The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor Kindle Edition

Martin Meredith provides an extensive history of Africa for the past 5000 years. It is a grim saga of avarice and greed and more recently of corruption and incompetence. Nevertheless, it is a book that should be read.

There are cave paintings in what is believed to be the Bantu homeland in present-day Cameroon dating back 28,000 years and linguistic evidence of a later great migration of these people across southern Africa. In the rocky and now uninhabited Gilf Kebir plateau at the edge of the Sahara desert in southwestern Egypt there are prehistoric paintings of people dancing and swimming and other evidence that the great desert that stretches across Africa was once lush pastureland. The recorded history of Africa encompasses only the past 5000 years and becomes a progressively grimmer tale of the rape of the continent and its people by their own leaders in collaboration with traders and invaders from southeast Asia, then the Levant, later Europe, and since "independence" from colonial rule by native despots interested only in enriching themselves and staying in power by enriching selected others..

Although rich in gold, diamonds, minerals and oil, the main product that has enriched African leaders for the past 2000 years has been slaves, a business only brought to an end in the late 19th century when the British became the major force in Africa. Between 800 and 1900, trans-Saharan slave traffic totaled 7.2 million, Red Sea traffic totaled 2.4 million, and east African trade totaled.2.9 million. Between 1450 and 1900 the trans-Atlantic slave traffic is estimated at 11.3 million. In the 19th century the slave traffic was 4 million trans-Atlantic, 1.2 million trans-Saharan, half a million Red Sea--in all about 6.1 million. The slave traders bought from local African chieftains who waged war with nearby tribes and imposed the criminal penalty of slavery on their own people in order to provide the slaves. As mentioned the slave trade external to Africa was only ended by the power of the British Royal Navy at the end of the 19th century, but within Africa it continued into the 20th century and beyond.

The large-scale extraction of the wealth of the land was carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries by colonial companies--diamonds by the British in southern Africa, rubber by the Belgians in the Congo, etc.--with very little of the wealth remaining in Africa directed for the benefit of the people. Since the end of colonialism, more of the extracted wealth remains in Africa, but to enrich corrupt local despots and their cronies rather than to improve the living standards of the broader African people, and the same fate befalls the new wealth of foreign aid..

As the title states, this book covers 5000 years of history. So it is long and exhaustive. However, most of the chapters can be read in thirty minutes or less. This book does use a lot of terms and references that may be unfamiliar to the average reader. If you are the type of person who feels they must understand every word before proceeding to the next page, you may get bogged down in some chapters like I did at times. There is a good set of chapter notes placed at the end of the book. Given the amount of detail in this book, it was well worth the $15 I paid for it. (I read the Kindle version.)

In about 700 pages, "The Fortunes of Africa" is a well written narrative of African history. It describes in good detail a lot of events that occurred over a span of 5 millennia and provides the reader with a good context within which to situate the current state of affairs on the continent.

I found the material well referenced and as an African I learnt many things about our history that I didn't know prior to reading this book. The book provides an impressive breath of historical narrative at the expense depth. I thought that the author skimmed over the details of many historic events, understandably so as that would be unachievable in one book. For this reason, I consider this work an "abstract" of the history of Africa that will motivate an interested reader to delve more into the history of this fascinating continent.

To much of an emphasis on white people. I wanted to learn more about Africa pre-white colonization.

My main complaint is there are not enough maps in each chapter to understand exactly where events are happening. I had to have my notebook open while reading to figure out where all this stuff was happening. I would have liked to read more details about certain things. What was it like for the first European explorers to travel into the jungle up a river?.. How did they actually make contact and communicate with natives in all their hundreds of native languages? What was the day in a life of an explorer actually like? In one chapter it's mentioned that Sahara caravans contained up to 12,000 camels traveling thousands of miles across the desert. How did they find all these camels and get em to Africa and what was like to make such a journey? One thing that dawned on me after reading the way the Europeans raped the continent and the people is that the ones that got sold into slavery where probably the lucky ones.

The best book I've ever read about Africa--geology, history, economics, religion etc., North vs. sub-saharan, devastation wrought by European pursuit of wealth (gold, diamonds, ivory, slaves)-- impact of colonialism; horrific human toll of slavery not just those kidnapped and shipped out but also those enslaved in Africa. People were needed to work in the mines in order to enrich non-African conquerors/Colonial administrators. They were ingenious at passing laws effectively enslaving people while not actually actually legalizing slavery.

It was worth the wait to finally read this book. I learned so much from Meredith’s book. You read from the beginning of the history and read through to independence for many of the countries It is long (I read 10 pages a day because I have about 20 books going at all times.) it was well written. I highly recommend this book.

I read this straight through. Most people will likely prefer to browse. The book is an excellent overview of the history of the continent up to the present day, and contains a wealth of interesting detail in addition to covering broad trends.