"In Twilight on the Zambezi, historian Eugenia W. Herbert looks at a remote district in Central Africa in the moment just before the collapse of British colonial rule.

Beginning with a lively study of daily life on the ground, from the perspective of both local colonial officials and their African counterparts in the Native Authority, the story moves outward in widening circles to the larger drama that was pitting diehard proponents of settler supremacy against African nationalists with their demands for independence and majority rule, and finally to Whitehall and the centers of imperial power in London. The result is a prismatic glimpse of the complexities of late colonialism and decolonization in one corner of Africa. Based on a rich assortment of interviews and and unpublished documents, the book focuses on the key year of 1959.

With its abundance of historical detail and conflicting perspectives, Twilight on the Zambezi provides new insights into the particularities of colonial history, breaking down monoliths into their human components."--BOOK JACKET.