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Africans: the HISTORY of a CONTINENT, Second Edition P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 This page intentionally left blank ii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 africans, second edition Inavast 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 hostilecontinent.Africanshavebeenpioneersstrugglingagainstdiseaseandnature, 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 Amodern 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. i P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 ii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 african studies The African Studies Series,founded in 1968 in collaboration with the African Studies Centre of the University of Cambridge, is a prestigious series of monographs and general studies on Africa covering history, anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science. editorial board Dr. David Anderson, St. Antony’s College, Oxford Professor Carolyn Brown, Department of History, Rutgers University Professor Christopher Clapham, Centre of African Studies, Cambridge University Professor Michael Gomez, Department of History, New York University Professor David Robinson, Department of History, Michigan State University Professor Leonardo A. Villalon, Center for African Studies, University of Florida A list of books in this series will be found at the end of this volume. iii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 iv P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 Africans THE HISTORY OF A CONTINENT Second Edition john iliffe Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge v CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521864381 © John Iliffe 1995, 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2007 ISBN-13 978-0-511-34916-4 eBook (EBL) ISBN-10 0-511-34916-5 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-521-86438-1 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-86438-0 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 In memory of Charles Ross Iliffe and JoyJosephine Iliffe vii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 viii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 Contents List of maps page xi Preface to the second edition xiii 1 The frontiersmen of mankind 1 2 The emergence of food-producing communities 6 3 The impact of metals 17 4 Christianity and Islam 37 5 Colonising society in western Africa 63 6 Colonising society in eastern and southern Africa 100 7 The Atlantic slave trade 131 8 Regional diversity in the nineteenth century 164 9 Colonial invasion 193 10 Colonial change, 1918–1950 219 11 Independent Africa, 1950–1980 251 12 Industrialisation and race in South Africa, 1886–1994 273 13 In the time of AIDS 288 Notes 317 Further reading 329 Index 345 ix P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 x P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 List of maps 1 Main physical features page 3 2 The emergence of food-producing communities 8 3 African language families in recent times 11 4 The impact of metals 18 5 Christianity and Islam 39 6 Colonising society in western Africa 65 7 Colonising society in eastern and southern Africa 102 8 The Atlantic slave trade 132 9 Regional diversity in the nineteenth century 165 10 Colonial invasion 194 11 Colonial boundaries 204 12 Colonial change and independent Africa 220 13 Independent African states 254 14 Industrialisation and race in South Africa 275 15 In the time of AIDS 289 xi P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 xii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 Preface to the second edition David Fieldhouse suggested this book. In writing it, I have strayed far from my expertise as a documentary historian. John Sutton is partly to blame for that becausehefirstinterestedmeinAfricanprehistorythroughhislecturesatDares Salaam. David Phillipson kindly read and commented on my typescript, as did John Lonsdale, who has taught me so much. John Alexander and Timothy Insoll helped with books. Tothe first edition, published in 1995,Ihaveaddedachapter, current to 2006, and I have extensively revised the chapters on prehistory and the Atlantic slave trade, together with less substantial revisions to take account of recent scholarship on other periods. The mistakes that remain are my own. John Iliffe xiii P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 xiv P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 africans, second edition xv P1: RNK 0521864381pre CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 19:34 xvi P1: RNK 0521864381c01 CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 15:15 1 The frontiersmen of mankind the liberation of their continent made the second half of the twentieth century a triumphant period for the peoples of Africa, but at the end of the century triumph turned to disillusionment with the fruits of independence. This juncture is a time for understanding, for reflection on the place of contemporary problems in the continent’s long history. That is the purpose of this book. It is a general history of Africa from the origins of mankind to the present, but it is written with the contemporary situation in mind. That explains its organising theme. Africans have been and are the frontiersmen who have colonised an especially hostile region of the world on behalf of the entire human race. That has been their chief contribution to history. It is why they deserve admiration, support, and careful study. The central themes of African history are the peopling of the continent, the achievement of human coexistence with nature, the building up of enduring societies, and their defence against aggression from more favoured regions. As a Malawian proverb says, ‘It is people who make the world; the bush has wounds and scars.’ At the heart of the African past, therefore, has been a unique population history that links the earliest human beings to their living descendants in a single story. That is the subject of this book. The story begins with the evolution of the human species in Africa, whence it spread to colonise the continent and the world, adapting and specialising to new environments until distinct racial and linguistic groups emerged. Know- ledge of food-production and metals permitted concentrations of population, but slowly, for, except in Egypt and other favoured regions, Africa’s ancient rocks, poor soils, fickle rainfall, abundant insects, and unique prevalence of disease composed an environment hostile to agricultural communities. Until the later twentieth century, therefore, Africa was an underpopulated continent. Itssocieties were specialised to maximise numbers and colonise land. Agricul- tural systems were mobile, adapting to the environment rather than trans- forming it, in order to avert extinction by crop-failure. Ideologies focused on fertility and the defence of civilisation against nature. Social organisation also sought to maximise fertility, especially throughpolygyny, which made genera- tional conflict a more important historical dynamic than class conflict. Sparse populations with ample land expressed social differentiation through control 1 P1: RNK 0521864381c01 CUNY780B-African 978 0 521 68297 8 May 15, 2007 15:15 2 africans: the history of a continent over people, possession of precious metals, and ownership of livestock where the environment permitted it, especially in the east and south. Scattered settle- ment and huge distances hindered transport, limited the surplus the powerful could extract, prevented the emergence of literate elites and formal institutions, left the cultivator much freedom, and obstructed state formation, despite the many devices leaders invented to bind men to them. Northern Africa first escaped these constraints, but the Sahara isolated it from the bulk of the continent until the later first millennium ad,whenits expanding economy and Islamic religion crossed the desert, drew gold and slaves from West Africa’s indigenous commercial system, and created maritime links with eastern and central Africa. Yet this path of historical development was aborted by a population catastrophe, the Black Death, which threw North Africa into nearly five centuries of decline.
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