ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by introducing the analytical weapons to be used in the hunt: our employment of the concept of state in the colonial setting. It examines the wider landscape, to consider the ways in which colonial-state construction in Africa may have differed from patterns in other parts of the world once part of imperial domains. The chapter explores the development of the African colonial state through three stages: initial construction, where the basic framework was established, up to 1914; institutionalization as an enduring form of alien hegemony, in the interwar period; and transformation into a decolonizing mode, after World War II. It considers the residues of the colonial state which persisted in the postindependence era and some of the consequences of the legacy. As step by step an African political class gained access to and influence over the terminal colonial state machinery, autonomy began to enter the calculus of reason of state.
