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Africans: The History of a Continent (African Studies), by John Iliffe
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In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the AIDS epidemic, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure their survival. In the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations, however, the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. The history of the continent is thus a single story binding living Africans to their earliest human ancestors. John Iliffe was Professor of African History at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of St. John's College. He is the author of several books on Africa, including A modern history of Tanganyika and The African poor: A history, which was awarded the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association of the United States. Both books were published by Cambridge University Press.
- Sales Rank: #267006 in Books
- Published on: 2007-08-13
- Released on: 2007-10-04
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x .79" w x 6.14" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 388 pages
From Library Journal
Iliffe, an eminent African historian at Cambridge, offers a far-ranging survey of Africa from the development of the human species to the South African elections of 1994. He writes in a thematic rather than strictly chronological fashion. What sets his book apart from other such surveys (e.g., Basil Davidson's African Civilization Revisited, LJ 6/1/91. 2d ed.) is his treatment of the environment and population as factors in the development of Africa, including North Africa. Iliffe examines human coexistence with nature, the building up of enduring societies, and African reactions to outside forces; yet he always keeps the contemporary world in mind, focusing on the answers to such basic questions as why Africa remained relatively underdeveloped compared with Eurasian societies or why African states have experienced so many problems over the past couple of decades. Iliffe's excellent, well-written introductory text belongs in all collections of Africana.?Paul H. Thomas, Hoover Inst. Lib., Stanford, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Reading this seminal work afresh has made me appreciate just what an extraordinary achievement it really is." -John Parker, Journal of African History
From the Back Cover
In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the South African general election of 1994, John Iliffe refocuses African history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure survival and maximise numbers. These institutions enabled them to survive the slave trade and colonial invasion, but in the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This demographic growth has lain behind the collapse of colonial rule, the disintegration of Apartheid, and the instability of contemporary nations. The history of the continent is thus a single story binding living Africans to their earliest human ancestors.
Most helpful customer reviews
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
A history of Africa for the 21st century.
By markbearn@aol.com
Iliffe's 'Africans' is the most distinguished and intelligent brief history of Africa yet written. Dry, and at times dense with information, it nonetheless succintly and brilliantly outlines the history of this complex and fascinating continent from earliest man to the democratic movements of the 1990s. Centred around a thesis that the key to Africa's history is population change, Iliffe weaves his tale with masterly skill. Underpopulated until the middle of the 20th century, the central feature of African history till the modern period has been a struggle for the control of scarce labour - land, by contrast, being abundant. Only with the massive population increases and urbanisation of the last fifty years have parts of the continent become over-populated, where a struggle for natural resources among an abundance of competitors has become the defining feature of African society (anyone who has spent time in the dog-eat-dog societies of Kenya or Nigeria can happily testify to this truth). This simple, somewhat tendentious but nonetheless thought-provoking thesis is the thread on which the book hangs, and is a relief from the dry, tedious and abstracted ideological and political theories which other historians have tried to apply to African history. This is a much richer book than such a summary might imply - Iliffe seems to have read every book and article ever written on African history (his Stakhanovite work methods are renowned), and politics, great men, religion, social movements all play a part in the narrative: and, as one has come to expect from Iliffe, African proverbs are studded in the text like diamonds in a tiara, illuminating and making real the events and processes on which he dwells. This is perhaps too dry a book to celebrate completely - Iliffe's Jesuitical approach to historical research lacks passion, and his powerful historian's mind perhaps takes for granted in the reader a too-deep understanding of that subject and its conventions. But ANYONE who wishs to understand more about the African continent cannot do without the learning, wisdom and intelligence that this book offers. Africa has been done a great service.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Educational but a tough read
By David MacDougall
In just 300 pages the book provides a rich overview of the history of the peoples of Africa. It sheds light on so many areas and corrects a host of misconceptions I had. I enthusiastically recommend the book but I rated it only four stars because it is a slow and dense read. You will need to be highly motivated to finish it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Hard work, but very informative
By Richard Middleton
This book manages to compress an astounding amount of information into 300-odd pages. Anyone who is tempted to apply a broad-brush approach when talking about Africa (for example, dividing the continent arbitrarily into East vs. West, or Anglophone vs. Francophone) would do well to read this book so as to appreciate the finer details which have historically separated or linked tribes, countries or regions. The effort will be rewarding - but an effort it is! I agree with another reviewer who says that the book needs at least another 30 pages of maps and charts: providing only a single small-scale map, of the entire continent, to illustrate chapters which go on to describe complicated developments, often at a rather local level, is not sufficient.
One underlying thesis of the book is that for much of its history Africa was under-populated, and that this hindered its development. This is an interesting and quite convincing approach: clearly, small tribal units, separated by long distances and often by very inhospitable terrain, and focused on survival in a hostile environment, would have had great difficulty in establishing the sort of civilization that grew up in the more closely-linked countries around the Mediterranean. But there is an infuriating lack of demographic information to illuminate this thesis. Granted that demographic data simply did not exist for most of Africa until comparatively recently, but we are given little idea of whether a tribe being discussed consists of a hundred, a thousand, or tens of thousands of people. Nor are examples given from other regions of the world. For example, what are the size and characteristics of the minimum population needed to develop its own literature, or to support invention and manufacture beyond the most basic? Why did much of Africa remain - at least to Western eyes - very primitive? (And how appropriate are the criteria we apply in making such a judgment?!) There is such a striking contrast between sub-Saharan Africa and the countries along the North African coastline (Egypt in particular), at least in terms of what we in the West call "civilization", that I think that more analysis, with numerical examples, would have been helpful.
Well before 1994, the end of the period with which the author is concerned, there were concerns about the number of "failed states" in sub-Saharan Africa, about population pressures (roughly a doubling in population since I began working in Africa in the early 1970s), placing a huge burden on resources and on political systems, and about the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS (removing many of the productive males in some places, leaving only children and grandparents). I know that the author is dealing with history, and is not crystal-ball-gazing, but I wish that he had gone into these problems at greater depth and given us his perspective on the future of the continent.
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