The West Indies and British West African policy in the nineteenth Century—a corrective comment

Abstract

Using some examples from recent writing on West Africa, this article suggests that the failure of African historians to appreciate fully the importance of the West Indies in generating British imperial policy in the Atlantic tropics has led to serious distortions and errors of interpretation. For economic, ideological, and historical reasons, Britain's interest in the West Indies greatly exceeded her interest in West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. Her extensive Caribbean involvement and her ideological commitment to the successful outcome of slave emancipation powerfully influenced her policy in West Africa. In assessing the motives which generated imperial actions in the tropical Atlantic and in evaluating the impact of those actions upon Africa, it behooves historians to develop a broader, trans-Atlantic comprehension of the roots of British imperial policy.