In the first section of this book, I am concerned with exposing the inner workings and spatial logics of societies in the Senegambia and the trans-Volta before the partition at the end of the nineteenth century. I also seek to understand the ways in which existing frontier regions were incorporated into boundary-making and how, in turn, the latter was integral to colonial state-making. I advance a case for viewing the relationship between boundaries and state-making in its West African context. Although I question the straightforward notion that institutions were transplanted from Europe to Africa, I also show how these processes were shaped by a longer engagement with the Atlantic world.