• Acknowledgements; Part I. Continental Perspectives: Perimeters: 1. Prelude: Africa and the historians; 2. Out of Africa: the precursors; 3. Environment, language and art c. 10,000–c. 500 BCE; 4. Producing more food c. 10,000–c. 500 BCE 5. Copper and iron c. 600 BCE–c. 1000 CE; 6. Models: Production, Power and Gender; Part II. Regional Histories to the Sixteenth Century: 7. Central Africa; 8. East Africa; 9. Africa south of the Limpopo; 10. Northern Africa in antiquity; 11. Northern Africa from the seventh century CE; 12. The North-East; 13; The Western Sudan; 14. West Africa: from the savanna to the sea; Part III. Regional Historis to c. 1870: 15. Northern Africa; 16. The Western Sudan; 17. The Central Sudan; 18. The Atlantic slave trade; 19. West Africa to 1870; 21. Central Africa; 22. Southern Africa; 23. East and East Central Africa Maps: 1. Human evolution: archaeological sites; 2. African language families; 3. Bantu Languages; 4. Cradles of domestication; 5. Central Africa; 6. Eastern Africa; 7. South Africa; 8. Northern Africa in antiquity; 9. Northern Africa (seventh to twelfth centuries); 10. Egypt and the Near East: Fatimids and Mamluks; 11. The North-East; 12. The Western Sudan (to c. 1600); 13. Lower Guinea; 14. The Western and Central Sudan: the nineteenth century; 15. Southern Africa: the nineteenth century 16. East and Central Africa: the nineteenth century. Diagrams: 1. Human evolution; 2. Long-term climate change; 3. African language families: Afroasiatic; 4. African language families: Nilo-Saharan; 5. African language families: Kordofanian and Niger-Congo.

'A Reading of A History of African Societies to 1870 impresses one with the fact that it is written by a 'teacher' of African history, not, merely an academic. Certainly, there are many good scholarly histories of Africa, but few that have been written with the average undergraduate student in mind. In Isichei's pages one can almost hear the questions asked by students over the years, and her careful working out of the answers: current, nuanced, and comprehensible, but not at all simplistic.' Charles W. McLellan, Radford University