Introduction

Summary

This edited volume originated about three years ago in an invitation from James Currey Publishers to consider writing a textbook of West African history and a Historical Atlas of West Africa. I conceded the need for these texts, and after some hesitation opted to edit a volume of essays on West Africa's history and deferred the Historical Atlas for a later time. I chose to edit a volume on West Africa because I sought an easy way out. More importantly, reviewing my syllabi on West Africa over the past decade - cobbled from various sources - convinced me that a comprehensive textbook on West Africa's history needed to draw on different disciplines and expertise. I am grateful to James Currey Publishers for the invitation and their persistence and to the thirteen contributors of this volume who responded with enthusiasm to the prospectus for this textbook.

The volume is arranged thematically and chronologically, but not necessarily as a continuous historical narrative. It aims to bring together in about 300 pages key themes from West Africa's prehistory to the present. It is designed as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate levels, discussing various disciplinary approaches to West African history, providing overviews of the literature on major topics, and breaking new ground through the incorporation of original research. The goal was to write in an accessible style and with few footnotes, though I was the first to fall foul of that prescription in respect to the latter. At the end of each chapter is a short list of recommended reading. Though there is important overlap between the chapters, I made no attempt to harmonize the intellectual views expressed within them. As the chapters went through the review process, I shared drafts with other contributors to the volume in their areas of expertise. We therefore served as our own peer review system. For future editions, I hope to convene workshops at Harvard University that will enable contributors to deliberate over the text as a whole and how it should be reshaped, as well as their individual contributions.