512039 - HISTORY AND POLITICS OF WESTERN, CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

Course companions
• Parker, John, Richard Rathbone, African History: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.
• John Parker, Richard Reid, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Readings for the exam

Attending students:
1 handbook + 1 book from within Module 1, 2, or 3

Non-attending students:
1 handbook + 2 books from within Module 1, 2, or 3

The choice must be communicated by email or during a meeting

Handbooks
• Calchi Novati, Giampaolo, and Pierluigi Valsecchi, Africa: la storia ritrovata. Dalle prime forme politiche agli Stati nazionali. Nuova edizione, Roma, Carocci, 2016.
• Parker, John, and Richard Reid, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013

Module 1. Western and Central Africa and the World, c.1000-1900: African states, power, and slavery
• Fauvelle, François-Xavier, Les masques et la mosquée. L’empire du Mâli (xiiie-xvie siècle), Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2022.
• Gomez, Michael A., African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Eearly and Medieval West Africa, Princeton NJ and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2018.
• Green, Toby, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Heywood, Linda M., Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen, Cambridge Massachussets and London, Harvard University Press, 2017.
• Smallwood, Stephanie E., Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, Harvart MA, Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Thornton, John K., The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684-1706, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005 [1998].
• Thornton, John K., A History of West Central Africa to 1850, Cambridge, Cambridge University, 2020.
• Valsecchi, Pierluigi, Power and State Formation in West Africa: Appolonia From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, or Valsecchi, Pierluigi, I signori di Appolonia. Poteri e formazione dello Stato in Africa occidentale fra xvi e xviii secolo, Rome, Carocci, 2002.
• Vansina, Jan, Paths in the Rainforests. Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa, London, James Currey, 1990.

Module 2. Western and Central Africa and Colonialism, 1830-1994
• Casentini, Giulia, Al di là del fiume. Storia e antropologia di un confine africano (Ghana e Togo), Roma, Viella, 2015.
• Iocchi, Alessio, Living Through Crisis by Lake Chad: Violence, Labor and Resources, London and New York, Routledge, 2023.
• Macola, Giacomo, A Violent History: Power and Conflict in the Congo Basin from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2025, or Macola, Giacomo, Una storia violenta. Potere e conflitti nel bacino del Congo (XVIII-XXI secolo), Roma, Viella, 2021.
• McCaskie, Tom C., Asante Identities: History and Modernity in an African Village 1850-1950, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
• Parker, John, Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Eearly Colonial Accra, Oxford, James Currey, 2000.
• Parker, John, In My Time of Dying: A History of Death and the Dead in West Africa, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021.
• Prosperetti, Elisa, An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Module 3: Southern Africa from Mapungubwe to Mandela, c.1250-1994
• Dooling, Wayne, Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Scottsville, South Africa, 2007.
• Dubow, Saul, Apartheid, 1948-1994, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Etherington, Norman, The Great Treks: The Transformations of Southern Africa, 1815-1854, London, Longman, 2001.
• Hamilton, Carolyn, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Landau, Paul Stuart, Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400-1948, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Landau, Paul Stuart, Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries, Athens, Ohio University Press, 2022.
• Morelli, Ettore, La voce del re. Parola, potere, libertà sull’altopiano sudafricano, ca.1800-1903, Roma, Viella, 2025.
• Ross, Robert, The Borders of Race in Colonial South Africa: The Kat River Settlement, 1829-1856, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Shell, Robert C.-H., Children of Bondage. A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope 1652-1838, Wesleyan University Press, Hannover and London, 2001.
• Warwick, Patrick, Black People and the South African War 1899-1902, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004 [1983].