This book grew out of a course jointly taught by its authors, Myles Osborne, an Africanist specializing in Kenya and Susan Kingsley Kent, a social historian of modern Britain, both professors at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It is thus a survey, aimed at undergraduates, and not a sustained argument about the relationship between Africa and Britain during this long period of contact, only part of which entailed formal colonial rule. For the readers of this journal, the question to be asked is what insights into African history are gained by focusing on countries in East, West, and southern Africa ruled at some point or another by Britain, and what furthermore can be learned (especially during the postcolonial era) of the African impact upon Britain?
The authors do not address these issues in a systematic manner and seem most concerned about not appearing to be boosters of the British empire, which results in frequent sarcastic comments on the moral pretensions of its rulers. The economics of this relationship (whether its agents are actually British or white South Africans) is mainly presented as an exploitative one, consisting of underpaid mine or plantation work; little attention is paid to the smallholder rural enterprises (as in Nigeria and Ghana) that produced much of the revenues of Britain's tropical African colonies. There is also little treatment of Africa's place in the larger British, let alone global, economic order.
Osborne and Kent are at their best (and somewhat original) in pointing out the role of violence in the colonial era, both for Africans drafted into the two World Wars and for those involved in the Kenyan Mau Mau crisis. There is also some valuable analysis of gender issues and interesting discussions of African agency in setting the terms of European domination. The book draws on some of Osborne's earlier research on the British pursuit of auxiliary ‘martial races’, which is used here to explain why some groups gained power over others in the colonial order, but the analysis here does not extend beyond the case study of the Kamba in Kenya. The earlier sections of the book seem, at times, to envision political independence as the telos of the colonial experience. However, the two postcolonial chapters acknowledge and confront the disappointments that followed the end of British rule, which the authors blame on both the structural flaws of colonial (non-)development and the moral failings of African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Idi Amin (who perhaps presents a lost opportunity to explore another ‘martial race’?).
The chapter on the ‘The White Man's Wars’ contains the only extended account of ruling systems in British Africa; the links between indirect rule and development could have been better clarified. In a short epilogue on ‘The Legacy of Colonialism’ the authors soften their earlier tone, pointing out (more in anecdotal than systematic fashion) that there were many decent figures among British colonial administrators, that racism towards non-white immigrants into Britain during the 1960 and 1970s eventually evolved into a more enlightened multiculturalism, and that African economies have grown and adapted digital technologies in the early twenty-first century.
To answer the question with which this review began, this book as a whole does not provide a very convincing new vision of African history, although it contains parts that may compel us to rethink how we teach our subject.
