A workshop titled “Africa and/to/in World/Global History” was held on　４^th of September, 2015 with guest speaker Andreas Eckert of Humboldt University and TAKEZAWA Shoichiro of National Museum of Ethnology. 

The aim of the workshop was to approach the relationship between Africa and World/Global History from variety of angle, thus given the title.

Professor Eckert’s gave a talk titled “Africa in the World – 20^th Century African History in a Global Perspective”. His talk outlined the development of African history studies in the 20^th century and its key issues and historical debates. The prevailing view of Africa as not yet part of History has shifted towards the middle of 1960’s with new enthusiasm towards the decolonization of African history. This enthusiasm declined in the 1970’s in large part to the political and economical instability in many of the countries concerned. Second part of the talk was focused on the approach to world history. The two key questions are how much of the Europe or the world history is needed to understand the history of Africa or how to go about many stereotypes and essentialism of African history. In particular, the question of what is African about Africa became an important issue for panafricanism or cultural studies. He also pointed out the danger of neglecting immobile aspect of society in the context of world history as well as that of putting too much emphasis on the ethnicity and tribalism as in itself was in many cases modern invention and has the potential to become political tool for some. The big question for the future is to what extent Africa’s place in world history will change again due to the social and economic development of the region. Who will profit and what will be the effects of that are the major concerns of the future studies of African history.

Professor TAKEZAWA Shoichiro gave a talk titled “Revising African History: Economic Development of the Pre-Slave trade West Africa”. The aim of his talk was to revise African History and give more multiple contextualization that it deserves. In this light, Professor TAKEZAWA presented the findings of his archaeological fieldwork conducted in Mema region as well as in Gao region of Mali since 1999 to demonstrate among others, the prosperity of the African societies in the 7^th to 16^th centuries. His findings are part of counterargument against the overemphasis put on the influence of Islamization and long distance trade in African history. The findings include complex building site in Gao region east of Mali constructed in the mid 10^th century. Large number of glass beads, copper items and fragments of glassware found at the site indicates the existence of centralized power. His field work in Gao Saneye region 7 km east of Gao suggests an original economic system established during the 14^th to 16^th centuries that was sufficiently developed until the arrival of the European countries. 　　　　　　　　　（Mandkhai Lkhagvasuren)