The value of Lady Lugard's book is that while she is telling us about the interplay of power between religions and other competing forces in Africa before slavery, she provides us with a much needed look behind the curtain of slavery. In telling us what African states had been, she is clearly indicating what African states could be. This may not have been the intent of her book, but this is the message that came across to more than a generation of African activists.

Since the book was first published in 1906, there has been a detailed research on Africa's place in world history. A Tropical Dependency was part of the stimulus for this research. New readers of Lugard's book, and much new research on Africa before slavery and colonialism, will produce a new generation of readers and scholars confident in Africa's ability to rise again as a nation governed by Africans for Africans.

CATEGORY
History, Africa