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Biography and the Debate about Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Historians sometimes claim to be making their own modest contribution to the African revolution by re-establishing the identity of Africa's pre-colonial past. But it should not be thought that the relevance of their work to modern Africa can end there, nor even that this is the most difficult of the adjustments of perspective which they will need to make. Now that the colonial flags are coming down, European and African historians will need to look back—so far as is humanly possible, without anger—and try to answer the question of how the Europeans came to be there as rulers. (An even more difficult task, still not seriously begun, will be to appraise the lasting historical importance of their rule.)

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

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