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.…
Empire State-Building
War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952
By Joanna Lewis
This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks four questions:Why was Kenya's welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies?Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor?Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down?The answers offer revealing insight into the dynamics of rule in the late colonial period in Kenya.…
Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa
Gender, Culture, and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist
Edited by Dorothy L. Hodgson
The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist gender relations are dynamic, relational, historical, and produced through complex local-translocal interactions.…
Brothers at War
Making Sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War
By Tekaste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll
The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment.…
After the TRC
Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation
Edited by Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver
Has South Africa dealt effectively with the past, and is the country ready to face the future? What are the challenges facing both government and civil society in the years ahead? These and other questions are explored in this collection of essays by international and local commentators on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.…
Ghanaian Popular Fiction
Thrilling Discoveries in Conjugal Life and Other Tales
This is a study of the 'unofficial' side of African fiction—the largely undocumented writing, publishing, and reading of pamphlets and paperbacks—which exists outside the grid of mass production. Stephanie Newell examines the popular fiction of Ghana produced since the 1930s, analyzing the distinctive ways in which narrative forms are borrowed and regenerated by authors and readers.…
Paths of Accommodation
Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920
Between 1880 and 1920, Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In Paths of Accommodation, David Robinson examines the ways in which the leaders of the orders negotiated relations with the Federation of French West Africa in order to preserve autonomy within the religious, social, and economic realms while abandoning the political sphere to their non-Muslim rulers.…
South Africa’s Resistance Press
Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid
Edited by Les Switzer and Mohamed Adhikari
South Africa's Resistance Press is a collection of essays celebrating the contributions of scores of newspapers, newsletters, and magazines that confronted the state in the generation after 1960.…
Property Rights & Political Development in Ethiopia & Eritrea
This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society.…
Revolution and Religion in Ethiopia
The Growth and Persecution of the Mekane Yesus Church, 1974–85
Studies of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution have hitherto almost completely ignored religion, in spite of the commitment of a great majority of Ethiopian people to one or another religious tradition. Moreover, existing studies focus almost exclusively on the center, on national politics, and on the evolution of national institutions.…
Nigerian Video Films
Revised and Expanded Edition
Edited by Jonathan Haynes
Nigerian video films—dramatic features shot on video and sold as cassettes—are being produced at the rate of nearly one a day, making them the major contemporary art form in Nigeria. The history of African film offers no precedent for such a huge, popularly based industry.…
Nkrumah & the Chiefs
The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960
Kwame Nkrumah, who won independence for Ghana in 1957, was the first African statesman to achieve world recognition. Nkrumah and his movement also brought about the end of independent chieftaincy—one of the most fundamental changes in the history of Ghana.…
Workers, War and the Origins of Apartheid
Labour and Politics in South Africa, 1939-48
This book provides a significant revision of South African labor history and makes an important contribution to the debate about apartheid's genesis. Using a range of untapped sources, it shows that there was far more strike action during World War II than has been officially acknowledged.…
The Poor Are Not Us
Poverty and Pastoralism in Eastern Africa
Edited by David M. Anderson and Vigdis Broch-Due
Eastern African pastoralists often present themselves as being egalitarian, equating cattle ownership with wealth. By this definition “the poor are not us”, poverty is confined to non-pastoralist, socially excluded persons and groups.…
African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1950
This book explores the history of African womanhood in colonial Kenya. By focussing on key sociocultural institutions and practices around which the lives of women were organized, and on the protracted debates that surrounded these institutions and practices during the colonial period, it investigates the nature of indigenous, mission, and colonial control of African women.…
Black Lawyers, White Courts
The Soul of South African Law
In the struggle against apartheid, one often overlooked group of crusaders was the coterie of black lawyers who overcame the Byzantine system that the government established oftentimes explicitly to block the paths of its black citizens from achieving justice.…
African Apocalypse
The Story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet
By Robert R. Edgar and Hilary Sapire
The devastating influenza epidemic of 1918 ripped through southern Africa. In its aftermath, revivalist and millenarian movements sprouted. Prophets appeared bearing messages of resistance, redemption, and renewal.…
Herero Heroes
A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923
The Herero-German war led to the destruction of Herero society. Yet Herero society reemerged, reorganizing itself around the structures and beliefs of the German colonial army and Rhenish missionary activity.…
El Dorado in West Africa
The Gold Mining Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism
The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed some of the greatest gold mining migrations in history when dreams of bonanza lured thousands of prospectors and diggers to the far corners of the earth—including the Gold Coast of West Africa.…
South Africa in Southern Africa
Reconfiguring the Region
Edited by David Simon
South Africa's release of Nelson Mandela from prison in February 1990 and the subsequent independence of nearby Namibia heralded other dramatic political and economic changes in southern Africa that have transformed the region from a global flashpoint to one in which peaceful cooperation and development may become the norm.…
East African Expressions of Christianity
Edited by Thomas Spear and Isaria N. Kimambo
Christianity has been spread in Africa by Africans. It is the story of peoples seizing control of their own spiritual destinies—rather than the commonplace notion that the continent's Christian churches represent colonial and capitalist powers that helped subdue Africans to European domination.…
