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This article scrutinizes recent histories of colonial and international law that use metropolitan reactions to the 'scandals of empire' to project a reform-oriented version of European colonialism. In French West Africa, most scandals never reached the level of metropolitan debate; they hit dead ends in colonial bureaucracies. Analyzing one dead-end scandal, the M'Pésoba Affair, this article argues that colonial justice on the ground often adhered to a politics of expediency, not a reformist rule of law. To maintain their precarious grip on power, colonial administrators had to simultaneously appease their superiors, economic interests, and powerful African actors. Resolving the M'Pésoba Affair, for one, entailed navigating the complex entanglements of cotton production, chiefly disputes, Islamic policy, and interracial sexual relationships in a backwater of empire marked by anticolonial revolt and world war. Especially in moments of crisis, political constraints shaped the application of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiences of mentally ill Nigerian migrants during the colonial era. Migrant Nigerian ‘lunatics’ faced different circumstances depending on what type of migrant they were and where they fell ill. Those in the UK tended to be repatriated for medical reasons, while those within the West African region rarely returned home because of financial considerations. Nigerian pilgrims to Mecca are noticeably absent from the discourse as are procedures associated with the relationship between migration and mental illness, despite the fact that they made up a large and constant flow of migrants from Nigeria during the colonial period. By putting these transnational individuals at the centre of analysis, this article provides a comparative perspective that reveals contingencies of psychiatric biopower that are often subsumed in narratives that focus on the activities of specific colonial asylums within individual colonial states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on a conference entitled "German Colonialism in West Africa: Implications for German-West African Partnership in Development, held at the University of Education (UEW) between September 29, 2011, and October 1, 2011. The article states that speakers included German embassy counsellor Maria Tekuelve, and scholars Bea Lundt, and Kofi Darvlo.

This article explores some neglected economic aspects of the partition of West Africa with special reference to the case of Lagos, and puts forward for future use some propositions which take account of the economic elements in the scramble for tropical Africa. In the case of Lagos, the main reason why Great Britain decided to move into the interior was because the officials and politicians who were responsible for shaping colonial policy gave way to commercial pressure groups and to the local administration, both of which favored expansion in order to solve the economic problems which had arisen out of the growth of legitimate commerce and which had become acute in the 1880's. What is required now is not the total abandonment of economic interpretations of imperialism but a new look at the economic history of the frontiers between Europe and the underdeveloped world in the late nineteenth century. In the last analysis, the partition of West Africa may be thought of as a political act carried out to resolve the economic conflicts which had arisen as a result of the meeting of two disparate societies, one developing, the other underdeveloped.

A brief introduction is presented that discusses a series of reviews of the book "African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa" by Michael A. Gomez.