ANTHONY KIRK-GREENE served in the Indian Army in the Second World War and then went up to Cambridge University. He joined the Colonial Administrative Service in 1950, working in Northern Nigeria as a District Officer from 1950-60 and then at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. In 1967 he was elected Senior Research Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and in 1980 became the first holder of the University’s Lectureship in the Modern History of Africa. He was President of the African Studies Association of the UK, 1988-90. He has lectured widely in American and Canadian universities. On retirement in 1992 he was elected to a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship, during which he wrote the present book (his 27th). He is currently Adjunct Professor at the Stanford University Centre in Oxford and an Associate Editor of The New Dictionary of National Biography. He has recently published an
anniversary history of the Colonial Service, On Crown Service.