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Papers from an Exhibition

or more accurately the state's monopoly of violence, and with it the conditions for a final flourishing of the (still essentially pre-colonial) economy, but the very completeness of their military success opened the way to influences emanating from metropolitan France which in the end transformed the nature of that economy. The demise of the pre-colonial economy, according to Roberts, came not with the original French conquest, but rather with the collapse of slavery as a functioning institution, effected mainly by a massive flight of slaves from their masters in 1905-6, an exodus which, although it was made possible by the establishment of French colonial rule, was neither promoted nor welcomed by the local French officials. This book is of great interest, not only for providing an economic perspective on the history of a region which has hitherto been studied mainly in political or religious terms, but also for its interpretative insights: Roberts' analyses of the contradictory relationship between war and the economy and of the continuities between pre-colonial and early colonial periods are especially valuable. Stylistically vigorous (despite some occasionally repetitive jargon), and cogently argued as well as intellectually stimulating, it is a very good book indeed.