This is a study of societies in the throes of violent change. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Mandingo states of the Senegambia were ripe for revolution. A decaying ruling elite confronted an aggressive, prosperous, and dissatisfied element within the population. Islam and a resurgent European commercial community created within the society new stresses and forces of change. The civil strife that characterized the second half of the century bore many resemblances to contemporary revolutionary upheavals elsewhere in the world, and interference by European interests in the processes of decay and renewal in the Senegambia resulted in many of the same patterns of weakness and disorder of the local society as those that followed intervention by major powers in Asia and Africa during the twentieth century. In such cases, support by an outside power given to one side of a revolutionary confrontation often results in an enervating dependence of the favored protagonist. Darkened by the shadow of a more powerful political force than any on the local scene, the spontaneous evolution of a new order from within the society is frustrated. A prolonged and bloody struggle drags itself out until interference is suspended or until a "solution" is dictated from without. -- Preface (page xiii).