The African Experience: From 'Lucy' to Mandela
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The African Experience: From 'Lucy' to Mandela Audible Audiobook – Original recording

Kenneth P. Vickery (Narrator, Author), The Great Courses (Author, Publisher)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 6 ratings
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The story of Africa is the oldest and most event-filled chronicle of human activity on the planet. And in these 36 lectures, you'll explore this great historical drama, tracing the story of the Sub-Saharan region of the continent from the earliest evidence of human habitation to the latest challenges facing African nations in the 21st century.

By learning with these lectures, you'll finally be able to bust myths and correct potential misunderstandings about Africa. For example, in Africa, the word "tribe" is used in a neutral way to connote ethnic identity. Another example: Sub-Saharan Africa was not as isolated as is often suggested by references to the "lost" continent; in fact, an ancient Greek sailing guide from 2,000 years ago clearly shows that the East African coast was already connected commercially with areas to the north.

The primary focus of these eye-opening lectures is Sub-Saharan Africa, the region separated from North Africa by the harsh climate of the Sahara Desert and traditionally the part of the continent that has been the most mysterious and most misunderstood by Westerners. But by traveling on this exciting learning experience (one imbued with a pervasive spirit of charm and adventure), you'll finally be able to strengthen your understanding of this beautiful, multifaceted region.

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  1. Listening Length
    18 hours and 18 minutes
  2. Author
    Kenneth P. Vickery, see all
  3. Narrator
    Kenneth P. Vickery
  4. Audible release date
    July 8, 2013
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    The Great Courses
  7. ASIN
    B00DTNVE3M
  8. Version
    Original recording
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 18 hours and 18 minutes
Author Kenneth P. Vickery, The Great Courses
Narrator Kenneth P. Vickery
Audible.com Release Date July 08, 2013
Publisher The Great Courses
Program Type Audiobook
Version Original recording
Language English
ASIN B00DTNVE3M
Best Sellers Rank #48,010 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#326 in World History (Audible Books & Originals)
#4,202 in World History (Books)

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
6 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Herb Mevers
5.0 out of 5 stars Good listen.
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2015
Verified Purchase
For me This was very educational. Knowing little of africa outside basic common knowledge, I was suddenly aware of a huge unknown area of the world. After a while I expect to revisit the course and will surely learn more.
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Gilbert M. Stack
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Place to Start for Understanding Africa
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2021
Here’s a wonderful overview of mostly Sub-Saharan African history from the dawn of humanity to the present day. That’s a heck of a lot of material to cover and Vickery does a masterful job of exploring the highlights of early human existence, Africa in the pre-colonial period, the colonial period, and the post-colonial struggles. Vickery also struggles for balance in his presentation, so this is neither overly romantic nor overly negative. All in all, it’s a fascinating overview of huge continent and the people who inhabit it.
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Historian1912
4.0 out of 5 stars Decent
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2021
Great on most levels, but I felt like the quality took a massive nose dive once the instructor got to slavery. Somehow, he managed to completely forget the slave trade leading up towards North Africa and the Arab world. If you are going to talk about effects, it is inexcusable, if not outright disgusting, to not mention this facet of the slave trade when it went on far longer and involved far more victims. How can you call yourself an expert on African history and not even mention this?
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Camber
5.0 out of 5 stars More of an academic outsider's view, but still valuable
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2014
First, let me note that I watched the video version of this course. It doesn't have nearly as many images as it could and should, but the upside is that you won't miss much if you listen to the audio version of the course.

I found that the lecturer, Kenneth Vickery, is clear and articulate, and certainly knows the subject matter, having specialized in African history for decades and having visited Africa many times. He provides plenty of information in this course, and it's well organized, but I was a bit disappointed to find that he emphasizes those aspects of African history which you tend to hear about in the news, but doesn't go much into sociocultural history. So I finished the course having learned about events and patterns of events, but I didn't get much sense of what's historically been in the hearts and minds of Africans themselves - what it felt like to be an African at various points in the past, as all these events were unfolding, the real `African Experience'. In that sense, at least relative to what I was looking for, this course piqued my interest, but I'll definitely need to delve deeper using other sources. Nevertheless, here's a summary of points I found particularly noteworthy from the course:

* Africa is HUGE. Three times bigger than the continental US. Bigger than the continental US, Europe, China, India, Argentina, and New Zealand combined!

* The physical geography of Africa is diverse, encompassing savanna, desert, and rain forests (mainly in central Africa). Overall, Africa is relatively warm year round and relatively dry, with soils that are mostly poor for farming. These conditions increase prevalence of infectious diseases and make food supply more difficult.

* Humans evolved in Africa over several million years, reaching relatively modern form about 100,000 years ago. They lived in migrant groups not larger than several dozen people, and subsisted by hunting and gathering.

* Domestication of plants and animals first developed in Africa several thousand years ago, and eventually spread to most of the rest of the continent, along with development and spread of iron tools, resulting in a more sedentary lifestyle.

* As in the rest of the world, African individuals have multiple identities, but their stronger identities tend to be based on kinship, cultural ethnicity, and political units. These intersect to form `tribal' identities, but such tribal identities are necessarily somewhat fluid.

* African religions originally tended to be local and diverse, involving elements such as a supreme God, lesser gods, earth spirits, ancestral spirits, and people who can manipulate spiritual forces (witchcraft). Later, Christianity and Islam became widespread in Africa, but often syncretically combined with elements of indigenous religions.

* Egypt's powerful and affluent ancient civilization was made possible by the agricultural productivity and navigability of the Nile River valley, with its predictable rainfalls and flooding, and fertile soils.

* From about 300 to 1000 AD, iron age civilizations developed in southern Africa, with `Great Zimbabwe' being the most prominent.

* From about 600 to 1600 AD, western Africa had several major empires, typically ruled by kings.

* From about 1000 to 1500 AD, about 40 city-states emerged along the east coast of Africa. They had extensive trade with Arabia, India, Persia, and the Far East.

* African slavery (long preceded by slavery elsewhere in the world) developed as part of European mercantile capitalism, which was facilitated by advances in sailing around 1500 AD. Slavery peaked during the 1700s (the period of European `Enlightenment'!). Around 10 to 15 million slaves were brought to the Americas, mostly aged 15 to 35 and about two-thirds males, with many more Africans injured or killed in the process of obtaining slaves. Most slaves were obtained from African traders, and were primarily captives from inter-African wars, battles, raids, etc. The `compensation' given to these traders included about 20 million guns.

* In the mid 1600s, the Dutch began colonizing and settling in south Africa, gradually displacing the native Khoisan people, especially by taking prime land for farming and using slaves from outside Africa. Around 1800, the British came in and took control, generating conflict with both the Dutch and Africans, and spreading from the cape area northward and eastward. The diamond and gold industries emerged in the mid-1800s and had a huge influence on the economy, with de Beers developing a diamond monopoly which largely still exists.

* During the 1800s, slavery was gradually abolished, partly for humanitarian reasons, but even more so for commercial reasons and the need for industrial labor. Some Africans were very entrepreneurial during this period, but they were typically suppressed, sometimes by force, by Europeans.

* The Western European scramble to colonize Africa began in the late 1800s and nearly all of Africa was colonized by about 1910. Motivations included finding raw materials and new markets for industrial production (tending to narrow African economies to focus on one or few major commodities), evangelical drive to `reform' Africans, social Darwinist expectation to dominate `lesser races', and the grandeur of empire building. Africans resisted, but were overpowered by far greater military strength. The resulting African infrastructure was oriented radially towards the coasts, to facilitate export and import, rather than internal transport for the needs of the population. African `leaders' were still there, but serving as middle men between the colonists and African populations, thus running into trouble if perceived to be coerced by either side too much. Africans in colonies where Europeans permanently settled fared much worse than other colonies, since much of their land was taken by settlers.

* African nationalists who resisted colonial rule tended to be Western-educated elites who were oriented towards development and modernization, rather than a return to precolonial life. Due to their pressure and the support of the populations, along with cost/benefit calculations by the colonists, many African states gained independence by around 1960, though gaining independence in settler colonies involved much more struggle (often violent) and generally didn't occur until about 1975 to 1994.

* South Africa was a special case where, after World War II, apartheid was initiated - an effort to transition the already racially segregated society into a permanent regime of white supremacy (still drawing on black labor). Four factors coalesced in the 1980s to break down apartheid: low-level guerilla war, civil insurrection in and around townships, increasing power of trade unions, and international sanctions. Under this pressure, the South African government sought compromise, freed Mandela, and legalized all political parties in 1990. But there was still violence leading up to elections of 1994, when Mandela became President and the situation in South Africa finally improved greatly as far as stability, peace, and economic progress.

* When Africans gained independence, there was initially much optimism, but the national boundaries previously established by colonists mostly stayed in place, which created a difficulty (continuing to the present) in dealing with the diversity of tribes within those boundaries. In addition, rather than creating a new governmental structure, strong central state control continued. For the first couple decades, this meant major improvements in education and health care, and respectable economic growth rates, but the economies still lacked diversification and thus weren't robust. Moreover, since being part of the government was the main `game in town', governments became increasingly authoritarian and corrupt, with leaders trying to hold on to power with violence if necessary, often being replaced through coups.

* The respectable economic growth rates after independence were partly due to an expansionary world economy. But starting in the mid 1970s, partly due to oil shocks, the world economy contracted, which resulted in reduced demand for African exports, lower prices paid for those exports, higher interest rates charged to African countries, and increasing debt of African countries. And even in oil-producing countries like Nigeria, much of this oil wealth went to foreign countries and internal waste and corruption, rather than going into the domestic economies.

* During the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the context of the economic problems starting in the mid 1970s, African populations increasingly lost faith in government leaders and protested, pressing for ending one-party or military political monopolies and replacing them with multi-party democratic systems. While this reform did generally occur, the results were disappointing and corruption was still rampant.

* Beyond economic problems and corruption, an extreme example of post-colonial African deterioration was the genocide in Rwanda which climaxed in 1993 and 1994, resulting in 700,000 deaths and 2 million refugees.

* AIDS likely originated in central Africa prior to the 1980s and has been a huge problem in Africa, much worse than the rest of the world. Tens of millions of Africans have died from or been orphaned by AIDS, and HIV infection rates remain high (up to 30%+) in some parts of Africa.

Personally, all of this leaves me feeling sad about the history and prospects for Africa, but perhaps there's always some room for hope.
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