Because of the controversies associated with Afrocentrism, the study of African history is more difficult than the study of some other ancient civilizations. In selecting further reading on Africa, care has been taken to avoid works that are clearly not based on historical fact. Still, questionable claims are made in some of the books or Web sites listed below, but these sources are included because they offer valuable information as well.
In researching history, it is always wise to use several sources, including one or two acknowledged authorities on a subject. If one book offers an account of events that differs noticeably from the others, there is a chance its author used unconventional research methods in compiling his or her information. On the other hand, it should be cautioned that just because something differs from the mainstream does not mean it is wrong; it is entirely a question of why it differs. Is the work the result of unique research that has yielded new information, as in the case of Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy? Or is the writer simply presenting supposition—something that might be true, or something that he or she wishes were true—as fact?
Understand. Few could tell the difference between the Hutu (HOO-too) and Tutsi (TOOT-see), two Bantu-speaking groups in Rwanda (ruh-WAHN-duh); but this did not stop the Hutu from massacring half a million Tutsi in 1994.
The Hutu-Tutsi conflict resembled the ethnic problems in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s; the United States, however, took considerably more interest in the Yugoslav conflict. Sadly, once Africa was no longer a valuable chess piece in the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, it had little political value. With the wreck that dictatorships had made of African economies, there was little business interest in the continent either. But Mandela's leadership as the first president of the “new” South Africa offered hope for the future. On the ruins of one of the worst European political systems in Africa, many hoped, Mandela and those who followed him might create a model for black Africa in the twenty-first century.
World History
