History and the Study of Africa
- LAST REVIEWED: 17 August 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0095
- LAST REVIEWED: 17 August 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0095
Introduction
The land mass known as Africa and its inhabitants have a long, dynamic, and often contentious relationship with the writing of history. Nonetheless, it is the fluid and often acrimonious relationship between Africa and the field of history that allows the subject to offer a valuable insight into the changing nature of the practice of history itself and into the scholars, observers, and agents who have produced that history. For much of antiquity, most of Africa existed on the periphery of the writing of history, a region defined often by speculation rather than by observation. Then a strange thing happened. As new maritime technologies led to increased connections with and greater awareness of things and people African, rather than being brought into greater historical focus, Africa increasingly was pushed out of history altogether. Indeed, during the Early Modern and Enlightenment periods, unintentional marginalization shifted to active exclusion. This reality is crucial to our understanding of history and the study of Africa because it was during this period that the very concept of history as a modern field of study was being created. By 1900, Africa had become perhaps the most common “primitive” foil to Europe’s ascribed status as the source of progress and history. Thus, even as European colonialism established economic and political dominance over much of Africa by the early 20th century, so did historians of European birth or descent assert dominance over the continent’s history. The denial of African history, however, was to be temporary. Even during the 19th century, Africans and those of African descent were beginning to challenge the notion of an ahistorical Africa. By the middle of the 20th century, these early historians of Africa were joined by a group of area studies specialists known as Africanists who sought to pioneer and use innovative forms of research and evidence to prove that a very real and dynamic African history could be revealed and written. This process accelerated as the 20th century progressed, especially as increasing numbers of African-born historians not only drew upon Western methods of history to challenge European constructions of Africa but also found careers in Western universities to reform the field of history from within. Indeed, the very tools used to establish the reality of Africa’s place as part and parcel of the historical world also, by the late 20th century, changed the practice of history itself, altering the way historians everywhere research and understand the past. See also the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles on Image of Africa and Historiography and Methods of African History.
General Overviews
Despite the fact that Africa’s relationship to history provides such an excellent measure of the transformations of the field over time, there are relatively few overviews that place Africa in clear historiographical context. Curtin 1964 examines and challenges the construction of a particular image of Africa among the British. Du Bois 1979, Herskovits 1990, and Mudimbe 1988 offer broader critiques of how Africa has been represented in history and philosophy. Miller 1999 is perhaps the most historiographically detailed examination of changing attitudes toward Africa by historians, while Reynolds 2007 is a broader examination of the changing relationship between African history and world history. Phillips 2005 is largely methodological but also consistently addresses changing perspectives on Africa in history.
Curtin, Philip. The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Actions, 1780–1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
A groundbreaking early study that examines the changing representation and meaning of Africa in British sources and policy during the latter 18th and early 19th centuries.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The World and Africa: Being an Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History. Rev. ed. New York: International Publishers, 1979.
Originally published in 1947, this text presents the first text to specifically challenge Africa’s alleged isolation and irrelevance to understandings of world history. It builds upon and extends themes first presented by Du Bois in The Negro in 1915 (New York: Holt).
Herskovits, Melville. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon, 1990.
Originally published in 1941, this work was one of the first Western anthropological studies to challenge the idea that Africans possessed no culturally significant history. Herskovits focuses on “spiritual” and linguistic developments, in particular, to argue for the complexity of African culture in the Americas and Africa alike.
Miller, Joseph C. “Presidential Address: History and Africa/Africa and History.” American Historical Review 104.1 (1999): 1–32.
DOI: 10.2307/2650179
A brief yet historiographically dense overview of the relationship between the modern field of history and the study of Africa.
Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
An incisive intellectual history and assessment of the philosophical underpinnings of the creation of Western constructions of Africa and Africanness.
Phillips, John Edward, ed. Writing African History. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005.
Written as an intentional follow up to McCall 1969 (cited under Methodologies), this edited volume examines the writing of African history from a number of disciplinary and methodological perspectives.
Reynolds, Jonathan T. “Africa and World History: From Antipathy to Synergy.” History Compass 5.6 (2007): 1998–2013.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00475.x
This article utilizes the changing status of Africa in world history scholarship to examine the transformation of our understanding of not only African history but also of the very nature of 20th century historical scholarship. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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- Achebe, Chinua
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
- Africa in the Cold War
- African Masculinities
- African Refugees
- African Socialism
- Africans in the Atlantic World
- Aid and Economic Development
- Alcohol
- Algeria
- Angola
- Arab Spring
- Arabic Language and Literature
- Archaeology and the Study of Africa
- Archaeology of Central Africa
- Archaeology of Eastern Africa
- Archaeology of Southern Africa
- Archaeology of West Africa
- Architecture
- Art, Art History, and the Study of Africa
- Arts of Central Africa
- Arts of Western Africa
- Asante and the Akan and Mossi States
- Bantu Expansion
- Benin (Dahomey)
- Boer War
- Botswana (Bechuanaland)
- Brink, André
- British Colonial Rule in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Burkina Faso (Upper Volta)
- Burundi
- Cameroon
- Cape Verde
- Central African Republic
- Children and Childhood
- China in Africa
- Christianity, African
- Cinema and Television
- Cocoa
- Coetzee, J.M.
- Colonial Rule, Belgian
- Colonial Rule, French
- Colonial Rule, German
- Colonial Rule, Italian
- Colonial Rule, Portuguese
- Communism, Marxist-Leninism, and Socialism in Africa
- Comoro Islands
- Conflict Management and Resolution
- Congo, Republic of (Congo Brazzaville)
- Congo River Basin States
- Congo Wars
- Conservation and Wildlife
- Crime and the Law in Colonial Africa
- Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire)
- Development of Early Farming and Pastoralism
- Diaspora, Kongo Atlantic
- Disease and African Society
- Djibouti
- Dyula
- Early States And State Formation In Africa
- Early States of the Western Sudan
- Eastern Africa and the South Asian Diaspora
- Economic Anthropology
- Economic History
- Economy, Informal
- Education
- Education and the Study of Africa
- Egypt
- Egypt, Ancient
- Environment
- Environmental History
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Ethnicity and Politics
- Europe and Africa, Medieval
- Family Planning
- Famine
- Farah, Nuruddin
- Feminism
- Food and Food Production
- Fugard, Athol
- Fulani
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Genocide in Rwanda
- Geography and the Study of Africa
- Ghana
- Gikuyu (Kikuyu) People of Kenya
- Globalization
- Gordimer, Nadine
- Great Lakes States of Eastern Africa, The
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Hausa
- Hausa Language and Literature
- Health, Medicine, and the Study of Africa
- Historiography and Methods of African History
- History and the Study of Africa
- Horn of Africa and South Asia
- Igbo
- Ijo/Niger Delta
- Image of Africa, The
- Indian Ocean and Middle Eastern Slave Trades
- Indian Ocean Trade
- Invention of Tradition
- Iron Working and the Iron Age in Africa
- Islam in Africa
- Islamic Politics
- Kenya
- Kongo and the Coastal States of West Central Africa
- Language and the Study of Africa
- Law and the Study of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Law, Islamic
- Lesotho
- LGBTI Minorities and Queer Politics in Eastern and Souther...
- Liberia
- Libya
- Literature and the Study of Africa
- Lord's Resistance Army
- Maasai and Maa-Speaking Peoples of East Africa, The
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mande
- Mau Mau
- Mauritania
- Media and Journalism
- Military History
- Modern African Literature in European Languages
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Music, Dance, and the Study of Africa
- Music, Traditional
- Nairobi
- Namibia
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Nollywood
- North Africa from 600 to 1800
- North Africa to 600
- Northeastern African States, c. 1000 BCE-1800 CE
- Obama and Kenya
- Oman, the Gulf, and East Africa
- Oral and Written Traditions, African
- Oromo
- Ousmane Sembène
- Pastoralism
- Police and Policing
- Political Science and the Study of Africa
- Political Systems, Precolonial
- Popular Culture and the Study of Africa
- Popular Music
- Population and Demography
- Postcolonial Sub-Saharan African Politics
- Religion and Politics in Contemporary Africa
- Rwanda
- Senegal
- Sexualities in Africa
- Seychelles, The
- Siwa Oasis
- Slave Trade, Atlantic
- Slavery in Africa
- São Tomé and Príncipe
- Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Study of Africa
- Somalia
- South Africa Post c. 1850
- Southern Africa to c. 1850
- Soyinka, Wole
- Spanish Colonial Rule
- Sport
- States of the Zimbabwe Plateau and Zambezi Valley
- Sudan and South Sudan
- Swahili City-States of the East African Coast
- Swahili Language and Literature
- Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar)
- Togo
- Tourism
- Trade
- Traditional Religion, African
- Transportation
- Trans-Saharan Trade
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Urbanism and Urbanization
- Wars and Warlords
- Western Sahara
- White Settlers in East Africa
- Women and African History
- Women and Colonialism
- Women and Politics
- Women and Slavery
- Women, Gender and the Study of Africa
- Women in 19th-Century West Africa
- Yoruba Diaspora
- Yoruba Language and Literature
- Yoruba States, Benin, and Dahomey
- Youth
- Zambia