Davidson, Basil

Boston. 1978. Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown. 1st American Edition. A Few Penned Numbers And School Stamp On Front Free Endpaper, Otherwise Good.No Dustjacket. 0316174351. 431 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Africa History . FROM THE PUBLISHER - This book is a history of modern Africa, from the 1880s to the present day, by way of the development of African political ideas and practice. It is a history that is here considered, above all, from the standpoint of nationalism through the twentieth century. Through long previous development, the Africans of the nineteenth century had organized themselves into a very large number of communities. A hundred years later, through an extraordinary and perhaps unique experience, they became organized into some fifty nations, forty-six on a count of the mid-70s with several more on the way. One phase of history came to an end. Another evidently began, and now continues. Why? How? What ideas have steered, and steer, this transformation? Few writers have done more to analyze and explain the history and culture of Africa than Basil Davidson. Few by their long and intimate experiences are better qualified to answer these questions. In this important new synthesis, Basil Davidson writes from the belief that the new history of Africa flows organically out of the old, and it is otherwise inexplicable. The ‘colonial period' is seem not as an episode but as an interlude of complex, often contradictory consequences precisely because the new imperialism did not operate in a vacuum, but with the crowded arena of African society. inventory #22108 ISBN: 0316174351.