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An historical fact is sometimes forgotten: African urban history is a very old and complex affair. Cities existed in Africa in ancient archaeological times and during the age of medieval Islam. The Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Atlantic Ocean trading systems spurred urban development, as did autochthonous processes. Early on, urbanization was made possible, as elsewhere, by the agricultural so-called neolithic revolution, which allowed noncultivating urbanites—men of power, priests, craftsmen, and merchants—to be fed by their rural partners.1 Another common point is that, from these varied and sometimes contrasted urban realities, a new urban revolution occurred from the very beginning of the nineteenth century.It resulted from an early (precolonial), even if often mediated, diffusion of European Industrial Revolution impulse into a westernized “modernity”; African modern cities were cities that politically and/or economically accepted or later were forced to adapt (as, in Yorubaland, Abeokuta or Ibadan). From that moment onward and still more than beforehand, cities proved to be main political and cultural focuses. Urban cultural processes probably are the most difficult to study, while they certainly were among the most decisive tools for change.
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