"Africa was partitioned and colonized by the Europeans. After military conquest came the commercial exploitation of the wealth of Africa. The intensity of resistance to colonization varied from one region to another, but a new economic and social system linked with colonization was put in place, bringing about unprecedented demographic and political change."--Publisher's description.

One of UNESCO's most important publishing projects in the last thirty years, the General History of Africa marks a major breakthrough in the recognition of Africa's cultural heritage. Offering an internal perspective of Africa, the eight-volume work provides a comprehensive approach to the history of ideas, civilizations, societies and institutions of African history. The volumes also discuss historical relationships among Africans as well as multilateral interactions with other cultures and continents.

This seventh volume in The Cambridge History of Africa examines the period 1905-40 in African history.

Diamonds in the Rough explores the lives of African laborers on Angola’s diamond mines from the commencement of operations in 1917 to the colony’s independence from Portugal in 1975. The mines were owned and operated by the Diamond Company of Angola, or Diamang, which enjoyed exclusive mining and labor concessions granted by the colonial government. Through these monopolies, the company became the most profitable enterprise in Portugal’s African empire. After a tumultuous initial period, the company’s mines and mining encampments experienced a remarkable degree of stability, in striking contrast to the labor unrest and ethnic conflicts that flared in other regions. Even during the Angolan war for independence (1961–75), Diamang’s zone of influence remained comparatively untroubled. Todd Cleveland explains that this unparalleled level of quietude was a product of three factors: African workers’ high levels of social and occupational commitment, or “professionalism”; the extreme isolation of the mining installations; and efforts by Diamang to attract and retain scarce laborers through a calculated paternalism. The company’s offer of decent accommodations and recreational activities, as well as the presence of women and children, induced reciprocal behavior on the part of the miners, a professionalism that pervaded both the social and the workplace environments. This disparity between the harshness of the colonial labor regime elsewhere and the relatively agreeable conditions and attendant professionalism of employees at Diamang opens up new ways of thinking about how Africans in colonial contexts engaged with forced labor, mining capital, and ultimately, each other.

In Colonial Legacies, Gabriella Nugent examines a generation of contemporary artists born or based in the Congo whose lens-based art attends to the afterlives and mutations of Belgian colonialism in postcolonial Congo. Focusing on three artists and one artist collective, Nugent analyses artworks produced by Sammy Baloji, Michèle Magema, Georges Senga and Kongo Astronauts, each of whom offers a different perspective onto this history gleaned from their own experiences. In their photography and video art, these artists rework existent images and redress archival absences, making visible people and events occluded from dominant narratives. Their artworks are shown to offer a re-reading of the colonial and immediate post-independence past, blurring the lines of historical and speculative knowledge, documentary and fiction. Nugent demonstrates how their practices create a new type of visual record for the future, one that attests to the ramifications of colonialism across time.

There have been few more remarkable events than the European colonisation and decolonisation of Africa. Often within a single lifespan countries were conquered, reorganised, settled and then granted independence. Colonial Africa (1984) examines the impact this had on the landscape of Africa. The period of colonial contact between Europe and Africa had been lengthy, beginning in the early fifteenth century; yet for much of the continent the colonial period was relatively short, from the 1880s to the 1960s. European intervention in the nineteenth century was motivated by new demands of the European economy, resulting in the conquest of virtually the entire continent. As a result various groups of colonists arrived in Africa and each tried to impose a particular imprint upon the landscape. The colonial powers each had their own styles which are most evident in the architecture bequeathed to independent Africa. This is a clear account of the way that historical attitudes have dictated the appearance and geography of modern Africa.

This contributed volume applies cliometric methods to the study of family and households in order to derive global patterns and determine their impact on economic development. Family and households are a fundamental feature of societies and economies. They are found throughout history and are the place where key decisions on fertility, labour force participation, education, consumption are made. This is especially relevant for the position of women. The book gathers key insights from a variety of fields – economics, history, demography, anthropology, biology – to shed light on the relation between family organisation and the long-term process of economic development.