Cosmopolitan Africa

1700-1875

Trevor R. Getz

African World Histories

Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, offers an alternative interpretation of the 175 years leading up to the formal colonization of Africa by Europeans. In this brief and affordable text, author and series editor Trevor R. Getz demonstrates how Africans pursued lives, constructed social settings, forged trading links, and imagined worlds that were sophisticated, flexible, and well adapted to the increasingly global and fast-paced interactions of this period. Getz's interpretation of a "cosmopolitan Africa" is based on careful reading of Africans' oral histories and traditions, written documents, and images of or from the eighteenth century. Examining this time period from both social and cultural perspectives, Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, helps students to re-envision African societies in the time before colonization.

Cosmopolitan Africa

1700-1875

Trevor R. Getz

African World Histories

Description

Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, offers an alternative interpretation of the 175 years leading up to the formal colonization of Africa by Europeans. In this brief and affordable text, author and series editor Trevor R. Getz demonstrates how Africans pursued lives, constructed social settings, forged trading links, and imagined worlds that were sophisticated, flexible, and well adapted to the increasingly global and fast-paced interactions of this period. Getz's interpretation of a "cosmopolitan Africa" is based on careful reading of Africans' oral histories and traditions, written documents, and images of or from the eighteenth century. Examining this time period from both social and cultural perspectives, Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, helps students to re-envision African societies in the time before colonization.

Cosmopolitan Africa

1700-1875

Trevor R. Getz

African World Histories

Series Introduction
Introduction

Chapter 1: Ordering their worlds
A Place to begin
Spirit power and state power in Burganda
Xhosa worlds: homestad, neighborhood, kingdom, ancestors
Matriclans and entrepreneurs in the making of the Asante state
Titles and lineages in Igbo-speaking societies
Imperial Tunis
Reigning in greed and anarchy in BaKongo and Jaga state and society
Feature: Beatriz of Saint Anthony

Chapter 2: Global Africa in an oceanic era
An Oceanic era
Mediterranean Africa
Atlantic Africa
Indian Ocean Africa
Feature: The Chronicles of Pate and 19th century Swahili identity

Chapter 3: Spiritual belief and practice in cosmopolitan Africa
African "world" and African "traditional" religions
African Islam in the eighteenth century
African Christianity and Protestant evangelism
Feature: The Xhosa Cattle-Killing

Chapter 4: African economies and the industrial revolution
Production and productivity in late eighteenth century Africa
Africans and the industrial revolution
Settlers, peasants, and plantations
Feature: Muhammad Ali's Egypt

Chapter 5: Africans write back
Men and women in the middle?
Egyptian intellectuals on France and Islam
The Abbé Boilat
James Africanus Horton
The "educated men" of the Fante Confederation
Jan Tzatzoe in Britain
Towards colonialism?

Cosmopolitan Africa

1700-1875

Trevor R. Getz

African World Histories

Author Information

Trevor R. Getz is Professor of History at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Abina and the Important Men (OUP, 2011) and Slavery and Reform in West Africa (2004), and coauthor of textbooks in world and African history.

Cosmopolitan Africa

1700-1875

Trevor R. Getz

African World Histories

Reviews and Awards

"This is a most welcome addition to the existing literature. Cosmopolitan Africa encourages students to think not just about a key period in the history of Africa, but in doing so, it allows a rethinking of key concepts that have not been traditionally used in our perceptions of the African past."--Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia, Montclair State University

"By emphasizing the cosmopolitan nature of many African societies during the formative period for modernity, Getz succeeds in shredding some of the old and tired stereotypes that habitually removed Africa from the grand narrative of world history."--Maxim Matusevich, Seton Hall University