Following the desertification of the Sahara, North African history became entwined with

the Middle East and Southern Europe while the Bantu expansion swept from modern
day Cameroon (Central West Africa) across much of the sub-Saharan continent in waves
between around 1000 BC and 1 AD, creating a linguistic commonality across much of the central
and Southern continent.[4]

During the Middle Ages, Islam spread west from Arabia to Egypt, crossing the Maghreb and the
Sahel. Some notable pre-colonial states and societies in Africa include the Ajuran Empire,
Bachwezi Empire, D'mt, Adal Sultanate, Alodia, Dagbon Kingdom, Warsangali
Sultanate, Buganda Kingdom, Kingdom of Nri, Nok civilization, Mali Empire, Bono State, Songhai
Empire, Benin Empire, Oyo Empire, Kingdom of Lunda (Punu-yaka), Ashanti Empire, Ghana
Empire, Mossi Kingdoms, Mutapa Empire, Kingdom of Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Sine, Kingdom
of Sennar, Kingdom of Saloum, Kingdom of Baol, Kingdom of Cayor, Kingdom of
Zimbabwe, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Kaabu, Ife Empire, Ancient
Carthage, Numidia, Mauretania, and the Aksumite Empire.

At its peak, prior to European colonialism, it is estimated that Africa had up to 10,000 different
states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs.[5][6]

From the late 15th century, Europeans joined the slave trade.[7] That includes the triangular trade,
with the Portuguese initially acquiring slaves through trade and later by force as part of
the Atlantic slave trade. They transported enslaved West, Central, and Southern Africans
overseas.[8] Subsequently, European colonization of Africa developed rapidly from around 10%
(1870) to over 90% (1914) in the Scramble for Africa (1881–1914).

However following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, as well as a
weakened Europe after the Second World War (1939–1945), decolonization took place across
the continent, culminating in the 1960 Year of Africa.[9]

Disciplines such as recording of oral history, historical linguistics, archaeology,

and genetics have been vital in rediscovering the great African civilizations of antiquity.

Prehistory[edit]
Main article: Prehistoric Africa
Further information: Prehistoric North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa § Prehistory, Prehistoric West
Africa, Prehistoric Central Africa, Prehistoric East Africa, Horn of Africa § Prehistory, Prehistoric
Southern Africa, and African archaeology

Reconstruction of "Lucy"
The first known hominids evolved in Africa. According to paleontology, the early hominids' skull
anatomy was similar to that of the gorilla and the chimpanzee, great apes that also evolved in
Africa, but the hominids had adopted a bipedal locomotion which freed their hands. This gave
them a crucial advantage, enabling them to live in both forested areas and on the
open savanna at a time when Africa was drying up and the savanna was encroaching on
forested areas. This would have occurred 10 to 5 million years ago, but these claims are
controversial because biologists and genetics have humans appearing around the last 70
thousand to 200 thousand years.[10]

The fossil record shows Homo sapiens (also known as "modern humans" or "anatomically
modern humans") living in Africa by about 350,000-260,000 years ago. The earliest
known Homo sapiens fossils include the Jebel Irhoud remains from Morocco (c. 315,000 years
ago),[11] the Florisbad Skull from South Africa (c. 259,000 years ago), and the Omo remains from
Ethiopia (c. 233,000 years ago).[12][13][14][15][16] Scientists have suggested that Homo sapiens may
have arisen between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago through a merging of populations in East
Africa and South Africa.[17][18]

Evidence of a variety of behaviors indicative of Behavioral modernity date to the African Middle
Stone Age, associated with early Homo sapiens and their emergence. Abstract imagery, widened
subsistence strategies, and other "modern" behaviors have been discovered from that period in
Africa, especially South, North, and East Africa.

The Blombos Cave site in South Africa, for example, is famous for rectangular slabs
of ochre engraved with geometric designs. Using multiple dating techniques, the site was
confirmed to be around 77,000 and 100–75,000 years old.[19][20] Ostrich egg shell containers
engraved with geometric designs dating to 60,000 years ago were found at Diepkloof, South
Africa.[21] Beads and other personal ornamentation have been found from Morocco which might
be as much as 130,000 years old; as well, the Cave of Hearths in South Africa has yielded a
number of beads dating from significantly prior to 50,000 years ago,[22] and shell beads dating to
about 75,000 years ago have been found at Blombos Cave, South Africa. [23][24][25]

Around 65–50,000 years ago, the species' expansion out of Africa launched the colonization of
the planet by modern human beings.[26][27][28][29] By 10,000 BC, Homo sapiens had spread to most
corners of Afro-Eurasia. Their dispersals are traced by linguistic, cultural and genetic evidence.[30]
[31][32]
Eurasian back-migrations, specifically West-Eurasian backflow, started in the
early Holocene or already earlier in the Paleolithic period, sometimes between 30-15,000 years
ago, followed by pre-Neolithic and Neolithic migration waves from the Middle East, mostly
affecting Northern Africa, the Horn of Africa, and wider regions of the Sahel zone and East Africa.
[33]

Pre-Neolithic and Neolithic migration events in Africa. [33]

Affad 23 is an archaeological site located in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in
northern Sudan,[34] which hosts "the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the
oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old".
[35][36][37]
 Vegetation and water bodies in
early Holocene (top), between about 12,000 and 7,000 years ago, and Eemian (bottom)
Around 16,000 BC, from the Red Sea Hills to the northern Ethiopian Highlands, nuts, grasses
and tubers were being collected for food. By 13,000 to 11,000 BC, people began collecting wild
grains. This spread to Western Asia, which domesticated its wild grains, wheat and barley.
Between 10,000 and 8000 BC, Northeast Africa was cultivating wheat and barley and raising
sheep and cattle from Southwest Asia.

A wet climatic phase in Africa turned the Ethiopian Highlands into a mountain forest. Omotic
speakers domesticated enset around 6500–5500 BC. Around 7000 BC, the settlers of the
Ethiopian highlands domesticated donkeys, and by 4000 BC domesticated donkeys had spread
to Southwest Asia. Cushitic speakers, partially turning away from cattle herding,
domesticated teff and finger millet between 5500 and 3500 BC.[38]

During the 11th millennium BP, pottery was independently invented in Africa, with the earliest
pottery there dating to about 9,400 BC from central Mali.[39] It soon spread throughout the
southern Sahara and Sahel.[40] In the steppes and savannahs of the Sahara and Sahel in
Northern West Africa, the Nilo-Saharan speakers and Mandé peoples started to collect and
domesticate wild millet, African rice and sorghum between 8000 and 6000 BC.
Later, gourds, watermelons, castor beans, and cotton were also collected and domesticated. The
people started capturing wild cattle and holding them in circular thorn hedges, resulting
in domestication.[41]

They also started making pottery and built stone settlements (e.g., Tichitt, Oualata). Fishing,
using bone-tipped harpoons, became a major activity in the numerous streams and lakes formed
from the increased rains.[42] Mande peoples have been credited with the independent
development of agriculture about 4000–3000 BC.[43]
 9th-century bronze staff head in form of a coiled snake, Igbo-
Ukwu, Nigeria
Evidence of the early smelting of metals – lead, copper, and bronze – dates from the fourth
millennium BC.[44]

Egyptians smelted copper during the predynastic period, and bronze came into use after 3,000
BC at the latest[45] in Egypt and Nubia. Nubia became a major source of copper as well as of gold.
[46]
The use of gold and silver in Egypt dates back to the predynastic period.[47][48]

In the Aïr Mountains of present-day Niger people smelted copper independently of developments
in the Nile valley between 3,000 and 2,500 BC. They used a process unique to the region,
suggesting that the technology was not brought in from outside; it became more mature by about
1,500 BC.[48]

By the 1st millennium BC iron working had reached Northwestern Africa, Egypt, and Nubia.
[49]
Zangato and Holl document evidence of iron-smelting in the Central African
Republic and Cameroon that may date back to 3,000 to 2,500 BC.[50] Assyrians using iron
weapons pushed Nubians out of Egypt in 670 BC, after which the use of iron became
widespread in the Nile valley.[51]

The theory that iron spread to Sub-Saharan Africa via the Nubian city of Meroe[52] is no longer
widely accepted, and some researchers[which?] believe that sub-Saharan Africans invented iron
metallurgy independently. Metalworking in West Africa has been dated as early as 2,500 BC at
Egaro west of the Termit in Niger, and iron working was practiced there by 1,500 BC.[53] Iron
smelting has been dated to 2,000 BC in southeast Nigeria.[54] Central Africa provides possible
evidence of iron working as early as the 3rd millennium BC.[55] Iron smelting developed in the area
between Lake Chad and the African Great Lakes between 1,000 and 600 BC, and in West Africa
around 2,000 BC, long before the technology reached Egypt. Before 500 BC, the Nok culture in
the Jos Plateau was already smelting iron.[56][57][58][59][need quotation to verify][60][61] Archaeological sites containing
iron-smelting furnaces and slag have been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast
Nigeria in Igboland: dating to 2,000 BC at the site of Lejja (Eze-Uzomaka 2009)[54][62] and to 750
BC and at the site of Opi (Holl 2009).[62] The site of Gbabiri (in the Central African Republic) has
also yielded evidence of iron metallurgy, from a reduction furnace and blacksmith workshop; with
earliest dates of 896-773 BC and 907-796 BC respectively.[61]

Antiquity[edit]
Main article: Ancient Africa
Further information: History of North Africa § Classical period, History of West Africa § Iron
Age, History of Central Africa § Ancient history, History of East Africa § Ancient history,
and History of Southern Africa § Ancient history
The ancient history of North Africa is inextricably linked to that of the Ancient Near East. This is
particularly true of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. In the Horn of Africa the Kingdom of Aksum ruled
modern-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia and the coastal area of the western part of the Arabian
Peninsula. The Ancient Egyptians established ties with the Land of Punt in 2,350 BC. Punt was a
trade partner of Ancient Egypt and it is believed that it was located in modern-
day Somalia, Djibouti or Eritrea.[63] Phoenician cities such as Carthage were part of the
Mediterranean Iron Age and classical antiquity. Sub-Saharan Africa developed more or less
independently in those times.[citation needed]

In the western Sahel the rise of settled communities occurred largely as a result of the
domestication of millet and of sorghum. Archaeology points to sizable urban populations in West
Africa beginning in the 2nd millennium BC. Symbiotic trade relations developed before the trans-
Saharan trade, in response to the opportunities afforded by north–south diversity in ecosystems
across deserts, grasslands, and forests. The agriculturists received salt from the desert nomads.
The desert nomads acquired meat and other foods from pastoralists and farmers of the
grasslands, and fishermen on the Niger River. The forest-dwellers provided furs and meat.[64]

The Bantu expansion involved a significant movement of people in African history and in the
settling of the continent.[65] People speaking Bantu languages (a branch of the Niger–Congo
family) began in the second millennium BC to spread from Cameroon eastward to the Great
Lakes region. In the first millennium BC, Bantu languages spread from the Great Lakes to
southern and east Africa. One early movement headed south to the upper Zambezi valley in the
2nd century BC. Then Bantu-speakers pushed westward to the savannahs of present-
day Angola and eastward into Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in the 1st century AD. The second
thrust from the Great Lakes was eastward, 2,000 years ago, expanding to the Indian
Ocean coast, Kenya and Tanzania. The eastern group eventually met the southern migrants
from the Great Lakes in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Both groups continued southward, with
eastern groups continuing to Mozambique and reaching Maputo in the 2nd century AD, and
expanding as far as Durban.

Medieval and early modern period[edit]

Main article: Medieval and early modern Africa
Further information: History of North Africa § Arrival of Islam, History of West Africa § Sahelian
kingdoms, History of Central Africa § Post-classical history, History of East Africa § Post-
classical history, and History of Southern Africa § Post-classical history
The Sao civilization flourished from about the sixth century BC to as late as the 16th century AD
in Central Africa. The Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later
became part of present-day Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have left clear
traces of their presence in the territory of modern Cameroon. Today, several ethnic groups of
northern Cameroon and southern Chad – but particularly the Sara people – claim descent from
the civilization of the Sao. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper,
and iron.[66] Finds include bronze sculptures and terracotta statues of human and animal figures,
coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewelry, highly decorated pottery, and spears. [67] The
largest Sao archaeological finds have occurred south of Lake Chad.[citation needed]

Settlements of Bantu-speaking peoples who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen were
long already well established south of the Limpopo River by the 4th century CE, displacing and
absorbing the original Khoisan speakers. They slowly moved south, and the earliest ironworks in
modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050.[ambiguous] The
southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits
from the earlier Khoi-San people, reaching the Great Fish River in today's Eastern Cape
Province.[68]

Colonial period[edit]
Main article: Colonial Africa
Further information: History of West Africa § Slave trade, History of Central Africa § Slave
trade, History of East Africa § Slave trade, History of Southern Africa § Slave trade, History of
North Africa § European colonial period, History of West Africa § Colonial period, History of
Central Africa § Colonial period, History of East Africa § Colonial period, and History of
Southern Africa § Colonial period
Between 1878 and 1898, European states partitioned and conquered most of Africa. For 400
years, European nations had mainly limited their involvement to trading stations on the African
coast. Few dared venture inland from the coast; those that did, like the Portuguese, often met
defeats and had to retreat to the coast. Several technological innovations helped to overcome
this 400-year pattern. One was the development of repeating rifles, which were easier and
quicker to load than muskets. Artillery was being used increasingly. In 1885, Hiram S.
Maxim developed the maxim gun, the model of the modern-day machine gun. European states
kept these weapons largely among themselves by refusing to sell these weapons to African
leaders.[69]

African germs took numerous European lives and deterred permanent settlements. Diseases
such as yellow fever, sleeping sickness, yaws, and leprosy made Africa a very inhospitable place
for Europeans. The deadliest disease was malaria, endemic throughout Tropical Africa. In 1854,
the discovery of quinine and other medical innovations helped to make conquest and
colonization in Africa possible.[70]

Strong motives for conquest of Africa were at play. Raw materials were needed for European
factories. Europe in the early part of the 19th century was undergoing its Industrial Revolution.
Nationalist rivalries and prestige were at play. Acquiring African colonies would show rivals that a
nation was powerful and significant. These factors culminated in the Scramble for Africa.[71]

In the 1880s the European powers had divided up almost all of Africa (only Ethiopia and Liberia
were independent). They ruled until after World War II when forces of nationalism grew much
stronger. In the 1950s and 1960s the colonial holdings became independent states. The process
was usually peaceful but there were several long bitter bloody civil wars, as in Algeria,
[72]
Kenya[73] and elsewhere. Across Africa the powerful new force of nationalism drew upon the
organizational skills that natives learned in the British and French and other armies in the world
wars. It led to organizations that were not controlled by or endorsed by either the colonial powers
not the traditional local power structures that were collaborating with the colonial powers.
Nationalistic organizations began to challenge both the traditional and the new colonial structures
and finally displaced them. Leaders of nationalist movements took control when the European
authorities exited; many ruled for decades or until they died off. These structures included
political, educational, religious, and other social organizations. In recent decades, many African
countries have undergone the triumph and defeat of nationalistic fervor, changing in the process
the loci of the centralizing state power and patrimonial state.[74][75][76]
 Areas controlled by European powers in 1939.
British (red) and Belgian (marroon) colonies fought with the Allies. Italian (light green) with
the Axis. French colonies (dark blue) fought alongside the Allies until the Fall of France in
June 1940. Vichy was in control until the Free French prevailed in late 1942. Portuguese
(dark green) and Spanish (yellow) colonies remained neutral.

Postcolonial period[edit]
Main article: Postcolonial Africa
Further information: History of North Africa § Post-colonial period, History of West Africa § Post-
colonial period, History of Central Africa § Post-colonial period, History of East Africa § Post-
colonial period, and History of Southern Africa § Post-colonial period
See also: Decolonisation of Africa, Neocolonialism, CFA franc, Status of forces agreement,
and Historical African place names

Dates of independence of African countries

The decolonization of Africa started with Libya in 1951, although Liberia, South
Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia were already independent. Many countries followed in the 1950s and
1960s, with a peak in 1960 with the Year of Africa, which saw 17 African nations declare
independence, including a large part of French West Africa. Most of the remaining countries
gained independence throughout the 1960s, although some colonizers (Portugal in particular)
were reluctant to relinquish sovereignty, resulting in bitter wars of independence which lasted for
a decade or more. The last African countries to gain formal independence were Guinea-
Bissau (1974), Mozambique (1975) and Angola (1975) from Portugal; Djibouti from France in
1977; Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom in 1980; and Namibia from South Africa in
1990. Eritrea later split off from Ethiopia in 1993.[77]
Historiography[edit]
Main article: African historiography

Historiography of British Africa[edit]

The first historical studies in English appeared in the 1890s, and followed one of four
approaches. 1) The territorial narrative was typically written by a veteran soldier or civil servant
who gave heavy emphasis to what he had seen. 2) The "apologia" were essays designed to
justify British policies. 3) Popularizers tried to reach a large audience. 4) Compendia appeared
designed to combine academic and official credentials. Professional scholarship appeared
around 1900, and began with the study of business operations, typically using government
documents and unpublished archives.[78]

The economic approach was widely practiced in the 1930s, primarily to provide descriptions of
the changes underway in the previous half-century. In 1935, American historian William L.
Langer published The Diplomacy of Imperialism: 1890–1902, a book that is still widely cited. In
1939, Oxford professor Reginald Coupland published The Exploitation of East Africa, 1856–
1890: The Slave Trade and the Scramble, another popular treatment.[citation needed]

World War II diverted most scholars to wartime projects and accounted for a pause in
scholarship during the 1940s.[79]

By the 1950s many African students were studying in British universities, and they produced a
demand for new scholarship, and started themselves to supply it as well. Oxford
University became the main center for African studies, with activity as well at Cambridge
University and the London School of Economics. The perspective of British government
policymakers or international business operations slowly gave way to a new interest in the
activities of the natives, especially nationalistic movements and the growing demand for
independence.[79] The major breakthrough came from Ronald Robinson and John Andrew
Gallagher, especially with their studies of the impact of free trade on Africa. [80] In 1985 The Oxford
History of South Africa (2 vols.) was published,[81] attempting to synthesize the available
materials. In 2013, The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History was published,[82] bringing
the scholarship up to date.[citation needed]

Historiographic and Conceptual Problems[edit]

The current major problem in African studies that Mohamed (2010/2012)[83][84] identified is the
inherited religious, Orientalist, colonial paradigm that European Africanists have preserved in
present-day secularist, post-colonial, Anglophone African historiography.[83] African and African-
American scholars also bear some responsibility in perpetuating this European Africanist
preserved paradigm.[83]

Following conceptualizations of Africa developed by Leo Africanus and Hegel, European

Africanists conceptually separated continental Africa into two racialized regions – Sub-Saharan
Africa and North Africa.[83] Sub-Saharan Africa, as a racist geographic construction, serves as
an objectified, compartmentalized region of "Africa proper", "Africa noire," or "Black
Africa."[83] The African diaspora is also considered to be a part of the same racialized construction
as Sub-Saharan Africa.[83] North Africa serves as a racialized region of "European Africa", which
is conceptually disconnected from Sub-Saharan Africa, and conceptually connected to the Middle
East, Asia, and the Islamic world.[83]

As a result of these racialized constructions and the conceptual separation of Africa, darker
skinned North Africans, such as the so-called Haratin, who have long resided in the Maghreb,
and do not reside south of Saharan Africa, have become analogically alienated from
their indigeneity and historic reality in North Africa.[83] While the origin of the term "Haratin"
remains speculative, the term may not date much earlier than the 18th century CE and has been
involuntarily assigned to darker skinned Maghrebians.[83] Prior to the modern use of the term
Haratin as an identifier, and used in contrast to bidan or bayd (white), sumr/asmar, suud/aswad,
or Sudan/sudani (black/brown) were Arabic terms used as identifiers for darker skinned
Maghrebians before the modern period.[83] "Haratin" is considered to be an offensive term by the
darker skinned Maghrebians it is intended to identify; for example, people in the southern region
(e.g., Wad Noun, Draa) of Morocco consider it to be an offensive term.[83] Despite
its historicity and etymology being questionable, European colonialists and European Africanists
have used the term Haratin as identifiers for groups of "black" and apparently "mixed" people
found in Algeria, Mauritania, and Morocco.[83]

The Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire serves as the precursor to later narratives that
grouped darker skinned Maghrebians together and identified their origins as being Sub-Saharan
West Africa.[84] With gold serving as a motivation behind the Saadian invasion of the Songhai
Empire, this made way for changes in latter behaviors toward dark-skinned Africans. [84] As a
result of changing behaviors toward dark-skinned Africans, darker skinned Maghrebians were
forcibly recruited into the army of Ismail Ibn Sharif as the Black Guard, based on the claim of
them having descended from enslaved peoples from the times of the Saadian invasion.
[84]
Shurafa historians of the modern period would later use these events in narratives about
the manumission of enslaved "Hartani" (a vague term, which, by merit of it needing further
definition, is implicit evidence for its historicity being questionable).[84] The narratives derived from
Shurafa historians would later become analogically incorporated into the Americanized narratives
(e.g., the trans-Saharan slave trade, imported enslaved Sub-Saharan West Africans, darker
skinned Magrebian freedmen) of the present-day European Africanist paradigm.[84]

As opposed to having been developed through field research, the analogy in the present-day
European Africanist paradigm, which conceptually alienates, dehistoricizes,
and denaturalizes darker skinned North Africans in North Africa and darker skinned Africans
throughout the Islamic world at-large, is primarily rooted in an Americanized textual tradition
inherited from 19th century European Christian abolitionists.[83] Consequently, reliable history, as
opposed to an antiquated analogy-based history, for darker skinned North Africans and darker
skinned Africans in the Islamic world are limited.[83] Part of the textual tradition generally
associates an inherited status of servant with dark skin (e.g., Negro labor, Negro
cultivators, Negroid slaves, freedman).[83] The European Africanist paradigm uses this as the
primary reference point for its construction of origins narratives for darker skinned North Africans
(e.g., imported slaves from Sub-Saharan West Africa).[83] With darker skinned North Africans or
darker skinned Africans in the Islamic world treated as an allegory of alterity, another part of the
textual tradition is the trans-Saharan slave trade and their presence in these regions are treated
as that of an African diaspora in North Africa and the Islamic world.[83] Altogether, darker skinned
North Africans (e.g., "black" and apparently "mixed" Maghrebians), darker skinned Africans in the
Islamic world, the inherited status of servant associated with dark skin, and the trans-Saharan
slave trade are conflated and modeled in analogy with African-Americans and the trans-Atlantic
slave trade.[83]

The trans-Saharan slave trade has been used as a literary device in narratives that analogically
explain the origins of darker skinned North Africans in North Africa and the Islamic world.
[83]
Caravans have been equated with slave ships, and the amount of forcibly enslaved Africans
transported across the Sahara are alleged to be numerically comparable to the considerably
large amount of forcibly enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic Ocean. [83] The
simulated narrative of comparable numbers is contradicted by the limited presence of darker
skinned North Africans in the present-day Maghreb.[83] As part of this simulated narrative, post-
classical Egypt has also been characterized as having plantations.[83] Another part of this
simulated narrative is an Orientalist construction of hypersexualized Moors, concubines,
and eunuchs.[83] Concubines in harems have been used as an explanatory bridge between the
allegation of comparable numbers of forcibly enslaved Africans and the limited amount of
present-day darker skinned Maghrebians who have been characterized as their diasporic
descendants.[83] Eunuchs were characterized as sentinels who guarded these harems.[84] The
simulated narrative is also based on the major assumption that the indigenous peoples of the
Maghreb were once purely white Berbers, who then
became biracialized through miscegenation with black concubines[83] (existing within a geographic
racial binary of pale-skinned Moors residing further north, closer to the Mediterranean region,
and dark-skinned Moors residing further south, closer to the Sahara).[84] The
religious polemical narrative involving the suffering of enslaved European Christians of
the Barbary slave trade has also been adapted to fit the simulated narrative of a comparable
number of enslaved Africans being transported by Muslim slaver caravans, from the south of
Saharan Africa, into North Africa and the Islamic world.[83]

Despite being an inherited part of the 19th century religious polemical narratives, the use of race
in the secularist narrative of the present-day European Africanist paradigm has given the
paradigm an appearance of possessing scientific quality.[84] The religious polemical narrative
(e.g., holy cause, hostile neologisms) of 19th century European abolitionists about Africa and
Africans are silenced, but still preserved, in the secularist narratives of the present-day European
Africanist paradigm.[83] The Orientalist stereotyped hypersexuality of the Moors were viewed by
19th century European abolitionists as deriving from the Quran.[84] The reference to times prior,
often used in concert with biblical references, by 19th century European abolitionists, may
indicate that realities described of Moors may have been literary fabrications. [84] The purpose of
these apparent literary fabrications may have been to affirm their view of the Bible as being
greater than the Quran and to affirm the viewpoints held by the readers of their composed works.
[84]
The adoption of 19th century European abolitionists' religious polemical narrative into the
present-day European Africanist paradigm may have been due to its correspondence with the
established textual tradition.[84] The use of stereotyped hypersexuality for Moors are what 19th
century European abolitionists and the present-day European Africanist paradigm have in
common.[84]

Due to a lack of considerable development in field research regarding enslavement in Islamic

societies, this has resulted in the present-day European Africanist paradigm relying on unreliable
estimates for the trans-Saharan slave trade.[84] However, insufficient data has also used as a
justification for continued use of the faulty present-day European Africanist paradigm. [84] Darker
skinned Maghrebians, particularly in Morocco, have grown weary of the lack of discretion foreign
academics have shown toward them, bear resentment toward the way they have been depicted
by foreign academics, and consequently, find the intended activities of foreign academics to be
predictable.[84] Rather than continuing to rely on the faulty present-day European Africanist
paradigm, Mohamed (2012) recommends revising and improving the current Africanist paradigm
(e.g., critical inspection of the origins and introduction of the present characterization of the
Saharan caravan; reconsideration of what makes the trans-Saharan slave trade, within its own
context in Africa, distinct from the trans-Atlantic slave trade; realistic consideration of the
experiences of darker-skinned Maghrebians within their own regional context). [84]

Conceptual Problems[edit]
Merolla (2017)[85] has indicated that the academic study of Sub-Saharan Africa and North
Africa by Europeans developed with North Africa being conceptually subsumed within the Middle
East and Arab world, whereas, the study of Sub-Saharan Africa was viewed as conceptually
distinct from North Africa, and as its own region, viewed as inherently the same. [85] The common
pattern of conceptual separation of continental Africa into two regions and the view of conceptual
sameness within the region of Sub-Saharan Africa has continued until present-day. [85] Yet, with
increasing exposure of this problem, discussion about the conceptual separation of Africa has
begun to develop.[85]

The Sahara has served as a trans-regional zone for peoples in Africa.[85] Authors from various
countries (e.g., Algeria, Cameroon, Sudan) in Africa have critiqued the conceptualization of the
Sahara as a regional barrier, and provided counter-arguments supporting the
interconnectedness of continental Africa; there are historic and cultural connections as well as
trade between West Africa, North Africa, and East Africa (e.g., North Africa with Niger and Mali,
North Africa with Tanzania and Sudan, major hubs of Islamic learning in Niger and Mali).[85] Africa
has been conceptually compartmentalized into meaning "Black Africa", "Africa South of the
 Sahara", and "Sub-Saharan Africa."[85] North Africa has been conceptually "Orientalized" and
separated from Sub-Saharan Africa.[85] While its historic development has occurred within a
longer time frame, the epistemic development (e.g., form, content) of the present-
day racialized conceptual separation of Africa came as a result of the Berlin Conference and
the Scramble for Africa.[85]

In African and Berber literary studies, scholarship has remained largely separate from one
another.[85] The conceptual separation of Africa in these studies may be due to
how editing policies of studies in the Anglophone and Francophone world are affected by
the international politics of the Anglophone and Francophone world.[85] While studies in the
Anglophone world have more clearly followed the trend of the conceptual separation of Africa,
the Francophone world has been more nuanced, which may stem from imperial policies relating
to French colonialism in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.[85] As the study of North Africa has
largely been initiated by the Arabophone and Francophone world, denial of the Arabic
language having become Africanized throughout the centuries it has been present in Africa has
shown that the conceptual separation of Africa remains pervasive in the Francophone world; this
denial may stem from historic development of the characterization of an Islamic Arabia existing
as a diametric binary to Europe.[85] Among studies in the Francophone world, ties between North
Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa have been denied or downplayed, while the ties (e.g., religious,
cultural) between the regions and peoples (e.g., Arab language and literature with Berber
language and literature) of the Middle East and North Africa have been established by
diminishing the differences between the two and selectively focusing on the similarities between
the two.[85] In the Francophone world, construction of racialized regions, such as Black
Africa (Sub-Saharan Africans) and White Africa (North Africans, e.g., Berbers and Arabs), has
also developed.[85]

Despite having invoked and used identities in reference to the racialized conceptualizations of
Africa (e.g., North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa) to oppose imposed identities, Berbers have
invoked North African identity to oppose Arabized and Islamicized identities, and Sub-Saharan
Africans (e.g., Negritude, Black Consciousness) and the African diaspora (e.g., Black is
Beautiful) have invoked and used black identity to oppose colonialism and racism.[85] While
Berber studies has largely sought to establish ties between Berbers and North Africa with Arabs
and the Middle East, Merolla (2017) indicated that efforts to establish ties between Berbers and
North Africa with Sub-Saharan Africans and Sub-Saharan Africa have recently started to being
undertaken.[85]

See also[edit]

 Africa portal

 History portal

 Architecture of Africa
 History of science and technology in Africa
 Military history of Africa
 Genetic history of Africa
 Economic history of Africa
 African historiography
 Historians of Africa
 List of history journals#Africa
 List of kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa
 List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa
 Outline of Africa#History of Africa
 Africa-Europe relations
 Africa-United States relations
 Africa–China relations
 Soviet Union-Africa relations

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deification and unusual representations in form of gods". Annales du Service des Antiquités
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Columbia University Press. Looks at the slave trade, the adaptation of Africans to new
conditions, their struggle for freedom and equality, and the establishment of a "black"
diaspora and its local influence around the world; covers 1430 to 2001.
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Further reading[edit]
 Byfield, Judith A. et al. eds. Africa and World War II (Cambridge UP, 2015).
 Clark, J. Desmond (1970). The Prehistory of Africa. Thames and Hudson
 Davidson, Basil (1964). The African Past. Penguin, Harmondsworth
 Devermont, Judd. "World Is Coming to Sub-Saharan Africa. Where Is the United States?"
(Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2018) online.
 Duignan, P., and L. H. Gann. The United States and Africa: A History (Cambridge University
Press, 1984)
 Fage, J.D. and Roland Oliver, eds. The Cambridge History of Africa (8 vol 1975–1986)
 Falola, Toyin. Africa, Volumes 1–5.
 FitzSimons, William. "Sizing Up the 'Small Wars' of African Empire: An Assessment of the
Context and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Colonial Warfare". Journal of African Military
History 2#1 (2018): 63–78. doi:10.1163/24680966-0020100
 French, Howard (2021). Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern
World, 1471 to the Second World War. New York: Liveright Publishing
Company. ISBN 9781631495823. OCLC 1268921040.
 Freund, Bill (1998). The Making of Contemporary Africa, Lynne Rienner, Boulder (including a
substantial "Annotated Bibliography" pp. 269–316).
 Herbertson, A. J. and O. J. R. Howarth. eds. The Oxford Survey Of The British Empire (6 vol
1914) on Africa; 550pp; comprehensive coverage of South Africa and British colonies
 July, Robert (1998). A History of the African People, (Waveland Press, 1998).
 Killingray, David, and Richard Rathbone, eds. Africa and the Second World War (Springer,
1986).
 Lamphear, John, ed. African Military History (Routledge, 2007).
 Obenga, Théophile (1980). Pour une Nouvelle Histoire Présence Africaine, Paris
 Reader, John (1997). Africa: A Biography of the Continent. Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0-241-
13047-6
 Roberts, Stephen H. History of French Colonial Policy (1870–1925) (2 vols., 1929) vol 1
online also vol 2 online; comprehensive scholarly history
 Shillington, Kevin (1989). History of Africa, New York: St. Martin's.
 Thornton, John K. Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (Routledge, 1999).
 UNESCO (1980–1994). General History of Africa . 8 volumes.
 Worden, Nigel (1995). The Making of Modern South Africa, Oxford UK, Cambridge US:
Blackwell.
Atlases[edit]
 Ajayi, A.J.F. and Michael Crowder. Historical Atlas of Africa (1985); 300 color maps.
 Fage, J.D. Atlas of African History (1978)
 Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P. The New Atlas of African History (1991).
 Kwamena-Poh, Michael, et al. African history in Maps (Longman, 1982).
 McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of African History (2nd ed. 1996). excerpt
Historiography[edit]
 Boyd, Kelly, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writers (Rutledge, 1999) 1:4–14.
 Fage, John D. "The development of African historiography." General history of Africa 1
(1981): 25-42. online
 Lonsdale, John. "States and social processes in Africa: a historiographical survey." African
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