Trans-Saharan Africa in World History (New Oxford World History)

<p>During the heyday of camel caravan traffic--from the eighth century CE arrival of Islam in North Africa to the early twentieth-century building of European colonial railroads that linked the Sudan with the Atlantic--the Sahara was one of the world's great commercial highways, bringing gold, slaves, and other commodities northward and sending both manufactured goods and Mediterranean culture southward into the Sudan. Historian Ralph A. Austen here tells the remarkable story of an African world that grew out of more than one thousand years of trans-Saharan trading. Perhaps the most enduring impact of this trade and the common cultural reference point of trans-Saharan Africa was Islam. Austen traces this faith in its various forms--as a legal system for regulating trade, an inspiration for reformist movements, and a vehicle of literacy and cosmopolitan knowledge. He also analyzes the impact of European overseas expansion, which marginalized trans-Saharan commerce in global terms but stimulated its local growth. Indeed, trans-Saharan culture not only adapted to colonial changes, but often thrived upon them, remaining a potent force into the twenty-first century.<br></p>

History

Austen, Ralph A.

Africa

Oxford University Press

Professional Responsibility: New Horizons of Praxis

This book is about the Duala "middlemen," who functioned as intermediaries between Europeans and their own hinterland for over three hundred years. Originally traders in ivory, slaves and palm products, they then became colonial-era cocoa planters, and finally took a leading role in anti-colonial politics. One of their lasting advantages was European education, which they used to develop ideas about their ethnicity and its historical basis. The authors criticize these local beliefs about the past but indicate what they reveal about power and identity in this region and elsewhere in Africa.

Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers: The Duala and their Hinterland, c.1600–c.1960 (African Studies, Series Number 96)

Derrick, Jonathan

Arts & Photography

Cambridge University Press

Routledge

This book spans two thousand years from the origins of domesticated food production to the third decade of the independence era. The author applies various theoretical perspectives to the two main themes of internal development and external dependency, with an emphasis on the continuous growth of domestic African economic capacities accompanied by an ever-increasing engagement with the international economy. North America: Heinemann

African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency

Literature & Fiction

World Literature

James Currey

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Books by Austen, Ralph A.