THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AFRICA

XI African History

1983

UNESCO's eight volume General history of Africa (Heinemann, in association with UNESCO, f13.50 each) have appeared: J. Ki-Zerbo (ed), Methodology and African prehistory; and G. Mokhtar (ed), Ancient civilizations of Africa. The much lower price makes this an attractive alternative to the planned eight volume Cambridge history of Africa, which started appearing in 1975. A comparison suggests a more elaborate structure of editorial committee control for the UNESCO project, which together with the simultaneous production of French and English editions would account for the slow progress. One would therefore perhaps have expected a cautious 'definitive' work. But the editorial committee's ideological commitment to African authors, whenever available, has produced a mixture of conservative 'textbook' writing and deliberately unconventional interpretations, which might make the work look very dated before it has even been published in full. A general survey of African culture, history and society, listed here chiefly because of its abundance of well selected illustrations is P. Alexandre, Les africains: initiation a une Iongue historie e t a de vieilles civilisatiom, de I'aube de I'humanitt au dtbut de la colonisation (Paris: Lidis, Fr 225). A curious throwback to nineteenth-century type historical interpretation is to be found in C.A. Hromnik, Indo-Africa: towards a new understanding of the history of sub-Saharan Africa (Cape Town: Juta, f15.75), where the 'new' theory is the hoary old one that any

History of Africa

Introduction Between the 1870s and 1900, Africa faced European imperialist aggression, diplomatic pressures, military invasions, and eventual conquest and colonization. At the same time, African societies put up various forms of resistance against the attempt to colonize their countries and impose foreign domination. By the early twentieth century, however, much of Africa, except Ethiopia and Liberia, had been colonized by European powers. The European imperialist push into Africa was motivated by three main factors, economic, political, and social. It developed in the nineteenth century following the collapse of the profitability of the slave trade, its abolition and suppression, as well as the expansion of the European capitalist Industrial Revolution. The imperatives of capitalist industrialization—including the demand for assured sources of raw materials, the search for guaranteed markets and profitable investment outlets—spurred the European scramble and the partition and eventual conquest of Africa. Thus the primary motivation for European intrusion was economic 1 (Ehiedu E.G Iweriebor).