Workshop: Major themes of African history 3600-KM-MAH-OG

This course introduces students to the major issues in African history from ancient times to the modern era. Themes include the civilisations, the interaction between ancient kingdoms and modern politics in West Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa; religious and political movements in the Sahel, the Sahara, and in North Africa; the history of kingmaking and modern empire building in Africa; global commercial networks in the Indian Ocean; the transatlantic slave trade; colonialism, anti-colonial resistance in Africa and post-colonial Africa. Students will learn about African’s contributions to world civilisations and tools of analysis for approaching the modern history of diverse cultures and societies on the African continent. The lecture is organised geographically with specific units on distinct regions in Africa as well as units that zoom out to ask questions about the unity or disunity of Africa as a coherent cultural, political, and social unit. Africa is a massive continent, and there is no way to discuss every aspect of life in Africa in one course in a semester. This course will not be comprehensive or encyclopedic, but will provide students with tools for questioning and analysing the history of Africa in all its complexity.
Course objectives
1. To facilitate students with history as a discipline that plays a central role both in the construction of identities and the development of a critical understanding of human existence.
2. Understanding the major themes of African history, concentrating on the earliest times till 1960.
3. Provide an overview of African civilisation, its impact and achievements

Type of course

general courses

Mode

Classroom

Course coordinators

Hanna Rubinkowska-Anioł

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of this lecture, students should be able to:
1. Access historical events objectively from the African perspective
2. Illustrate understanding of the past as the storehouse of historical information and history as an academic discipline for examining the past.
3. Discover various interpretations of African history and communicate ideas in written and oral form.

Bibliography

Alfred, R. Brown and Forde C. Daryll, African Systems, Kinship and Marriage, London: Oxford University Press 1950.

Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Curtin, Philip D. Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade, 2 vols, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.
Darity, William, Jr. “A General Equilibrium Model of the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Slave Trade.” Research in Economic History Vol. 7, 1982.
Diouf, Sylvia (ed.), Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003.
Evans, E. W. and David Richardson. “Hunting for Rents: The Economics of Slaving in Pre-Colonial Africa.” The Economic History Review 48, No. 4, 1995.
Fage, John, A History of West Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Gemery, Henry A, and Jan S. Hogendorn, “The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Tentative Economic Model,” The Journal of African History 15, No. 10, 1974,
Harley, Knick C. “Slavery, the British Atlantic Economy and the Industrial Revolution,” University of Oxford, No 113, 2013.
Inikori, Joseph. “The Import of Firearms into West Africa 1750-1807: A Quantitative Analysis.” The Journal of African History 18, No. 3, 1977.
John D. Hargreaves, The end of colonial rule in West Africa, London: Macmillan Press 1979.
Johnson, Marion. “The Ounce in 18th Century West African Trade.” The Journal of African History 7, No. 2 1966.
Kea, R. A. “Firearms and Warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” The Journal of African History 21, No. 2 1971
Kenneth Kalu and Toyin Falola (eds), Exploitation and Misrule in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2019.
Klein, Herbert, The Atlantic Slave Trade, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Klein, Martin. “The Slave Trade and Decentralized Societies,” Journal of African Studies, Vol. 42, 2001.
Manning, Patrick. “Contours of Slavery and Social Change in Africa.” The American Historical Review. Vol. 88. No. 4, 1983.
Martin S. SHANGUHYIA and Toyin FALOLA, The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Nunn, Nathan. “Historical Legacies: A Model Linking Africa’s Past to Its Current Underdevelopment.” Journal of Development Economics 83, no. 1, 2007.
Nunn, Nathan. “The Long Term Eﬀects of Africa’s Slave Trades.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, No. 1, 2008.
Oriji, John, Igboland, “Slavery, and the Drums of War and Heroism.” In Sylvia Diouf (ed.). Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003.
Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972.
Saheed Aderinto, Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2022.
Saheed Aderinto, Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2018.
Thornton, John, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400- 1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Additional information

Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:

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Description of 3600-KM-MAH-OG in USOSweb