Author Description

These essays, collected in memory of Michael Crowder, reflect his interests as a distinguished Africanist and show, perhaps, how later scholars may build upon the foundations he laid. He was a writer, editor, scholar, teacher and academic administrator, making an outstanding contribution to African historical scholarship, and to African art and culture. The contributions place the imperial experience in its context, and to show the relationship between people - individuals and groups, with diverse languages, culture, religion, history, economic and political interests, and social class - and "empire", both in pre-colonial times and after. The essays cover pre-colonial empires, the early British colonial attitudes, the essential nature of colonial rule which Crowder experienced at first-hand; African resistence to the imposition of colonial rule and accommodation to it; and the policies and practices of other European colonial powers. There is much stress on the extraordinary diversity of African people and groups, and the British in Africa.