The story of the imposition of colonial rule and its impact on African peoples has been told at length in numerous volumes. A half century of European control resulted in the successful implanting of European capitalist infrastructure throughout the African continent. The degree of success depended on many variables–ecology, mineral resources, agricultural productivity, the absence or presence of white settlers, African cultural attitudes, European administrative acumen, and, to a certain extent, luck and chance. The main goals of the colonial system were to replace a subsistence economy with a cash economy, to spread Christianity and western education and to inculcate a western mode of thought concerning government and development. Like it or not, African peoples experienced escalating socioeconomic changes which emanated from vaguely understood sources, had unanticipated consequences, and transformed their ideas and manners. How did ordinary people cope in this situation? What was the range of their options? The papers presented in this special issue seek to address these questions.

The papers collected here originate from the symposium, “Grassroots Involvement in Modern Africa,” sponsored by the African Studies Council of the University of Minnesota and held in Minneapolis on February 28/29, 1980. The symposium's central theme dealt with the question of how ordinary people operated within the context of the socioeconomic and political changes that took place in modern Africa from colonial times to the present era of independence. Ordinary folk–farmers, market women, clerks, laborers, domestic servants, beer brewers, drivers, school teachers, and the like–helped create their own history and restructure their own societies. They bore the brunt of the far-reaching changes which took place after the colonial conquest and they continue to do so to the present day.