Roger Louis, one of the British Empire’s leading historians, reprints 34 of his learned articles bearing on the subject, with a fresh introduction, thus creating a most useful tool for scholars and a splendid bran-tub into which the common reader can dive with pleasure as well. He deals largely, but not solely, with Africa; some of his most interesting chapters bear on the origins of the League of Nations mandate system and on the Pacific rim.

For materials on mandates, he plundered that golden treasury of imperial secrets, the Milner papers in the Bodleian — explored by other American scholars before him, but not so thoroughly. He is able to explain why the British were so happy, in this instance, to fit in with Woodrow Wilson’s desire to give the League of Nations a colonial role; even though, notoriously, Wilson was in the end unable to persuade the United States Senate to allow the USA to join the League.

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