Precolonial Africa

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course explores African history before 1800: How and why did complex societies form in Africa? Why did states form in some place and times and not others? What technological responses did different Africans make to environmental changes? How did various cultures, religions, and state ideologies help to organize African social and political formations? What effect did the medieval and early-modern trade in African slaves have on African social and political formations? We will attempt to answer these questions from both theoretical and historiographical perspectives by engaging with academic debates on some of these issues, and by looking at the viewpoints of African historical actors themselves using primary sources.