Martin Plaut

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...

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...