For more than two decades, The Africans has been one of the best, single volume surveys of Africa's past. Now in its third edition, this seminal text continues to be an authoritative source to introduce students and the wider public to broad themes in African history. A historian of wide-ranging expertise, Iliffe demonstrates how environmental and global historical forces shaped African communities from the emergence of the continent's first societies to the present.
Much of the thematic link that weaves this broad survey together are the interrelated fields of demographic and environmental history, clashing with global historical forces. Iliffe portrays Africans as successful pioneers of the continent's rich and challenging environments and demonstrates how brutal impositions such as slavery and colonialism challenged local adaptation and development. Some have criticised Iliffe's approach as too deterministic, privileging demography over more nuanced social and cultural arguments. However, with such a sweeping scope, his well-sourced argument provides a needed comparative thread for tying such diverse historical experiences together.
Covering a broad historical scope, eight of the 13 chapters address regional and thematic histories prior to 1900, balancing discussions of local development with the adaptation of global technologies and religions into an African context. Three chapters address the colonial period, with one focusing specifically on South Africa. The final two chapters examine African history since independence. Revisions for the third edition have focused on updating the final chapters on contemporary history, but the extensive bibliography reveals integration of the latest scholarship throughout the text.
When the first edition was published at the end of Apartheid, Iliffe concluded that South Africa's transition would have to grapple with the larger post-colonial challenges ‘bred by demographic growth, mass poverty, urbanisation, education and the demands of youth’ (Iliffe Reference Iliffe1995: 284). And when the second edition was released in 2007, the author added an additional chapter examining the contemporary HIV/AIDS crisis. While the first two editions end with rather sobering accounts of contemporary challenges, the third edition continues to place contemporary issues in important historical context and reflects on the last decade of African history as a more hopeful moment of recovery. Detailing health, economic and political changes over the past decade, this latest edition provides good data to challenge popular perceptions of contemporary histories of African ‘failure’, without simplistically embracing the ‘Africa rising’ narrative.
As a text primarily marketed for the undergraduate classroom, this third edition is a welcome addition. Striking a nice balance between narrative and historical data, the chapters are richly sourced yet concise for course design. However, with succinct synthesis, Iliffe sacrifices the inclusion of African historical voices and primary sources more directly in the text. With only 14 maps and figures over 400 pages, most undergraduates will certainly need supplementary visual and primary source materials to help process and analyse this complex history. The Africans is certainly a fine text for the undergraduate classroom and continues to serve as a vital reference for students, teachers and the wider public.
