Author: J. D. Fage File Type: pdf After the prehistory of Volume I, Volume II of The Cambridge History of Africa deals with the beginnings of history. It is about 500 B.C. that historical sources begin to embrace all Africa north of the Sahara and, by the end of the period, documentation is also beginning to appear for parts of sub-Saharan Africa. North of the Sahara, this situation arises since Africans were sharing in the major civilizations of the Mediterranean world. It is shown that these northern Africans were not simply passive recipients of Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Arab influences, or of the great religions and cultures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam coming from the Semitic world. They adapted these things to their own particular needs and purposes, and sometimes too contributed to their general development. But the North African civilization failed to make headway south of the Sahara. The agricultural crops that sustained it were unsuited to the tropics the growth of populations large enough to secure effective mobilization of resources therefore depended on the development of new crops by Sudanic cultivators immediately south of the Sahara. When this had been done, the foundations were laid for a wholly African civilization and, by the end of the period, the Bantu expansion had brought almost all the southern half of the continent within its sphere.

Author: Christy Wampole File Type: pdf People have long imagined themselves as rooted creatures, bound to the earthand nationsfrom which they came. In Rootedness, Christy Wampole looks toward philosophy, ecology, literature, history, and politics to demonstrate how the metaphor of the rootsurfacing often in an unexpected variety of places, from the family tree to folk etymology to the language of exiledeveloped in twentieth-century Europe. Wampole examines both the philosophical implications of this metaphor and its political evolution. From the root as home to the root as genealogical origin to the root as the past itself, rootedness has survived in part through its ability to subsume other compelling metaphors, such as the foundation, the source, and the seed. With a focus on this concepts history in France and Germany, Wampole traces its influence in diverse areas such as the search for the mystical origins of words, land worship, and nationalist rhetoric, including the disturbing portrayal of the Jews as an unrooted, and thus unrighteous, people. Exploring the works of Martin Heidegger, Simone Weil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Celan, and many more, Rootedness is a groundbreaking study of a figure of speech that has had wide-reachingand at times direpolitical and social consequences. **Review Theoretically vigorous, critically elegant, and impressively well informed, this is a wonderful exploration of the root metaphor and the notion of rootedness in Western culture and, more particularly, in twentieth-century France and Germany. With assurance and verve, Wampole illuminates such figures as Paul Celan, Edouard Glissant, Jean Paulhan, and Simone Weil. (Gerald Prince, University of Pennsylvania) Wampole convincingly shows that rootedness is a pervasive literary, political, and philosophical theme that keeps resurfacing in a host of connected contemporary issues, including questions of nationhood in the globalized, multicultural context of identity politics ideas of memory and tradition in immigrant cultures and dialectics of localism and universalism in the postcolonial world. Students and scholars alike will benefit from this book. (Elie During, University of Paris OuestNanterre) Rootednessis original, compelling, and ambitious in scope. This is an exemplary work of scholarship in its breadth and depth, not only as an investigation into a number of major works of European literature and thought, but also as an exploration of the human relationship to the other living beings that inhabit the earth. (Alison James, University of Chicago) About the Author Christy Wampole is assistant professor of French at Princeton University. She is the author of The Other Serious Essays for the New American Generation.