Africanists have long sought to place the continent’s own developments, rather than external events, at the center of African history narratives. To this end, Christopher Ehret offers an innovative history of Africa with his second edition of The African Civilizations: A History to 1800. Highly readable, this is a textbook that will appeal to newcomers and experts alike.
Throughout the book, the portrayal of Africa’s deep history resonates in a way that assuages fears about what Richard Reid calls the “foreshortening of African history” (“Past and Presentism,” JAH 52 [2], 2011]). Following an introduction that summarizes human origins in Africa, the work’s eight chapters tackle African history from 22,000 BCE to 1800 CE. Different geographic divisions in each chapter also reflect specific African trajectories. Early sections describe multiple food-gathering traditions, middle chapters trace evolving ties between northern and western Africa and among central, eastern, and southern Africa, while final chapters carefully elucidate how geography and societal scale influenced Atlantic world encounters.
Another strength of the work is that it does not dwell only on the most famous (and most hierarchical) civilizations. Although certainly Ancient Egypt, Great Zimbabwe, and other familiar societies do appear, each is situated in the midst of many other developments, such as the often neglected subjects of Saharan Africa and the multitude of small-scale African societies. Similarly, although Ehret acknowledges Africans’ interactions with outsiders (from the early diffusion of Asian crops into Africa to the trans-Atlantic slave trade), the work’s narrative remains closely centered on Africans in Africa. This focus directs attention to variations in African history (such as the diversity of ways in which Africans adopted and innovated Islam); it also makes for chapters brief enough to be easily supplemented with other materials.
Although rulers and elite merchants get their due credit as instigators of change, the many “hidden majorities” in African history shine through with each chapter’s details on societal beliefs, practices, economies, technologies, and arts. From ancient Niger-Congo boat-building and Nabta Playa astronomical megaliths, to how the chicken and banana crossed into Africa, these and many other examples—not to mention the multitude of color images throughout the text—will likely lure even the most ardent Egyptology student into enthusiastic study of Africa’s broader history.
Refreshingly, topics of both gender and historical sources feature in this textbook. The narrative clearly shows how African women filled various social, political, and economic roles with examples from Queen Nzinga to the common ritual leader role of *mo-kumo, filled by either a man or woman, to women’s many artisanal and economic activities, generally carried out independently of husbands’ control. Ehret also explores when and why Africans changed systems of descent between matrilineal and patrilineal (or why they sometimes kept both). Unlike some textbooks, this work also makes clear how scholars develop their historical insights, mentioning sources that include rock art, archaeological traditions, and Ehret’s and others’ extensive historical linguistic research. Such points are accessible to newcomers and promote conversations about historical production and correlations between types of evidence for more advanced students. Helpful chapter summaries, comparative questions, and suggested reading also allow pursuit of points of debate.
In terms of its depth and breadth, this work is truly an impressive synthesis. A few places could use revising for the third edition to reflect ongoing research, such as recent discoveries that elaborate Garamantes’ role in Saharan history (see David Mattingly, “Approaches to the Archaeology and Environment of the Sahara,” The Journal of North African Studies 10 [3–4], 2005). In a work that covers over twenty thousand years of history, such minor omissions are unavoidable and do not detract from the textbook’s value for many African history classrooms. All in all, this second edition is a valuable resource. It underscores the relevance of pre-1800s African history and urges us all to think critically about how we narrate the long history of the continent.
