History of Africa offers a richly illustrated introduction to the history of the entire continent, from earliest times right up to the present day. The third edition has been revised and updated in the light of recent research and provides expanded coverage of modern Africa. This successful student text is now supported by a companion website.
This account covers the history of the African sub-continent from pre-history to the present day. It concentrates on the history of the African people of the region, showing the variety of their political organizations and the range of their economic activities both before and after European colonization. The history of Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia are dealt with, particularly in relation to the emergence of the modern State of South Africa.
Luka Jantjie is today a largely forgotten hero of resistance to British colonialism. His place in South African history has tended to be overshadowed by events elsewhere in the region. This book attempts to redress the balance by recording his remarkable story. In 1870, at the beginning of the Kimberley diamond mining boom that was to transform southern Africa, Luka Jantjie was the first independent African ruler to lose his land to the new colonialists, who promptly annexed the diamond fields. His outspoken stand against the hypocrisy of colonial 'justice' earned him the epithet: "a wild fellow who hates the English". As the son of an early Christian convert, Luka was brought up to respect peace and non-violence; his boycott of rural trading stores in the early 1890s was perhaps the earliest use of non-violent resistance in colonial South Africa. His steady refusal to bow to colonial demands of subservience intensified the enmity of local colonists determined to 'teach him a lesson'. As many of his people succumbed to colonial pressures, Luka was twice forced to take up arms to defend himself and his people from colonial attacks. His life ended in a dramatic and heroic last stand in the ancestral sanctuary of the Langeberg mountain range; its tragic consequences stretched far into the next century.
The life of Charles Warren Royal Engineer (1840‒1927) is a compelling story full of action, conflict, triumph and disaster, with repuations gained and lost. All set against the background of an expanding British Empire. It is a tale of secrecy, Freemasonry and pioneering archaeology as the young Lt Warren, still only in his twenties, tunnelled under the Holy City of Jerusalem in search of evidence of the Temple of Solomon and Herod the Great.A man of high principle and dogged determination, Warren thrived on a challenge: searching for lost British spies in the desert of the Exodus, or publicly calling out the rapacious colonialism of Cecil Rhodes. Later, in different circumstances, he ordered the arrest of Winston Churchill.Although thrice knighted for his many achievements, Warren is most widely remembered as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner who failed to catch ‘Jack the Ripper’. In the end he faced the supreme challenge in the Anglo-Boer War, becoming the scapegoat for one of Britain’s greatest military disasters, the Battle of Spion Kop.