HIST 270(S) Early African History Through the Era of the Slave Trade*

This course introduces students to the early history of the peoples of Africa, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa (students interested in North Africa will have the opportunity to take my course on North Africa next term). The course begins with the origins of late stone-age African civilizations (ca. 25,000 BCE) and runs through the late-eighteenth-century years of most intensive exports of slaves. It concentrates on people and civilizations indigenous to Africa. It therefore notices Asian and European visitors mostly as Africans influenced them and takes up foreigners and outside ideas only as Africans made use of them. Such extraneous (though related) topics as the origins of Islam, the Atlantic slave trade, European wars that touched African shores, the African Diaspora in the New World, and European explorers and missionaries receive only passing attention. The emphasis in this course on the African sides of these, and other aspects of world history provides a valuable alternative perspective on apparently familiar events elsewhere around the globe. Evaluation will be based on class participation, two shorts papers, an hour exam, and a final exam. Groups C and D

Hour:  MUTONGI