Includes index.

Chapter 1: Ordering their worlds -- A place to begin -- Spirit power and state power in Burganda -- Xhosa worlds: homestead, neighborhood, kingdom, ancestors -- Matriclans and entrepreneurs in the making of the Asante state -- Titles and lineages in Igbo-speaking societies -- Imperial Tunis -- Reigning in greed and anarchy in Bakongo and Jaga state and society -- Feature: Beatriz of Saint Anthony -- Chapter 2: Global Africa in an oceanic era -- An Oceanic era -- Mediterranean Africa -- Atlantic Africa -- Indian Ocean Africa -- Feature: the chronicles of Pate and 19th century Swahili identity -- Chapter 3: Spiritual belief and practice in cosmopolitan Africa -- African "world" and African "traditional" religions -- African Islam in the eighteenth century -- African Christianity and Protestant evangelism -- Feature: the Xhosa cattle-killing -- Chapter 4: African economies and the industrial revolution -- Production and productivity in late eighteenth century Africa -- Africans and the industrial revolution -- Settlers, peasants, and plantations -- Feature: Muhammad Ali's Egypt -- Chapter 5: Africans write back -- Men and women in the middle? -- Egyptian intellectuals on France and Islam -- The Abbe Boilat -- James Africanus Horton -- The "educated men" of the Fante Confederation -- Jan Tzatzoe in Britain -- Towards colonialism?