Africa: A Short History
"Robert O. Collins, already well-known for his "Problems in African History" (Markus Wiener, 1992) and "Documents from the African Past" (Markus Wiener, 2001), has presented us with an elegantly written narrative that takes us from prehistoric times to contemporary Africa in fewer than 250 pages. Needless to say, the text is concise, and it is precisely for its brevity that it is important for the readers to understand what Collins has achieved in this work....Given its characteristics, this book will be a valuable tool for teachers and graduate students. Certain chapters can also be useful for course reading in introductory courses, although these need to be carefully chosen. Finally, historians of Africa will also benefit from reading this text. Like any good work of synthesis it will encourage reconceptionalization and reassessment and thus will contribute to the exploration of old and new questions." --African Studies Review<br /><br />"Robert O. Collins, already well-known for his "Problems in African History" (Markus Wiener, 1992) and "Documents from the African Past" (Markus Wiener, 2001), has presented us with an elegantly written narrative that takes us from prehistoric times to contemporary Africa in fewer than 250 pages. Needless to say, the text is concise, and it is precisely for its brevity that it is important for the readers to understand what Collins has achieved in this work....Given its characteristics, this book will be a valuable tool for teachers and graduate students. Certain chapters can also be useful for course reading in introductory courses, although these need to be carefully chosen. Finally, historians of Africa will also benefit from reading this text. Like any good work of synthesis it will encourage reconceptionalization and reassessment and thus will contribute to the exploration of old and new questions." ---African Studies Review (April 07)<br /><br />A lament that repeatedly comes across in contemporary policy studies on higher education is that top professors in almost all disciplines spend too much time doing research on increasingly narrow, specialized topics, denying to the undergraduate student and the general reader the benefit of their erudition regarding the broader themes of their disciplines. Such is not the case of Robert Collins, Professor Emeritus of African History at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a distinguished expert on the history of the Southern Sudan. Collins' wide variety of publications, including this Short History, stands as proof of his capacity to write insightfully--over a career spanning more than forty-five years--on general as well as highly specialized topics. Professor Collins established his reputation with The Southern Sudan 1883-1898: A Struggle for Control (1962), his revised Yale PhD disserta-ion, and reaffirmed it with Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, 1918-1956 (1983). Alone or with collaborators, Collins has also written or compiled a number of volumes intended for undergraduate survey courses in African history, particularly his Problems in African listory: The Precolonial Centuries, now in its third edition. Professor Collins must have had his "Problems..." book in mind when structuring the present volume. He presents the history of Africa coherently--from the dawn of humankind to the present--in only 232 pages, alternating between detailed descriptions of key issues, followed by broad generalizations that lead to more rounds of detailed descriptions, and then more generalizations. This recurring pattern begins with a short Introduction and runs through six chapters covering (i) "Prehistoric Africa"; (ii) "Ancient and Medieval Africa"; (in) "Islam, Trade, and States"; (iv) "Europeans, Slaver --African Studies Review