AFRICAN GLORY: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations

Dr. deGraft-Johnson of the University of Ghana refers to his little book as Glimpses of the Negro Past and hopes that it may ""fire the imagination of African scholars and historians, who alone can do full justice to the history of the continent of Africa."" Despite its subtitle, the book is involved with early colonization of the continent as well as indigenous civilizations. It begins with Egypt, ""where the earliest African civilization is known to have originated,"" moves on to Carthage, its conquest by Rome (in alliance with the Numidian and Mauritanian kings and chiefs and the sister city of Utica), and a study of Africa Romana. Then came the Vandals, the Moslems, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the slave traders. Meantime, the Ghana, Mali and Songhai empires rose and fell. Disappointingly, there is less documentation regarding the native cultures than in the European contacts--the record of Rome is the most comprehensive. The coverage of slavery and the fight to abolish it is oriented to a British rather than an American market. Altogether, the Glimpses are not completely satisfactory, being heavily limited; they do serve to inform at a certain level and to awaken interest in a further, more complete treatment.