Discover how European colonization across the many regions in Africa dramatically altered the continent and the daily lived experiences of its peoples.

Daily Life in Colonial Africa explores nine facets of daily life in the European-colonized African continent, such as domestic, economic, political, and religious life. Examples of everyday people-farmers forced to switch to cash crops, people of faith melding native traditions and European Christian doctrine on beliefs about the afterlife, storytellers using allegory to discreetly challenge colonial rule-show how colonialization impacted every aspect of life for Africa's indigenous people, as well as how they adapted to new ways of life while maintaining their cultural roots. Alongside the main text, helpful additional resources such as a timeline of the colonization of Africa and a glossary of terms provide useful context for understanding what life in this period of history was truly like for the many different people and groups affected by Africa's colonization.

An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe's novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework.

Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe's literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa's present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer's works - novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays - as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa.

The raw creativity found in Achebe's stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story - precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial - have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer's works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.

A History of Africa is available in a combined print or e-Book volume, or in split e-Book volumes (Volume One: to 1880 and Volume Two: since 1870).

An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe's novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework.

Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe's literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa's present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer's works - novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays - as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa.

The raw creativity found in Achebe's stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story - precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial - have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer's works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.

The African diaspora is arguably the most important event in modern African history. From the fifteenth century to the present, millions of Africans have been dispersed -- many of them forcibly, others driven by economic need or political persecution -- to other continents, creating large communities with African origins living outside their native lands. The majority of these communities are in North America. This historic displacement has meant that Africans are irrevocably connected to economic and political developments in the West and globally. Among the known legacies of the diaspora are slavery, colonialism, racism, poverty, and underdevelopment, yet the ways in which thesesame factors worked to spur the scattering of Africans are not fully understood -- by those who were part of this migration or by scholars, historians, and policymakers.

In this definitive study of the diaspora in NorthAmerica, Toyin Falola offers a causal history of the western dispersion of Africans and its effects on the modern world. Reengaging old and familiar debates and framing new ones that enrich the discourse surrounding Africa, Falola isolates the thread, running nearly six centuries, that connects the history of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and current migrations. A boon to scholars and policymakers and accessible to the general reader, the book explores diverse narratives of migration and shows that the cultures that migrated from Africa to the Americas have the capacity to unite and create a new pan-Africanist movement within the globalized world.

Toyin Falolais the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the 2011 recipient of the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association and serves as the vice president of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. His previous books published by the University of Rochester Press include The Power of AfricanCultures and Nationalism and African Intellectuals.

In Global Yorùbá, renowned scholar Toyin Falola covers the history, people, traditions, environment, religion, spirituality, cosmology, culture, and philosophy of one of Africa's largest cultural groups, the Yorùbá, all while considering the people's relationship with their immediate and distant neighbors.

Falola examines how the Yorùbán people have adapted to their environment and tapped it to (re)invent their civilization, shape their culture and traditions, and inform their socioeconomic relations with their neighbors. These interactions have guided the Yorùbá philosophy that developed over time, expressing their conviction regarding society's evolution and the place that humans occupy within it. This web of knowledge can present a more coherent account than any other text yet produced regarding Yorùbá civilization.

This volume demonstrates how global dynamics have been adopted in the creation of a Yorùbá community across different times and spaces.

Decolonizing African history involves efforts toward ending European intellectual hegemony over Africa's political, economic, historical, and cultural ways, the reverse of its effects, and the pursuit of absolute liberation and self-determination for Africa. As an intellectual under-taking, decolonizing African history emphasizes the study of African history from an African perspective, as well as the transmission of that knowledge through Africanized curricula, instructional frameworks, and epistemologies. The acknowledgment of marginalized peoples or groups as agents of their own histories and experiences is a critical component in decolonizing African history. Decolonizing African history is based on the premise that Africa must look inside and apply an alternative multidisciplinary approach to developing ideas for solutions to Africa's developmental problems, drawing inspiration from its own culture, history, and creative imag-inations. Essentially, African intellectuals must apply local theories and approaches to understand African problems, solve them, and challenge the status quo's beliefs and practices of a distorted African image. The overall goal of this lecture is to liberate African knowledge, as well as the adoption and adaptation of traditional African modes of knowing and knowledge creation. Hence, the lecture attempts to awaken Africans to set the records right in terms of African history and unlock Africa's hitherto suppressed immense potentials. It conveys the essence of decolonization in African history: its origins and nature, reasons, methods, goals, and expected outcomes. It also argues for the development of an indigenous knowledge-based system in sync with African realities and capable of carving out autonomous models to alleviate Africa's political, economic, sociocultural, and innovative leadership overdependence on the developed world. Finally, it submits that if African societies can be shown to be on par with other major societies throughout the world, there is no reason they should not be able to control their own destiny. It rekindles the belief that Africans will be proud of their identities one day, having freed themselves and their past from crippling colonial notions.

This book explores how decolonization and decoloniality provide liberationist knowledge to question and replace the hegemony of Western knowledge systems imposed on Africa. It critically examines the silencing and exclusion of subalterns in global knowledge production and the far-reaching implications of this for pedagogy and policy. As global power is concentrated in the global north where Eurocentrism and white supremacy validate the monopoly of knowledge and its centrality and universality, African perspectives continue to be marginalized or excluded in research, creating the problem of misrepresentation of the continent. It is to this challenge that this book has responded&emdash;the urgent need to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism in the academy and research methodologies.

Coloniality is seen not only as a historical phenomenon but also as an ethnocentric continuum, dominating all aspects of present life, especially monopolizing human epistemology, the threshold of human existence, and even development activities. This book provides a balanced overview of what a feasible decoloniality should be. It is all-inclusive, aggregating differing perspectives, including decolonial feminist and LGBTQ thought. It deploys a holistic approach that critiques the limitations to decoloniality, the impediments that culminated in the failure of the late 20th century struggle for decoloniality, and the problems associated with current African resistance to academic decoloniality.

The book closes with a discussion of African futurism. Seen as the advanced stage of decoloniality, African futurism involves the application of traditional (indigenous) instruments of articulation and cohesion such as Afro-spirituality, myths, folklore, and indigenous techno-scientific innovations, deployed in their capacity to drive, harness, and actualize future possibilities.

Memories of Africa: Home and Abroad in the United States suggests a new lens for viewing African Diaspora studies: the experiences of African memoirists who live in the United States. The book shows how African Diaspora memoirs beautifully and grippingly depict the experiences of African migrants over time through political, social, and cultural spheres. In reading African Diaspora memoirs from the transatlantic slave trade period to the present, a reader can understand the complexity of the African migrant legacy and evolution.

Author Toyin Falola argues that memoirs are significant not only in their interpretation of events conveyed by the memoirists but also in demonstrating how interpersonal and human the stories told can be. Memoirs are powerful because they are emotionally captivating and because important themes and events circulate around a particular person (in this case, the memoirist). Undoubtedly, a memoir is significant because it can teach anyone about a part of the human experience, even if the facts are not described without bias. Through this sort of narrative, the reader cannot help but enter into the memoirist's mind and, therefore, feel more empathy for them. In doing so, the reader can feel what the memoirist feels and see what the memoirist sees as clearly as is humanly possible. In this way, the historical events and life lessons become tangible and poignantly real to the reader.

The book uses the main body of Lovejoy's work to speak to core African and economic history issues. It thoroughly examines Lovejoy's contributions to the study of Africa, particularly in exploring issues around production and exchanges at local, regional and international levels. The book offers readers a fresh perspective on the discourse of slavery and colonialism while simultaneously introducing them to the quality of work already accomplished by a stellar scholar.

As the book argues, Lovejoy presents verifiable historical data that nudges us to reconsider our perception of Africa's growth trajectory, especially before its encounter with the Americas. A chapter examines the various ways by which the people experienced slavery before it became proliferated during the time Europeans entered into the business. Another chapter addresses questions about the progressive efforts of slave traders to access the interior to drive more victims who would be shipped to the Atlantic for the business of servitude to advance the European economy. Alongside this exploration, a provides the background as to the contributions of Africans to ensure the continuity of this business. Lovejoy notes, for instance, that Muslims were found in every region in the Americas during slavery, which indicates that they were being taken there through transatlantic slavery. While Muslims were found in these areas, it was not true that they were there in large numbers. This is underscored by their resistance to all forms of forced extraction of the people from their homeland. In essence, they challenged the system in ways that redefined their participation in the exercise. The book analyzes how Muslims ensured that economic and political power were withdrawn from the hands of the victims and how they systematically created institutions that promoted that very inequity.

Lovejoy's extensive knowledge allows us to develop theories and establish applicable methodologies for understanding African reality since the precolonial era. He presents original perspectives about addressing issues of African-American engagements and the roles of critical voices in the diaspora. Consequently, the book is an invaluable educational resource, particularly for people who want to deepen their understanding of African social and economic history.

Milestones in African Literature offers an accessible guide to ten key moments in African literature. It traces literature in Africa through forms and genres, as well as social and political changes.

Toyin Falola embraces the richness of African literature, and considers the oral tradition, pre-colonial literature, apartheid, print media and digital literature, postcolonialism, and migration literature. He explores the realities of African people by drawing from and highlighting peoples' convictions, spirituality, and pasts. The book reveals African literature's capacity to convey cultural, social, and political messages through storytelling, while depicting the social structures and cultural norms that shape these experiences through the examination of perspectives and literary works of African authors.

Milestones in African Literature is the ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students interested in African literatures. It will also be invaluable for teachers and researchers aiming to strengthen their knowledge.

This book introduces readers to the rich and fascinating history of West Africa, stretching all the way back to the stone age, and right up to the modern day.

Over the course of twenty seven short and engaging chapters, the book delves into the social, cultural, economic and political history of West Africa, through prehistory, revolutions, ancient empires, thriving trade networks, religious traditions, and then the devastating impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonial rule. The book reflects on the struggle for independence and investigates how politics and economics developed in the post-colonial period. By the end of the book, readers will have a detailed understanding of the fascinating and diverse range of cultures to be found in West Africa, and of how the region relates to the rest of the world.

Drawing on decades of teaching and research experience, this book will serve as an excellent textbook for entry-level History and African Studies courses, as well as providing a perfect general introduction to anyone interested in finding out about West Africa.

Delve into the ways Africa has transformed since the continent was freed from colonial rule.

In its exploration of the complex and ever-changing fabric of African lives after the end of colonial power, this book offers readers insight into how daily life has changed for Africans over the last 75 years and what it looks like today. The book covers various aspects of the lives of the peoples of Africa in the post-colonial era, such as domestic life, economic activities, intellectual pursuits, material culture, political power, leisure, and spiritual engagements.

This addition to the Daily Life through History series recognizes the anguish of previous experiences of colonial rule while simultaneously commemorating the optimism and liveliness of the present and future of Africa. Discussing large moments - Nelson Mandela's presidency or South Africa hosting the FIFA world cup - to the small - what a typical meal or holiday might look like for those across the continent - this book is an homage to the eternal essence of Africa and its inhabitants. Ultimately, the volume provides readers a glimpse into the diverse lived experiences across this remarkable continent, as it navigates the intricacies of post-colonial existence and establishes its trajectory on the international platform.

The Yoruba people today number more than 30 million strong, with significant numbers in the United States, Nigeria, Europe, and Brazil. This landmark reference work emphasizes Yoruba history, geography and demography, language and linguistics, literature, philosophy, religion, and art. The 285 entries include biographies of prominent Yoruba figures, artists, and authors; the histories of political institutions; and the impact of technology and media, urban living, and contemporary culture on Yoruba people worldwide. Written by Yoruba experts on all continents, this encyclopedia provides comprehensive background to the global Yoruba and their distinctive and vibrant history and culture.

The Igbo are one of the most populous ethnic groups in Nigeria and are perhaps best known and celebrated in the work of Chinua Achebe. In this landmark collection on Igbo society and arts, Toyin Falola and Raphael Chijioke Njoku have compiled a detailed and innovative examination of the Igbo experience in Africa and in the diaspora. Focusing on institutions and cultural practices, the volume covers the enslavement, middle passage, and American experience of the Igbo as well as their return to Africa and aspects of Igbo language, society, and cultural arts. By employing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume presents a comprehensive view of how the Igbo were integrated into the Atlantic world through the slave trade and slavery, the transformations of Igbo identities and culture, and the strategies for resistance employed by the Igbo in the New World. Moving beyond descriptions of generic African experiences, this collection includes 21 essays by prominent scholars throughout the world.