In this encyclopedic work of intellectual history, Philip D. Curtain sought to discover the British image of Africa for the years 1780–1850.

"For the light it sheds on the problems of the new Africa as well as the old, it should be read by everyone concerned with the continent’s affairs"—Africa Report

"Efforts to explain the nature of Africans and their culture led eventually to discussion of race, of origins, of languages, of climate, of Islam, and of biblical interpretations of man’s creation. . . . Scholars will find this monumental study most useful not only for assumptions about Africans and their history, but also for the light cast on such social sciences as anthropology and ethnology, for theories of tropical medicine, and also for its vast bibliographical information."—Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

• CONTENTS · VOLUME 1 
• PART I 
• The “New World” of Eighteenth-Century Africa
• 1 
• West Africa: The Known and the Unknown
• 2 
• The Africans' “Place in Nature”
• 3 
• The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment
• 4 
• New Jerusalems
• PART II 
• The Age of Exploration and Disappointment, 1795–1830
• 5 
• Sierra Leone: The Lessons of Experience
• 6 
• West Africa in the New Century: A Pattern of Discovery
• 7 
• The Problem of Survival
• 8 
• Towns and Elephants
• 9 
• Barbarism: Its Physical Causes
• 10 
• Barbarism: Its Moral Causes
• 11 
• Techniques for Culture Change

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