Scholars usually write of the “Scramble for Africa.” In fact, there were many scrambles, and not just a European one. Africans were also rewriting the map of Africa, for example the Sokoto Caliphate and the empire of Samori Ture. We can only understand the continent’s modern history by bringing together African and European actors, even if in the end most of Africa would be subjected to Western imperialism. Yet despite the carving up of Africa, the formal period of European imperialism was in fact brief—in most areas barely half a century.