1. Fallible yardsticks -- 2. Mid-nineteenth-century colonialism -- 3. Imperialism-the highest stage of nationalism? -- 4. The imperial high-water mark and the turn of the tide -- 5. Pre-Leninist critiques of colonialism on the continent -- 6. Lenin's view of imperialism -- 7. The colonial debate between the two world wars -- 8. Pan-Africanism, imperialism, and négritude -- 9. Communism, colonialism, and neocolonialism -- 10. Problems of African historiography -- 11. Africa before partition -- 12. Europe in Africa by the early 1870s -- 13. The scramble for Africa -- 14. Dual mandate -- 15. Development or exploitation? -- 16. Businessmen and bureaucrats : the growth of state control -- 17. Teachers and doctors in colonial Africa -- 18. African townsmen -- 19. The rulers waver -- 20. The subjects organize -- 21. Winning of the political kingdom -- 22. Imperial balance in sheet : a summing up -- 23. The new rulers in charge : an epilogue