Browse

Africa

State Department logo
Review

Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume XVII: Near East, 1961-1962

These documents provide crucial historical evidence of the attitudes American diplomats and officials held toward the countries of the Middle East, as well as uncovering aspects of foreign relations from an American perspective at the height of the Cold War.
Gertrude Bell standing in a mosque's decorated arch
Review

Gertrude Bell Project

In the teaching of world history, this site lends itself to exploring both the themes of women travelers and their writing, as well as the timely topic of European intervention in the Middle East, in particular Iraq.
The ruins of Great Zimbabwe's elliptical building
Review

Internet African History Sourcebook

The site provides broad chronological and geographic coverage, with a particularly impressive list of sources for ancient Egypt and Greek and Roman Africa. It is a gateway to an abundance of information.
Title page for The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Teaching

Long Teaching Module: Children in the Slave Trade

From the 16th to the 18th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans crossed the Atlantic to the Americas in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Used on plantations throughout the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, enslaved Africans were shipped largely from West Africa.

thumbnail of the text
Teaching

Long Teaching Module: African Scouting (20th c.)

Conceived by General Sir Robert Baden Powell to reduce class tensions in early 20th-century Britain, the Boy Scout movement evolved into an international youth movement that offered a romantic program of vigorous outdoor life for boys and adolescents as a cure for the physical decline and social

thumbnail of the text
Source

Cultural Contact in Southern Africa: Letters, Johanna Maria van Riebeeck

Johanna Maria van Riebeeck (1679-1759) was from an elite family in the Dutch colonial network.

Title page for The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Childhood and Transatlantic Slavery

Especially useful in helping to place slavery in a world history perspective is one of the first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, originally published in 1772.

thumbnail of the text
Source

British Empire: Fiction, Nervous Conditions

In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Africa in the British colony known as Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. From the age of two, she spent four years living in Britain. On her return to Rhodesia, she attended a missionary school in Mutare.

thumbnail of the text
Source

British Empire: Travel Narrative, Mary Kingsley

Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) is one of the best known British women to have visited West Africa during the period historians call the Age of New Imperialism. Her early life gave no indication of her future renown.

thumbnail of the text
Source

Cultural Contact in Southern Africa: Law, Slave Women and Children

Although marriage was not forbidden between Europeans and slaves or other non-Europeans, it was quite rare and entailed a drop in social status for the European. Nevertheless, sexual relationships occurred—sometimes coerced, sometimes by mutual agreement.