ABSTRACT
Regions come and go. Unlike jurisdictions, whose boundaries are established and delineated on maps, regional boundaries are subject to opinion. They shift, converge, or divide when impelled to do so by changing circumstances, whether economic, political, climatic, or religious, or some combination of these. Sometimes new regions emerge that call into question existing ones, overlapping, joining, and absorbing earlier regional formations. This volume focuses on the Sahara-Sahel region that includes parts of both North and West Africa. It is defined by economic, political, religious, and geostrategic factors. It joins parts of North and West Africa in ways that defy older models. The Sahara-Sahel zone bridges two major recognized regions, the Mediterranean world and sub-Saharan Africa. As such, the Sahara “falls through conceptual grids and lies outside of research projects.” It has fallen in the gap between recognized fields of study such as African Studies or Middle Eastern Studies, and has often been overlooked by researchers. 1 The region I am attempting to define includes the Saharan and Sahelian reaches of Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania, as well as parts of Libya, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. The Sahara-Sahel region exists within a broader meta-region I will call, for lack of a better term, North and West Africa. This meta-region, as I am defining it, includes all of Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania, as well as the Western Sahara, southwestern Libya, northern Nigeria, and parts of Burkina Faso. While the Sahara-Sahel region is the focus of this book, the North and West African meta-region is its setting.
