HIST 181: African History to 1800 (Spring 2025)

• Keep it simple!
  • Only use a few search terms at once, connected by AND
  • Example: Africa AND Islam
• Use nouns (people/place/thing/film) as search terms in the search
  • Example: Impact of the crusades on the spread of Christianity in Africa?
    • Africa AND crusades AND Christianity 
• Limit to books and ebooks.
• Use Boolean!
  • islam* AND "north africa" and History
• When you find a book on your topic, open it and pay attention to the subject terms!
  • There is a special subject headings for Islamic law -- Africa, North -- History -- To 1500
• Skim books to see why they are in the results.
  • Frequently there will be a chapter in the book that is of interest.   

Key Subject Headings 

• Search the name of your country of interest as a SUBJECT
• After keyword searching, see what terms are Subjects and narrow the search accordingly
• For centuries, use 12th, 13th, 14th, etc as subjects

Example: a SUBJECT search for  africa AND History AND "To 1500"

Key Subject terms

• "To 1500"
• "to 18*
• Africa
• "nation building"
• Trade
• Colonization
• Africa, East
• Africa, South
• Africa, North
• Africa, West
• Africa, central

If you cannot find any books on your topic, use WorldCat to find books we don't own.
The W&M Libraries will order it via Interlibrary Loan at no charge, and you'll borrow it from us without issue. 
Don't limit yourself to books just in our collection!