For the past several years, we have been editing a series of intelligence reports on the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, all of them prepared by French officials in Tunisia during the 1890s, using information gathered from Muslim pilgrims who were passing through the Regency on their way to or from Mecca. Now that our edition is complete and we have regained a measure of control over our lives, we have been persuaded to jot down some of our reflections on this experience for the benefit of those who might be embarking on collaborative ventures of a similar sort.
Scholarly collaboration, at least in History, usually begins in one of two, overlapping, ways. Individual researchers often develop an interest in a particular topic and then seek out one or more collaborators to work on it. The reasons for doing so can be as varied as the individuals concerned—to fill some gap in their own expertise, to lighten the research load, or to ease the loneliness which the more gregarious among us feel when working in scholarly isolation.
Alternatively, two or more scholars may decide to work together and then seek out a research topic which best suits their collective interests. The reasons for adopting this second approach can be as varied as those for the first—friendship (and those involved are almost invariably friends before they become collaborators), a sense of intellectual affinity, or more crassly the attraction of being able to claim credit individually for all the work done collectively, since co-authored works still tend to “count” as much as those bearing only one name on the cover.