This is the first major revision of this key Seminar Study which was originally published in 1974. The book contrasts the Victorian image of Africa with what has been revealed by late twentieth-century research on the history of Africa. Professor Chamberlain uses case histories from Egypt to Zimbabwe to examine the European partition and conquest of the continent. For the new edition she brings up-to-date the historiography of the explanations offered for the phenomenon, Euro-centric or 'peripheral', economic, political or strategic. Revised, reset and reissued in the larger format now established for the series, the new edition is sure to be welcomed by a new generation of students.