 Tantor Audio, a division of recorded books, presents African History, a very short introduction. By John Parker and Richard Rathbone. Narrated by Dionne Graham. Chapter 1 The Idea of Africa This book is a very short introduction to a very big topic. In fact, it is a very short introduction to two very big topics. On the one hand, it is about a place and its people. Africa. On the other, it is about the past of that place, as it has been envisaged by Africans and written about by historians. The sheer scale of both place and past is colossal. Africa. An entire continent, in terms of language and culture, the world's most diverse, stretching from the southern shores of the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and today, comprising over 50 separate nations. The cradle of mankind, where humans first evolved and from where they fanned out to settle the earth. Africa also possesses a recoverable history, stretching back five millennia to the earliest of the world's ancient civilizations. That of Pharaonic, Egypt. To provide even the sparist chronological outline of this history, as it unfolded across the diverse regions of the continent, is way beyond our scope here. Besides, it would be as dry as the dust that each year the harmattan wind blows south from the Sahara Desert, discoloring skies from Senegal to Sudan. There are already many volumes that provide overviews of African history, or of different parts of it. We recommend a selection of these at the end of the book. Rather, our aim is to reflect upon the changing ways that the African past has been imagined and represented. That said, we have not focused exclusively on history as the representation of the past to the exclusion of history as a sequence of actual events. Our arguments are illustrated by a range of events and processes drawn from across the continent, as well as from the African diaspora beyond its shores. From these examples, hopefully, will emerge some of the main issues, problems, and debates that have arisen from the study of the African past. These issues are critical, not just for an understanding of Africa, but for an understanding of the entire discipline of history. Neither is it simply the physical immensity of Africa, coupled with the great depth and diversity of its past that makes our topic such a challenging one. It is also because the notion of African history itself has been so controversial and contested.