Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, offers an alternative interpretation of the 175 years leading up to the formal colonization of Africa by Europeans. In this brief and affordable text, author and series editor Trevor R. Getz demonstrates how Africans pursued lives, constructed social settings, forged trading links, and imagined worlds that were sophisticated, flexible, and well adapted to the increasingly global and fast-paced interactions of this period. Getz's interpretation of a "cosmopolitan Africa" is based on careful reading of Africans' oral histories and traditions, written...

Africanizing Democracies examines the ways in which Africans have constructed and reshaped democracy in order to fit their own political ideals and agendas. Analyzing political democratization in this vast continent--which is home to fifty-five sovereign countries--the book includes voices of Africans from all walks of life and utilizes a wide variety of primary sources, including newspaper articles, speeches, memoirs, films, letters, and photographs. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of democratization in Africa, demonstrating how the process has had a significant impact on the...

Sovereignty and Struggle: Africa and Africans in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1994 provides students with a deeper insight into African history during the period of decolonization and the Cold War. Examining Africa and Africans in the context of the global themes of liberation, economic development, and popular culture, author Jonathan T. Reynolds illustrates how Africans sought to define their own lives on a global stage.
The first three chapters of Sovereignty and Struggle offer a thematic approach, covering the politics of early liberation struggles, economics, and global Cold War...

Combining history, archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics, Bantu Africa: 3500 BCE to Present, synthesizes current scholarship on one of the most important cultural zones in world history--an area larger than the United States--whose traditions span several thousand years. The authors show how Bantu cultural ideas continue to shape modern realities in new contexts. By examining the cultural, political, religious, economic, and social issues in the Bantu world, Bantu Africa gives students an understanding of the long-term history of an immense cultural zone. The book also...