The Slave Coast, situated in what is now the West African state of Benin, was the epicentre of the Atlantic Slave Trade. But it was also an inhospitable, surf-ridden coastline, subject to crashing breakers and devoid of permanent human settlement. Nor was it easily accessible from the interior due to a lagoon which ran parallel to the coast. The local inhabitants were not only sheltered against incursions from the sea, but were also locked off from it. Yet, paradoxically, it was this coastline that witnessed a thriving long-term commercial relation-ship between Europeans and Africans, based on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. How did it come about? How was it all organised? And how did the locals react to the opportunities these new trading relations offered them? The Kingdom of Dahomey is usually cited as the Slave Coast's archetypical slave raiding and slave trading polity. An inland realm, it was a latecomer to the slave trade, and simply incorporated a pre-existing system by dint of military prowess, which ultimately was to prove radically counterproductive. Fuglestad's book seeks to explain the Dahomean 'anomaly' and its impact on the Slave Coast's societies and polities.

This comprehensive history of Niger during the colonial period is a work based on primary research which attempts an overall appraisal of the colonial past. Dr Fuglestad questions the assumption that the colonial conquest constituted a clear break in African history. He traces the main trends of the colonial period back to their origins in the pre-colonial past. He also demonstrates that the power of colonial officials was less effective than is generally thought and that, though French colonial rule was the single most important factor in shaping the present-day societies of Niger, it was still only one of the many contributing factors. While the main events of the modern history of Niger and the neighbouring regions of the Central Sudan and the Central Sahara are discussed and analysed in detail, the book focuses on long-term trends.

This book argues that history may, by definition, be an imperialist science or a quintessentially Western form of discourse. Finn Fuglestad thinks there is something profoundly ambiguous about the science or academic discipline we call history. It is the only science that is the product of its own object of study, the past, an object outside of which it cannot exist. It is also the only science that can study itself. The author argues that history has a relationship with one of the so-called civilisations of the world that borders on the incestuous. That civilisation is Western Civilisation: history has both emerged from it and helped to shape it in such a way that they are inextricably linked. History, with its Western conceptual framework, has become a defining part of Western Civilisation to the extent that the West cannot even conceive of itself being without history. But what happens when history is removed from its natural habitat? Can it be done, and has it been done, other than on the terms of the West? The real issue therefore concerns all those societies and peoples outside the West who, in accordance with the Hegelian tradition, have traditionally been labelled as 'without history'. What does it mean exactly 'not to have history?' The reconstruction of the pasts of 'peoples without history' poses a tremendous challenge to the science of history, especially at the conceptual level. Finn Fuglestad not only believes that there has been a failure to confront this challenge properly, but he also questions whether anything can really be done.