This chapter examines the Pan-African peacemaking of Africa’s first UN Secretary-General, Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali between 1992 and 1996, including his conflict management efforts in Angola, Mozambique, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Rwanda, and his landmark 1992 An Agenda For Peace report.

This chapter asks what historians can do in the global crises of the Anthropocene and the sixth extinction. It rethinks the presentism of our human–animal relationships and argues that at least one way forward is to take the multispecies entanglements of the past seriously. Thus it adopts the lens of the relationship between baboons and humans. In examining how this relationship changed over millennia, it tries to reconstruct a ‘more-than-human history’ as ‘useable past’, using the Armitage and Guldi approach. Environmental histories of southern Africa have neglected the longue durée and local/vernacular ecological knowledge, so this chapter tries to suggest possible new approaches drawing on cognate disciplines like ethnoprimatology, palaeontology, palaeoecology, archaeology and the study of rock art, hitherto largely overlooked by historians. In using these new sources it does two things: it offers a sample card of possibilities for other environmental histories of human–animal relations, especially over long time periods, and it argues that history can be useful in conservation efforts in the Anthropocene. In presenting a synthesis of human sociocultural history and baboon ethology/ecology, it builds a conceptual bridge between conservation biologists and environmental historians, crossing disciplinary boundaries. It argues that this kind of analysis of the past should be included in understanding human–wildlife conflict. The chapter makes the case that historians can be particularly useful by drawing on various disciplines and synthesising them critically to produce a narrative that explains change over time, while being deeply embedded in the specificities of the idiographic context.

This chapter assesses the activist career of Trinidadian scholar, C.L.R James, who was a pioneering voice in post-colonial studies. James was also a political activist who focused centrally on subaltern studies. His 1938 Black Jacobins - a classic of the Haitian revolution – is examined.

This chapter analyses the activism of African-American civil rights lawyer, Randall Robinson, who used the TransAfrica Forum to wage the anti-apartheid struggle in the US in the 1970s and 1980s (pushing for economic and other sanctions), as well as to oppose military rule and to restore democracy in Haiti in the early 1990s.

This chapter assesses the career of St. Lucian Nobel literature-winning playwright and poet, Derek Walcott, through an examination of some of his key texts, including an analysis of his discomfort with the proponents of “Black Power” in the 1960s and 1970s.

This chapter focuses on the Pan-Africanist philosophy of Beninois scholar-politician, Paulin Hountondji, and his quest to develop an African epistemology that was self-dependent and academically rigorous.

This chapter assesses the contributions of scholar-diplomat Edward Blyden – sometimes referred to as the “Father of Pan-Africanism” – to the movement through his concept of “Ethiopianism” which urged African Americans in the Diaspora to return to Africa to help develop the continent.

This chapter examines the philosophy of Martinique’s Frantz Fanon as a political theorist of democracy and a political sociologist of development, as well as his Marxist ideas on revolutionary change in Africa (based on his direct experiences in civil war Algeria), and his critique of the first generation of post-independence African leaders.

This introduction discusses the main varieties of modern South African historiography – that is, the trends that have shaped the field over the last five decades or so. It discusses the major schools, which are Afrikaans neo-Marxist, revisionist and postmodern historiography. The sections will discuss the major individual contributors to each of these schools, and the controversies that have embroiled each of the interpretations. The chapter will also provide a sense of the unresolved problems within the field. This discussion will serve as a basis for the final section of the chapter, which will introduce the respective contributions to History beyond apartheid, and explain how they build on the legacy of the various strands of the South African historiographical tradition.

This chapter examines the philosophy of Black Consciousness as advocated by Steve Biko in order to increase the consciousness and self-confidence of South Africa’s black masses to liberate themselves.

This chapter assesses the philosophical thoughts of Bissau Guinean revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, who was greatly influenced by Fanon. Rabaka analyses Cabral’s critical theories of revolutionary decolonization and revolutionary re-Africanization.

This chapter assesses the Pan-Africanist activism of South African singer, Miriam Makeba, who used her music and speeches to campaign against apartheid at the UN and other international fora. She also lived in Guinea, and travelled across Africa and its Diaspora spreading her message.

This chapter reviews the history of Africa’s quest for Pan-African unity in the areas of politics, socio-economic development, and culture, and puts this in the context of the 39 figures of Pan-Africanism in this book in relation to their intellectual thought and individual struggles.

This chapter argues that African delegates at the United Nations (UN) World Conference on Racism in 2001 betrayed the African and Caribbean cause for reparations for slavery and colonialism, and calls for a reorientation of the relationship of Africa with its Diaspora.

This chapter traces Garvey’s struggles to lead a “Back to Africa” Movement through the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities Imperial League (UNIA), as well as his activism in the US and Caribbean.