This comprehensive history of Niger during the colonial period is a work based on primary research which attempts an overall appraisal of the colonial past. Dr Fuglestad questions the assumption that the colonial conquest constituted a clear break in African history. He traces the main trends of the colonial period back to their origins in the pre-colonial past. He also demonstrates that the power of colonial officials was less effective than is generally thought and that, though French colonial rule was the single most important factor in shaping the present-day societies of Niger, it was still only one of the many contributing factors. While the main events of the modern history of Niger and the neighbouring regions of the Central Sudan and the Central Sahara are discussed and analysed in detail, the book focuses on long-term trends.

How colonial governments in Asia and Africa financed their activities and why fiscal systems varied across colonies reveals the nature and long-term effects of colonial rule.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption and an ailing economy. Toyin Falola, a leading historian intimately acquainted with the region, and Matthew Heaton, who has worked extensively on African science and culture, combine their expertise to explain the context to Nigeria's recent troubles through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past, and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria's history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense, but unrealized, potential.

A History of Africa is a thorough narrative history of the continent from its beginnings to the twenty-first century. Long established at the forefront of African Studies, this book addresses the events of the 1990s and beyond. The issues discussed include: post-apartheid South Africa the prospects for democratization in Africa at the beginning of the new millennium developments in Muslim North Africa including the threat of Islamic fundamentalism economic and social developments including the devastating impact of Third World debt and the provision of debt relief cultural, environmental and gender issues in Modern Africa.

In The Yearning for Relief Klaas van Walraven traces the history of the Sawaba movement in Niger and its rebellion against the French-protected regime during the 1960s. The book analyses its guerrilla campaign and failure, followed by the movement’s destruction.

A fascinating collection that advances a renewed conceptual framework for understanding slavery in West Africa today: instead of retracing the end of West African slavery, this work highlights the preliminary contours of its recent reconfigurations.

The Slave Coast, situated in what is now the West African state of Benin, was the epicentre of the Atlantic Slave Trade. But it was also an inhospitable, surf-ridden coastline, subject to crashing breakers and devoid of permanent human settlement. Nor was it easily accessible from the interior due to a lagoon which ran parallel to the coast. The local inhabitants were not only sheltered against incursions from the sea, but were also locked off from it. Yet, paradoxically, it was this coastline that witnessed a thriving long-term commercial relation-ship between Europeans and Africans, based on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. How did it come about? How was it all organised? And how did the locals react to the opportunities these new trading relations offered them? The Kingdom of Dahomey is usually cited as the Slave Coast's archetypical slave raiding and slave trading polity. An inland realm, it was a latecomer to the slave trade, and simply incorporated a pre-existing system by dint of military prowess, which ultimately was to prove radically counterproductive. Fuglestad's book seeks to explain the Dahomean 'anomaly' and its impact on the Slave Coast's societies and polities.