Modern Africa, indeed, the entire complex of modern African cultures, cannot be understood without considering the impact of the West, and what is retained, borrowed or adapted. In studying their people and continent, African scholars have had little or no choice other than to make sense of the Western encounter. Indeed, without deciphering the engagement with the West, scholarship becomes almost shallow or merely defensive. The intellectual encounter has been a cultural project that uses knowledge for liberation and power. The era that has made the most considerable impact has been the first half of the twentieth century, when European powers established colonial rule in Africa. This transitory phase moved Africa to a modern age and laid the foundation for the modern-day “globalization” of Africa. Africa can no longer escape the Western impact, and it has become almost impossible to return to a pre-contact period with all the charms and magic that many now associate with such an age of innocence.

The main interest of African scholars in the Western encounter with Africa has concentrated on two closely related themes: resistance and nationalism. Various studies have examined the military and diplomatic responses to the European “scramble” for and subsequent conquest of Africa in the late nineteenth century, as well as the anti-colonial movements that ultimately led to independence during the twentieth century. Due to this, African heroes, diplomats, politicians, and warriors have received considerable attention, not as powerless colonial subjects, but as creative and innovative agents of their own history. This approach is of great usefulness, if only to critique the motives and methods of the European expansion, in its refusal to allow Africans to remain on the margins of a history that the colonial writers created for them. The so-called glory of European imperialism belongs to European history, just a national history writ large. Studies of African resistance and nationalism have empowered Africans and turned them into the agents of their own history.

In keeping with the established objective of providing the African perspective on European expansion, this chapter will examine the responses of the Westernized African elite to the creation of the European empires in their continent.