Designed as a textbook for courses in African History this survey, originally published in 1979, aims at a broader scope of history than is found in textbooks on the history of other continents. Less emphasis is given to purely political history and more to social economic and intellectual trends. It covers the history of the entire continent from earliest time right through to the end of the colonial period. (It doesn't deal with the history of contemporary Africa since independence). The Second Edition is entirely reset and redesigned and the 60-odd maps have been redrawn; and it sets the many different cultures and people of Africa in their widest context, both chronologically and geographically.