Over the last half century, sub-Saharan Africa has not had one history, but many. Histories that have intertwined, converged and diverged. They have involved a continuing process of decolonization and state-building, conflict, economic problems but also progress and the perpetual interplay of structure and agency.

This new view of those histories looks in particular at the relationship between territorial, economic, political and societal structures and human agency in the complex an...