Summers presents the material in her book with an admirable acumen. ...scholars interested in education, religion and the colonial state will find much in this book.

- Matthew Engelke, AFRICAN HISTORY

This is a worthwhile book, which fulfils an important historical need to revise the role of the early African intelligentsia. On the whole the author's case is convincing: elite educated middlemen were far from colonial puppets; they built African status; shaped policy debates; challenged white and black people alike; and laid foundations for the subsequent emergence of the mass nationalist parties.

- John Louis Moore in ARAS Australia,