Davidson Basil. West Africa before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850

Routledge, 1998. — 272 p.This is a survey of pre-colonial West Africa, written by the internationally respected author and journalist, Basil Davidson. He takes as his starting point his successful text A History of West Africa 1000-1800, but he has reworked his new text specially for a wider international readership. In the process he offers a fascinating introduction to the rich societies and cultures of Africa before the coming of the Europeans. West Africa, of course, is a vast area, covering a great range of climates and conditions (from the Sahara to the equatorial jungles of the south), and an equal range of peoples and cultures. It is not a single story that Basil Davidson has to tell, therefore, but many interlocking and overlapping stories. To that end, he provides narrative accounts of the key empires and cultures of West Africa, but sets them in their broader general context, as illuminated by the findings of both historians and anthropologists.