African War History

America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats.

Abolitionism was the movement that strove to end slavery in the United States. The abolitionists saw slavery as a stain and an affliction on the United States and made it their goal to eradicate slave ownership. Abolitionists produced anti-slavery literature, sent petitions to Congress, and ran for political office.

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Conflict shifted from the battlefield to the Capitol as Congress warred with President Andrew Johnson over just what to do with the South. Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction, which was sympathetic to the former Confederacy, would ultimately lead to his impeachment and the institution of Radical Reconstruction.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama, aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered.

The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary "Desert Fox", Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940, when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy’s entrance into the war, seeing an opportunity for Italy to enlarge its colonial holdings in Africa by seizing portions of the British Empire.

For the past three decades, Colin Powell has been among America's most trusted and admired leaders. This biography demonstrates that Powell's decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate is crucial to understanding his astonishing rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to the highest echelons of military and political power.

In late January 1879, following news of the terrible disaster to befall British forces at Isandlwana, Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood, commanding officer of the northern No. 4 Column, withdraws his forces to Khambula, near the Natal and Transvaal borders. Adding to their woes, the southern No. 1 Column finds itself trapped under siege at the abandoned mission station of Eshowe. The general officer commanding, Lord Chelmsford, orders Wood to continue harassing the Zulus, keeping the pressure off their central and southern forces while he rallies reinforcements to relieve Eshowe.

Nigeria was an unpopular destination for European settlement, thanks to its punishing climate and proliferation of tropical disease, so it saw very little direct European influence. Europeans were posted to Nigeria or sought employment purely to satisfy the needs of administration, and, of course, the various Christian missionary organizations were led largely by whites. Christian missions, incidentally, succeeded spectacularly in the spreading of Christianity across the animist south, but they made absolutely no inroads in the Muslim north.

Very few of the ancient empires and nations were able to challenge the Romans, who were famous for their military might. Even fewer were able to make them shiver just by mentioning their name. In fact, only one enemy of Rome managed to engrave such fear into their bones. That was Carthage, sometimes called the Carthaginian Empire. It was a formidable state that stretched across northern Africa, from Algeria and Tunisia to the shores of Morocco and southern Spain.

Freedom Flyers brings to life the legacy of a determined, visionary cadre of African American airmen who proved their capabilities and patriotism beyond question, transformed the armed forces - formerly the nation's most racially polarized institution - and jump-started the modern struggle for racial equality.

The Boer War was the defining conflict of South African history and one of the most important conflicts in the history of the British Empire. Naturally, complicated geopolitics underscored it. The European history of South Africa began with the 1652 arrival of a small Dutch flotilla in Table Bay, at the southern extremity of the African continent. The Boer War: The History and Legacy of the Conflict That Solidified British Rule in South Africa looks at the controversial fighting and the manner in which it affected the 20th century.

On October 3, 1807, Thomas Jefferson was contacted by an unknown traveler urgently pleading for a private "interview" with the president, promising to disclose "a matter of momentous importance". By the next day, Jefferson held in his hands two astonishing manuscripts whose history has been lost for over two centuries. Authored by Muslims fleeing captivity in rural Kentucky, these documents delivered to the president in 1807 were penned by literate African slaves, and written entirely in Arabic.

When World War I began, it seemed unlikely that a unit such as the Harlem Hellfighters would ever be formed. Given their nickname by their German foes who admired their bravery, the Harlem Hellfighters were members of the 369th, an all-Black regiment. The 369th played key roles in critical battles and helped secure an Allied victory.

Through oral histories and original interviews with surviving family members, Dan Goldberg brings 13 forgotten heroes away from the margins of history and into the spotlight. He reveals the opposition these men faced: the racist pseudoscience, the regular condescension, the repeated epithets, the verbal abuse, and even violence. Despite these immense challenges, the Golden Thirteen persisted—understanding the power of integration, the opportunities for black Americans if they succeeded, and the consequences if they failed.

Mastering the West offers a thoroughly engrossing narrative of this century of battle in the western Mediterranean, while treating a full range of themes: the antagonists' military, naval, economic, and demographic resources; the political structures of both republics; and the postwar impact of the conflicts on the participants and victims.

Of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in 1938 in the backlands of his country (Kiambu district) to a father whose four wives bore him two dozen or so children. Ngugi was the fifth child of the third wife. His father was a peasant farmer forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Before going off to school, he had what was then considered a bizarre and inexplicable thirst for learning....

A finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize: A stunning work of investigative reporting by a Canadian journalist who has risked her own life to bring us a deeply disturbing history of the Rwandan genocide that takes the true measure of Rwandan head of state Paul Kagame.

Dr. Jordan B. Smith, Jr. became the first African-American to become the Color Company Commander at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis or USNA) in 1976. The Class of 1976 African Americans set the pathway for changes, by demonstrating that Blacks and other minorities had earned the right to be in Annapolis. The incidents and events are authentic. This audiobook is about one of the Black men who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1976.

First published in 1961, John Hope Franklin’s revelatory study of the Reconstruction Era is a landmark work of history, exploring the role of former slaves and dispelling longstanding popular myths about corruption and Radical rule. Looking past dubious scholarship that had previously dominated the narrative, Franklin combines astute insight and careful research to provide an accurate, comprehensive portrait of the era.

1879 was a year of bloody conflict on the African continent. Cetsywayo, the Zulu chieftain, had wielded his armies with precision and care, defeating and driving his enemies before him. This courageous force finally butted heads with the British on the sweeping plains of Africa, inflicting grievous losses on the empire’s red coats. This book covers the conflict and the major political and military events that took place. Written the year after the war came to an end, the author weaves a compelling narrative that’s hard to put down.