African Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa (review)

REVIEWS 367 sure might have helped her to develop her natural talent, we cannot know. But the letters themselves stand as her victory. Charlotte Painter Oakland L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan, eds. African Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa. New York: The Free Press, 1978. 548 pp. $29.95. The sub-Saharan African territories were ruled during the modern period from 1884 to 1964 by a vast array of European governors or other office holders of approximately equivalent rank, including 333 French, 293 British, 142 Portuguese, 27 German, and 26 Belgian officials , according to the computation of the senior editor of African Proconsuls . This volume offers moderate-length biographies and analyses of the careers of fifteen of these, written by fourteen outstanding American, British, and French scholars of colonial African history. A chapter on Louis Faidherbe, whose last term as governor of Senegal ended in 1865, was written by a fifteenth author. The sixteen individuals studied were all of moderate or considerable importance in their impact on modern Africa or their country's colonial policy, although a Nigerian writer whose essay is included at the end attacks those historians who assign significance to the lives and careers of Europeans as governors in black Africa. Lewis Gann, the volume's senior editor, more than adequately refutes this objection in his introduction, which assesses the profound impact of European colonialism on Africa and the great differences made by the varying policies and methods of its governors. The individual studies of the governors highlight and assess the importance , or in some cases the failures, of major figures who governed in colonial Africa. The introductory chapters to the separate sections devoted to the French, British, Belgian, Portuguese and German governors are generally excellent in explaining the context of the specific power's colonial position and the role of its governors, although A. H. M. Kirk-Greene's remarks on the British governors are far too long-winded and filled with superfluous information. The book is deficient in certain respects. It contains no overall bibliography or bibliographies on the different chapters, which are, however, adequately footnoted and do list the writings of the governors themselves. The 368 biography Vol. 2, No. 4 book does not at all cover European governors in North and Northeast Africa, and Southern and Central Africa below the Zambezi are grossly underrepresented. No Spanish or Italian governors are included. The coverage of the French governors is quite adequate. The chapters on Faidherbe, Binger, and Gallieni in West Africa and Madagascar cover the military men who expanded the French empire in Africa during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, although the study of Gallieni by Virgil L. Matthew, Jr., and that of Binger by Henri Brunschwig are more balanced and persuasive than the more one-sided case built by Leland C. Barrows to lessen the importance of Faidherbe in the expansion of the Senegalese colony. The studies of Ponty, Eboué, and Delavignette are all well written and flow together to explain the evolution of twentieth-century French-colonial policy in West and Equatorial Africa toward Association and selfgovernment . By way of contrast, the four studies of British governors do not fit well together. As mentioned above, the introduction by Kirk-Greene rambles needlessly on, for fifty-six pages, and many truly important officials in the South African colonies, Rhodesia, Egypt, and the Sudan remain uncovered. There are two well-written and substantial chapters here, however: Harry A. Gailey's descriptive analysis of Sir Hugh Clifford's long and revealing career in Malaysia and West Africa and Peter Duignan's study of Sir Robert Coryndon's string of appointments in Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Uganda, and Kenya. These chapters seem fairly comprehensive and balanced in their judgments alongside John E. Flint's attack on Frederick Lugard and his colonial career in East Africa and Nigeria. Dame Margery Perham's massive two-volume study of Lugard covers this story far more judiciously and remains the standard work on her subject. Ronald Robinson 's short essay on Sir Andrew Cohen's career as a decolonizer with the Colonial Office and in Uganda is illuminating but somewhat cursory in treating the specific events of his career...