In his diary, Antera Duke (ca.1735-ca.1809) wrote the only surviving eyewitness account of the slave trade by an African merchant. A leader in late eighteenth-century Old Calabar, a cluster of Efik-speaking communities in the Cross River region, he resided in Duke Town, forty-five miles from the Atlantic Ocean in what is now southeast Nigeria. His diary, written in trade English from 1785 to 1788, is a candid account of daily life in an African community at the height of Calabar's overseas...

From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart—a long-awaited memoir of coming of age in a fragile new nation, and its destruction in a tragic civil warFor more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’...

In "The Confessions of Nat Turner," the eponymous protagonist recounts the harrowing journey that culminated in the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia. Written in a deeply confessional style, the text oscillates between a stark realism and poignant introspection, capturing the psychological turmoil of enslaved individuals and their struggle for dignity and autonomy. The narrative stands as both a historical document and a piece of creative literature, inviting readers into the complexities o...

The Tragedy of Victory: On-the-Spot Account of the Nigeria-Biafra War in the Atlantic Theatre is a chronological narrative of the war that lasted from July 6, 1967 to January 15, 1970. With about 500 photographs and maps and facts, told with accuracy, the well-organised and efficient Third Marine Commandos, earlier commanded by Col. Benjamin Adekunle (with Lt. Col. G. Alabi-Isama, as the Chief of Staff) had already controlled the Atlantic coast from Bonny to Calabar before Col. Olusegun Obas...

The most comprehensive, profound, and accurate book ever written in the history of modern Sudan, Integration and Fragmentation of the Sudan: An African Renaissance, is an encyclopedia of ancient and modern history as well as the politics of Sudan. It is a library of data that discusses Sudan from its economic, political, and social standpoint since the Arab discovery and use of the term Bilad es Sudan up through the modern republic of the Sudan after which South and North Sudan collided in...

'If you want to understand Nigeria's history in one succinct go, this is a very good choice.'Noo Saro-WiwaKnown as the African Giant, Nigeria's story is complex and often contradictory. How, despite the ravages of colonialism, civil war, ongoing economic disappointment and most recently the Boko Haram insurgency, has the country managed to stay together for a hundred years? Why, despite an abundance of oil, mineral and agricultural wealth, have so many of its people remained...

Through the Dark Continent is essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth century Africa and the European explorers who travelled through it.Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) was a Welsh-American journalist and explorer who was famous for his exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Upon finding Livingstone, Stanley reportedly asked, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley is also known for his search fo...

The history of Liberia and the United States are closely tied together, but few people have taken the necessary steps to understand the complicated relationship between the two countries.Liberia: Americas Footprint in Africa traces the history of an African nation whose fate is closely tied to an uprising of slaves that began on the island that is now Haiti.The violence there caused people in the United States to wonder about the future of slavery and blacks in th...

For the past decade, Boko Haram has relentlessly terrorized northeastern Nigeria. Few if any explanations for the rise of this violent insurgent group look beyond its roots in worldwide jihadism and recent political conflicts in central Africa. Searching for Boko Haram is the first book to examine the insurgency within the context of centuries, millennia even, of cultural change in the region. The book surveys the deep history of the lands south of Lake Chad, richly documented in ...

No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky stands as a key text in the history of the eleven-year struggle against Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Though perhaps less well known than the struggles in Angola and Mozambique, the liberation war waged by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) easily ranks alongside those conflicts as an example of an African independence movement triumphing against overwhelming odds.Basil Davidson, ...

Situated along the Senegal River, the Kingdom of Waalo was the smallest of the Wolof states of Senegal, but it illustrates the broader consequences of a shift from trans-Saharan to trans-Atlantic commerce during a time of competing European, Muslim, and indigenous African forces. From the establishment of a French trading post in 1659 to the early nineteenth century, the history of Waalo was closely tied to French interests in St. Louis, popular revolutionary Islamic movements, and interna...

International media coverage in the 1960s and early 1970s represented the Biafran War, in which the state of Biafra attempted to secede from the Nigerian Federation, as a grand humanitarian disaster, characterised by sustained conflict, starvation and genocide. Using interviews and newly-released archival material, Michael Gould questions this depiction, examining the role of foreign parties in the conflict and the impact of propaganda upon its international reception both during and after...