African experiment

MANY BOOKS HAVE BEEN written about the Colonies of the British Empire, and many are the books dealing with their geography, political history, and ethnology. By contrast, com paratively few works cover their economic development. In consequence, there are big gaps in our knowledge of the Colonies, and false ideas are widely held about them and their peoples.

This book attempts to dispel ignorance about the economic ✓ development of British West Africa and to remove some of the misconceptions which arise from inaccurate teaching about the 'Dark Continent'.

The task of building up an economic consciousness of the British Colonial Empire was begun in 1924 by the late Pro fessor Lilian Charlotte Anne Knowles with her The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire, Vol. 1. Since then scholars interested in colonial affairs have focused their atten tion on specific regions and have produced a limited number of helpful books on colonial economics.

Dr. Allan McPhee, a former student of commerce and eco nomics at Edinburgh University, published, in 1926, the first systematic work dealing with the economic development of British West Africa. This work of pioneer research has since been supplemented with very useful material by Professor Shephard, Lord Hailey, Sir Alan Pim, and a few others. But in spite of these fairly recent volumes much still remains to be written about the economic development of this part of Africa, both from a general and a specific standpoint.