Readings for Africa in World History Summer Institute
Other readings
Alpers MSU NEH – The Indian Ocean Slave Trade
Required Readings
Week One
Achebe, Chinua. “Africa’s Tarnished Name” In Another Africa, Chinua Achebe and Robert Lyons. 103-117. Surrey: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1998.
“African Creation Stories” Handout. (2 pages)
Bohannan, Paul and Philip Curtin. “The Myth and the Fact,” 3-18. In Africa and Africans. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1995.
Gilbert, Erik and Jonathan Reynolds. “The Physical Context of African History: Geography and Environment,” 16-36. In Africa in World History: From Prehistory to the Present. New York: Prentice Hall, 2009.
Hammond, Dorothy and Alta Jablow. “The First Light on the Dark Continent,” The Africa that Never Was: Four Centuries of British Writing on Africa, 7-48. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1992.
Harris, Joseph. “Tradition of Myths & Stereotypes,” In Africans and Their History. 1-20. Cornwall: Plume, 1998
Miner, Horace. “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 503-507.
Week Two
Ba, Mariama. So Long A Letter. London: Heinemann, 2008 (novella: 96 pages)
Niane, D. T. Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. New York: Longman, 2006 (oral history: 120 pages)
Okonjo, Kamene. “The Dual-Sex Political System in Operation: Igbo Women and Community Politics in Midwestern Nigeria.” In Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, ed. N. J. Hafkin, and Edna G. Bay, 45-56. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1976.
Week Three
Afonso, Dom. “Evils of the Slave Trade” [Primary Document]. 223-226. In Basil Davidson, African Civilization Revisited: From Antiquity to Modern Times. New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1991.
Barbot, John. “The Trade in Captives” [Primary Document]. 250-252. In Basil Davidson, African Civilization Revisited: From Antiquity to Modern Times. New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1991.
Curtin, Philip. Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the era of the slave trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. (363 pages)
Equiano, Olaudah. “The Author’s birth and parentage—His being kidnapped with his sister—Horrors of the slave-ship,” 23-42. In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The African.Penguin Classics, reprinted 1995.
Johnston, John. “The Price of Slaves” [Primary Document]. 273. In Basil Davidson, African Civilization Revisited: From Antiquity to Modern Times. New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1991.
Week Four
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Knopf, 1992. (novel: 181 pages)
Achebe, Nwando. “Balancing Male & Female Principles in Things Fall Apart.” In Don Burness, Inocencia Mata and Vicky
Hartnac, eds. When Things Came Together: Studies on Estudossobre Chinua Achebe,” 140-160. Lisboa, Portugal: Faculdade de Letras, Univerdidade de Lisboa, 2008.
“4th Witness: Nwanyeruwa” [Primary Document]. 24-27. Aba Commission of Inquiry, Notes of Evidence. In D. C. Dorward,The Igbo “Women’s War” of 1929: Documents Relating to the Aba Riots in Eastern Nigeria. Yorkshire: Microform Ltd, 1983.
Lugard, Frederick. “Indirect Rule in Tropical Africa,” [Primary Document]. 291-297. In Robert O. Collins, Documents from the African Past. Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.
“Records of the Maji Maji, The Maji Maji Rebellion 1905-1907” [Primary Document]. 305-311. In Robert O. Collins, Documents from the African Past. Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.
Oyono, Ferdinand. Houseboy. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2012 (novel: 122 pages)
Supplemental Readings
Pre-Colonial States and Small-Scale Societies:
Connah Graham. African Civilizations: an Archaeological Perspective. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 2nd edition.
Levtzion, Nehemia. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London: Methuen, 1973.
Lonsdale, John. “States and Social Processes in Africa.” African Studies Review, 1981.
Marcus, Harold. A History of Ethiopia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Rodney, Walter. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.
Thornton, John K. The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
Slavery and the Slave Trades:
Afigbo, A. E. The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885-1950 (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora).University of Rochester Press, 2006.
Beswick, Stephanie and Jay Spaulding. African Systems of Slavery, eds. 105-133. New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2010.
Carney, Judith. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Diouf, Sylviane, ed. Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Western African Studies), Ohio University Press, 2003.
Hawthorne, Walter. Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003.
Inikori, Joseph E. Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies. London: Hutchinson, 1982.
Klein, Martin and Claire Robertson. Women & Slavery in Africa (Social History of Africa). Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1997.
Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983
Miers, Suzanne and Richard Roberts, eds. The End of Slavery in Africa. 1984
Reis, João José. Slave Rebellion in Brazil. The Johns Hopkins University Press; Reprint edition (September 1, 1995)
Sweet, James. Recreating Africa. The University of North Carolina Press (February 23, 2006).
Wright, Marcia. Strategies of Slaves & Women: Life-Stories from East/Central Africa. L. Barber Press, 1993.
Women and Gender:
Achebe, Nwando. The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2011.
Achebe, Nwando. Farmers, Traders, Warriors and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann Social History Series 2005.
Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Books, 1987.
Bay, Edna. Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Charlottesville and London, 1998.
Boahen, Adu. Yaa Asantewaa and the Asante-British War of 1900-1. James Currey, 2003.
Cornwall, Andrea, ed. Readings In Gender In Africa. Indiana University Press, 2005.
Geiger, Susan. TANU Women: Gender and Culture in the Making of Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955-1965 .Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.
Kaplan, Flora, ed. Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses, and Power: Case Studies in African Gender (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, V. 810). New York Academy of Sciences, 1997.
Mack, Beverly and Jean Boyd (eds).One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’U, Scholar and Scribe, Indiana University Press, 2000.
Nast, Heidi J. Concubines and Power: Five Hundred Years In A Northern Nigerian Palace. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Oyewumi, Oyeronke. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Historical Dimensions of Religion:
Anderson, David and Johnson, D. H. Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in Eastern African History, London: James Currey, 1995.
Comaroff, Jean. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Fields, Karen E. Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Levtzion, Nehemia, and Randall L. Pouwels (eds.). The History of Islam in Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000.
Mbiti, John S. African Religions & Philosophy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990. 2nd edition.
Peel, J. D. Y. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Robinson, David. Muslim Societies in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Thorton, John. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Colonial Africa:
Afigbo, A. E. The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891-1929. London: Longman, 1972.
Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: the Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
Boahen, Adu A. African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Cooper, Frederick. Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Davidson, Basil. The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State.
London. 1992
Oyono, Ferdinand. Houseboy. London: Heinemann, 1966.
Thompson, Leonard. A History of South Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.