Jocelyn Murray (2)

Why did I buy an out of date book? (First printed in 1981 and reprinted for this version in 1986....so it's now 38 years old!) A lot has changed over the last 38 years. However, for a book like this which is half ethnography and half geography, a lot probably has not changed. I certainly found it fascinating reading. And learned some new things.....such as there was probably as much trade in slaves on the Eastern side of Africa...to the Arab countries and to India as there was in the trans Atlantic trade. And the other interesting angle from the slave trade was that the slaves took their culture with them and replicated it in the new world. Elsewhere, slaves had simply been absorbed into the culture of the countries to whom they were enslaved.
Confession: I have not read every page of this book. I only skimmed it. The geography/history section which makes up about half of the book deals with each country in some detail...but whilst one can follow the genesis of the Tutsi-Hutu conflict in Ruwanda, you certainly miss all the details of the recent genocidal massacres. Still, it's an interesting book but suffering because it is now dated. I gave it 3.5 stars.… (mehr)