Books & Audiobooks
Zeinab Badawi’s book An African History of Africa is a must-read for history fans, and those wanting to know more about what she terms the most diverse continent on the planet. I totally agree and was delighted so early in the book to be reminded that diversity is so often talked about as not white. African diversity has little to do with whiteness and that paradigm shift at the beginning was an incredible way to be steeped in a concept of diversity that disrupts “diversity and inclusion” based on colonial ideas of equity as being granted by colonizers or Eurocentric systems and structures. It doesn’t go into a great deal of depth about one single region of Africa, but that shouldn’t be the reason someone neglects to read it. There is a lot of information in it, and that’s probably the best reason to read it. It’s important to consider the title, set against the number of pages in the book in your expectations. Of course it won’t go into great detail, and it doesn’t seem like the author’s intention was to write a thousand-page tome. I would be eager to read a more personal history of the author as she took up such a broad continental history; the personal narratives she included in the book were very enjoyable to read.
Those who are more accustomed to reading literary historical fiction with more narrativity about a singular event or tiny moment in time that gets expanded upon and illuminated might find this a difficult read. Not because the content is absent any richness, but because it’s not something readers of specific genre non-fiction are probably familiar with, which could explain the reason for some lamentations of the book. I still found it incredibly informative and illuminating. There are also inevitably parts of African history that aren’t in this book because of geopolitical conflicts and inaccessible locations where climate and temperature resist archaeological imperatives. However, this doesn’t render the book incomplete by any stretch of imagination.
Global North classrooms (at least the ones I encountered in Canada) taught world history in a way that viewed the engine of civilization as firing up around the Greek and Roman empires. True, there is much to say about them, but where my generation was one where the continent of Africa was often misrepresented in classroom maps, such was the extent of the dissonance between Africa as colonization’s remains recall and as it is/was. For those wondering, it was rendered as smaller than the United States which is laughable for its geographically incorrect depiction of scale. Books like Badawi’s restore dignity to the civilizations that existed in Africa and even contributed to the success of that of the Roman Empire. Massinissa, for example, was crucial to the razing of Carthage by the Romans and made a decisive contribution to their plunder. The North African contributions to Roman history are seldom wrought in African terms (or beyond oversexualized depictions of Cleopatra and Nefertiti in “classic” movies) and I was delighted to read about it. It would be encouraging to see history teachers engage with these topics more consistently throughout the year and beyond Black History Month, as the richness and complexity of African history deserves far more than a single mention. Badawi book does a great deal to remind readers that African history is not just confined to Blackness but is also ancient history and worth being discussed as such. It honors history more fulsomely and disrupts ideas that the Global North’s history of Blackness is most of, or the entirety of African History.
If you’re looking for something pithy in the same vein of “read this to be smarter about _____” Badawi’s book may frustrate you. It’s a cursory overview but lacks nothing for details. It elevates dynasties, kingdoms, local histories, spiritual traditions, military leaders, and also guiding documents. I was surprised by how little I know, which is the best gift a book could give a reader of history. The Declaration of Independence, or the French Revolution axiom “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” are often cited for example, as de facto productive of human rights in history. If not this, then Enlightenment and Scientific Revolutions philosophers of Europe are seen as the forebears of the concept. Yet the West African oral history the Mande Charter, written in 1236 CE (13th century) often go unobserved despite being a predecessor to them. Some may “well actually” pretty hard about it, and say that the Magna Carta was its origin story, having been written in 1215 CE. It’s important to remember, to make sense of cacophonous debate, that no one is saying these other constitutional mechanisms throughout history are more or less important. If the Mande Charter were given equal weight for its civilization-shaping power though, perhaps Africa would be seen less as the place where Global North history unfolded, rather than a continent with a significant diversity and history unto itself. Africa was a continent of civilizations, the likes of which were equal to Greco-Roman illumination, and participated in international trade well before European contact and colonization. These stories just aren’t prioritized or were based on oral histories more than written ones. I’m blown away that at 2026-years-old, despite reading as much as I do, on so diverse a range of topics, and obtaining a graduate-level education (which included a PhD-level anthropology course in a Magisteriate/Master’s level education) this is the first I’m learning of the Mande Charter. Seriously. For reasons such as this I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
There are difficult parts to read, including enslavements, but it wasn’t the whole story or history of Africa (that’s the Global North’s history of its relationship to the continent, not Africa’s history). The way Badawi wrote about enslavement detailed its multiple instances, beyond the Trans-Atlantic dominance that Global North histories often focus on (rightly so though, because of the centrality of the U.S. to it). The Eastern-maritime part of Africa was also widely subject to this cruelty, and it gets equal illumination. Colonization though, was among the more difficult reading in the book for the systematic cruelty of it, including King Leopold’s particularly brutal way of treating Africans.
After reading this, I’m planning on returning to it and looking up important leaders, movements, geographies, and geopolitical dynamics to learn more. If someone documented the Mande Charter for example, I am so unbelievably excited to read it, or at least about it! I want to read more about leaders like Mani Musa of Mali, who conceived of the Charter, or the ancient churches at Lalibela whose paintings “features images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, with light brown skin and soft afros” (p.126). I’m not Christian, but how can anyone in their right mind not want to know more about that? If nothing else, to see ancient history painted decidedly and wonderfully Black, not as anomalous to include based on “diversity,” but the norm. There’s also Mansa Musa I, who was arguably the wealthiest person in human history, who, according to Badawi, was worth the equivalent of $400 billion USD (p.183). If you’re looking for a springboard for taking a deeper dive into these historical subjects, Zeinab Badawi has written an excellent book. African history on African terms, it is a necessary addition to any ancient and world history TBR list.