A History of Africa South of the Sahara

A History of Africa South of the Sahara

By Donald L. Wiedner

Published by Vintage Books, 1964, first Vintage edition, 

Soft cover, boards with minimum wear, illustrated with maps, 578 pages, good condition.

 The first tenth of the book covers the period of "old Africa,' before the arrival of the white man. It was an era of tribes, migration, and black empires. Wiedner demonstrates the impact of climatic and topographical conditions on human development in this era, and the subsequent period. The white man came, in ships, down the west coast, with a prime objective of capitalizing on an existing African institution - slavery- and "globalizing" it. It became "big business," fueling the development of the Americas. The evil of this trade caused an ethical reaction that eventually led to its banning. On the east coast, the slave trade, principally from Oman, also flourish, but it was a much smaller, due to more limited labor requirements. Wiedner covers the historical developments in the different areas of the continent, with white settlement much more limited in the insalubrious equatorial areas, and more bountiful in the far south. In fact, on my first reading is when I learned that the British, Dutch, and Bantu migrations all more or less "collided" in South Africa, via differing migration patterns, pushing out and marginalizing the only true "natives," the Hottentots.