Library books on Africa

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Many people rely on their local public libraries for new
reading and information. I find that when it comes to
Africa the materials that libraries retain and do not
discard are nearly wholly ethnocentric and outdated.
Nor is this condition remedied by donating current up
to date volumes. I tried and found my donations were
discarded within two years or labeled stolen but with
no intentions of replacing. Meanwhile I find multiple
copies of volumes approaching 30 or more years of age.

What particularly irks me are the pre-history chapters.
This is where peopling, neolithicization, and initial
cultures/polities are examined and explained. That is
where the foundation is laid for ethnocentric proposal
on all other time periods polities and accomplishments.

So I would like to broach a thread that examines, one
book per post, and rates what's available in your local
public library (university stacks are also fair game) and
how grossly, or benignly, ethnocentric and behind the
times they are.

To end on a positive note don't be shy in informing of
books that aren't so ethnocentric and are up to date.
Please, no random so-called debating about the meaning
of ethnocentricity or postulating uninformed opinions are
as valid as writings based on field research and scientific
studies/reports. There's a reason why even 20 year old
books can become woefully slack vs today's knowledge.

[sundiata]

I am probably too "new school" for my own good since I systematically avoid older material for the very reasons you've addressed, with the exception of cross referencing bibliographies from other books and research papers. This is a bad habit as I know there is vital information in older material that is necessary for any prospective scholar to examine.

A decent book that you may find interesting that IS newer and does NOT fit the old paradigm is "On Trans-Saharan Trails" (2009) by Ghislaine Lydon. I have the ebook and will upload it in the "Uploaded Studies" thread on ES if you or anyone else would like to read it.

It explores the relational dynamics between traders across the Sahara, going beyond rigid ideas of ethnicity and gender roles in establishing a comprehensive model for studying "Trans-Saharan" Africa in its totality. She's out of UCLA (where Ehret professes) so the sentiment that the Sahara desert has never been a divide and that groups within it and on its periphery are equally African (tied together by common history and interaction within this African space), isn't surprising for her as this is widely shared over there and even directly stated on their History department website.

Anyways, here's an except from chapter 1 to bring home the point:

Saharan history and its misperception


The history of the Sahara is marked by the ebbs and flows of peoples and caravans. In the same way that recent scholars have tackled the concept of liquid continents by historicizing the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, as Fernand Braudel did decades earlier for the Mediterranean, one must think of the Sahara as a dynamic space with a deep history.10 It was a contact zone where teams of camels transported ideas, cultural practices, peoples, and commodities. Yet the Sahara, representing one-third of the African continental landmass, has remained largely outside the radar of traditional scholarship, especially in North America where research has been landlocked in the area studies paradigm. Historically, the Sahara was perceived as a natural barrier dividing the continent. Indeed, this land has rarely attracted scholars of “Sub-Saharan” Africa who prefer to think of themselves as specialists of an Africa located “south of the Sahara.” Concurrently, historians of North Africa often ignore the peoples living on the desert edge or in the less populated south. Instead, they tend to focus on the historical relationship with Europe and the Middle East, or emphasize the northern caravan trade, all the while disregarding North Africa’s “African” roots. The Sahara, stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea, therefore remains unappreciated by many historians on either side of the African divide. Despite perceptions to the contrary, the countries bordering the Sahara are united by a common history. When transcending the notion of a “Saharan frontier” and examining the itineraries of trans-Saharan families, it is easy to see that the history of the desert, just like that of the ocean, is marked by continuous exchanges. I treat West and North Africa as one region with the Sahara sealing the continent rather than dividing it. In this book “western Africa” includes what is typically referred to as West Africa in addition to the Sahara, stretching to its northwestern (southern Morocco, western Sahara, southern Algeria) and central (Niger, southern Libya, Chad) edges.


Saharans: Betwixt and Between


The notion of an Africa divided by the vast Sahara Desert was not a product of the post–World War II geo-politics that led to the area-studies paradigm. Rather, it has antecedents in a long-drawn history of “otherings” rooted in antiquity. Herodotus spoke of the northern desert edge as “the wild beast region,” while characterizing the area to the south as “the ridge of sand.”11 Although located beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and therefore outside the range of Herodotus’ descriptions of the eastern region, the western Sahara was the land of Hanno’s legendary or mythical voyage.12 Whether or not it was the quest for gold that may have precipitated Hanno’s Periplus in the fifth century b.c.e., the lure of that precious metal and the desire for slaves propelled Jews and later Muslims, to follow trans-Saharan trade routes into the western African interior. Muslim geographers named the region al-Sahra¯ ’, Arabic for “the Desert,” also referred to as al-S_ahra¯ ’ al-Kubra¯ (or “the Great Desert”). They viewed it as an intermediate zone beyond which was the Bila¯d al-S
uda¯n or “Land of the Blacks.” In an attempt to describe an area they barely understood, these early writers used this expression to discriminate between Africans so as to set apart “Blacks” from “Arabs” and “Berbers” of Muslim North Africa, recently incorporated into the abode of Islam (Da¯ r al-Isla¯m). The limits of an imaginary Bila¯d al-S
uda¯n were redefined when a series of North African migrations, which began in earnest in the eleventh century, displaced many Saharan dwellers forced to migrate toward the southern desert edge. Ironically, some of these groups began identifying themselves as “Whites” (Bı¯d_a¯n) and speaking of a “Land of the Whites” (T_ra¯b al-Bı¯d_ a¯n) united by the use of a common language, the Arabic-based H_ asa¯ nı¯ya.13 In the fifteenth century, Portuguese maritime explorers, vying for African gold, heralded a new age of imperialism. European explorers, and later colonial rulers, would reinvent Africa on their own terms by also applying a color line to their racial mappings of the continent. Africans as well as foreigners have long discussed the Sahara as betwixt between. In fact, the most celebrated Mauritanian author of the late nineteenth century, Ah_mad al-Amı¯n al-Shinqı¯t_ ı¯, weighed in on a longstanding debate about whether his place of origin, “the country of Shinqı¯t_ i” (Bila¯d Shinqı¯t_), was part of “Black Africa” (S
uda¯n) or northwest Africa (Maghrib).14 So eager was this author to prove that this Saharan region did not belong to “the Land of the Blacks,” as was the prevailing opinion in Mecca, that this controversy may well have inspired him to write his anthology in the first place. So he pondered:

Is Shinqı¯t_i part of the S
uda¯n or the Maghrib? Shinqı¯t_ i is part of the Maghrib . . .and this is well known to the people of Shinqı¯t_i and the people of the Maghrib. But several Easterners dispute this, claiming instead that it is part of the S
uda¯ n. Even some people of Shinqı¯t_ i believe this. . . . So I told them that they are from the extreme southern part of the Maghrib (aqs_a¯) al-maghrib).

Al-Shinqı¯t_ ı¯ refers to the case of an eighteenth-century pilgrim from Shinqı¯t_ i who, in order to prove this very point, sought several fatwas, or legal opinions, including an acknowledgment issued by the Sultan of Morocco. Tragically, the pilgrim died before making his case in Mecca. Moreover, al-Shinqı¯t_ı¯ claims that another scholar who held the opposite view, namely, that the people of Shinqı¯t_ i were from the S
uda¯n, had misquoted one of his sources.16 But judging from the mockery with which his arguments were received, al-Shinqı¯t_ ı¯ does not seem to have succeeded in convincing his audience. That such debates were taking place, however, is indicative of Saharans’ ongoing crisis of identity as Africans caught between two shores. At the same time, they reflect the shifting borders of the Bila¯d al-S
uda¯n both in the minds of Muslims and in the physical distancing caused by desertification. For centuries, the Sahara Desert has captured the Western imagination. It conjures visions of torrid heat waves rising over an endless sea of burning sand dunes where only nomads on spiteful camels dared to tread. So it is not surprising that, given its inaccessibility, the Sahara was the last portion of the African continent to be carved up by European conquest. But for the most part, this region was less affected by colonial rule

www.amazon.com/Trans-Saharan-Trails-Networks-Cross-Cultural-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0521887240

[anansi]

The main branch of the Brooklyn library on Grand Army plaza was always good at-least on my last visit to NY.

[anansi]

The main branch of the Brooklyn library on Grand Army plaza was always good at-least on my last visit to NY.

[zarahan]

Same at my local library as al-Takuri says.
All I have to do is go to the 'Egyptian" section and
old volumes circa 1962 to 1970something are still in place.
Still I do find different editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica
sometimes interesting. The older editions surprisingly gives more
accurate detail on African cultural diversity than the newer ones sometimes
where the info as disappeared. As late as the 1984 edition for example
the following appeared on a separate article called "Egyptian Religion"

Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508


"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."
"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."


By the 1990 edition the info had vanished. Also in the 1990 edition, statements bout skeletal studies
"showing the presence of the negroid element" (pre 1984 editions) had disappeared
and the 1990 edition now talked about ancient Egyptian cranial shapes as "Armenoid",
whatever that means. Now the "Armenoid phase" has disappeared. So older books
despite their often distorted and ethnocentric content can yield valuable tidbits. Its
just finding them is the problem.

[maiherpra]

I like one book in particular from my local library: History of West Africa, Volume One.; J F Ade Ajaye & Michael Crowder. Published 1st in 1971, but it has valuable info on historic civilizations--from Ancient Ghana to the Mossi kingdoms. However racist ideas still persist: the Fulbe are described as having 'white features' and the Sanhaja Berbers are also all white. And ofcourse there is that whole lie about Almoravids conquering Ancient Ghana.