ABSTRACT
If ‘imperial networks’ included those among people of British or other European descent, there were also vigorous, important, and still too little studied African ones. In his pioneering study, from which these excerpts come, Philip Zachernuk looks at the global influences and contacts of early West African intellectuals – including their connections with the ‘British World’. The ideas of the colonial intelligentsia have roots in discussions that reach beyond the narrow confines of colonial settlements, intertwining with various traditions of thought. The Western-educated community was dynamic, spreading geographically as it grew in size, thus gradually altering its significance and position within Nigerian society. But up to the 1880s it remained small, even in Lagos, and more closely connected to communities abroad than within Nigeria. Constructing a place for themselves necessarily from the cultures around them, they drew on ideas from all sides to pursue their material and intellectual interests.
