It hardly seems necessary to recapitulate the main lines of Lugard's life and career since these are well known and have been studied several times. It might be useful, however, to discuss the political impact of his writings--especially some of his later works--because so many of them helped to influence British colonial policy throughout Africa and the empire.

As early as 1889 Lugard had established himself as an authority on African affairs by publishing a series of articles about Nyasaland and the necessity of suppressing the slave trade. Three years later--after engineering a treaty between Mwanga, the kabaka of Buganda, and the Imperial British East Africa Company--Lugard returned to England to campaign for the retention of Uganda. In addition to making his views known in The Times and in the Pall Mall Gazette, he defended the British position in eastern Africa in such important publications as the Manchester Geographical Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, and the Chamber of Commerce Journal. The Rise of Our East African Empire, a two-volume study of approximately 350,000 words, also helped to convince the British government and public of Uganda's stategic and economic value.

In 1894 Lugard accepted employment with the Royal Niger Company, thereby starting an association with west Africa that lasted for more than forty years. During that time he wrote an astounding number of articles, books, and pamphlets about the region's economic, political, and social life. In one nine-month period, for example, Lugard wrote twelve papers that appeared in a number of journals, including the Scottish Geographical Magazine, The Nineteenth Century, National Review, and The Geographical Journal.