The Internationalization of Colonialism: Britain, France, and Black Africa, 1939-1956 (Oxford Studies in African Affairs) - Hardcover

Kent, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198203020 ISBN 13: 9780198203025

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1992

Synopsis

John Kent has written the first full scholarly study of British and French policy in their West African colonies during the Second World War and its aftermath. His detailed analysis shows how the broader requirements of Anglo-French relations in Europe and the wider world shaped the formulation and execution of the two colonial powers' policy in Black Africa. He examines the guiding principles of the policy-makers in London and Paris and the problems experienced by the colonial administrators themselves. This is a genuinely comparative study, thoroughly grounded in both French and British archives, and it sheds new light on the development of Anglo-French co-operation in colonial matters in this period.

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Review:

Here is a study which, as one expects from the Clarendon * EHR * 'John Kent does his best to give his story a measure of clarity while doing justice to all its complexities, and on the whole he does so successfully.' A.S. Kanya-Forstner, York University, The International History Review, XVI, 2: May 1994 This is a tense, closely argued and immensely detailed study...Its thorough coverage ensures that it will become at standard reference work on Anglo-French co-operation in black Africa * African History * `Here is no broad conceptual sweeping of the horizons but a very closely researched and argued academic study of Anglo-French relationships in and concerning West Africa between 1939 and 1956. Kent's central thesis is that international circumstances in and after 1939 forced these two competing powers at least to consider whether their common needs outside Africa would be served by some degree of agreement or common action in West Africa. This is a little-investigated field of study and Dr Kent has filled the gap very effectively. This is a thorough piece of research, densely argued, with a great mass of detail which throws much light on the dark corners of Anglo-French colonial policy in the last two decades of West African colonialism.' Times Literary Supplement This is a dense, closely argued and immensely detailed study...Its thorough coverage ensures that it will become a standard reference work on Anglo-French co-operation in black Africa * Journal of African History * `Picking out the detailed threads of this story has clearly been a hugely laborious task in which the author has trawled archives in both Britain and France. ... most historians of empire interested in post-war decolonization will need to read this volume, and one can say without bathos that it is a valuable addition to the literature.' Inst. of Commonwealth Studies

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0198203020
• ISBN 13: 9780198203025
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384