Human rights have a deep and tumultuous history that culminates in the age of rights we live in today, but where does Africa's story fit in with this global history? Here, Bonny Ibhawoh maps this story and offers a comprehensive and interpretative history of human rights in Africa. Rather than a tidy narrative of ruthless violators and benevolent protectors, this book reveals a complex account of indigenous African rights traditions embodied in the wisdom of elders and sages; of humanitarians and abolitionists who marshalled arguments about natural rights and human dignity in the cause of anti-slavery; of the conflictual encounters between natives and colonists in the age of Empire and the 'civilizing mission'; of nationalists and anti-colonialists who deployed an emergent lexicon of universal human rights to legitimize longstanding struggles for self-determination, and of dictators and dissidents locked in struggles over power in the era of independence and constitutional rights.

Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh teaches Human Rights History and African History in the Department of History and the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University. He also teaches in the McMaster Arts & Scence Program and the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition. He has taught in universities in Africa, Europe and North America. Previously, he was professor at Brock University, Canada; professor in the Department of Political Science at University of North Carolina at Asheville; Human Rights Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, New York; Research Fellow at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen and Associate Member of the Centre for African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He has also taught at Ambrose Alli University and the University of Lagos. His research interests are global human rights, peace/conflict studies, legal and imperial history. His articles on these themes have appeared in historical and interdisciplinary journals – Human Rights Quarterly, The Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, the Journal of Global History, and Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology (Journal of the American Psychological Association).