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Historiography of Africa and The British Empire


The English acquisitions in Guinea and East-India: Containing, first, the several forts and castles of the Royal African Company. Secondly, the forts and factories of the Honourable East-India Company in Persia, India
by N. Crouch
1728

Eighteenth Century books on the subject of Africa tended to see it as a staging post either to the Orient and India or to the Americas. Therefore, their treatment was very much a simple description of the unusual flora, fauna and envronment.

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The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the Slave Trade by the British Parliament
by Thomas Clarkson
London, 1808

Early discussions on the role of the British in Africa concentrated on its role in the Slave Trade. Early commentators like Clarkson were keen to stress the evil behind the trade in order to explain why the recent abolition movement was necessary. They did little to promote understanding of existing African polities except as a victim of European rapaciousness.

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Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America: 1638-1870
by W.E.B. Du Bois
Cambridge, Mass 1896

W.E.B. Du Bois provided the first scholarly approach to the slave trade. Hitherto, most discussions had been memoirs or hagiographic descriptions of the roles of various Europeans in the abolition of the trade. Du Bois took a longer term view of the origins of the trade and how economic forces and powers moulded its development and why it was so prevalent for so long. He severely criticised the Laissez-Faire doctrine that allowed the slave trade to flourish and thrive and bring so much wealth to so few people due to its exploitative and coercive nature. Written by an African-American, it was one of the first books to examine West Africa critically through a non-European lense.

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European Beginnings in West Africa 1454 - 1578
by John Blake
London, 1937
John Blake provided the earliest and most comprehensive account of initial European impact on Guinea in general. He actually expanded his research and ideas in further books such as Europeans in West Africa and West Africa: Quest for Gold, 1454 - 1578. He did not just focus on the English, but looked at the Portuguese and later Dutch involvement in considerable detail.

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History of the British Colonies
by R. Martin
London, 1835

The first discussion of a British presence in West Africa - except as slave traders - was in this 1835 general compendium of British imperial history to that point. It was used to help justify recent expansions in formal control of increasingly large portions of West Africa.

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A Brief History of the Wesleyan Missions on the Coast of Africa
by W. Fox
London, 1851

Some of the earliest discussions of African societies were those compiled by missionaries who had served on the Continent or were about the earliest missionary trailblazers. William Fox collected together the biographical details of many of the earliest missionaries to Sierra Leone, Gambia and the Gold Coast from the 1790s to the 1850s. There was little critical analysis of the work of these individuals although their integration into African societies could throw illuminating light on the societies these people were seeking to change.

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Western Africa: Its History, Condition and Prospects
by J. Wilson
London 1856

This is another example of a missionary-spectacled view of events and history in West Africa. It makes no apology for seeking to explain how Christianity would bring benefits of Western Civilisation to what they regarded (if sympathetically) as being uncivilised peoples.

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A Contribution to the Medical history of Our West African Campaigns
by A. Gore
London, 1876

Africa's reputation as "The White Man's Grave" meant that advances in medical science in the 19th century were eagerly anticipated in order to open up more places to imperial expansion and possibilities. This book looks at how the limits of medical knowledge combined with recent advances to analyse the effects on the then recent Ashanti Wars. It takes a military point of view of this African society that was to be assaulted by the British military machine.

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History of Sierra Leone
by A. Sibthorpe
London, 1868

Sierra Leone was an interesting aberration in imperial terms, it was established as a colony for freed slaves and those wishing to return from the Americas and the Caribbean. There was therefore some interesting analysis about this hybrid, creole society that was African but a strange mix of African tribal customs and European ideas. Books like Sibthorpe's were evaluating the creation of a new African society under imperial direction. Similar themes were explored by J. Horton in West African Countries and Peoples

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History of the Gold Coast of West Africa
by A. Ellis
London, 1893

In the late 19th Century, there were increasing histories written by Europeans posted to the Continent for professional or administrative purposes. These people began to take an interest in the societies that they were living amongst and sought to discern historical trends and information about their host cultures. Although written from a European perspective, they did have the benefit of understanding the conditions and of access to local peoples and administrative accounts which were often of better quality of those back in Europe. Ellis had been a British Army Officer posted to the region.

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History of the Gold Coast and Asante: Based on Traditions and Historical Facts
by C. Reindorf
Basle, 1895

Reindorf was an African with some Danish descent living and working in West Africa who attempted to articulate a history of the region. He was a Christian missionary but sympathetic to the cultures he was living and working within. His fluency in the local tongues helped him to collect oral histories and deepen his cultural empathy to the local peoples.

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History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti
by W. Claridge
London, 1915

W. Claridge was a medical officer and certainly no trained historian. However, his research was certainly at the upper end of respectability and due diligence when it came to amateur treatment of the early history of various African colonies. He wrote it from 1909 to 1914 just as West Africa was going to tip into World War and some of the borders were being redrawn. However, he applied himself fully on the history of the Akans people in particular and how they came under British rule, tracing the interactions back thoroughly.

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A History of the Colony of Sierra Leone
by J.J. Crooks
Dublin, 1903

J.J. Crooks was a colonial secretary posted to Sierra Leone. Interestingly, he had the responsibility of transferring the colony's records back to London where he later accessed them himself in order to write a history of the early administration of Sierra Leone in his retirement. In many ways, he had the best of both worlds in that he had experienced the colony directly whilst having access to official documentation. His analysis was still one to justify the British undertaking of this colony for freed slaves and did not challenge its basis in any meaningful manner.

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The Rise of British West Africa, Comprising the Early History of the Colony of Sierra Leone
by C. George
London, 1903

Another amateur man on the ground history. This one is interesting for the fact that it used official records that subsequently went missing. This means that this book provides a vital link to texts which can no longer be found or verified.

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British East Africa Company: A History of the Formation and Work of the Imperial British East Africa Company
by P. McDermott
London, 1893

Chartered companies had all but disappeared by Victorian times and yet they made an interesting reappearance in the final decades of the Nineteenth Century. This book is something of a Company history explaining and justifying why they became involved in East African politics and economics.

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Zanzibar in Contemporary Times: A Short History of the Southern East in the Nineteenth Century
by R. Lyne
London, 1905

Lyne's book was another quasi-official justification for how Britain came to be entangled and dominant in the affairs of Zanzibar and its pre-eminent trading position on the East African coastline.

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A Tropical Dependency
by Flora Lugard
London, 1905

This book is an unusual one for the era in that it was written by a woman. Although the woman was the wife of the highly influential imperial administrator Lord Lugard. It is therefore a highly sympathetic portrayal of his administration but is interesting in how it explains his administrative innovations in devolving power to client kings - a policy that would later be replicated widely throughout the Empire. She also revealed the continued dependency of the region on slavery and the role it played in local politics and economics.

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The Story of Africa and its Explorers
by R. Brown
London, 1892 - 94

British activity in Africa was popularised and mythologised in the 1890s as sympathetic imperial writers saw Britain's imperial expansion as a force for good and necessary to prevent the spread of other, more sinister, European empires from expanding in their place. The role of explorers was thought to provide a suitably heroic genre of positive role models thrust into interesting and exotic locations. Other popularisers of imperial expansion included E. Sanderson who wrote Africa in the Nineteenth Century and a Consular official at Tunis, H. Johnston, who wrote A History of the Colonisation of Africa by Alien Races

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The Personal Life of David Livingstone
by W. G. Blaikie
London, 1892 - 94

The giant of Nineteenth Century explorers was David Livingstone. A library of hagiographic biographies spilled out over his exploits and campaigns against slavery but this was one of the earliest and more thoughtful and critical biographies.

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A Historical Geography of the British Colonies
by C.P. Lucas
Oxford, 1894

A more systematically academic approach was brought to bear by C.P. Lucas who had the additional luxury of full access to the Colonial Office records. He also sought to explain the economic and environmental history of the region as officials sought to use history as a potential guide for maximising the economic benefits from stewardship over the colonies. It was hoped that books like this could help inform administrators and investors who were interested in developing local colonial economies.

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The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa
by G. Zook
Lancaster, PA, 1919

The turn of the Twentieth Century saw the rise in interest of economic history. Attention therefore turned back to the original trading companies that first made contact with Africa back in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. These mercantalist histories looked at the underlying economic motives of investors and participants at each stage of the trading relationships.

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The British West African Settlements 1750 - 1821
by E. Martin
London, 1927

Eveline Martin provides another economic analysis of the early trading arrangements but her book is interesting for it being one of the first truly critical examinations of the early stages of European engagement. She explains that the early traders were far from heroic and in fact acted more like villains. The interactions with Africans are glossed over rapidly, but her writing does provide something of a turning point in African historiography.

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Kirk on the Zambesi
by R. Coupland
Oxford, 1928

Coupland was fascinated by the role of the British Consul at Zanzibar, John Kirk, and his role in supressing slavery on the East Coast of Africa. In fact, this provided a rich mine for Coupland to dig into as developed his ideas into a wider thesis about the development and history of British Humanitarianism in his: The British Anti-Slavery Movement. He also felt the need to put the history of East Africa into a wider historical and geographical context with his East Africa and its Invaders which examined the historical trading links of East Africa with the Middle East and India.

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The Exploitation of East Africa, 1856 - 1890, The Slave Trade and the Scramble
by R. Coupland
London, 1939

R. Coupland returned to his examination of East Africa during the period of Appeasement in the 1930s. He was concerned that the League of Nations Mandates taken from Germany might be returned to them and sought to explain just how exploitative the Germans had been compared to the British throughout the region.

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Empire and Commerce in Africa: A Study in Economic Imperialism
by L. Woolf
London, 1920

Woolf represented a new type of commentator on imperial history. He was no academic, official or amateur, he was writing a report for the new and expanding Labour Party. This book was written in the aftermath of the First World War whilst Germany's colonies were being transferred to British control through League of Nations Mandates. His book was critical of the exploitative history of empires in general and was advocating a far more internationalist outlook on the future.

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Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783 - 1919
by W.H. Dawson
Cambridge, 1923

Dawson wrote a more familiar outline of Imperial outline in his chapter in this book entitled: 'Imperial Policy in the Old and New World'. Dawson was an expert on German Imperial history and painted their attitudes to imperialism in a negative light especially compared to the British taking over their former colonies.

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Germany's First Bid for Colonies, 1884 - 1885
by A.J.P. Taylor
London, 1938

A.J.P. Taylor further examined the implications of German imperial expansion in the light of a rising German Third Reich on the Continent. He wondered why the Germans burst into the colonial field so suddenly and so dramatically in the 1880s but was thinking very much about the German state of the 1930s as he did so.

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The Berlin West Africa Conference, 1884 - 85
by S.E. Crowe
London, 1942

Originally, written as a thesis in 1939, this was another account of German Imperial ambitions written in the light of Nazi expansionism in Europe. It examined the diplomatic bluster and aims of a Bismarck who was seeking to use imperialism as a way of undermining France and Britain on the Continent. These were ideas with a fresh currency at the time they were written.

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The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire
by L. Knowles
London, 1924

Lilian Knowles tried to bring imperialism into the realm of economics as part of her role as Professor of Economic History at the LSE. There was much interest in this period as to how and why empires had developed in the 19th Century and how they came to blows in the First World War.

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The Economic Revolution in British West Africa
by A. McPhee
London, 1924

Allan McPhee had been a graduate student of Lilian Knowles and drilled down her economic analysis to what happened specifically in the economic transformation of West Africa under imperial control. It considered the effects of transferring the industrial skills of Europe to the forests of and plantations of West Africa and its transformative effect.

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An African Survey: A Survey of the Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara
by Lord Hailey
London, 1938

Although writing about the economic possibilities for African colonies under British control, the researchers to this book did much historical research and were quite critical of imperial management to the point in question. It should be remembered that this book was written in the depths of the depression when primary resource providers were having a particularly torrid time.

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The Financial and Economic History of the African Tropical Territories
by A. Pim
Oxford, 1940

This is another official enquiry into economic issues which focussed on Northern Rhodesia and again inspired by the difficulties brought about by the Depression. It took a long historical perspective but criticised the authorities for failing to invest in African welfare and education and making the region dependent on unskilled work.

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Africa Emergent: A Survey of Social, Political and Economic Trends in British Africa
by W.M. Macmillan
London, 1938

This book analysed the social and economic tensions that appeared to be mounting in 1930s depression affected Africa. It argued for a far more interventionist policy by the British state marking a departure to the hitherto accepted norms of allowing the market to determine the development of markets and economies. This was a shift that was occurring across the developed world as market economies struggled to deal with the Great Depression whilst Command Economies such as the Fascist and Communist States appeared to be weathering much more effectively.

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British Commonwealth Affairs, 1918 - 1939
by W.K. Hancock
London, 1942

Hancock continued the interventionist discussions with a particularly interesting account of the conflicting needs and requirements between the traders, producers and colonial governments in West Africa in particular. He believed that the traders were keeping the benefits to themselves and failing to share the benefits of development with either the imperial governments or local populations.

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Rolin's Rhodesia
by Henri Rolin (translated by Deborah Kirkwood)
Brussels, 1913

Some of the most critical evaluations of British Imperial rule was from foreigners. Henri Rolin wrote a searching report on the first decades of the British South Africa Company Rule in South Africa and the role of capitalism in the colony. Within a decade, the BSAC was to be relieved of the responsibility of running its Charter lands and direct rule was assumed.

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Kenya
by Norman Leys
London, 1924

Critical reviews of British rule in East Africa were also coming to the fore in the inter-war period. Norman Leys was someone who had lived and worked in the colony and believed that the segregation and privileged position of the Europeans was going to be unsustainable in the long run. He was joined by other interwar commentators like William McGregor Ross who wrote a similarly disparaging account: Kenya from Within: A Short Political History in 1927.

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Kenya: From Chartered Company to Crown Colony
by W. Hobley
London, 1929

There were still plenty of apologists and advocates of the benefits of British rule in East Africa in the 1920s. W. Hobley represents what was very much a contemporary view of the benefits of imperialism as far as the European population was concerned.

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Nigeria under British Rule
by W Geary
London, 1927

There were still plenty of sympathetic authors to imperialism in West Africa in the Interwar period. Geary was joined by authors like A.C. Burns who wrote A History of Nigeria in 1929 also.

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The Native Problem in Africa
by R. L Buell
New York, 1928

Possibly the most comprehensive analysis of British rule in Africa came from this American author who sought to investigate 'government responses to the problems arising from the impact of primitive peoples with an industrial civilisation'. He focussed on the allocation of land and labour in early colonial rule and how the powerful vested interest groups were able to maintain their position vis-a-vis the powerless. Americans tended to be particularly critical of imperialism and this publication was very in keeping with American views on the subject in the period following the Great War. Other American writers of the period included A.N. Cook's British Enterprise in Nigeria and M. Dilley's British Policy in the Kenya Colony.

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White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya
by Elspeth Huxley
London, 1935

One of the most high profile of interwar writers was Elspeth Huxley who had grown up in Kenya herself. She wrote sympathetically about Lord Delamere the settler leader of Kenya although she was still empathetic to the plight of the Africans.

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The Cameroons and Togoland: A Demographic Survey
by R.R. Kuczynski
London, 1939

Criticisms of the official British 'light touch' policy towards its colonies saw that the more interventionist ideas required more data in order to be successful. The LSE professor R.R. Kuczynski was asked to make a study of popluation statistics which he started with a very thorough analysis in West Africa. War precluded the ability to instigate the hoped for accurate censuses but allowed R.R. Kuczynski to broaden and deepen his work on Africa and allowing him to underpin his statistical work with more historical analysis in: A Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire

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Tanganyika Territory: A Study of Economic Policy Under Mandate
by C. Leubuscher
London, 1944

In 1941, Oxford University created a new project in the field of colonial research, partly to advise on which policies were working and which were not. They were intended to support a new activist phase in imperial thought and direction with the idea of Britain providing developmental leads rather than allowing the market to dictate policy. Leubuscher was joined in her writing by Martin Wight's The Gold Coast Legislative Council, J.W. Davidson's The Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council, Joan Wheare's The Nigerian Legislative Council, Margery Perham's Mining, Commerce and Finance in Nigeria and Kathleen Stahl's The Metropolitan Organisation of British Colonial Trade.

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Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830 - 1895: An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria
by K.O. Dike
Oxford, 1956

The Post Second World War period saw a new generation of Higher Education facilities being created throughout British colonies in Africa. Kenneth Dike represents one of the first Nigerian historians to look at the history of Britain's involvement with Nigeria. This post-war period saw a shedding of the paternalistic overtones towards colonies and saw a more critical period from other African authors like Jacob Ajayi's Christian Missions in Nigeria, J.C Anene's Southern Nigeria in Transition 1885-1906: Theory and Practice in a Colonial Protectorate and A. Ayandele's The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria 1842 - 1914.

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Lugard: The Years of Adventure: 1858 - 1898
by M. Perham
London, 1956 (vol 1) and 1960 (vol 2)

Lugard continued to cast an interesting spell over researchers as his unconventional methods of imperial administration continued to fascinate. M. Perham spent many years at Oxford researching this fascinating figure. The second volume was entitled: Lugard: The Years of Authority: 1898 - 1945

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The Economy of British Central Africa: A Case Study of Economic Development in a Dualistic Society
by W. Barber
London, 1961

The Empire had begun to shrink by the late 1950s, but Britain's position in Africa still appeared dominant and books like this sought to point out the development opportunities that the British should address.

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European Politics in Southern Rhodesia
by C. Leys
Oxford, 1959

With Britain beginning to grant independence to African countries in the late 1950s and early 1960s, interest was shown in the settler economies that had developed in Southern and Eastern Africa. In many ways, books like these were signposting the difficulties that lay ahead for these Europeans in surviving amongst an overwhelmingly black African population. M. Sorrenson wrote on the Europeans in Kenya in a similar vein with: Origins of European Settlement in Kenya.

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The Royal African Company
by K.G. Davies
London, 1957

As racial consciousness became more confidently aware of itself in the 1950s and 60s, some historians began to turn back to the origins of slavery and of Europe's involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade with a critical eye. Davies' work examined the beginnings of the mercantalist stage of imperial development.

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Nationalism in Colonial Africa
by T. Hodgkin
London, 1956

National Consciousness was also a post-war phenomena which caught the interest of academics. Thomas Hodgkin started examining the roots of African nationalism and resistance movements to colonial rule.

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Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent
by John Gallager and Ronald Robinson
1961

Cambridge University shook up views on Imperialism once more with Gallagher and Robinson promoting the concept of 'Informal Empire' and influence to explain how and why empires came about and that formal control was generally only exerted in areas where informal power could not get what was necessary or useful. They therefore saw formal imperial rule as something of a burden and an inefficiency. This particular thesis was something of a revelation and stirred up considerable academic debate for many years hence.

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Ashanti Under the Prempehs
by W. Tordoff
London, 1965

As Ghana became the first black African nation to be granted independence in 1957, it seemed fitting that its African history be revisited and re-analysed. The Asante were to be re-evaluated from research institutes in West Africa itself as the local peoples began to be the focus of research rather than the rulers. David Kimble also analysed the rise of nationalism in Ghana in his 1963 book: A Political History of Ghana 1850 - 1928.

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Politics in a Changing Society: A Political History of the Fort Jameson Ngoni
by J.A. Barnes
1951

It may seem somewhat paradoxical, but just as Britain began divesting itself of its colonies, there seemed to be renewed interest in the 1950s in just how African peoples came to be colonised in the first place. The idea was to put the colonised peoples at the heart of the process rather than the colonisers. Barnes is an example of an academic studying in Northern Rhodesia about how Africans ended up inside The British Empire.

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Buganda and the British Overrule
by D.A. Low and R.C. Pratt
1960

Similarly, in Uganda, academics from Makarere sought to explain how the kingdom of Buganda became a pawn of European colonial rivalries and how it came under British control. Low and Pratt were joined by other academics in Uganda like P.G. Powesland's: Economic Policy and Labour: A Study in Uganda's Economic History

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The Penetration of Africa to 1815
by R. Hallett
1965

Even the popular histories of European explorers were to be reexamined by locally based historians like Hallett who attempted to return the local African peoples to the exploration processes and opening up of the continent.

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A History of Sierra Leone
by C. Fyfe
1962

A local archivist collated an extensive history of Sierra Leone. Other works by local historians included N.A. Cox-George's Finance and Development in West Africa: The Sierra Leone Experience and John Hargreaves' biography of the prominent Sierra Leonean: A Life of Sir Samuel Lewis.

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England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 1882 - 1899
by G. Neville Sanderson
1965

In Khartoum, Sanderson sought to explain the complicated relationships that saw the British clash with other European powers, especially the French, for domination over the fabled River Nile and its almost mystical origins.

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The Birth of a Dilemma: The Conquest and Settlement of Rhodesia
by P. Mason
1958

The Creation of the Federation of Central Africa in 1953 saw a new interest in the study of 'race relations'. This term was coined by liberals in pre-war South Africa as they attempted to walk the minefield of segregation and overt racism. The Federation gave increased powers to the white minorities over African peoples living throughout Central and Southern Africa. The ideas behind 'race relations' was to demonstrate how the various races competed, came together and then enhanced one another. He followed it up in 1960 with Year of Decision: Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1960

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The Two Nations: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland
by R. Gray
1960

There was much debate raging as to how suited black peoples were to self-rule. This is another example of a 'race relations' view of the parallel communities in Central Africa.

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The Birth of a Plural Society: The Development of Northern Rhodedia under the British South Africa Company, 1894 - 1914
by L. Gann
1958

In Southern Rhodesia, the Federal Archives employed Gann to write a history of the company rule of the BSAC. This dwelt on the positives of egalatarianism for the white population whilst overlooking the treatment of the black peoples by these same pluralistic settlers. It also under valued the societies that were disrupted and displaced by British company rule. Gann went on to write more extensive (but equally pro-white) histories of both Rhodesias: A History of Northern Rhodesia and A History of Southern Rhodesia.

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Nigeria: Background to Nationalism
by J.S. Coleman
1953

In the 1950s, an era of rising race consciousness in the United States, American academics began to turn their attention to African and colonial issues as a way of shedding light on their own history. Other American academics continued this trend such as F. Bourret's The Gold Coast: A Survey of the Gold Coast and British Togoland, J.H. Kopytoff's A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The Sierra Leonians in Yoruba and P.D. Curtin's The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action

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An Introduction to the History of West Africa
by J.D. Fage
1959

The 1960s saw an increased emphasis on African agency in understanding colonial histories. Africans were becoming more and more central to the imperial story - either as collaborators, resistors or in how they coped with British rule.

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Independent African: John Chilembwe and the Origins, Setting and Significance of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915
by G. Shepperson and T. Price
1958

Shepperson and Price's book represent this new focus on Africans as agents in their own history. It offers a remarkably detailed account which drew from official histories, oral histories but also relied on new techniques from ethnographers and sociologists.

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Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896 - 97
by T.O. Ranger
1967

The difficulty of placing Africans at the centre of the history was revealed by Ranger on his book about African resistance to BSAC rule in Rhodesia in the 1890s. With whites still politically powerful in swathes of Africa, Ranger was forcibly deported from Rhodesia for daring to contradict the established myth of benign company intervention in a backwards part of the world.

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The Rulers of British Africa
by L.H. Gann and P. Duiganan
1978

The 1970s saw Britain reduce the period of time for files to be declassified from 50 years to 30 years. There was therefore a sudden glut of official papers that covered African history up to the end of the World Wars. Administrators could be re-examined in the light of these new papers. In a similar vein was H.M. Kirk-Greene's A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Governor

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Oxford History of East Africa
by R. Oliver
1963

There were still liberal histories that separated the political dimensions from economic consequences being published in the 1960s and 1970s. This is primarily due to the length of time research on big collaborative volumes required. Similar in vein was Gann and Duignan's Colonialism in Africa

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An Economic History of West Africa
by A.G. Hopkins
1973

The 1960s and 1970s had seen something of a revival of Marxist interpretations of history. Hopkins did not go down the Marxist route, but did re-evaluate the importance of economic factors in being the primary motor for imperialism in West Africa in particular. He did not think that the reasons for initial engagement were due to the political machinations of European powers, but were as a result of a widening engagement from Africans willing and wishing to trade and do business. He saw the African as a much more dynamic figure in the imperial process from start to finish.

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Cambridge History of South Africa
by CUP
1980s

The gigantic exploration of the entire continent of Africa's history came to publication in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was a vast undertaking that showed how interest in the topic was splintering into all sorts of diverse directions: environmental, social, medical, sexual histories, etc..., etc... It was harder to find themes, but more responsive to the multitude ways of examining the past.

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History of Africa and The British Empire


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