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Modern African historians have not set much store by full-scale biographies, least
of all biographical studies of former colonialists. Instead, scholars have tended
to place greater emphasis on factors concerned with state building, nation-building,
and the mobilization of resources and of men. This book attempts to restore the
balance. It presents portraits of French, Belgian, Portuguese, German, and British
empire builders; it also attempts to cover colonialism in all its various stages.
In addition, there are a number of chapters that discuss the wider problems of
governorship in the former British, French, German, and Portuguese colonies.
The portraits of the various governors follow a broadly similar outline. Our contributors
describe the governors' background, education, and early career and place them
in their social, political, and national setting. The different authors devote
considerable attention to the governors' official careers and conclude with assessments
of their postcolonial activity. Given the disparate nature of the material available
and the disparate nature of colonial governance at different periods of time, under
different European flags, we have not attempted to impose rigid uniformity. The
chapters in this volume are meant to be historical essays in their own right not
standardized entries for a historical encyclopedia. But there is a connecting thread.
The proconsuls who are our subjects served at different times and in different
places; they faced an extraordinary variety of administrative and political problems.
They were all servants of alien regimes; they were also among the unwitting state
builders of modern Africa. In A.E. Afigbo's words, they were “men of two
continents” —political architects as well as agents of destruction.
Our labor has been lightened by the scholarship and also by the patience displayed
by our contributors in the face of administrative delays. In addition, we should
like to express our thanks to the Director of the Hoover Institution and to the
Earhard Foundation for their generosity, in supporting the Hoover Institution's “Builders
of Empire” project, of which this volume forms a part.
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