A Textbook of West African History

PREFACE: The need to provide the West African students of History, with an objective analysis of the activities of the peoples who occupy the Western zone of the continent of Africa, has motivated this publication. This book has been specially prepared to meet the demands of the West African School Certificate examinations in history; the special history paper for candidates offering General Certificate of Education examinations at Advanced level; and the Higher School Certificate examinations. It has also been written to provide the general reader with a direct communion with the traditions and culture of our peoples.To the students and the general readers alike is addressed this note of warning: You must not expect all your historical problems to be solved solely by this book. Other books, journals and current magazines should be read to supplement and enrich your historical experience. In such a quest, you are bound to come across some other ideas about historical writing and the study of history; particularly our own history, African history. Some historians erroneously believe that African history consists of European activities in Africa. This is utterly nonsense and baseless. Such historians persist in their mistakes because their views of African history are based on the European Imperialist-colonialist activities in Africa during the 19th and the 20th centuries. These simple questions which destroy their myth and expose their error must be asked: Does it mean that there were no people in Africa before the advent of the Europeans? Did the Portuguese not find highly organised communities in Africa during their Atlantic exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries? Did such explorers not find Africans in useful and rewarding trade, and other economic activities? Were the people then without indigenous religion outside Christianity and Islam? Or, are we to regard the ancient Egyptian civilization as European? Or else, what then is history? No one would contest the fact that compact biographies of European nationalities can be compiled into a single book and called "History of European Activities in Africa". But it is the height of intellectual dishonesty to call such a compilation "a history of Africa". European influence in Africa is only a part of the foreign of our cultural relations. Therefore, it cannot be a substitute to the whole entity. Among other problems that may confront teachers, students and the general readers are the difficulties of securing adequate periodization and valid justification for our historiography. Here, some attempts may be made to evince some thoughts among other historians on these items. Recent research and archaeological excavations have increasingly pointed the way to an acceptable classification of the periods on African history along the following lines.1.Pre-Historic - Before 4000 BC 2. Ancient - 4000 BC - 300 A.D. 3. Medieval - 300 A.D. - 1800 A.D. 4. Modern - 1800 A.D. Upwards Much can be said in favour of this classification but would be fully expatiated upon in another work. The generalisation that African History heavily relies on the use of oral tradition for its primary source, and therefore its facts cannot be reliable is untrue and illogical. From periodization above, it is obvious that periods (1), (2), and partly (3) are likely to lean on oral tradition. The use to which African scholars have put oral tradition for the recovery of the past is sound and offers a novelty in the history of historiography. Cont.