The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian History provides a comprehensive history of Africa's most populous and most rapidly developing country. Rather than centering the rise of the nation-state, the Handbook reads the narrative of national politics alongside deeper histories of political and social
organization, as well as in relation to competing influences on modern identity formation and inter-group relationships, such as ethnic and religious communities, economic partnerships, and immigrant and diasporic cultures.

Consisting of 36 chapters, the Handbook is separated into five major sections, starting with the historiography of Nigeria--namely, the systems of knowledge handed down by the indigenous, Christian, Islamic, colonial, and post-colonial traditions. From that foundation, the chapters cover the
development of nomadic and agricultural societies, the colonial era, the emergence of a modern Nigeria, and the impact of Nigerians outside of the country's borders. This transnational approach incorporates the most important ideas from the new scholarship emerging in the 21st century, creating a
forward-looking volume appropriate for a dynamic, diverse, and swiftly changing Nigeria.

About the Author:
Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town, and Extraordinary Professor of Human Rights, University of
the Free State. He had served as the General Secretary of the Historical Society of Nigeria, the President of the African Studies Association, Vice-President of UNESCO Slave Route Project, and the Kluge Chair of the Countries of the South, Library of Congress. He is a member of the Scholars'
Council, Kluge Center, the Library of Congress. He has received over thirty lifetime career awards and fourteen honorary doctorates. He has written extensively on Nigeria, including A History of Nigeria; Nigerian Political Modernity; Violence in Nigeria; Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria, and
Understanding Nigeria.

Matthew M. Heaton is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Virginia Tech. His research interests are in the history of health and illness, migration, and globalization in Africa with particular emphasis on Nigeria. He is the author of Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists,
Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry and co-author of A History of Nigeria.