Explore the societies, empires, and trade networks that flourished across Africa before colonial contact: from the wealth of Mali and Songhai, to the statecraft of Buganda and Zulu, to the enduring stone cities of Great Zimbabwe and Kush.
Not dolls, curses, or shuffling zombies. Vodun is one of the world’s older living religions — a sophisticated West African faith that Hollywood turned into a horror prop.
Twice — a century and a half apart — Russia reached for a foothold in Africa. Both attempts ended in storm, farce, and a single shelled fort. But they happened.
How a sovereign king chose Christianity in 1491 — and how his son became the first African ruler to put the crime of the Atlantic slave trade into writing.
In 1781 the crew of the slave ship Zong threw 132 living people into the Atlantic, then filed an insurance claim. The court case that followed helped expose the brutal logic of the slave trade and became an important episode in Britain’s growing abolitionist movement.
For its first decades, the traffic through Elmina flowed in the direction history has forgotten — Europeans selling African captives to African buyers, in exchange for gold.
In June 1730, ninety-six captives aboard the slave ship Little George broke their irons, seized the vessel, and sailed it back to Africa — with no one aboard who knew how.
Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arabic writers produced the most accurate account of Africa that anyone outside it had ever managed. It was accurate because it was an inventory, and the habit of reading the continent as an inventory has never quite been broken.
For seven centuries Greek and Roman writers could not find where the great river began. What they wrote in place of an answer hardened into a way of describing Africa, and that way of thinking outlasted the writers who created it.
Discover how Sundiata, the legendary founder of the Mali Empire, overcame disability, exile, and betrayal to fulfill an ancient prophecy. This review of D.T. Niane's classic African oral epic explores destiny, resilience, unity, and leadership lessons that still resonate today.
How the Mali Empire rose under Sundiata, crashed Cairo's gold market under Mansa Musa, and fell to Songhai — the full story of Africa's wealthiest throne.
Queen Amanirenas, who lost an eye battling Romans, and Queen Amanishakheto, whose face appears on pyramid reliefs, reflect Meroitic values that elevated royal women to genuine power.
