Achim von Oppen is Professor of African History at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He has published widely on the history of social and economic change; space-making and translocality; religious change; and ‘development’, mainly in rural settings in Zambia and Tanzania. Silke Strickrodt is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, UK. Her research focuses on the history of pre-colonial and early colonial West Africa, particularly on Afro-European encounters in the context of trade, Christian mission and scientific exploration.

• Introduction: Biographies Between Spheres of Empire 1. The English Interpreters in Dahomey, 1843–1852 2. David Meetom: Interpreting, Power and the Risks of Intermediation in the Initial Phase of German Colonial Rule in Cameroon 3. Transcending Gender Roles, Crossing Racial and Political Boundaries: Agnes Hill’s Fight for her Inheritance in German Southwest Africa 4. The Awkward Squad: Arts Graduates from British Tropical Africa Before 1940 5. ‘No One Knows What He is Until He is Told’: Audience and Personhood in a Colonial African Diary