Product Description

In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the AIDS epidemic, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure their survival. In the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations, however, the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. The history of the continent is thus a single story binding living Africans to their earliest human ancestors. John Iliffe was Professor of African History at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of St. John's College. He is the author of several books on Africa, including A modern history of Tanganyika and The African poor: A history, which was awarded the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association of the United States. Both books were published by Cambridge University Press.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111371 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Library Journal
Iliffe, an eminent African historian at Cambridge, offers a far-ranging survey of Africa from the development of the human species to the South African elections of 1994. He writes in a thematic rather than strictly chronological fashion. What sets his book apart from other such surveys (e.g., Basil Davidson's African Civilization Revisited, LJ 6/1/91. 2d ed.) is his treatment of the environment and population as factors in the development of Africa, including North Africa. Iliffe examines human coexistence with nature, the building up of enduring societies, and African reactions to outside forces; yet he always keeps the contemporary world in mind, focusing on the answers to such basic questions as why Africa remained relatively underdeveloped compared with Eurasian societies or why African states have experienced so many problems over the past couple of decades. Iliffe's excellent, well-written introductory text belongs in all collections of Africana.
Paul H. Thomas, Hoover Inst. Lib., Stanford, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Reading this seminal work afresh has made me appreciate just what an extraordinary achievement it really is." -John Parker, Journal of African History

About the Author
John Iliffe is Professor of African History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John's College. He is the author of several books on Africa, including A Modern History of Tanganyika and The African Poor: A History, which was awarded the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association of the United States. Both books are published by Cambridge University Press.

Customer Reviews

A history of Africa for the 21st century.
Iliffe's 'Africans' is the most distinguished and intelligent brief history of Africa yet written. Dry, and at times dense with information, it nonetheless succintly and brilliantly outlines the history of this complex and fascinating continent from earliest man to the democratic movements of the 1990s. Centred around a thesis that the key to Africa's history is population change, Iliffe weaves his tale with masterly skill. Underpopulated until the middle of the 20th century, the central feature of African history till the modern period has been a struggle for the control of scarce labour - land, by contrast, being abundant. Only with the massive population increases and urbanisation of the last fifty years have parts of the continent become over-populated, where a struggle for natural resources among an abundance of competitors has become the defining feature of African society (anyone who has spent time in the dog-eat-dog societies of Kenya or Nigeria can happily testify to this truth). This simple, somewhat tendentious but nonetheless thought-provoking thesis is the thread on which the book hangs, and is a relief from the dry, tedious and abstracted ideological and political theories which other historians have tried to apply to African history. This is a much richer book than such a summary might imply - Iliffe seems to have read every book and article ever written on African history (his Stakhanovite work methods are renowned), and politics, great men, religion, social movements all play a part in the narrative: and, as one has come to expect from Iliffe, African proverbs are studded in the text like diamonds in a tiara, illuminating and making real the events and processes on which he dwells. This is perhaps too dry a book to celebrate completely - Iliffe's Jesuitical approach to historical research lacks passion, and his powerful historian's mind perhaps takes for granted in the reader a too-deep understanding of that subject and its conventions. But ANYONE who wishs to understand more about the African continent cannot do without the learning, wisdom and intelligence that this book offers. Africa has been done a great service.

Good Overall History
This is a good overall comprehensive history of Sub-Saharan Africa. I wouldn't use it for getting a better understanding of Northern Africa as his focus on demography paints a laconic picture of this region. For a more contemporary historical overview, I would suggest Fred Cooper's, Africa Since 1940.

Excellent
There isnt much more for me to add to the previous reviews, but I will say that this is an excellently written book that is amazingly wide in its breadth.