Publisher's Synopsis
Innovative study of the relations of the peoples of West Africa in the precolonial period. Covering a period of some 400 to 500 years up to the last decades of the nineteenth century, the author takes a wide range of examples from those societies whose levels of political organisation warrant the term 'states'. The arrangements for the exercise of power within these varied from states where one man or an oligarchy made decisions about war and peace to states where power was diffused between members of the community. North America: University of Wisconsin Press.
