About the Author

A. G. Hopkins, formerly the Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at Cambridge University and now an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, is currently the Walter Prescott Webb Professor of History at the University of Texas, Austin. He has published widely in the field of African and imperial history, beginning with a pioneering study, An Economic History of West Africa (1973), and continuing with two prize-winning volumes, written jointly with P. J. Cain, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914 (1993) and British Imperialism, 1914-1990 (1993), second editions of which are now available in one volume entitled British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (2001).