The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History represents an invaluable tool for historians and others in the field of African studies. This collection of essays, produced by some of the finest scholars currently working in the field, provides the latest insights into, and interpretations of, the history of Africa - a continent with a rich and complex past. An understanding of this past is essential to gain perspective on Africa's current challenges, and this accessible and comprehensive volume will allow readers to explore various aspects - political, economic, social, and cultural - of the continent's history over the last two hundred years.

Since African history first emerged as a serious academic endeavour in the 1950s and 1960s, it has undergone numerous shifts in terms of emphasis and approach, changes brought about by political and economic exigencies and by ideological debates. This multi-faceted Handbook is essential reading for anyone with an interest in those debates, and in Africa and its peoples. While the focus is determinedly historical, anthropology, geography, literary criticism, political science and sociology are all employed in this ground-breaking study of Africa's past.

John Parker teaches African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (2000); Tongnaab: The History of a West African God (2005; with Jean Allman); and African History: A Very Short Introduction (2007; with Richard Rathbone). He is currently conducting research on the history of death and the end of life in Ghana.

Richard Reid is Professor of the History of Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of several books, including Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda (2002), War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa (2007), A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the present (2009; 2012), Frontiers of Violence in Northeast Africa (2011), and Warfare in African History (2012). He is the editor of Eritrea's External Relations: Understanding its Regional Role and Foreign Policy (2009), and has written a number of articles on various aspects of violence and liberation struggle in nineteenth- and twentieth-century northeast Africa. His work has focused particularly on the history of warfare and military culture in Africa; now he is researching historical consciousness and culture in Uganda. Professor Reid is also an editor of the Journal of African History.

Introduction - African Histories: Past, Present, and Future, Richard Reid and John Parker
PART ONE: KEY THEMES IN AFRICAN HISTORY
1. Ecology and Environment, James McCann
2. Demography and Disease, Shane Doyle
3. African Slave Trades in Global Perspective, Pier M. Larson
4. States and Statelessness, Walter Hawthorne
5. Ethnicity and Identity, Richard Waller
6. Warfare and the Military, Richard Reid
7. The African Diaspora, John Parker
PART TWO: THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER
8. African Colonial States, Heather J. Sharkey
9. Law, Crime, and Punishment in Colonial Africa, Richard Roberts
10. Work and Migration, Emily Lynn Osborn
11. Chieftaincy, Justin Willis
12. Between the Present and History: African Nationalism and Decolonization, Jean Allman
PART THREE: RELIGION AND BELIEF
13. Islam, Marie Miran-Guyon and Jean-Louis Triaud
14. Christianity, David Maxwell
15. Indigenous African Religions, Robert M. Baum
16. New Religious Movements, Sean Hanretta
PART FOUR: SOCIETY AND ECONOMY
17. Education and Literacy, Carol Summers
18. Women and Gender, Barbara M. Cooper
19. Urbanization and Urban Cultures, John Parker
20. Health and Healing, Nancy Rose Hunt
21. Youth, Nicolas Argenti and Deborah Durham
22. Economic Growth, Morten Jerven
PART FIVE: ARTS AND THE MEDIA
23. Visual Cultures, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
24. Music in Modern African History, Veit Erlmann
25. African Literary Histories and History in African Literatures, Stephanie Newell
26. Communications and Media, James R. Brennan