The African Revolution

"This book will be the first general history of this episode since Thomas Pakenham‘s Scramble for Africa, which was published over thirty years ago. The time is right for a new study: for the past few decades most work in this area has been very justifiably concentrated upon more local African perspectives, whether during colonialism or throughout the post-colonial period; Reid, however, integrates the local African experiences with new insights into the European political realities and deeper currents in European societies both before and after conquest. Although he highlights intra-European rivalry as the most proximate catalyst for imperialism in Africa, he also demonstrates that the late nineteenth century explosion in colonial activity was the manifestation of impulses which can be traced back to the eighteenth century and earlier. He demonstrates that to understand Africa and Europe, and indeed the modern world, one must understand the lasting effects of this period, from the problems of the creation of the current nation states to lasting changes in European society, and from the huge movement in people and goods in the early 20th century to what is arguably a new ‘scramble for Africa‘ today"--