On African Dominion

This is a tough read, but it’s not Gomez’s fault. He handles his subject with detail and care, but the source material is—by nature—arcane to Euro-American audiences. Moreover, Gomez is transparent with his material. Instead of offering a chronicle or fundamentally narrative history, Gomez makes it clear that some of the sources are contradictory, and he gives possibilities for what these contradictions might mean. The downside is that it’s easy to get lost in the details, but the benefit is that it shows the methodological issues of doing African history while respecting it immensely.