An attempt to place and record African History in a proper global context.

African history as world history: Africa and the Roman Empire -- Africa and the rise of Islam -- The mighty kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay -- The Atlantic slave trade: Slavery and resistance in South America and the Caribbean -- Slavery and resistance in the United States -- African Americans in the twentieth century.

This book examines the global unfolding of the African Diaspora, the migrations and dispersals of people of African, from antiquity to the modern period. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are discussed over a wide expanse of time in ways that link as well as differentiate past and present circumstances. The experiences of Africans in the Old World, in the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, is followed by their movement into the New, where their plight in lands claimed by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonial powers is analyzed from enslavement through the Cold War. While appropriate mention is made of persons of renown, particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of working class people and their cultural efflorescence. The book also attempts to explain contemporary plights and struggles through the lens of history.

"In the late 1960s through the late 1980s, the late John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998) was one of the foremost architects of the emerging discipline of Africana Studies/Africalogy as Professor of African World History in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York and as the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center. The study explores Clarke's development and conceptualization of Afrikan World History by examining his intellectual influences and training, his approach to teaching Afrikan World History, his notions regarding."--Publisher's website.

Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

The author, one of the foremost scholars on Africa, fought to legitimise African history for more than 60 years. This book finally uncovers the tumultuous life of this great figure. Through a series of autobiographical essays, Clarke looks back on his lifelong struggle to restore African history to its proper place in the context of world history.