1st Edition

Colonial West Africa Collected Essays

By Michael Crowder Copyright 1978
    352 Pages
    by Routledge

    352 Pages
    by Routledge

    Originally published in 1978, this volume provides a selection of Michael Crowder's wrtings on the impact of colonial rule in West Africa and African reaction to it from the conquest to independence. Key themes include the impact of European culture on African culture; the resistance of Africans to European conquest; African reaction to colonial rule; the differences between French and British administrative, social and economic politices and the consequences of these differences for those subjected to them; the extent to which Africans accepted the new socio-political strucrrues imposed on them and the point at which they began to take control over them; and finally the importance or otherwise of the colonial period in African history as a whole.

    1. West Africa and the Europeans: Five Hundred Years of Direct Contact (1971) 2. Background to the Scramble. (1968); 3.West African Resistance (1971) 4.Bai Bureh and the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War of 1898  (1970); 5. Blaise Diagne and the Recruitment of African Troops for the 1914–18 War. (1967) 6. The White Chiefs of Tropical Africa (1970) 7. The Imposition of the Native Authority System in Bussa: The Rebellion of 1915 (1974); 8.The French Suppression of the 1916–17 Revolt in Dahomey an Borgu (1975) 9. Indirect rule — French and British style(1964) 10. West African Chiefs (1970) 11. West Africa 1919 — 1939: The Colonial Situation. (1974) 12. Colonial Backwater (1956/1957) 13. Vichy and Free France in West Africa during the Second World War 14. Independence as a goal in French West African Politics: 1944–60 (1965) 15. Colonial Rule in West Africa: Factor for Division or Unity? (1965/1971).

    Biography

    Michael Crowder worked for most of his adult life in West africa, mainly in Nigeria. He was visiting Professor at the University of Lagos, Professor of History at Ahmadu Bello University and founder of the Centre of Nigerial Cultural Studies. He was Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ife and visiting lecturer at the UCLA Berkeley and Columbia University. In 1964 he was made an Officer of the National Order of Senegal.