African History Book List · 
Featured Title
Women and Slavery, Volume One
Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic
Edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers and Joseph C. Miller
The literature on women enslaved around the world has grown rapidly in the last ten years, evidencing strong interest in the subject across a range of academic disciplines. Until Women and Slavery, no single collection has focused on female slaves who—as these two volumes reveal—probably constituted the considerable majority of those enslaved in Africa, Asia, and Europe over several millennia and who accounted for a greater proportion of the enslaved in the Americas than is customarily acknowledged.…
Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier
The Life of the Borderlands since 1914
By Paul Nugent
The first integrated history of the Ghana-Togo borderlands, Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier challenges the conventional wisdom that the current border is an arbitrary European construct, resisted by Ewe irredentism.…
Eroding the Commons
The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890s-1963
Colonial Baringo was largely unnoticed until drought and localized famine in the mid-1920s led to claims that its crisis was brought on by overcrowding and livestock mismanagement. In response to the alarm over erosion, the state embarked on a program for rehabilitation, conservation, and development.…
A Modern History of the Somali
Nation and State in the Horn of Africa
By I. M. Lewis
This latest edition of A Modern History of the Somali brings I. M. Lewis's definitive history up to date and shows the amazing continuity of Somali forms of social organization. Lewis's history portrays the ingeniousness with which the Somali way of life has been adapted to all forms of modernity.…
Writing a Wider War
Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902
Edited by Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Suttie
A century after the South African War (1899-1902), historians are beginning to reevaluate the accepted wisdom regarding the scope of the war, its participants, and its impact. Writing a Wider War charts some of the changing historical constructions of the memorialization of suffering during the war.…
Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia
The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century
By Bahru Zewde
In this exciting new study, Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country's history.…
Stepping Forward
Black Women in Africa and the Americas
Edited by Catherine Higgs, Barbara A. Moss and Earline Rae Ferguson
A unique and important study, Stepping Forward examines the experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities from a variety of perspectives in a number of different settings.…
Creating Germans Abroad
Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia
When World War I brought an end to German colonial rule in Namibia, much of the German population stayed on. The German community, which had managed to deal with colonial administration, faced new challenges when the region became a South African mandate under the League of Nations in 1919.…
Potent Brews
A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999
In this first general history of alcohol and drinking in East Africa, Justin Willis's central theme is power—from customary beliefs in alcohol as a symbol of authority and a means of enhancement and privilege, to the use of power in advertising, and discourse on the consumption of modern bottled beers and spirits.…
Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia
Essays in History and Social Anthropology
Edited by Donald L. Donham and Wendy James
This pioneering book, first published to wide acclaim in 1986, traces the way the Ethiopian center and the peripheral regions of the country affected each other. It looks specifically at the expansion of the highland Ethiopian state into the western and southern lowlands from the 1890s up to 1974.…
Remapping Ethiopia
Socialism & After
Edited by Wendy James, Eisei Kurimoto, Donald L. Donham and Alessandro Triulzi
Governance everywhere is concerned with spatial relationships. Modern states “map” local communities, making them legible for the purposes of control. Ethiopia has gone through several stages of “mapping” in its imperial, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary phases.…
Soldiers, Airmen, Spies, and Whisperers
The Gold Coast in World War II
The fall of France in June 1940 left the Gold Coast surrounded by potentially hostile French colonies that had rejected de Gaulle's call to continue the fight, signaling instead their support for Marshall Pétain's pro-German Vichy regime.…
Flickering Shadows
Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe
By J. M. Burns
Every European power in Africa made motion pictures for its subjects, but no state invested as heavily in these films, and expected as much from them, as the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Flickering Shadows is the first book to explore this little-known world of colonial cinema.…
Between the Sea and the Lagoon
An Eco-social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana c. 1850 to Recent Times
This study offers a “social interpretation of environmental process” for the coastal lowlands of southeastern Ghana. The Anlo-Ewe, sometimes hailed as the quintessential sea fishermen of the West African coast, are a previously non-maritime people who developed a maritime tradition.…
Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World
Edited by Hölger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
The fact that many of the leaders in the Third World were educated by Christian missionaries is a decisive factor in world politics today. Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World provides examples of how these missionaries contributed to the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of state structures in Africa and the Caribbean, through educational activity and attempts at healing and trade, as well as by preaching, prayer, and other sacramental endeavors.…
A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991
Second Edition
By Bahru Zewde
Bounded by Sudan to the west and north, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the southeast, and Eritrea and Djibouti to the northeast, Ethiopia is a pivotal country in the geopolitics of the region. Yet it is important to understand this ancient and often splintered country in its own right.…
West African Challenge to Empire
Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War
By Mahir Şaul and Patrick Royer
West African Challenge to Empire examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915-16. It was the largest challenge that the French ever faced in their West African colonial empire, and one of the largest armed oppositions to colonialism anywhere in Africa.…
Environmental Justice in South Africa
Edited by David A. McDonald
Environmental Justice in South Africa provides a systematic overview of the first ten years of postapartheid environmental politics. Written by leading activists and academics in the field, this edited collection offers the first critical perspective of environmental justice theory and practice in South Africa.…
From Guerrillas to Government
The Eritrean People's Liberation Front
By David Pool
In 1991 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years later after a referendum in May 1993. It was the climax of a thirty-year struggle, though the EPLF itself was formed only in the early 1970s.…
The Post-Apartheid Constitutions
Perspectives on South Africa's Basic Law
Edited by Penelope Andrews and Stephen Ellmann
Offering a unique range of perspectives on South Africa's interim and final constitutions, this collection of essays by scholars, lawyers, and political leaders illuminates the many issues of process, substance, and context presented by the constitutions.…
Pastimes and Politics
Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945
By Laura Fair
The first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political lives of island residents were in incredible flux, framed by the abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide of urban migration.…
