A Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa Published in European Languages: For the Most Part in Book Form

by John Donnelly Fage

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

John Donnelly Fage was a British historian who was among the earliest academic historians specialising in African history, especially of the pre-colonial period, in the United Kingdom and West Africa. Educated at Tonbridge School and Magdalene College, Cambridge from 1939, Fage's studies were interrupted by World War II. After service in the Royal Air Force in Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) and elsewhere in Africa, he returned to Cambridge in 1945, where he earned his doctorate four years later

Fage taught at the new University College of the Gold Coast in Accra, Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) in West Africa from 1949 until 1959, when he returned to the United Kingdom to take a post at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. He moved to the University of Birmingham in 1963 to establish the Centre of West African Studies (CWAS) which he directed until his retirement in 1984.