This approach is of great usefulness, if only to critique the motives and methods of the European expansion, in its refusal to allow Africans to remain on the margins of a history that the colonial writers created for them. Due to this, African heroes, diplomats, politicians, and warriors have received considerable attention, not as powerless colonial subjects, but as creative and innovative agents of their own history. Various studies have examined the military and diplomatic responses to the European “scramble” for and subsequent conquest of Africa in the late nineteenth century, as well as the anti-colonial movements that ultimately led to independence during the twentieth century. The main interest of African scholars in the Western encounter with Africa has concentrated on two closely related themes: resistance and nationalism. Africa can no longer escape the Western impact, and it has become almost impossible to return to a pre-contact period with all the charms and magic that many now associate with such an age of innocence. This transitory phase moved Africa to a modern age and laid the foundation for the modern-day “globalization” of Africa. The era that has made the most considerable impact has been the first half of the twentieth century, when European powers established colonial rule in Africa. The intellectual encounter has been a cultural project that uses knowledge for liberation and power. Indeed, without deciphering the engagement with the West, scholarship becomes almost shallow or merely defensive.

In studying their people and continent, African scholars have had little or no choice other than to make sense of the Western encounter.

Modern Africa, indeed, the entire complex of modern African cultures, cannot be understood without considering the impact of the West, and what is retained, borrowed or adapted. “IT IS THE EYE THAT HAS SEEN THE SMOKE THAT WILL PERCEIVE THE FIRE.” -A HAUSA PROVERB

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