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Article: How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- June 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600. By Jan Vansina. (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 325. $50.00.)
In the heady days of the 1960s when African history was first taking shape, the theme of Bantu migration challenged historians, archaeologists, and linguists alike. The issue was how to explain the domination of Bantu languages over a large sweep of the continent from the Niger-Benue confluence to southern Africa. Many of these languages were closely related, indicating a relatively recent hiving off from ancestral forms. Early efforts at a grand synthesis foundered, however, on a lack of hard ...