Nigeria and West Africa, by Wendy McElroy

A brief history.

I like the concept of short (2-3 hour) books that try to summarise a certain slice of history, and I think I'd be better off if I read 100 such books on important topics and filled in some of the many gaps in my foundational understanding of the world.

This book specifically, though, is only worthwhile as a kind of weird historical document about the time when it was written. Quotes like:

Beyond the concept of West Africa as a European market lies a remarkable culture. For centuries it has amazed and frightened Europeans; now it can enrich our understanding of mankind.

or (quoting an earlier book, admittedly, but seemingly approvingly):

many educated Africans privately believe that the slave trade is the main explanation for their so-called primitiveness. They bitterly resent the stigma of inferiority implicit in the fact that their race was once a race of slaves. They feel that they were victims of history, held back while other peoples were advancing.

In those framings, you can feel (I think) that the author is trying to be empathetic and modern and humanistic, in contrast to some previous time, and yet.... well.

I was gently mulling when Nigeria and West Africa might have been written and would have guessed the 1940s/50s/60s, I think (though I wish I'd made a written guess before I looked). Then I found out it was from 1992. I don't think it's worth reading this book specifically just to have this experience, but it's pretty incredible to read something from the 90s that feels (truly) unpublishable today. And to realise how much the world has changed, in my lifetime, etc.