Sources for the AAAH

Research Methods and Sources on the History of Colonial Occupation and Borders

Secondary Sources

In order to survey the processes of colonial conquest and occupation in any given year, we began with the following historical atlases and websites, which provided excellent introductions to the historical geography of Africa.

Primary Sources

We also consulted a variety of historical maps in order to corroborate the information from the atlases. Many of these maps are made available on the Internet by universities and museums. The following websites contain the most extensive collections of twentieth century African maps.

Historical Texts and Documents

After consulting general references and primary sources, we corroborated the information using historical texts, ranging from general textbooks to specialized journal articles. The following textbooks of African history deserve mention for their informative maps as well as clear narratives on political history.

International Boundary Studies, issued by the United States State Department, were also important resources on the history of border establishment. These documents are made available on the internet by the Florida State University of Law.

Research Methods and Sources on the History of Violence, 1879 – 1945

Historical Texts

The following works provided a general background and in some cases, detailed information on specific conflicts.

Websites

Timelines on several websites served as a starting point in our research on violence, although many offered conflicting information. Specifically, the sites listed here proved to be valuable and more credible.

Using the names of places found in the above sources, we searched for the longitude and latitude readings of battle locations using EarthSearch.

Sources on the History of Violence, 1946 – 2002

Data on conflicts after 1945 are taken from a database compiled by the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo The database provides precise geographical locations and years for the conflicts. It also differentiates between three levels of intensity, represented on the AAAH by X’s of different sizes.

Sources on Post-Colonial Political Systems

We conducted most of our research for on the political systems of post-colonial Africa on the Worldwide Web. The following sites were especially helpful. We consulted several sources to determine each classification.

When the best classification was in question, we consulted specialized academic publications.

Population and GDP

Data on population and economic trends after 1960 are taken from the World Bank Development Index Database.

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