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.…
The Krobo People of Ghana to 1892
A Political and Social History
This book presents a broad analytical framework for the history of southeastern Ghana within the context of a representative study of one of the country’s most important political and economic forces.…
Zanzibar under Colonial Rule
Edited by Abdul Sheriff and Ed Ferguson
Zanzibar stands at the center of the Indian Ocean system’s involvement in the history of Eastern Africa. This book follows on from the period covered in Abdul Sheriff’s acclaimed Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar.…
Penetration & Protest in Tanzania
Impact of World Economy on the Pare, 1860–1960
The originality of this study of rural transformation stems from the way in which Professor Kimambo has used the oral tradition to reveal the history of the impact of the world economy in northeastern Tanzania.…
Native Life in South Africa
Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion
First published in 1916 and one of South Africa's great political books, Native Life in South Africa was first and foremost a response to the Native's Land Act of 1913, and was written by one of the most gifted and influential writers and journalists of his generation.…
The Western Bahr Al Ghazal under British Rule, 1898–1956
Western Bahr al-Ghazal is perhaps one of the least known places in Africa. Yet this remote part of the Republic of Sudan can be regarded as a historical barometer, registering major developments in the history of the Nile valley.…
In the Heart of the Hausa States
By Paul Staudinger
Edited by Johanna E. Moody
Consequent upon the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), the Africanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland launched the Niger-Benue expedition to investigate possible riverine communications throughout the Niger-Benue river system.…
Mafeking Diary
A Black Man's View of a White Man's War
By Sol T. Plaatje
Edited by John Comaroff
“Sol Plaatje's Mafeking Diary is a document of enduring importance and fascination. The product of a young black South African court interpreter, just turned 23 years old when he started writing, it opens an entirely new vista on the famous Siege of Mafeking.…
Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya
The Dialectic of Domination
By Bruce Berman
This history of the political economy of Kenya is the first full length study of the development of the colonial state in Africa.Professor Berman argues that the colonial state was shaped by the contradictions between maintaining effective political control with limited coercive force and ensuring the profitable articulation of metropolitan and settler capitalism with African societies.…
The Mau Mau War in Perspective
By Frank Furedi
The book breaks new ground in following the story of the participants of the rural movement during the decade after the defeat of the Mau Mau. New archival sources and interviews provide exciting material on the mechanics of the sociology of decolonization and on the containment of rural radicalism in Kenya.…
Conflict Resolution in Uganda
Edited by Kumar Rupesinghe
There is a new mood in Uganda. There is a determination to reak out of the bitter history of internal conflict. Uganda gives hope to all those other areas of the world where violence has become endemic such as Ulster, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.…
Siaya
The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape
By David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo
The authors of this highly original book set out to remove the persistent boundary between the authors and readers of ethnography on one hand and the subjects of ethnography on the other – those who observe and those who are observed.…
Khaki and Blue
Military and Police in British Colonial Africa
By Anthony Clayton and David Killingray
Drawing upon a survey of former police officers in the six British colonies of Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Malawi, Clayton and Killingray examine the work of colonial law enforcement during the last years of British supremacy.…
Uganda Now
Between Decay & Development
Edited by Hölger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
Can the revolutionary government of Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement put Uganda back on the road from decay to development?These informed assessments put the present situation in context.…
Economic & Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–1953
By David Throup
This story of Kenya in the decade before the outbreak of the Mau Mau emergency presents an integrated view of imperial government as well as examining the social and economic causes of the Kikuyu revolt.…
Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar
Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873
The rise of Zanzibar was based on two major economic transformations. Firstly slaves became used for producing cloves and grains for export. Previously the slaves themselves were exported. Secondly, there was an increased international demand for luxuries such as ivory.…
Media and Dependency in South Africa
A Case Study of the Press and the Ciskei “Homeland”
By Les Switzer
Switzer looks at how South Africa’s communications industry, the largest and most powerful on the continent, promotes dependency among the subject African populations. This study of the Ciskei “Homeland”, which has long been a fountainhead of African nationalism and a zone of conflict between blacks and whites, focuses on the privately owned, commercial press and its role in helping to frame a consensus in support of the political, economic and ideological values of the ruling alliance.…
