he genesis o fthis book helps to explain its character. It began as a paper I was asked to write for the conference on ‘African Independence: Origins and Consequences of the Transfer of Power, 1956-1980’, which was held at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, in January 1985. The organizers, Prosser Gifford and Roger Louis, asked me to write a paper on “The Economic Dimensions of Decolonization and Independence in Anglophone Black Africa’ to balance a paper by Catherine Coquery- Vidrovitch on Francophone Africa. I found it quite impossible to deal with so large a subject briefly: the result was not an essay but about halfa book. The organizers tolerantly distributed this aberration to the conference and I later boiled down the core of the argument to chapter length for eventual publication as part of the proceedings of the conference. But having gotsofar,Idecided tocomplete my half-book by adding material on France and Francophone African states and filling structural gaps pointed to by friends and colleagues. The result is the book initspresent form.