For some years now there has been an urgent need for a concise history of Africa. Although much has been written on different regions of Africa and different periods of her long development - colonial histories of the European powers, current affairs article on the emergent countries, studies of Africa's prehistory - there has been nothing that offers the general reader an overall view of African history from the earliest times to the Pan-African meetings at Monrovia and Casablanca. Drawing on archaeology, oral tradition, language relationships, social institutions, and material cultures, the editors of the Journal of African History now present A Short History of Africa which not only assembles the most authoritative views of their colleagues into an absorbing narrative, but also contains some original conclusions that take the study of Africa a stage further.