Under the title of Approaching African History, this book aims to describe the gradual approach to the idea of Africa as a continent with a geography, a society and above all a history, and conversely to describe the ways in which that history has been approached since the establishment of the subject as an academic discipline since the end of the Second World War. The idea has developed over the centuries since the Romans first used the name of Africa for their provinces in what is now Tunisia, growing under that name to embrace a larger and larger area of the land mass and its inhabitants, until today the name stands for the continent as a whole. This history of the name points in turn to the evolution of its significance as it extended southwards from the northern margin of the continent, developing with the growing knowledge of its size and shape, and growing acquaintance with the peoples to the south, on the part of the societies of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In the process, those peoples have themselves adopted the idea of Africa as an identity for themselves, however they may have adapted it for their present purposes. The growth of this knowledge and this acquaintance, and the formulation of this idea in all its various forms, have together left a trail of written evidence for the historian to follow. But not until the second half of the last century did this lead to the concept of a specifically African history as an essential component of the idea itself.