Martin Meredith's Fortunes of Africa: Exploring the History of the African Diaspora

Souryadeep DasSouryadeep Das: It's the best book written on African continent.
Martin Meredith had written this book so good and had researched a lot . Explosive content huge amount of information on how this continent is exploited by Europeans .The different regions and their different groups of people has a great role in the Historical Saga .
Bought it for Rs 599 and it's worth.

India on May 06, 2023

Scorchio: I bought this book thinking that it is a 5000 year history of Africa. There are some chapters of this large book devoted to the internal history of Africa, particularly ancient Egypt and medieval/modern Ethiopia. But the great bulk of the book deals with invasions of Africa, mostly by Arabs and Europeans. I found this a little bit disappointing. I already know something about the history of Europe and the Islamic world, and their interactions with sub-Saharan Africa. I was hoping to learn a bit more about the story of Africa itself. It's not quite clear why the author doesn't tell us more about ancient and medieval sub-Saharan Africa. It may be that historians just don't know very much about it. But it would have been helpful at least outline what is known and what is not known.

From chapter to chapter the book jumps around different locations in Africa rather than trying to present a general outline of the history of Africa. Most the the book deals with the modern period, with a particular focus on European explorers and invaders. The chapters on southern Africa, especially the Dutch and English invasions, are excellent. These chapters give an excellent account of the Boer...

United Kingdom on Mar 31, 2023

TJS: The separation of the regions and the different groups that played their part in the historical saga and the African continent brought to life for me the extent of the horror and exploitation suffered by so many groups at the hands of internal an external forces. It's a true lessen in so many aspects of human nature.

United Kingdom on Jan 05, 2023

Amazon Customer: Excellent book with a comprehensive history from the very Beginnings to the current times. Very well read and very well written. I would recommend this book to any history enthusiast looking for information on Africa. I would also recommend this book to anyone interested in Africa, as it gives a great amount of insight in the creation of the continent as it is today.

United States on Sep 16, 2022

MJ: This book is well written and aimed at the general reader. (Meredith writes with the style of a good journalist rather than a specialist academic.) It attempts to give an overview of the whole history of the whole continent Africa. Inevitably it treats different periods and places with different levels of detail.

Although sub-Saharan Africa is very different from the northern coast of Africa, which is part of the Mediterranean world, looking at both in the same book is interesting, particularly to see the impact which North Africa had on sub-Saharan Africa via overland trade routes.

The book is more detailed on the history of English-speaking southern Africa, but is also a useful introduction to the history of Portuguese and French activity in Africa, which is probably less familiar to English-speaking readers. For example, it is very interesting to understand that the North African peoples were acquiring gold and slaves in sub-Saharan Africa before the Europeans got there, and that the Portuguese were active in West Africa quite some time before Columbus made it to the West Indies.

Although this book is not aimed at an academic audience, if you are interested...

United Kingdom on Nov 15, 2020

Jenny: I wanted to try to understand why it is that you always hear how poor most African countries are, how frequent and bloody civil war seems to be and why it is that hunger is so prevalent in parts of the continent. In short, decided to read about Africa to try to understand its troubled history.
Meredith's book is tackling a mammoth task, giving a overview of 5,000 years of African history. He starts pre-European involvement, touching on North Africa and particularly concentrating on Egypt in detail. He shows Africa as a massive place rich in resources and the home of countless peoples, tribes, ethnic groups and languages. Of course, Africa wasn't unknown to the Europeans. Ancient Rome got its grain from north Africa and found its worst nemesis there. However, when the likes of imperial Portugal & Spain started to take to the seas en-masse and trade with the Arabs in North Africa (the book also covers the Arab settlement of Africa) they quickly wanted to know where all these riches were coming from. There followed 100s of years of European empires competing with each other for African wealth. Its pretty ridiculous to imagine British & French racing to get some African...

United Kingdom on Jul 28, 2020

steven wallace: I have to start being saying I knew very little about African history before reading this book. I was familiar with ancient Egyptian and Carthage history, but that's it.

I liked that the author took a very clinical approach to the topic. He didn't seem to take sides but focused on what happened. He let the facts speak for themselves. The book covers such a long timeline and such a vast area that he touches on the main events of a period and moves forward. At the end of the book, though, the author spends many pages on references and points to other more in depth works.

I came away from this book understanding the different groups in Africa and why the map of the continent looks like it does today. The stories got pretty depressing at times, especially reading about the slave trade and how cruel the European and African leaders were to workers to maximize their profits in the slave, ivory, and mineral trades.

It is a European focused history and I wish there was more information centered more on the African nations themselves, but it is an ambition undertaking as it is already. He gave me the information I need to know where to look if I want to become more...

United States on Jan 02, 2020

gt surber: Review - The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavor by Martin Meredith

"The Fortunes of Africa" is a rather large survey of the long, complicated history of Africa. As such it picks out highlights of the history. The book gives the reader a brief taste of the various parts of Africa in turn as it's focus shifts round and round the huge geography of the continent and through the 5000 years. The huge amount of material this book surveys limits it's ability to do any location or era true justice. Yet, Martin Meredith, who has written other books on Africa, succeeds in giving the reader a creditable taste of the huge table.

The book is well written and enjoyable to read. There are almost no pictures, only two or three maps in my Kindle edition. The maps on my iphone were too small to be of use. The selection of the material is by necessity eclectic. The coverage of the various selections Martin Mededith choose is adequate to understand and appreciate the breadth of the history and to come away better informed than before reading the book.

I found the book enlightening and informative on a continent and a history of which I have...

United States on Nov 22, 2014

weston: 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...

United States on Oct 18, 2014