Open Internet Collections
- Open Knowledge Repository, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Open Knowledge Repository contains the World Bank’s premium research dealing with key aspects of development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Africa - Country Pages (University of Pennsylvania)Click on a country's name for links to cultural, political, and economic web sites for each African nation. Not all links are active.
Books and e-books
The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources
The two-volume Encyclopedia builds a theoretical foundation for the field, expanding the ways that Africa can be studied, and recovering the histories of the continent that often appear outside of the documentary record.
Africa : an introduction to history, politics and society
The textbook provides an in-depth overview of African history and politics from the Atlantic slave trade, through the phases of colonialism and decolonization, to the development problems of the present. Various development theories are used to explain successful and failed development paths of individual countries after 1960. Thematic foci include Europe's colonial legacy, state formation and state failure, democratization, the curse of raw materials, population growth, hunger and poverty, ethnic conflicts, and the roles of the World Bank, EU, and China as external actors in Africa.
Mother Earth, Mother Africa and African Indigenous Religions
Africans embrace all of life, the humanity of each person, the world, and the creation of God. Consequently, African indigenous education reflects the completeness of life itself. The various chapters in this volume recount religious events and experiences from individual perspectives as they are unfolding on the continent. The different voices show how modernity, colonisation, urbanisation, Christianity, and technology have sidelined beliefs and practices of African traditional religions (ATRs) to the detriment of the environment.
African Dominion
A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book, the first on this period of the region's history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally.
History of South Africa
South Africa was born in war, has been cursed by crises and ruptures, and today stands on a precipice once again. This book explores the country's tumultuous journey from the Second Anglo-Boer War to 2021. Drawing on diaries, letters, oral testimony and diplomatic reports, Thula Simpson follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, insurrections, massacres, crashes and epidemics that have shaped the nation.
New Encyclopedia of Africa
Addresses the entire history of African cultures from the pharaohs and the ancient civilizations of the south through the colonial era to the emergence of 53 independent countries, some of them newly emergent in world commerce and others deep in conflict. Covers issues facing the continent such as global development, the AIDS crisis, and international terrorism.
Library Databases
- European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: French Colonialism in Africa: From Algeria to Madagascar, 1910-1930 This link opens in a new windowThis collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the French colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and problems along the Moroccan-Algerian border.
- European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: Italian Colonies in North Africa and Aggression in East Africa, 1930-1939 This link opens in a new windowItalian colonial aspirations and policies mimicked those of other European countries during the modern period. Italian colonial policy during the period 1930-1939 was shaped more by Fascism. Fascist tenets related to governance and social policy was used in the administration and treatment of the African population in Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, and Italian East Africa. This collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities.
- European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: Political and Economic Consolidation of Portuguese Colonies in Africa, 1910-1929 This link opens in a new windowThis collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the Portuguese colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and the industrialization and economic exploitation of Portugal’s African colonies.
- Evangelism in Africa: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, 1835-1910 This link opens in a new windowThe records of the Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) of the Presbyterian Church provide valuable information on social conditions in developing nations and on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century. Among the missions’ responsibilities was the establishment of indigenous churches, educational facilities, hospitals, orphanages, and seminaries. The majority of the material in this collection consists of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters.