Oxford's Hugh Trevor-Roper is often cited to show what little even scholars in the West knew of the "Dark Continent" until re- cently. As Michael Crowder notes in

West Africa Under Colonial Rule
(Northwestern, 1968), European colo- nists truly believed they were civilizing "a benighted people."
In the most complete survey of the subject in English, the two-volume His-tory of West Africa (Columbia, 1972- 73) edited J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, Thurstan Shaw traces &...