A. S. BALEZIN: TROPICAL AND SOUTHERN AFRICA IN MODERN TIMES: PEOPLE, PROBLEMS, EVENTS. Textbook, Moscow: KDU Publ., 2008, 272 p.

The publication of a textbook on the modern and contemporary history of sub-Saharan Africa is a long-awaited event. After all, the last general publication on the history of the continent of the XIX-early XX centuries, which university teachers could recommend to students, belongs to 1984 [History of Africa..., 1984], and the last textbook on modern history - to 1989 [History of Tropical and Southern Africa..., 1989]. Obviously, there have been many important developments in Africa over the past two decades that an African student (and indeed a history student in general) should certainly be aware of: the rejection of the "socialist orientation" is more than a matter of time before the end of the war.

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the collapse of the apartheid system in South Africa, the independence of Namibia, the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia, the genocide in Rwanda, civil wars in the former Zaire, Somalia, Liberia and some other countries, the transition to civilian rule in Nigeria, the reconciliation of the MPLA and UNITA in Angola... No less important is the fact that in the 1990s-2000s, a solid array of sources on the new and recent history of sub - Saharan Africa was introduced into scientific circulation (including through the efforts of A. S. Balezin), which made it possible to present it to the student more fully than it was possible to do before [1]. Finally, there was a clear need for textbooks and generalizing works written from modern theoretical and methodological positions, taking into account the concepts developed in Russian and world science at the end of the XX-beginning of the XXI century. 2

However, the relevance and objective necessity of the publication is not yet a guarantee of its real value. In the recent flood of textbooks and manuals for schools and universities in a wide variety of disciplines that has hit Russian teachers and students, it is not uncommon to find works written by unskilled and even unscrupulous people. Even in this regard, the work of A. S. Balezin deserves attention - it summarizes the long-term scientific and pedagogical experience of a professional African historian.

The textbook consists of two parts: the standard "Course Program" and the corresponding cycle of 19 lectures. This cycle is not divided by the author into parts, but logically breaks down into two introductory lectures ("What does the study of New and Modern African History give a historian" and "Problems of periodization of New and Modern African History"), lectures on the New History of Africa (lectures 3-11) and the Modern History of the region (lectures 12-19). Thus, we have not just a typical "textbook", but the author's lecture course. The latter is evident even in the style of the work, which, in my opinion, is its great advantage: A. S. Balezin managed, on the one hand, to create a written text that meets all classical standards, and on the other, to preserve the charm of a lively oral speech of a story addressed to a student audience. Putting myself in the place of a student, I understand that reading such a manual will not be boring, and therefore the material will be learned easier and faster.

The creative nature of the author is also reflected in the way specific historical material is selected and presented. It seems that because it is impossible to include in one manual the entire "Mont Blanc of Facts", even important ones, of the African history of the last half-thousand years, A. S. Balezin chose a combination of two strategies that would allow him to create a reliable and coherent picture of the New and Recent History of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The first strategy is maximum reliance on sources. The author cites extensive, sometimes multi-page excerpts from them, cites some documents in their entirety, and this is one of the aspects of methodological originality and novelty of this textbook. Of course, the natural reverence of the historian for the source is also evident here. But this is also, undoubtedly, the perspective of the author's achievement of the main goal of his work - its success as a textbook. The subtitle "people, problems, events", which is not typical for the works of this genre, seems to be more suitable for a popular science monograph, reflects the desire of A. S. Balezin to create not a banal "educational text", but one in which people would talk about themselves and their place in history themselves, problems would be revealed in real terms, the events would be seen through the eyes of participants and contemporaries. The student will probably be more interested in reading the letters of the "king" of Buganda or the documents of the Organization of African Unity, rather than the most profound arguments of scientists about them. Consequently, the assimilation of them

1 For a bibliography of recent publications of sources on the new and recent history of Tropical and Southern Africa, see peer-reviewed work, pp. 14-15.

2 At the same time, the publication of the latest major textbooks and generalizing works in Russian on the pre - colonial history and ethnography of sub-Saharan Africa [Istoriya Tropicheskoi Afrika..., 1984 (original French edition-1970); Lvova, 1984], so my assessment of the state of the educational and information base is based on the new (since the XIX century) model. Until the appearance of a peer-reviewed textbook for these sections of African studies, unfortunately, it remains fully relevant today. Textbook by V. A. Popov [Popov, 2001], which practically combines the pre-colonial history and ethnography of sub-Saharan Africa, is too small in volume to cover even the most important aspects of the culture and history of the peoples of the region; moreover, it was published in a very small circulation.

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the material will be faster and more complete, and his interest in African studies will grow. At the same time, the reader is not left "alone" with the facts: the author invariably offers him his own interpretations of historical events, sometimes even polemically pointed. The combination of detailed, but not excessive and not intrusive presentation, with a convincing analysis of facts is a sign of the professional taste of a scientist.

The second strategy, which is more controversial, but, I think, justified, i.e. also contributing to the potential success of A. S. Balezin's work as a textbook, is the author's refusal to attempt to describe in equal detail the history of all historical and cultural areas in all periods. Undoubtedly, there is an element of subjectivism and voluntarism in this; I have no doubt that A. S. Balezin himself would not argue that, in particular, the epochs and aspects of the continent's history that are not provided with written sources in European languages are not sufficiently significant, or that the history of West and Central Africa at the end of the XV - XVIII centuries is less significant. it is more interesting than the history of the eastern and southern parts of the continent of the XVI-XIX centuries. However, first of all, the main events of the history of West and Central Africa (at least, provided with European written sources) are also covered in the manual quite thoroughly, and it is possible to speak about the "priority" of the East and South in it only in the sense that their history is discussed in more detail. Secondly, this choice of the author is clearly due to his own experience as a researcher of just these regions: the understanding that it is on their materials that he can most clearly illustrate the general trends in the history of sub-Saharan Africa, and also, apparently, the preference for more detailed coverage of the history of certain large areas of the continent with sufficient attention to the history of the rest, rather than a "uniform", but in no case so complete consideration of the history of all its regions.

At the beginning of the review, I noted that the value of a new textbook is largely determined by the extent to which it reflects current trends in scientific thought, both general theoretical, methodological, and related to the assessment of specific phenomena. In this connection, it is noteworthy that A. S. Balezin seeks to introduce the student reader to the latest scientific discussions not only in African studies, but also in historical science as a whole: about the stages of political genesis, the nature and historical place of colonial society, and many others. Studying the history of Africa in this manual will help the student avoid assimilating some of the dogmas that characterized domestic African studies (as part of historical science) in the Soviet period, which the African student still could not find out about the groundlessness due to the lack of modern textbooks: about the onset of the New Time in the middle of the XVII, and not on the verge of the XV - XVI centuries., on the alleged original "liberation" orientation of the anti-colonial movement in Africa, etc., etc.

However, my complaints about the textbook under review also relate to its theoretical and conceptual component, in particular to the author's approaches to considering the two "chronological poles" of his work - the pre - colonial and modern (late XX-early XXI centuries) stages of African history. Describing the social evolution of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa before the establishment of colonialism, A. S. Balezin builds a one-line scheme of its stages (pp. 48-56). The main point of my remark in this case is not so much that in recent years there has been a tendency to abandon it in favor of non-linear theories (see, for example: [Beyond Chiefdoms..., 1999; Civilizational Models..., 2002]), but rather that in his" version " the author does not distinguish between forms of social and political organization (for example, a conic clan and a chiefdom, respectively). As for A. S. Balezin's view on the problems of Africa today, despite the accuracy of their isolation and reliability of the description, I would like to see a clearer statement of these problems in the theoretical context set by the processes of globalization.

And one last thing. At present, sub-Saharan Africa seems to many, including many scientists, to be almost a "black hole", an" incurable ulcer on the body of humanity " - a world in which everything that civilization is proud of retreats before the horrors of poverty, disease, war, where there is no place for simple human happiness. For some, this view denies the right of Africans to be considered equal. However, my personal experience as an Africanist allows me to fully subscribe to the statement with which A. S. Balezin, probably, does not accidentally end his work: "I believe that pessimism can be replaced by very cautious optimism in the assessment of the development prospects of Tropical and Southern Africa" (p.271).

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I would like to hope that for some this book will become a textbook not only on African studies, but also on humanism: a sincere and unadorned scientific story about the history of the Black continent can claim to be so.

list of literature

The history of Africa in the XIX - early XX V. M.: Nauka, 1984.

History of Tropical Africa (from ancient times to 1800). Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1984. History of Tropical and Southern Africa. 1918-1988 Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1989. Lvova E. S. Etnografiya Afrika [Ethnography of Africa]. Moscow: MSU, 1984.

Popov V. A. Etnografiya Afrika (Tsivilizatsii i prototsivilizatsii Tropicheskoi Afrika) [Ethnography of Africa (Civilizations and Proto - civilizations of Tropical Africa)]. Ch. I-II.SPb: TSPO "Informatization of Education", 2001.

Civilizational Models of Politogenesis, Moscow: Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2002.

Beyond Chiefdoms. Pathways to Complexity in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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