Cheikh Anta Diop Reading List

This reading list is named after Cheikh Anta Diop in recognition of the impact Cheikh Anta Diop had on the advancement of knowledge of Africans, descendants of Africans and Africans in diaspora of African history and African achievements in the context of world history.

The reason for creating this list is to provide:

• Cultural esteem to the readers;
• A chance to develop a love of reading. A love of reading produces future authors, inspiration for content creation (films, tv series, podcasts); and
• An opportunity to develop enhanced critical thinking.

This reading list isn’t limited to resources written by African writers but includes non-African writers who have produced accurate African History.

Foundations, methods and big-picture African history

1177 BC: The year civilization collapsed by Eric H. Cline

A History of Nigeria by Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton

A History of the Yoruba People by Stephen Adebanji Akintoye

A Popular History of Benin: The Rise and Fall of a Mighty Forest Kingdom by Peter M Roese and Dmitri M Bondarenko

Accounting for Slavery Masters and Management Caitlin Rosenthal

African Kingdoms: A Guide to the Kingdoms of Songhay, Kongo, Benin, Oyo and

Dahomey c.1400 – c.1800 by Dr Toby Green

Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions by Jane Landers

Before Colour Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks by Frank M Snowden

Black and British by David Olusoga

Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann

Civilization or Barbarism An Authentic Anthropology by Cheikh Anta Diop

General History of Africa Volume I – Methodology and African Prehistory by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume II – Ancient civilizations of Africa by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume III – Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume IV – Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume V – Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume VI – Africa in the Nineteenth Century until the 1880s by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume VII – Africa under Colonial Domination 1880-1935 by UNESCO*

General History of Africa Volume VIII – Africa since 1935 by UNESCO*

Kiswahili : past, present, and future horizons by Rocha Chimera

Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society by Ifi Amadiume

Precolonial Black Africa by Cheikh Anta Diop

Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World by Rebecca F. Kennedy

Rome in Africa by Susan Raven

Secret Cures of Slaves by Londa Schiebinger

Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy by George J.M. James

The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? By Cheikh Anta Diop

The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo by Cecile Fromont

The Cambridge History of Africa: From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC. By J. Desmond Clark

The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 by Christopher Ehret

The Crime of the Congo by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Formation of Yoruba Nation and the Challenge of Leadership Since the Pre-Colonial Era by Dr Jadesola Tai Babalola

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E Baptist

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge by V. Y. Mudimbe

The Kaiser’s Holocaust by Casper Erichsen and David Olusoga

The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization by Laszlo Torok

The World’s War by David Olusoga

Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa’dī’s Ta’rīkh al-sudān down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents by John O Hunwick

White Gold by Giles Milton

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past by David Reich

* International Scientific Committee for the drafting of a General History of Africa

Deep time Africa: archaeology, origins and early innovation

Ann Brower Stahl, African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction (Blackwell, 2005)

David W. Phillipson, African Archaeology (Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed.)

Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah and Alex Okpoko (eds.), The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns (Routledge, 1993)

Graham Connah, African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed.)

Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 is already listed above and is especially valuable here for linking archaeology, language and early state formation.

Nile Valley, Nubia and ancient north-east Africa

Basil Davidson, Africa in History (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)

Shinnie P. L., Ancient Nubia (Kegan Paul International)

Derek A. Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (British Museum Press)

Stuart Tyson Smith, Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypt’s Nubian Empire (Routledge)

David O’Connor, Ancient Nubia: Egypt’s Rival in Africa (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

The Horn of Africa and the Red Sea world

Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh University Press)

Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia 1270–1527 (Oxford University Press)

Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopians: A History (Blackwell)

Mordechai Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea: The Rise and Decline of the Solomonic Dynasty and Muslim-European Rivalry in the Region (Routledge)

Swahili cities, Indian Ocean trade and East African worlds

Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Adria LaViolette (eds.), The Swahili World (Routledge)

Neville Chittick, Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City on the East African Coast (British Institute in Eastern Africa)

Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Blackwell)

Felicitas Becker, Becoming Muslim in Mainland Tanzania, 1890–2000 (Oxford University Press)

Rocha Chimera’s Kiswahili : past, present, and future horizons, already listed above, fits naturally alongside these works and helps connect language to culture, identity and long-distance exchange.

Southern Africa, stone cities and state formation

Peter Garlake, Great Zimbabwe (Thames & Hudson)

Thomas N. Huffman, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of Social Complexity in Southern Africa (Cambridge University Press / regional academic editions)

David Beach, A Zimbabwean Past: Shona Dynastic Histories and Oral Traditions (Mambo Press)

Carol Summers, Colonial Lessons: Africans’ Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918–1940 (Heinemann)

Women, gender, thought and African intellectual history

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (University of Minnesota Press)

Nkiru Nzegwu, Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture (SUNY Press)

Valentin-Yves Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa, already listed above, should be read slowly and critically because it helps readers think about how knowledge about Africa has been framed, filtered and sometimes distorted.

Colonialism, resistance and the making of modern Africa

Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge University Press)

Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (PublicAffairs)

Frederick Cooper, Africa in the World: Capitalism, Empire, Nation-State (Harvard University Press)

Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press)

Crawford Young, The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010 (University of Wisconsin Press)

Diaspora, race, slavery and Africa in world history

John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (Cambridge University Press)

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Verso)

Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge University Press)

Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (Verso)

Additional recommendations

The Songhay Empire

Books:

Manuel Barcia Paz, Soldier-Slaves in the Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

PF de Moraes Farias, Medieval Arabic Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2003)

Bruce Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600- 1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

John O. Hunwick (ed.), Sharīa in Songhay: The Replies of Al-Maghīlī to the Questions of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

John O Hunwick (ed.), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa’dī’s Ta’rīkh al-sudān down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

M. Last, The Sokoto Caliphate

N. Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London: Methuen, 1973)

Ghislaine Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

N. Levtzion and JFB Hopkins (eds.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000)

Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018)

Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicles and Songhay-Tuareg History is especially useful for readers who want to move beyond simplified textbook narratives and into the documentary world that shaped Sahelian political history.

The Kingdom of the Kongo (1400 – 1709)

Books:

D. Birmingham, Trade and Conflict in Angola: The Mbundu and their Neighbours Under the Influence of the Portuguese (1966; The Clarendon Press)

M. Candido, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and its Hinterland (2013; Cambridge University Press)

R Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Trade in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil in the Era of the Slave Trade (2012; Cambridge University Press)

Cecile Fromont, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo(2014; University of North Carolina Press).

R. Harms, River of wealth, river of sorrow : the central Zaire basin in the era of the slave and ivory trade, 1500-1891 (1981; Yale University Press)

L. Heywood and J. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Birth of the Americas, 1585-1660 (2007; Cambridge University Press)

A. Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (1985; The Clarendon Press)

W. MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire (1986; University of Chicago Press).

J. Miller, Kings and Kingsmen: early Mbundu States in Angola (1976; The Clarendon Press)

J. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 (1988; University of Wisconsin Press)

L. Newson and S. Minchin, From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish America in the Early 17th Century (2007; Brill)

J. Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil war and Transition, 1641-1719 (1983; University of Wisconsin Press)

J. Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (1998; Cambridge University Press)

J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savannah (1965; University of Wisconsin Press)

Articles:

L. Heywood, ‘Slavery and its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1800’, Journal of African History 50/1, 1-22 (2009)

W. MacGaffey, ‘Lineage Structure, Marriage and the Family Amongst the Central Bantu’, Journal of African History 24/2, pp. 173-87 (1983)

W. MacGaffey, ‘Changing Representations in Central African History’, Journal of African History 46/2, pp. 189- 207, (2005)

J. Miller, ‘Capitalism and Slaving: The Financial and Commercial Organization of the Angolan Slave Trade, According to the Accounts of Antonio Coelho Guerreiro (1684-1692)’, International Journal of African Historical Studies (17), (1984)

J. Thornton and A. Mosterman, ‘A Reinterpretation of the Kongo-Portuguese War of 1622 According to New Documentary Evidence’, Journal of African History 51/2, pp. 235-48 (2010)

J. Thornton, ‘Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation’, History in Africa 8, pp. 183-204 (1981).

Linda M. Heywood (ed.), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Mariana P. Candido and Adam Jones (eds.), African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability and Mobility, 1660–1880 (Boydell & Brewer)

The Kingdoms and empires of Oyo and Dahomey, c.1608–c.1800

Books:

I. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbours 1708-1818 (1967; Cambridge University Press)

S. Alpern, Amazons of Black Sparta: the women warriors of Dahomey (1998; C. Hurst & Co)

N. Argenti: The intestines of the state : youth, violence, and belated histories in the Cameroon grassfields. (2007; University of Chicago Press)

E. Bay, Wives of the Leopard: gender, politics and culture in the kingdom of Dahomey (1995; University Press of Virginia)

R. Law, The Oyo Empire, c. 1600-c.1836: A West African Imperialism in the Era of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (1977; Clarendon Press).

:- The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750: the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on an African society (1991; Oxford University Press)

:- Ouidah: the social history of a West African slaving ‘port’ (2004; James Currey)

P. Manning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey 1640-1960 (1982; Cambridge University Press)

J Cameron Monroe: The Precolonial State in West Africa: Building Power in Dahomey (2014; Cambridge University Press).

Roland Oliver, The Cambridge History of Africa. (1975; Cambridge University Press).

Roland Oliver & Anthony Atmore, Medieval Africa 1250- 1800. (2001; Cambridge University Press).

Articles:

Ana Lucia Araujo (2012). “Dahomey, Portugal, and Bahia: King Adandozan and the Atlantic Slave Trade.” Slavery and Abolition 33, no. 1: 1–19.

Stephen Goddard, (Jun 1971). “Ago That became Oyo: An Essay in Yoruba Historical Geography”. The Geographical Journal (Blackwell Publishing) 137 (2): 207–211.

Robin Law (1975). “A West African Cavalry State: The Kingdom of Oyo”. The Journal of African History 16 (1): 1–15.

Robin Law (1986), ‘Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey’, Journal of African History 27/2

Robin Law (1989), ‘Slave-Raiders and Middlemen, Monopolists and Free-Traders: The Supply of Slaves for the Atlantic Trade in Dahomey c. 1715-1850,’ Journal of African History 30/1

Robin Law (1990) ,‘“The Common People Were Divided”: Monarchy, Aristocracy and Political Factionalism in the Kingdom of Whydah, 1671-1727’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 23/2

D. Ross (1982),‘The Anti-Slave Trade Theme in Dahomean History: An Examination of the Evidence’, History in Africa 9

D. Ross (1987), ‘The Dahomean Middleman System, 1727- c. 1818’, Journal of African History 28/3

D. Ross, (1989), ‘Robert Norris, Agaja, and the Dahomean Conquest of Allada and Whydah,’ History in Africa 16

Suggested additions:

Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas (first published 1921; multiple modern editions)

J. F. Ade Ajayi and Robert Smith (eds.), Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press / Ibadan academic editions)

Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900 (Indiana University Press)

The kingdom of Benin (c. 1500 – 1750)

Books:

Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Benin: Royal Arts of a West African Kingdom (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008).

RE Bradbury, Benin Studies (London: International Africa Institute, 1973)

H Ling-Roth, Great Benin: Its Customs, Art and Horrors (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968; first published 1903).

Lt-Gen Pitt-Rivers: Antique Works of Art from Benin (London: Harrison & Son, 1900)

Peter M Roese and Dmitri M Bondarenko, A Popular History of Benin: The Rise and Fall of a Mighty Forest Kingdom (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003)

AFC Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (Harlow: Longmans, Green & Co, 1969)

Suggested additions:

Paula Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin (British Museum Press / Thames & Hudson editions)

Barbara Plankensteiner (ed.), Benin: Kings and Rituals, Court Arts from Nigeria (Museum für Völkerkunde / Snoeck)

Jacob U. Egharevba, A Short History of Benin (Ibadan University Press and other editions)

Further regional additions for a more complete African history shelf

Great Zimbabwe and southern Africa:

Peter Garlake, Great Zimbabwe (Thames & Hudson)

Thomas N. Huffman, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe

Ethiopia and the Horn:

Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity

Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia 1270–1527

Swahili Coast and East Africa:

Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Adria LaViolette (eds.), The Swahili World

Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society

Modern Africa after colonial rule:

Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present

Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror

A practical reading path for beginners

Readers who are completely new to African history may find it useful to begin with the UNESCO General History of Africa volumes, then move to Christopher Ehret, Cheikh Anta Diop, and selected regional studies such as Kongo, Benin, Oyo, Dahomey, Songhay, Kush, Aksum and Great Zimbabwe. After that, works on slavery, colonialism, gender, race and the modern period will make far more sense because the reader will already know that African history did not begin with European contact. That myth needs retiring, preferably with dramatic speed.