Journal of Social Development in Africa (1997), 12,1,105-112 
Book Reviews 
Decolonization and African Society, Frederick Cooper (19%), Cambridge 
University Press, Cambridge, ISBN: 0-521-56251-1 (h/b), 0-521-56600-2 (p/b), 
677pp inc index, Price: £55 (h/b), £19.95 (p/b). 
This detailed and authoritative volume changes our conceptions of "imperial" and 
"African" history. Frederick Cooper gathers a vast range of archival sources in 
French and English to achieve a truly comparative study of colonial policy towards 
the recruitment, control, and institutionalisation of African labour forces from the 
mid-1930s, when the labour question was first posed, to the late 1950s, when 
decolonisation was well under way. 
Professor Cooper explores colonial conceptions of the African worker, and 
shows how African trade union and political leaders used the new language of 
social change to claim equal wages, equal benefits, and shareof power. This helped 
to persuade European officials that their post-war project of building a "modem" 
Africa within the colonial system was both unaffordable and politically impossible. 
France and Great Britain left the continent, insisting that they had made it 
possible for Africans to organise wage labour and urban life in the image of 
industrial societies, while abdicating to African elites responsibility for the 
consequences of the colonial intervention. They left behind the question of how 
much the new language for discussing social policy corresponded to the lived 
experience of African workers and their families and how much room for 
maneuver Africans in government or in social movements had to reorganise work, 
family, and community in their own ways. 
The book contains a wealth of detail, divided into five parts: Part I "The dangers 
of expansion and the dilemmas of reform" examines the labour question, Part II 
looks at "Imperial fantasies and colonial crises," Part III "The imagining of a 
working class," with Part IV "Devolving power and abdicating responsibility." 
The chapters are well laid out and clearly discussed, each capturing main points 
through introductory and concluding sections. The notes to the chapters are very 
detailed and extensive. This is a major contribution, especially valuable as 
comparative studies of colonial policy between British and French Africa of this 
detail are rare. 
Reviewed by Nigel Hall, Editor ofJSDA.