Preface

Understanding areas outside our own corner of the globe is always a challenge. This is particularly true in the case of Africa, a vast continent with a complex web of indigenous cultures. Yet Africans make up one-fifth of the world's population, and the continent lies at the crossroads between the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. What happens in Africa affects us all.

Moreover, North America's links to Africa go back many centuries—first as a partner in the Atlantic slave trade and later as an ally of European colonial powers that ruled Africa. The slave trade had a lasting effect on the history of both North America and Africa. It brought millions of Africans to this side of the Atlantic as slaves, forming the basis for black populations in the Americas. At the same time, the slave trade divided Africa and deprived it of generations of young people who would have played a productive role in society.

A great deal of material about Africa—in textbooks, newspapers, novels, and films—is superficial, biased, or even invented. Most of it appears in bits and pieces and not as part of a comprehensive study of the region. This work, Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students, offers a more coherent picture of the continent. In its pages Africa emerges as a single continent with unique geographical features, a continuous, interrelated history, and similar economic, political, and social problems.

The Scope of the Encyclopedia.

In its four volumes, Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students offers both a broad and a fairly detailed view of Africa's land and its peoples—from the Mediterranean Sea to the Cape of Good Hope and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Although it is not possible to provide a detailed treatment of all aspects of the continent in less than 1,000 pages, the work does bring together a great deal of vital information and careful analysis.

The student encyclopedia is based on the four-volume Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara, published in 1997, of which I was editor in chief. The original work contains 896 articles by geographers, historians, anthropologists, linguists, philosophers, and other experts from Europe, North America, and Africa. In the past most scholarly research about the continent came from non-Africans. Now, however, scholars from Africa play a leading role in the field. Africans tend to see their continent in one way, while foreigners have other perspectives. Combining these different images of Africa brings us closer to an understanding of the continent.

Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students covers much of the same ground as the earlier work at a level suitable for middle and high school students. Many of the original articles have been adapted and updated, and a substantial amount of new material has been added on North Africa. In addition to articles on standard topics such as countries, cities, and historical individuals, the student encyclopedia contains entries on broad fields of knowledge, ranging from human origins to music and song, from colonialism to marriage systems, and from slavery to food and drink. All articles are arranged in alphabetical order to make it easy for students to find information.

Features of the Encyclopedia.

Alongside the text column in the pages of Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students is a marginal column filled with helpful features. There readers will find time lines placing events in historical context, sidebars providing interesting information on a variety of topics, and definitions of difficult or unfamiliar words used in the text. Cross-references to related articles appear both within the text and at the end of entries. Fact sheets accompany each country article, providing significant data about the nation's people, geography, government, and economy in a convenient format.

The illustrations in the student encyclopedia bring the people and places discussed in the entries to life. Each volume has special full-color inserts devoted to the themes of Peoples and Cultures, The Land and Its History, Art and Architecture, and Daily Life. The encyclopedia also includes more than 50 maps of modern nations, ancient kingdoms and colonial empires, trade routes, and various geographic features.

The original Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara took six years to produce and Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students has taken nearly two more. No single editor can do everything, and I wish to thank the publisher, Karen Day, and the senior editor, John Fitzpatrick, of Charles Scribner's Sons; Darryl Kestler of Visual Education Corporation; and the many members of their staffs. In addition, I thank the authors and the members of the original boards of associate editors, advisers, and consultants. This new student encyclopedia has been very much a cooperative effort.

John Middleton, Editor