Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour
    Unavailable
    Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour
    Unavailable
    Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour
    Ebook1,029 pages19 hours

    Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

    By Martin Meredith

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    In this vast and vivid panorama of history, Martin Meredith, bestselling author of The State of Africa, follows the fortunes of Africa over a period of 5,000 years. With compelling narrative, he traces the rise and fall of ancient kingdoms and empires; the spread of Christianity and Islam; the enduring quest for gold and other riches; the exploits of explorers and missionaries; and the impact of European colonisation. He examines, too, the fate of modern African states and concludes with a glimpse into their future.

    This is history on an epic scale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster UK
    Release dateSep 11, 2014
    ISBN9781471135460
    Unavailable
    Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour
    Author

    Martin Meredith

    Martin Meredith is a journalist, biographer and historian who has written extensively on Africa and its recent history. He is the author of many books about the continent, including The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence; Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa; The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour;  and Mandela: A Biography. He lives near Oxford.

    Related to Fortunes of Africa

    Related ebooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Mining Wrote South Africa’s History. Does It Have A Future?

      May 6, 2019

      The discovery of gold and diamonds transformed South Africa’s trajectory. Today the industry is in decline, and voters are hungry for solutions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      10 Forgotten African Empires

      Dec 31, 2020

      10 Forgotten African Empires
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Desert Empire

      Mar 12, 2021

      A Desert Empire
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

      Mar 1, 2020

      The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
      3 min read

    • Article

      Black Britannia

      Sep 29, 2022

      Black Britannia
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conversation

      Apr 23, 2020

      The Conversation
      13 min read

    • Article

      Arab Influence in Tunisia

      Nov 28, 2022

      Arab Influence in Tunisia
      6 min read

    • Article

      A West African Empire Built On Gold

      Aug 11, 2023

      I once presented a documentary for Italian television declaring that Jakob Fugger – Fugger the Rich – was the richest man in history. He was a German who made his fortune in the 16th century through gold and copper mines, lending money to kings and p

      3 min read

    • Article

      Britain’s Black Trailblazers

      Oct 1, 2020

      Britain’s Black Trailblazers
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Oldest Wonder

      Jan 13, 2023

      The Oldest Wonder
      2 min read

    • Article

      Is Africa A Prisoner Of Its Past?

      Jul 16, 2020

      Is Africa A Prisoner Of Its Past?
      8 min read

    • Article

      Coinage of Tunisia PART 2

      Oct 31, 2022

      Coinage of Tunisia PART 2
      8 min read

    • Article

      From Afrikaner Nationalism To African Nationalism

      May 3, 2023

      Around this time in 1947, South Africa’s attention was focused on the British royal family who were on a three-month visit to our country. King George VI was accompanied by his wife, Queen Elizabeth and their daughters, Princess Elizabeth and Princes

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Khanate of Crimea

      Dec 28, 2023

      The Khanate of Crimea
      7 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Jul 6, 2023

      Michael Wood On…
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Re-discovery Of Timbuktu

      Mar 10, 2023

      The Re-discovery Of Timbuktu
      7 min read

    • Article

      Cyprus 1955 definitives

      May 12, 2023

      Cyprus 1955 definitives
      6 min read

    • Article

      Time In Timbuktu

      Feb 8, 2021

      Time In Timbuktu
      2 min read

    • Article

      Reimagining the Crusades

      Oct 11, 2018

      Reimagining the Crusades
      10 min read

    • Article

      Very Moorish Andalusia

      Jun 29, 2022

      Very Moorish Andalusia
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Ottomans in Tunisia

      Jan 23, 2023

      The Ottomans in Tunisia
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Europeans Take Over

      Mar 2, 2020

      ANYONE RIDING A horse automatically feels “superior” to people who are not riding horses. They feel that way because they are looking down on the pedestrians, knowing that the pedestrians will always get out of their way. On a horse, one “naturally”

      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fortunes of Africa

    4.5/5

    5 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Massive and magisterial book covering the full history of the continent. While few eras or places have in-depth coverage, that would be impossible to achieve in a book of such ambitious scope. When I finished, I half wanted to turn to the start and begin again - definitely a book to revisit more than once.
    • 4/5
      Fantasticly written history of the tragedy that is Africa. A lot of the book was spent on the process of colonialisation, not much on post-1960, but then the author has another book about that. As with other English-language history books, relatively not much space was spent on French Africa, but that is only missing bit on a anotherwise enlightening read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      It's important that you realize one thing about this book: it is a history of how the peoples and land of Africa have been exploited from Egypt to the present; it not a history of Africa. I'd like to read Meredith do the latter, but this isn't it.

      It's important to mention this because I can easily imagine someone criticizing this book for its focus on the various peoples who have done the exploiting, whether ancient Egyptian, Muslim, African or European. There's a great deal less in here about the good and great things that the various African peoples have done for themselves. Also, he's writing about thousands of years of history of a place that isn't really coherent at all. If you get nothing else out of this book, you'll get the huge differences between the regions of Africa. That means he has to make some big generalizations, and they can probably be picked apart by specialists. That's okay. We need the specialists. We also need the generalists.

      With those caveat in mind, this is a glorious book. Meredith writes well, the structure is intuitive (i.e., though he jumps around in time and space, the jumps are never jarring, and are always signaled with section breaks etc...) I cannot explain how much I learned from this book.

      And if you're concerned about political bias, which you should be in any book of this kind, know that Meredith is seriously biased against everyone. A typical string of argument leads from, say, the horrors of the intra-African slave trade, to the horrors of the slave trade to Europe, to the greater horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Here most accounts fall silent. Meredith, instead, proceeds to discuss the ways that African leaders, from the earliest contacts with Muslim states through to the end of the American slave trade, used their people as a way to make wealth and consolidate their power. Most slaves, in other words, were sold by Africans. The trade only ended once the entire continent (minus Abyssinia) was colonized by European powers who opposed the slave trade.

      Such is the history of the exploitation of Africa: if you think something's getting better (e.g., slave trade ends), rest assured that something else is getting much worse.