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Historical Dictionary of Gabon (African historical dictionaries)
Historical Dictionary of Gabon - African historical dictionaries This second edition, like the first, provides both basic information and considerable detail about Gabon and its history in a form useful to both casual readers and professional scholars. The volume updates many of the earlier entries and presents the results of new research on the period between 1914 and 1940. Gardinier also synthesizes data ab... more »out the transformations that have occurred since 1967 under President Omar Bongo, including the upheavals of 1990-91. The introduction presents an overview of Gabon from prehistory to the present. A detailed chronology of events of the past five centuries follows, with tables of statistical data on population, national budgets, external trade, and domestic production since 1960. Within the dictionary itself are lists of colonial govenors and Catholic bishops. The alphabetical entries of the dictionary include individuals, groups, and movements; terms and events; and capsule histories of institutions and the forty peoples. The entries encompass both the pre-colonial and colonial periods (e.g., the slave trade, concessionary groups, the Mpongwe trading polities, early anti-colonial groups) and the eras of decolonization and national independence. Education, religion, the arts, the media, and health receive attention along with politics, foreign relations, the economy, and the society. After each dictionary entry are given the most important references in the comprehensive bibliography of 1,453 books, articles, and theses.« less