The book explores the comprehensive history of Africa, beginning with the earliest hominid emergence in eastern and southern regions. It delves into the human colonization of various areas, tracing the development of food production and the evolution of African languages, highlighting the continent's rich and diverse cultural heritage.
Oliver shares his extensive research travels across tropical Africa from the 1940s to the 1980s, highlighting his commitment to training African graduate students and enhancing local academia. He played a pivotal role in establishing conferences and journals that connected European and African historians and archaeologists. The narrative also includes his interactions with various figures, including political and religious leaders, as well as the significant political and economic changes he observed during this transformative period in Africa.
Focusing on the transformation of Africa from the late 18th to the 20th century, the book examines the impact of external forces through commercial and ideological penetration. It details the partition and colonization processes, along with the nature of colonial rule from 1885 to 1960. The latter section addresses the developments in independent Africa, culminating in events up to mid-2003, providing a comprehensive overview of the continent's historical trajectory and its ongoing challenges.
Dramatic alterations in political power have corrected the once prevalent vision of a European-centered world. While the centers of European culture flourished, decayed and sprouted in turn, empires in Africa rose, ruled, resisted, and succumbed. Much of Africa's past has now been excavated from ignorance and error, revealing a rich and previously little-known human heritage. This classic work draws on the whole range of literature about Africa as well as evidence provided by archaeology, oral traditions, language relationships, and social institutions. It marshals the most authoritative views of African specialists into an absorbing narrative and puts forward original conclusions that take the study of Africa a stage further.
German Lutheran perspectives on the future of the Church (in Germany) - essays by pastors, confirmands, high schoolers, theologians, and interested lay people.
