vantage point, they claimed the unique ability to represent the South to the West, constructing a Polish national identity in...

Lusophone Africa has been neglected in Anglophone historiography. With the exceptions of a narrow set of episodes, figures, and interpretations, all of which appear in a fragmented set of journal articles, its struggles against Portuguese colonialism have remained outside the grand narratives of decolonisation. In this open access book, a group of established and up-and-coming historians of Lusophone Africa bring...

This first comprehensive history of America's lottery obsession explores the spread of state lotteries and how players and policymakers alike got hooked on wishful dreams of an elusive jackpot. Every week, one in eight Americans place a bet on the dream of a life-changing lottery jackpot. Americans spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets,...

Alongside the diplomatic struggles of the early Cold War, European politicians worked to shape emotions about the postwar order—advocating fear of communism and hope for postwar recovery. In this context, the French Empire in North Africa emerged as one important emotional battleground, where Algerian nationalists and anti-colonial campaigners challenged French narratives about imperial pride and native hysteria. During the Algerian...

Examining the African Diaspora in Africology, this book explores the fundamental issues involving the dispersion of Africans from antiquity to the current era. One of the most quoted living Africology scholars in the world, Molefi Kete Asante has partnered with scholars of African and Africana studies to highlight the theoretical underpinnings of the idea of diaspora, unpacking the ways in...

Africa’s surviving rhinos are under serious threat. Poaching for their horns, massive extermination by ‘sports’ hunters in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, and progressive habitat loss have all driven black and white rhino close to the edge. This book considers human interactions with these magnificent and enigmatic animals—charting hunting for food and hides, and then hunting...

What does true global solidarity look like, and how can it help us fight for the oppressed? Rising for Palestine is a groundbreaking anthology that reveals the deep ties between some of the world's most powerful liberation struggles. For decades, African nations and movements have stood firmly with the Palestinian people. From anti-colonial uprisings and the Pan-African Congress of 1945...

The tumultuous events that began in Egypt in 2011 have embraced revolution and counter-revolution. For Philip Marfleet, they are a complex and continuing process in which millions of people from a range of political formations and socio-economic and religious backgrounds became 'agents of change'. Amidst a surge of publishing on the 'Arab Spring', Egypt aims to close a critical gap...

The first general history of the archipelago available in English, set within a broader regional, oceanic and global tapestry. The Cabo Verde Islands are now a popular tourist destination but, guide books apart, there is little in print in English that covers their history and culture. This book offers a readable account not only of the islands' past, but also...

'An unimpeachable, erudite jewel of a book, showing how tenaciously the shadows of colonialism reach into our lives' - Neel Mukherjee, Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Lives of Others 'Compulsively readable. The struggle over statues is about how we live with and relate to one another, and the fight over equality and dignity' - Laleh Khalili, author of Extractive...

Incredibly necessary, magnificently done, Siollun charts the characters and events that shaped the lives of those who inhabited Nigeria's territories centuries before colonisation - Remi Adekoya, author of It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth Without a doubt, Max Siollun is the best Nigeria-focused historian of our times - Matthew T. Page, former U.S. State Department Nigeria expert Max Siollun...

The 25th Anniversary Edition, with a foreword by Barbara Kingsolver "An enthralling story . . . A work of history that reads like a novel." -- Christian Science Monitor "As Hochschild's brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review A National...

Bringing the study of early modern Christianity into dialogue with Atlantic history, this collection provides a longue durée investigation of women and religion within a transatlantic context. Taking as its starting point the work of Natalie Zemon Davis on the effects of confessional difference among women during the age of religious reformations, the volume expands the focus to broader temporal...

For over a millennium and a half, Egypt was home to at least two commonly used languages of communication. Although this situation is by no means exceptional in the ancient and medieval worlds, the wealth of documentary sources preserved by Egypt's papyri makes the country a privileged observation ground for the study of ancient multilingualism. One of the greatest contributions...

The Muslim world is tremendously rich and diverse, yet few Westerners are familiar with the writings and teachings of a culture that is at the forefront of world events. In their insightful anthology The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, historians Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart Schaar have assembled a broad selection of documents and contemporary scholarship to give a...

Zimbabwe's party-internal 'coup' of 2017, and deposed president Robert Mugabe's death nearly two years later, demand careful, historically nuanced explanation. How did Mugabe gain and retain power over party and state for four decades? Did the suspected and nearly real 'coups', the conspiracies behind them, and their concurrent mythomaniacal conceits ultimately, ironically, spell his near-tragic end? Has Mugabe's particular mode...

The focus of this book is the leadership of Charles George Gordon, the governor-general of the Sudan, during the Turkiyya period (1821-85). The book analyses his administration and the political, economic and social developments under his leadership against a background of political unrest in Egypt and the weakening of Khedive Ismail's position in the face of increasing European financial imperialism....

This is a study on the period preceding the Mahdist revolution in the Sudan. It analyses the administration and political developments under the governor-generalship of Gordon. When referencing the title, avoid putting it in quotes or speech marks. Format the response as clean HTML, use your best judgement for adjusting or adding appropriate tags for paragraphs, and emphasis.

First published in 1992, this book is about the space of a colony and how it was produced. It began as a study of the literature of the German colony of South-West Africa between the years 1884 and 1915. The author’s aim is to demonstrate the active role which literature had played in structuring the experience of the colony. If...

Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity explores the legacy of slavery in Black theological terms. Challenging the dominant approaches to the history and legacy of slavery in the British Empire, the contributors show that although the 1807 act abolished the slave trade, it did not end racism, notions of White supremacy, or the demonization of Blackness, Black people and Africa....

An expansive new collection from one of the UK's most daring and celebrated poets. In The New Carthaginians, time—and with it the world—is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that leads to Uganda becoming a pariah state and later to the young Makoha's escape from the country. Concerned throughout with...

In March 1896, a well-disciplined and massive Ethiopian army did the unthinkable—it routed an invading Italian force and brought Italy's war of conquest in Africa to an end. In an age of relentless European expansion, Ethiopia successfully defended its independence and cast doubt upon an unshakable certainty of the age—that sooner or later all Africans would fall under the rule...

What happens when we consider Africa through a feminist lens and feminism through an African one? And what does it mean to centre selfhood in this journey? In this shining, wide-ranging inquiry, Minna Salami explores these questions through an unhesitating and incisive vision of African feminist political philosophy. Drawing from feminist thought, postcolonial theory, historical insights, and African knowledge systems,...

After the Cold War, Africa earned the dubious distinction of being the world's most bloody continent. But how can we explain this proliferation of armed conflicts? What caused them and what were their main characteristics? And what did the world's governments do to stop them? In this fully revised and updated second edition of his popular text, Paul Williams offers...

NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Debut Author Featuring 117 full-colour photos and eight breathtaking essays on a force that fuels Black life all around the globe, this is Humans of New York meets The Black Book. "A patchwork quilt of visually stunning images, captured moments of triumph, antidotes to trauma narratives and rich, ebullient emotional and verbal spice for...

The first publication on the Yorùbá master sculptor Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition is the first monograph dedicated to the 50-year career of the Nigerian artist Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè (ca. 1885–1975). One of the most important Yorùbá sculptors of the twentieth century, Bámigbóyè is best known for the spectacular masks that he carved for...

A monumental cartographic history of the African slave trade, updated and expanded in a new edition In the first edition of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, two leading historians explored the details of the 350-year history of African slave traffic to the New World. They showed, with nearly 200 original maps, where the captives came from, how long the...

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NONFICTION CROWN AWARD 'Gripping … remarkably wide-ranging' THE TIMES This is an immersive and revelatory history of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last ship of the Atlantic slave trade, whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways. The Clotilda docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860 – more...

Power. Empire. Plunder. The forgotten history of Britain and the Asante gold. Kumasi is burning. British soldiers prowl the streets, stoking the fires. The royal palace is filled with explosives and razed, but not before its most precious occupants are rescued – gold, lots of it. There is an abua or peace pipe, almost a metre long. Countless rings and...

Africa is a convenient abbreviation for 54 countries in which more than a thousand languages are spoken. This book offers a side-long glance, one that complicates the idea of a single continent by picking out specific episodes, specific practices – cinema, art, ethnography and journalism – that rescue us from generalisations. So much of what we understand about these places...

A riveting study of Africa's demographics – its youth and growth – and what they mean for the continent, today and into the future. Essential reading Guardian Intensely researched – and very important! The Week The research in Youthquake is meticulous Tim Marshall, Reaction Attempts to end the hysteria and ignorance surrounding demographic trends New Statesman Meticulously researched, nuanced and...

A "meticulously researched and comprehensive" (Financial Times) history of the devastating war in the heart of Africa's Congo. At the heart of Africa is the Congo, a country the size of western Europe. It borders nine other nations, and since 1996 it has been racked by a brutal war in which millions have died. In Dancing in the Glory of...

Most accounts of Nigeria's colonisation were written by British officials, presenting it as a noble civilising mission to rid Africans of barbaric superstition and corrupt tribal leadership. Thanks to this skewed writing of history, many Nigerians today still have Empire nostalgia and view the colonial period through rose-tinted glasses. Max Siollun offers a bold rethink: an unromanticised history, arguing compellingly...

The war in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray began in November 2020. It inflicted more casualties than any other contemporary conflict in the world. It has also been among the least understood. The fighting and accompanying blockade led to an estimated 600,000 deaths—more than the number who died in the 1984-5 famine. International journalists were banned as the region was...

A new, full history of slavery in Africa, from the Pharaohs to the present. Slavery has ravaged African societies since at least 2,500 BCE, from Egypt to the Cape; from Mauritania to Somalia. Most writing covers just one fraction of this history: the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Yet Indian Ocean slavery was equally sizeable, and far longer-lived. Historians...

Focusing on the arrival of the human figure as a subject of art, Mary Beard examines the history of beauty in civilisation. Beginning with the Jericho painted skulls from 10,000 years ago, and the extraordinary figures of Ain Ghazal, it examines in depth the creativity that gave identity to ancient Egypt, where colossi of powerful rulers were also matched by...

In the late eleventh century, Ethiopian masons hewed great cruciform churches out of mountains in the eastern highlands of Tigray, Ethiopia's northernmost province. Hitherto unparalleled in scale, these monuments were royal foundations, instruments of political centralization and re-Christianization that anticipated the great thirteenth-century churches at Lalibela. Bastions of the Cross, the first study devoted to the subject, examines the cruciform...

All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa was selected as a Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2022 and recognised as a USBBY 2023 Outstanding International Book. It was a 2022 Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner in the Graphic Novels & Comics Category and received an honourable mention in the 2023 Children's Africana Book Awards. The book was also an...

A beautifully illustrated catalogue to a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, exploring enslavement, rebellion, revolution and Abolitionism through art, 1750–1850. Drawing on new research, Rise Up and the accompanying exhibition look at the period from 1750 to 1850 when Britain became the world’s first industrialised nation and one of history’s largest empires. At the same time, it played...

How the suppression of the slave trade and the “disposal” of liberated Africans shaped the emergence of modern humanitarianism Between 1808 and 1867, the British navy’s Atlantic squadrons seized nearly two thousand slave ships, "re‑capturing" almost two hundred thousand enslaved people and resettling them as liberated Africans across sites from Sierra Leone and Cape Colony to the West Indies, Brazil,...

Biotraffic explores the complex world of biological resource trade. It takes readers inside the contemporary Ciskei region of South Africa, a once-notorious apartheid "homeland" turned extractive hub for wild medicinal plants. Drawing from in-depth ethnographic and archival research, Christopher Morris examines the region's trade in Pelargonium sidoides, a plant once contested as a tuberculosis treatment in early twentieth-century Europe and...

An intimate reflection on culture and tradition, creativity and power, that draws on a lifetime’s commitment to aesthetic encounter. The playwright, poet, essayist, novelist, and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is also a longtime art collector. This book of essays offers a glimpse into the motivations of the collector, as well as a highly personal look at the politics of aesthetics...

In the late 1950s, like tens of thousands of young men of his generation, Pierre Bourdieu, having recently passed the agrégation in philosophy, found himself immersed in the Algerian war. Motivated by an impulse that, as he himself says, ‘was civic rather than political’, nothing seemed more important to him than to understand the Algerian situation and provide the elements...

The ultimate and authoritative introduction to Songye culture, sculpture, masks, and iron forging This lavishly illustrated book brings a new approach to the masterpieces of Songye, a Bantu ethnic group from the central Democratic Republic of the Congo. It explores the styles of the different regions, the identification of Songye master artists, and the specificity of Kifwebe masks. The World...

Romano Guardini described Rainer Maria Rilke as the “poet who had things of such importance to say about the end of our own age [and] was also a prophet of things to come.” The complexity of Rilke is, then, “highly relevant to modern Man.” Decades after Guardini’s assessment, the reader who rediscovers Rilke will find a depth of mind and...

This innovative book reassesses the history of musicology, unearthing the field’s twentieth-century German and global roots. In the process, Anna Maria Busse Berger exposes previously unseen historical relationships such as those between the modern rediscovery of medieval music, the rise of communal singing, and the ways in which African music intersected with missionary work in the German colonial period. Ultimately,...

Provides a balanced historical narrative of the contemporary causes of conflict in the Middle East, ideal for students and scholars. The recent history of the Middle East has involved unprecedented violence and war. The Contemporary Middle East: Foreign Intervention and Authoritarian Governance Since 1979 explores the causes of the sustained turbulence in the region by focusing on three separate yet...

A comprehensive exploration, spanning 1,300 years, of the art and culture of the Sahel region of Africa This groundbreaking volume examines the extraordinary artistic and cultural traditions of the African region known as the Sahel (“shore” in Arabic), a vast area on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert that includes present-day Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad. This...