Europeans in Black Africa

It is difficult to separate the idea of Europeans in Africa from that of colonialism in Africa. This conflation was a feature of the older imperial history, and it also characterizes more recent schools, such as colonial discourse historiography. Nevertheless, there were Europeans in Africa before colonization; many Europeans related to Africans in informal ways even under colonialism; and there have been many thousands of Europeans in Africa since the end of colonial rule. This article is an attempt to find ways of writing a history of whites in Africa that is not also a history of colonialism.