Rabiat Akande , Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. ix, 317. $34 paperback (ISBN 9781009055048)

Rabiat Akande's book Entangled Domains provides a close examination of the role of secularism as part of British colonial governance in Northern Nigeria and in the early years of Nigeria's independence.Akande makes a significant contribution to a growing body of literature that critically examines this concept, "illuminating shifts in the making and remaking of the 'sacred' and the 'secular,'" demonstrating that "the construction of secularism is constantly shifting" (268).The great strength of Akande's work is that she allows her central construct (secularism) to exist without any foundational or central meaning.Rather, the goal of her project is to explore how this idea is used by different actors at different times to advance their own agendas within the governance of Northern Nigeria.This allows the idea itself to change, and in many cases be fundamentally transformed, through the periods of contestation.For example, in the first part of the book, Akande traces how claims to secularism were alternatively deployed by both colonial officials and missionaries as they struggled over whether and how Christian missionaries would be granted access to Muslim-dominated areas of Northern Nigeria.In its first instantiation, under the auspices of Frederick Lugard, the claimed secularism of the colonial state resulted in a promise of "noninterference with Islam" and resulted in an emphasis on restraining Christian missionaries (17).In the later years of colonial rule, however, the British colonial state emphasized "state-religion separation," which resulted in a "de-emphas[is]" of "the role of Islamic institutions" (17), and greater openness to missionary influence.Both periods involved the idea of secularism, but to very different ends.A scholar examining the role of secularism in (post)colonial governance might take these disputes and "stop[] at the conclusion that imperial secularism is politics," but Akande, by allowing secularism to have multiple and contested