Africans and Britons in the Age of Empires 1660-1980

Africans and Britons in the Age of Empires, 1660-1980 tells the stories of the intertwined lives of African and British peoples over more than three centuries. In seven chapters and an epilogue, Myles Osborne and Susan Kingsley Kent explore the characters that comprised the British presence in Africa: the slave traders and slaves, missionaries and explorers, imperialists and miners, farmers, settlers, lawyers, chiefs, prophets, intellectuals, politicians, and soldiers of all colors.

The authors show that the oft-told narrative of a monolithic imperial power ruling inexorably over passive African victims no longer stands scrutiny; rather, at every turn, Africans and Britons interacted with one another in a complex set of relationships that involved as much cooperation and negotiation as resistance and force, whether during the era of the slave trade, the world wars, or the period of decolonization. The British presence provoked a wide range of responses, reactions, and transformations in various aspects of African life; but at the same time, the experience of empire in Africa – and its ultimate collapse – also compelled the British to view themselves and their empire in new ways.

Written by an Africanist and a historian of imperial Britain and illustrated with maps and photographs, Africans and Britons in the Age of Empires, 1660-1980 provides a uniquely rich perspective for understanding both African and British history.

Myles Osborne is Assistant Professor of African History at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2008, and is the author of Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya: Loyalty and Martial Race among the Kamba, c. 1800 to the Present (Cambridge, 2014). He also recently edited The Life and Times of General China: Mau Mau and the End of Empire in Kenya (Markus Wiener, 2015), and has published articles in a variety of journals including the Journal of African History.

Susan Kingsley Kent is Professor of History at University of Colorado-Boulder. Her publications include Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914; Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain; Gender and Power in Britain, 1640-1990; Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Interwar Britain; The Women's War: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria, 1929, with Misty Bastian and Marc Matera; Gender and History; and Queen Victoria: Gender, Empire, and the Gender of Empire.