Description
Africa has moved from international conflict under foreign domination to struggles for political sovereignty and economic independence. Looking at the changes in Africa's fortunes since 1935, this volume examines the challenges of nation-building and socio-cultural changes affecting the continent. The series is co-published in Africa with seven publishers, in the United States and Canada by the University of California Press, and in association with the UNESCO Press.
Africa Since 1935 is the eighth installment in UNESCO's groundbreaking General History of Africa series, arguably the most factual and comprehensive source of information about the continent ever published. Edited by noted Kenyan scholar Ali A. Mazrui, this chronicle covers the years from the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia to today's violent conflicts. More than 30 scholars contribute to show how a complex syncretization of Islam, Western language, Christianity, capitalism, socialism, and Soviet Communism ultimately forged a continent-wide response to European dominance that "Africanized Africa." Nation builders--including Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, Senegal's Leopold Senghor, Egypt's Gamal Nasser, and South Africa's Nelson Mandela, as well as despots (Uganda's Idi Amin, the former Zaire's Mobuto Sese Seko, and Ethiopia's Haile Mengistu), are equally represented. The scholars also examine the wars in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Angola--a violent chaos brought on by AIDS, famine, political mismanagement, economic corruption, and ethnic hatred; they also note the positive contributions of Pan-Africanism and the artistic, scientific, and moral rebirth of the continent. "[B]y fighting for their own dignity," Mazrui writes, "Africans have also shocked the rest of the world into a new appreciation of global human history. That is the story of this volume."
--Eugene Holley Jr.
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