Colonial Rule in Africa

Abstract

In a review published in this journal last year, this writer noted that the forthcoming volumes of the series Colonialism in Africa 1870190, edited by Messrs Gann and Duignan, were anticipated with sane confidence that they would maintain the scholarship and continuity of the first volume. Now the second volume of this ambitious series has appeared, and once again we are faced with a compendium: an anthology of some fourteen pieces all written by different scholars, and most dealing with quite different regions or topics. Like the first volume, this collection is so broad in scope that it almost defies any specific review of each of its component parts. But unlike the first volume which had a topical arrangement giving it a kind of chronological and geographic continuity, this volume is organized around several distinct though related problems having to do with the several structures of colonial rule in Africa, whether French, British, Portuguese, or Belgian. Thus, it confronts the reviewer with an almost impossible task. By rights it ought to be reviewed by a panel of experts, though such an event is not likely to occur. The book is designed for the general reader as well as the specialist, and there are several things which must be said about it.