ABSTRACT
There is a great deal of good historical writing on how West African peoples rebelled against the French and British. The bulk of this literature—in French and English—consists of minute descriptions of military campaigns and the complicated analysis of diplomacies to end armed rebellions. The picture that emerges from this literature is a complex one characterized by much contestation and debate. Officials in the various colonial regimes heatedly debated the wisdom of military intervention and governance. West Africans themselves had a wide range of beliefs about the colonial administrations that sought to regulate them. As should be expected, there was a wide range of opinions and actions about active collaboration, passive resistance and armed rebellion. Usually a group's decision on how to react to the French or the British had more to do with the dynamics of local politics than with the quality of Euro-African relations. 1
