PRELUDE TO DECOLONISATION

DECOLONISATION AND THE PROBLEMS OF INDEPENDENCE

This volume of The Cambridge History of Africa differs from the two volumes immediately preceding it in that when it was first planned in 1975 archival sources were available to its authors only for the first five years in those few record offices that operate the 30-year rule. By and large, then, this is a volume whose contributors have been unable to use archival sources directly or refer to works based on them. Indeed as far as Africa is concerned it is only very recently that work based on the Public Record Office at Kew, covering the first ten years of our period, has been published in journals and books. Notable among these have been William R. Louis, Imperialism at bay 1941-194;: the United States and the decolonisation of the British Empire (Oxford, 1977); Ronald Robinson,' Andrew Cohen and the transfer of power in Tropical Africa, 1940-1951 ', in W. H. Morris-Jones and Georges Fischer (eds.), Decolonisation and after: the British and French experience (London, 1980); and R. D. Pearce, The turning point in Africa: British colonial policy 19)8-1948 (London, 1982).