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Teaching African History in an Era of Globalization
Author(s) -
Davis R. Hunt
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00148.x
Subject(s) - poverty , scholarship , state (computer science) , disadvantaged , nothing , colonialism , globalization , history of africa , political science , history , root cause , development economics , economic growth , political economy , sociology , ancient history , law , economics , philosophy , operations management , epistemology , algorithm , computer science
Africa today is the most impoverished continent, a fact that impels historians and other scholars to look for the root causes of this poverty. When African history emerged as a field in the 1950s, the focus of historians lay elsewhere. As the 1970s unfolded, however, and Africa lagged further behind most other parts of the world, historians began to look at the slave trade era and the colonial period for the roots of African poverty. Historical scholarship since then has continued to demonstrate the importance of developments over the past several hundred years to explain Africa's current disadvantaged state in our globalized era. Teaching earlier African history, when Africa was in the forefront of global developments, is important for understanding contemporary Africa as well. It shows that there was nothing inherent in the African condition that produced the current distressed state.