The civilizations of Africa: a history to 1800

✍ Scribed by Christopher Ehret

• Publisher: The University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 495
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

With his focus on precolonial Africa, Christopher Ehret provides in The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 a remarkably complete and original overview of African history during the long periods sparsely covered in most other general histories of the continent. He examines African inventions and civilizations from 16,000 BCE to 1800 CE from the northern tip of Tunisia to the Cape of Good Hope in the south.

Logically organized by topic and era, Ehret’s heavily illustrated and easily accessible text reveals the diversity of African history. It explores the wide range of social and cultural as well as technological and economic change in Africa, and it depicts African agricultural, social, political, cultural, technological, and economic history in relation to developments in the rest of the world. Designed to address the glaring lack of texts concentrating on Africa before 1800, this book can be fruitfully combined with histories of Africa since 1800 to build a full and well-rounded understanding of the roles of Africa’s peoples in human history.

✦ Table of Contents

Frontmatter
List of Illustrations (page ix)
Acknowledgments (page xii)
1 Introducing Africa and Its History (page 3)
2 Africa before the Agricultural Age, 16,000-9000 BCE (page 26)
3 Culture and Technology in Africa, 9000-3500 BCE (page 59)
4 Diverging Paths of History: Africa, 3500-1000 BCE (page 107)
5 An Age of Commerce, an Age of Iron: Africa, l000 BCE to 300 CE (page 159)
6 Southern, Central, and Eastern Africa: The Middle Centuries, 300-1450 (page 238)
7 Northeastern, West, and North Africa: The Middle Centuries, 300-1450 (page 290)
8 The Early Atlantic Age, 1450-1640 (page 349)
9 Africa in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1640-1800 (page 407)
Index (page 463)