Africans: The History of a Continent

Africans: The History of a Continent
ISBN-10
0521484227
ISBN-13
9780521484220
Series
Africans
Category
History
Pages
340
Language
English
Published
1995-08-25
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Author
John Iliffe

Description

In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the South African general election of 1994, John Iliffe refocuses African 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 survival and maximise numbers. These institutions enabled them to survive the slave trade and colonial invasion, but in the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This demographic growth has lain behind the collapse of colonial rule, the disintegration of Apartheid, and the instability of contemporary nations. The history of the continent is thus a single story binding living Africans to their earliest human ancestors.

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