bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
European Traders and the Mpondo Paramountcy, 1878–1886
Authors: Beinart William
Published: January 2009

For a brief period between about 1878 and 1886, European traders in Eastern Pondoland played an important role in the politics of the chieftaincy. In these years the formerly amicable relationship between the Mpondo chiefs and the Cape Colony broke down. An expansionist colonial government confiscated the Mpondo port at St Johns, took control of an area claimed by the paramountcy, and threatened the political independence of the chiefs. The traders, especially a few larger wholesale firms, allied themselves with the paramount in his struggle to regain his land and port. Some traders feared that colonial encroachments would affect the concessions they had obtained from the paramount and that customs duties charged by the Cape at Port St Johns would undermine their competitiveness. Others, faced with an acute trading depression in 1882–3, sought to increase their share of the Pondoland market and hoped that conflict between the Cape and the Mpondo would stimulate a new boom. The chiefs, on their side, were receptive to the political overtures of the traders. As traders penetrated the area, they began to lose control over production and became increasingly dependent on taxing trade and granting concessions. They had lost confidence in missionary scribes and looked to the traders to provide secretarial skills. Various groups of traders could also give aid in the prosecution of Mpondo diplomacy by supplying firearms, opening negotiations with the imperial authorities, and establishing a new port. The alliance was formed at a specific moment in the penetration of merchant capital into an independent African polity. It serves to illustrate that some traders were prepared to act independently of the colonial powers in order to protect their interests.
Passages in the Life of a White Anthropologist: Max Gluckman in Northern Rhodesia
Authors: Brown Richard
Published: January 2009

The period following the world slump saw increased British official interest in applying the new science of social anthropology to colonial problems. This paper looks at the eight years (1939–47) during which the distinguished South African anthropologist, Max Gluckman, held the post of Assistant Anthropologist and later Director at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Northern Rhodesia, and carried out field research among the Lozi of Barotseland. His post was also referred to as one in ‘functional’ or ‘applied’ anthropology, and the R.L.I, as a whole was intended to contribute to the solution of the urgent social problems thrown up by the growth of the mining industry. It is suggested that Gluckman's own shift in outlook from a belief in academic aloofness to a concern for active involvement with the administration, as well as being part of a wider change in attitudes, was also linked to his personal situation and to the unifying effects of the Second World War within N. Rhodesia. Gluckman was able to gain support for the ambitious research programme which was to put N. Rhodesia in the forefront of the post-war policy of organizing social research through local institutes, but his attempt to engage directly in practical affairs in N. Rhodesia proved disillusioning. Although the N. Rhodesian government continued to support the Institute and in theory welcomed Gluckman's offers of co-operation, it is shown that in practice little came of his attempts to apply either his specific knowledge of the Lozi or his general theoretical knowledge to administrative problems. Any influence he may have exerted on the colonial evolution of N. Rhodesia therefore remained indirect, but his position was one in harmony with the underlying trends towards decolonization.
Migration, Commerce and Community: the Mīzābīs in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Algeria
Authors: Holsinger Donald C.
Published: January 2009

The Mīzāb is an Ibādī community consisting of seven cities clustered in an arid rocky region 350 miles south of Algiers. Having established these settlements nearly a millennium ago, the Mīzābīs, as the inhabitants came to be known, struggled against formidable environmental odds and managed not only to survive but to prosper. By the sixteenth century the Mīzāb had become an important northern Saharan market. During the following centuries, the Maghrib witnessed a remarkable movement of Mīzābī men to coastal cities where they attained prominence in a variety of professions while leaving their roots firmly implanted within their distant oasis community.

Following a brief historical background to settlement in the Mīzāb, this article sketches the ecological constraints of an urban community in a region virtually devoid of resources. It then traces the history of the commercial dispersion to the North during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and discusses the probable causes of emigration. The Mīzābīs were forced by environmental constraints to seek outside sources of support. Their rise to prominence in the Regency of Algiers may have been related to declining Saharan commerce and new commercial opportunities in the North. The organization and function of Mīzābī corporations in Algiers and other northern cities are described. Finally, this article relates an Ibāçī reform ethic to Mīzābī commercial success and concludes with some reflections on religious ideology and environmental demands as contributing factors to the long-term Mīzābī role in commerce.
The political elite of Imerina and the revolt of theMenalamba: the creation of a colonial myth in Madagascar, 1895–1898
Authors: Ellis Stephen
Published: January 2009

One of the most puzzling and fascinating of all resistance movements is that known as the revolt of themenalamba. It occurred over a wide area of central Madagascar, mostly in the kingdom of Imerina, in the two years following the French invasion of Madagascar in 1895. The most mysterious aspect of the rising has always been the question of who, if anyone, was its leader. The official version, that reported by the French government in Madagascar, was that the movement was inspired or directed by a number of magnates at the old Merina court. The published evidence is so ambiguous as to have obliged every subsequent author to accept this version, although there was considerable doubt expressed as to its truth at that time. Recent research in previously unopened archives has thrown new light on the question.
Bū Himāra's European connexion: the commercial relations of a Moroccan warlord
Authors: Dunn Ross E.
Published: January 2009

The rural rebellion and dissidence of Jilālī ibn Idrīs al-Zarhūnā al-Yūsufī, alias Bū Ḥimāra, was among the most debilitating of the crises to afflict the Moroccan central government (makhzan) during its final decade of freedom from formal French control. Bū Ḥimāra, falsely declaring himself to be Mawlay MuḤammad, older brother of the reigning sultan, and thereby rightful claimant to the Sharifian throne, held sway over much of the northeastern part of the country between 1903 and 1909. Though the rebellion never extended beyond this region, the makhzan's protracted attempts to stamp it out contributed significantly to Morocco's political instability and fiscal collapse. The movement, under Bū Ḥimāra's leadership, may be divided into two major phases: the first, lasting about six months, when the revolt had the character of a mass popular protest against the makhzan; the second, from late 1903 to 1909, when Bū Ḥimāra, with a reduced and fluid band of partisans, settled into the role of regional warlord, ruling over a petty state apparatus in the mountainous Northeast. During the longer second phase, his paramountcy was similar in form and objective to that of other regional strong men who carved out principalities in peripheral areas of the country, building their power on access to modern firearms in defiance of the makhzan. This paper argues that the success and tenacity of Bū Ḥimāra's dissidence was dependent on his ability to develop connexions with the wider world of European commerce: merchandise and commodities trade yielding customs revenue, importation of firearms, relations with Algerian businessmen, and mining concessions. These forms of external support are examined and evaluated, leading to the conclusion that Bū Ḥimāra's principal objective from late 1903 onward was not active rebellion but rather an effort to maintain his political and military captaincy over the Northeast, drawing on whatever external resources were available. Though he successfuly defied the government for several years, his increasing association with European commercial and mining interests undermined his popular support and ultimately led to his downfall.
Labour and the transport problem in imperial Madagascar, 1810–1895
Authors: Campbell Gwyn
Published: January 2009

The absolute dependence upon human labour for the transport of goods and travellers in nineteenth-century Madagascar can only be understood in terms of the peculiar nature of the imperial Merina structure. A justifiable fear of European attack and takeover led the Merina regime to rely on ‘Generals “Hazo” and “Tazo”’ (forest and fever) and an underdeveloped road network to hinder and ultimately prevent any foreign military force reaching the central plateau. Simultaneously, however, the régime wished to expand both internal and external trade so as to be accepted as an independent member of the international trading community. It therefore needed an efficient transport and communications system. This was created through an imperial porterage organization of slave and forced (fanompoana) labour. This system held attractions for the Merina political élite, by being both servile and unpaid. Investment in alternative transport arrangements remained unattractive. The deterrents were natural conservatism, lack of capital, and the significant profits to be made from hiring out slave porters to carry trade commodities which increased in volume from the 1860s. Under these conditions an indigenous ‘proto-trade union’, based upon the growing organizational strength of themaromita(porter) movement emerged in the island. Its power however rested on the absence in the Merina economy of any alternative transport system. When the French colonial régime instituted a modern road and rail transport network from 1895, the imperial porterage system disintegrated.
The subjection of a South African state: Thaba Nchu, 1880–1884
Authors: Watson R. L.
Published: January 2009

This paper examines the reasons why the small African state of Thaba Nchu was annexed by the Orange Free State after more than a decade of nominal independence within Free State borders. For some years before 1884 Thaba Nchu had existed in a situation not unlike that of a modern ‘Bantustan’; this was disrupted when a coup was staged against the ruler, Tshipinare, who had relied on Free State support. Fearing instability if the new ruler, Samuel Moroka, became firmly established, Free State forces invaded Thaba Nchu, captured Samuel Moroka, and incorporated the land in the Free State.
Archaeology and the prehistoric origins of the Ghana empire
Authors: Munson Patrick J.
Published: January 2009

Archaeological investigations in southern Mauretania have revealed a wealth of rather spectacular stone masonry villages which were occupied by prehistoric cultivators as early as 1000 B.C. It is argued that the inhabitants of these villages were Negro and very probably Soninke, and that the basic elements of their culture had developed without major influences from outside the area. The apparent sophistication and complexity of this cultural manifestation, combined with the close fit of developments in this area with Carneiro's theory of state formation, suggests that this prehistoric complex represented at least a powerful chiefdom which embodied many of the characteristics of subsequent West African states. The first demonstrable outside influences in the area began about 600 B.C. with the arrival of Libyco-Berbers from North Africa. Rather than causing still further cultural advances, the initial effect of this contact was the collapse of this sociopolitical organization. But with subsequent adjustment, plus the potential from trans-Saharan trade carried out by the North Africans, the basic, pre-existing pattern re-emerged, resulting eventually in a second and much more powerful African political organization in this area – the Ghana Empire.
La destruction d'un réseau d'échange précolonial: l'exemple de la guinée
Authors: Goerg Odile
Published: January 2009

Au cours du XIXesiècle le territoire de l'actuelle Guinée, peuplée d'un à deux millions d'habitants, est parcouru par de nombreuses routes de commerce le reliant au nord à l'empire de Ségou, au sud à la ville prospère de Freetown et au pays forestier. Un trafic varié, complexe, s'effectue dans toute cette zone.
An East African Radical: the life of Erica Fiah
Authors: Westcott N. J.
Published: January 2009

Erica Fiah's neglected life is a very valuable source of information on African political thought and action in colonial Tanganyika. His mission education imbued him with strong Christian values and a belief in British culture and civilization. Coming to Tanganyika from Buganda he was always rather alienated from the local society and culture, and was therefore inclined to seek a political and social community with educated Africans throughout the territory, or with the traders and workers in Dar es Salaam. He too would have liked to be the ‘Mwalimu’ of the Tanganyikan people. In his relations with the colonial government he clearly went a step further than Martin Kayamba or the African Association of his day, who relied on maintaining and exploiting the paternalism of the Government and its patron–client relationship with Africans. Fiah's attitude was one of ‘loyal opposition’, which he expressed first through his own Garveyite association, in the 1930s, and then through his newspaper Kwetu, during the 1940s. Fiah sought to improve and change the existing system, taking more active steps than mere petitioning to make the Government fulfil its moral obligations. This led him into conflict with the African Association in 1936–8; later it also distanced him from the emerging nationalist movement which he had helped fertilize, but whose complete rejection of colonial rule was beyond his intellectual horizon. Fiah's life was not the failure it seemed but a central link in the political transformation of the people of Tanganyika.
Iron is iron 'til it is rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting
Authors: Goucher Candice L.
Published: January 2009

Archaeological evidence and historical accounts have been used to examine the impact of trade and ecology on the decline of West African iron industries. Environmental changes including an increasingly desiccating climatic shift and widespread deforestation as a direct result of fuel procurement over centuries of iron-smelting and European coastal exploitation, seriously affected the survivability of these industries. While the increasing importation of European iron bars and other manufactured goods necessitated a certain amount of technological innovation, the only viable long-term response and adaptation to the ecological devastation became the increased reliance on imported supplies of iron.
Monopolists and Speculators: British Investment in West African Rubber, 1905–1914
Authors: Munro J. Forbes
Published: January 2009

During the classical period of colonialism, from the 1890s to the 1940s, much private Western investment in Africa was conducted through investment waves – short-lived booms related to demands for, and prices of, particular raw materials. One such burst of foreign financial interest occurred between 1905 and 1914 when, against the background of a climacteric in tropical rubber, 55 companies with a total nominal capital of £5 9 million were floated in Britain to undertake rubber production in Africa. The article, seeking to understand why British capital, largely responsible for the dramatic growth of rubber planting in Asia, made such little lasting impact in Africa, focuses upon the 26 companies set up for West African operations. It notes their high failure rate, which was related to the predominance of interest in wild rather than planted rubber.

Two principal reasons are adduced for the lack of commercial success of the 18 companies exploiting wild rubber concessions. The first, political and commercial opposition aroused by the exercise of monopoly rights over a natural forest product, is illustrated by the experience of three relatively large concerns in Liberia and the Ivory Coast. The second, an inadequate financial and managerial structure, is most obvious among companies with assets in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria, mainly fraudulent or near-fraudulent concerns floated to feed speculation in rubber shares during 1909–10. Their promotion involved the shadier fringes of the Edwardian capital market and was connected to the Gold Coast mining shares boom of 1900–1. These businesses made almost no contribution to the West African rubber trade.
Change and Continuity in the British palm oil trade with West Africa, 1830–55
Authors: Lynn Martin
Published: January 2009

The utilization of a relatively unused source, the Customs Bills of Entry, enables the structure of the British side of the West African palm oil trade to be studied in detail. Three main developments emerged in the period from 1830 to 1855 when the introduction of regular steamer services radically altered the trade. Firstly, Liverpool's pre-eminence as the main British palm oil port began to be challenged by Bristol and London; secondly, Britain's reliance on the Niger Delta as a source of supply appears to have proportionately declined, and thirdly, new traders entered the trade, especially after 1840, and challenged the hegemony of the older, established merchants. These structural changes suggest that the organization of the British side of the oil trade, hitherto controlled by a few large Liverpool traders, was breaking down from the 1840s and that this contributed to increased tension and rivalry among British traders in West Africa. This in turn helps to explain the development of the aggressive behaviour between British traders and African middlemen, noted in the Niger Delta in the 1860s, which led to the subsequent appeals for British imperial intervention.
Recent archaeological research and radiocarbon dates from Eastern Africa
Authors: Mgomezulu Gadi G. Y.
Published: January 2009

Research over the past five years or so indicates that in north-western and central Kenya and northern Tanzania pastoralism is much older than previously supposed. Radiocarbon dates from the central Rift valley and the Serengeti plains suggest the presence of domestic cattle by about the sixth millennium b.c. Early pottery traditions in the central Rift valley and around Lake Turkana have been more precisely identified. A continuing research project in the southern Sudan has revealed early pottery with possible northern affinities and rouletted pottery of the first as well as second millennia a.d. In north-western Tanzania, iron would still seem to have been smelted as early as the sixth century b.c. The use of iron, and perhaps of rouletted ware, by pastoral peoples in central Kenya is now dated to the late first millennium a.d. In Malawi, food-production would still seem to have been introduced early in that millennium, but the introduction of cattle has now been dated to the third or fourth century a.d., some centuries earlier than had previously been supposed. In Zambia, the surprisingly early dates for Situmpa pottery have apparently been confirmed. On the east coast, excavations at Hafun, Mogadishu and Manda have enabled more precise dating of the periods during which these ancient ports flourished, while a comprehensive survey programme has refined our knowledge of monumental sites along the Kenya coast.
The Failure of European Mining Companies in the Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast
Authors: Silver Jim
Published: January 2009

European mining companies in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast failed because they were unable to solve the problem of ‘primitive accumulation’. Their failure to solve the problem of primitive accumulation was attributable to a variety of factors, including financial manipulations by ‘share-pushers’ and ‘concession-mongers’, managerial and technological inadequacies, and the refusal of the colonial state to employ that degree of force which would have been necessary to overcome the resistance by Africans to the sale of their labour-power to the mines. The resistance mounted by African gold diggers was such that they not only refused to sell their labour-power to the mines, but also out-produced the European mining companies for most of the period under review, while those few Africans who did sell their labour-power to the mines formed a small and highly transient labour force which engaged in a largely individualistic form of resistance characterized by their consistent refusal to work at the pace demanded by management, and to turn over to management the entirety of their day's output. Thus not only did the resistance of Africans contribute to the failure to solve the problem of primitive accumulation, and to the consequent weakness of the European mining companies, but conversely the weakness of the European mining companies contributed to the structuring of the mines'labour force, and to the forms of resistance waged by mineworkers.
A Voice in the Big House: The Career of Headman Enoch Mamba
Authors: Bundy Colin
Published: January 2009

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the administration of the Transkei was instituted, codified and elaborated. The role of the headman was crucial: he was directly responsible to the magistrate, and his ward (‘location’) became the basic administrative unit. The headman's position was also profoundly ambiguous. He was at once a state official (responsible for enforcing new legal, economic and political relationships) and a spokesman for and defender of the inhabitants of his location.

Although invested with considerable powers, headmen had to remain responsive to popular pressures. In tracing the career of a single prominent headman, Enoch Mamba, this article demonstrates the possibilities and contradictions within the post. Mamba entered government employment in Idutywa as a clerk/interpreter; was appointed headman in 1893; and was dismissed – after attempting to unseat the magistrate – in 1896. Resilient and resourceful, Mamba won reinstatement by 1904; he served as a highly effective and occasionally authoritarian headman and as District and General Councillor until his death in 1916. He created and led one of the first pan-tribal political organizations in the Transkei and came to play an active role in the (Cape) SANC and the SANNC. As a politician, Mamba remained sensitive to rural issues and differed from urban-based politicians (like Rubusana, Pelem, Jabavu) in his populist and ‘Africanist’ accents.
Truths yet Unborn? Oral Tradition as a Casualty of Culture Contact
Authors: Henige David
Published: January 2009

This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressing it as a matter of ‘contamination’, that is, as a question of extraneous data entering and distorting ‘pristine’ traditions, it is considered here to be a facet of the larger question of cultural assimilation – a case of the old and familiar constantly confronting and responding to the new and strange. Seen in this way, oral data continuously adopt and adapt whatever new, relevant and interesting materials come their way in not very different – though decidedly less visible – ways from those that written data have always done. This argument is illustrated by examples from various times and places, largely situations where missionaries, newly literate members, or colonial officials, perceptibly influenced the historical views of societies on their way to becoming literate.

In fact this phenomenon seems widespread enough to justify advancing a model that can be tested against specific cases. For our purposes, this model begins with the first meeting of oral and literate cultures, although we can fairly assume that an infinity of similar but unrecorded meetings of oral cultures also resulted in change. After this initial impetus, the constraints of colonial rule, the exigencies of independence, and the aims of modern academic oral historiography each contributed in some measure to this process of ongoing change. As a result, historians, whether primarily interested in the reliability of oral data, or in the process and effects of changes in them, must look to a wider range of sources than has been customary.
Empire and High Finance: South Africa and the International Gold Standard 1890–1914
Authors: Van-Helten Jean Jacques
Published: January 2009

Within twelve years of the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 the Transvaal was producing over one quarter of the world's annual output of gold. The Transvaal's emergence as a major gold producer took place at a time when global monetary relations were dominated by the operations of the gold standard. This article illustrates the impact of the Witwatersrand discoveries on the working of the international gold standard to 1914 and suggests that newly mined gold from South Africa eased international liquidity problems by facilitating an expansion of the gold base and money supplies without the dangers of inflation. Transvaal gold was shipped to London and sold in the City's bullion market. The establishment by South African mining companies of a complex London network of brokerage, insurance, refining and marketing facilities of gold is considered in detail. It is demonstrated that, when faced with a fixed price of gold and rising working costs on the Rand, the mining industry actively sought to minimize the marketing costs of gold in London to offset general cost inflation and to increase revenue. Finally, at the turn of the century, the Bank of England still occupied a hegemonic position in the international financial system, although, as this article shows, this hegemony was subject to periodic financial crises such as the collapse of Barings in 1890. The Bank‘s problems were thought to stem from a severe shortage of gold reserves. Recently, it has been argued that by the late 1890s British politicians and financiers encouraged the overthrow of the Kruger regime in the Transvaal in order to gain physical control over the Rand mines and thereby ease the Bank's shortages of gold. However, there are problems with this formulation and the article concludes with an alternative consideration of the complex relationship between the supplies of newly mined Transvaal gold, the international gold standard and the Bank of England's financial crises.
A New Framework for the Study of Early Pastoral Communities in East Africa
Authors: Robertshaw Peter , Collett David
Published: January 2009

This review provides a new interpretative framework for the ‘Neolithic’ in East Africa. A seriation of pottery assemblages is used to delineate several archaeological traditions, the implications of which include rejection of the use of the terms ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Pastoral Neolithic’, and the demise of previous attempts at archaeological—linguistic correlations. Evaluation of the dating evidence brings into question the validity of early dates for domestic stock and cultivated crops in the region. A new model for the development of specialized herd management strategies in the Central Rift Valley is outlined. This model rests upon the definition of pastoralism as an ideological system rather than as a subsistence strategy. Finally, the archaeological evidence for the antecedents of the early pastoral communities of East Africa is examined and the ascription of some of these assemblages to the ‘aquatic civilization of Middle Africa’ is questioned.
Slavery, Indentured Servitude, Legitimate Trade and the Impact of Abolition in the Gold Coast, 1874–1901: a Reappraisal
Authors: McSheffrey Gerald M.
Published: January 2009

It has long been held by historians of the Gold Coast and more recently by historians of slavery and emancipation in Africa that the formal abolition of slavery by the British colonial government in 1874 had little discernible impact on that institution per se or on the socio-economic and political status quo in the late nineteenth-century Gold Coast. This was so, it is argued, largely because the relatively benign nature of domestic slavery and other forms of involuntary servitude in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast tended to minimize the demand for emancipation from among the servile population in the Gold Coast after formal emancipation in 1874. A wider survey of the available evidence and a reappraisal of official sources suggest, however, that not only is this view of the consequences of abolition misleading, but it has also helped to perpetuate some equally misleading myths concerning the nature and role of slavery and other forms of servitude in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast. What is demonstrated is that the servile response to abolition in the Gold Coast was much greater than historians have hitherto believed and that this was a spontaneous reaction on the part of this class against what were increasingly exploitative and oppressive forms of slavery and servitude in the nineteenth century. The latter, it is shown, was a prominent by-product of the process of socio-economic change in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast which has all but been ignored by historians, most of whom have been taken in by what is described as the official mythology of domestic slavery in the Gold Coast. This official mythology which was rooted in the belief that slavery and other forms of servitude in the Gold Coast were domestic or patriarchal in character and relatively benign in practice was, it is argued, simply an attempt to rationalize the retention of an institution which was essential to the operation of the system of legitimate trade in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast. The extent of the servile response to formal emancipation in 1874 was a surprise, however, to inexperienced British officials on the Gold Coast who had come to believe in their own mythology, so that abolition presented a short-lived crisis for the British colonial administration. Successive colonial administrations on the Gold Coast, therefore, were forced to all but nullify the operation of the abolition ordinances of 1874 until the advent of a colonial economy after 1900 made traditional forms of involuntary labour expendable.
British Rubber Companies in East Africa Before the First World War
Authors: Munro J. Forbes
Published: January 2009

Until the Second World War, at least, tropical Africa constituted harsh and difficult terrain for Western capitalism — a region where financial loss, erosion of the capital base and ignominious failure were as likely for the expatriate or metropolitan firm as profitability or growth of turnover. This simple fact has been obscured in recent years both by the practice of business history which, in Africa as elsewhere, tends to concentrate upon the relative handful of enterprises which prospered and survived, and by dependency/underdevelopment theory which stresses Western capital's penetration into, and its re-ordering of, non-capitalist societies. That many European firms failed to make an effective entry, however, deserves to be reiterated, and the reasons for lack of success need closer investigation if acceptable conclusions are to be drawn about the character and consequences of European business activity in Africa. Such are the aims of the present article, which evaluates the brief history of twenty-two British companies set up to engage in rubber production in East Africa shortly before the First World War. It seeks to answer two questions — how is their presence to be explained and, more importantly, what factors frustrated their ambitions ? — and hopes to illustrate comparative international aspects of British corporate activity and investment. The failure of British rubber-planting initiatives in East Africa, it will be argued, was the obverse, and indeed a direct consequence, of successful British rubbercultivation in South and South-East Asia.
Western Bantu Expansion
Authors: Vansina Jan
Published: January 2009

Linguistic studies are now advanced enough to allow us to sketch how Central Africa was settled by farmers who spoke western Bantu languages. From the second millenium B.C. onward, yarn-growers with neolithic tools spread in the rain-forests of the Cameroons. By adapting repeatedly to different environments they expanded over the whole forest area and also over the savannas and woodlands further south. These people were in search of optimal environments, quite willing to move to settle in favoured locales. Although they multiplied there, their expansion over such huge areas meant that their settlements remained very thinly scattered over Central Africa.

A thickening of settlement would only occur when new crops – the banana in the rain-forest, cereals in more open lands – allowed farmers to settle in most places. Iron-smelting was less important here than these new crops. These induced further population growth, densities rose and movements in search of the best unknown lands ceased. If the first settlement had only moderately inconvenienced the autochthones, the thickening of population led in time to their absorption, dependence on villagers, or emigration in search of ever-decreasing empty areas.
The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750
Authors: Thornton John
Published: January 2009

Scholarly opinion on the conversion of the Kingdom of Kongo to Christianity has generally been that it was superficial, diplomatically oriented, impure, dangerous to national sovereignty or rejected by the mass of the population. This article argues that although Christianity in Kongo took a distinctly African form it was widely accepted both in Kongo and in Europe as being the religion of the country.

This was possible because Kongo, as a voluntary convert, had considerable leeway to contribute to its particular form of Christianity. Also, European priests were much more tolerant of syncretism in Kongo than in regions like Mexico, where colonial occupation accompanied the propagation of Christianity. Kongo's control over the theological content allowed the religion to gain mass acceptance while its control over the Church organization and finance allowed it never to be an instrument for foreign domination, in spite of Portuguese attempts to use it as a ‘fifth column’. When European priests arrived in Kongo during the Portuguese colonial occupation at the end of the nineteenth century, they rejected the local form of Christianity, thus ending its acceptance among Europeans as Christianity.
Maize, Cattle and Mosquitoes: the Political Economy of Malaria Epidemics in Colonial Swaziland
Authors: Packard Randall M.
Published: January 2009

Malaria was a major health problem in Swaziland during the colonial period. Prior to the commencement of vector control measures in the late 19405 annual outbreaks of malaria occurred during the summer and autumn months from December to May. These seasonal epidemics incapacitated large numbers of Swazis as well as a few Europeans. During most years the epidemic was limited to the lower regions of the country and was marked by relatively few deaths. In other years, however, the annual epidemic spread throughout the country and was accompanied by a high rate of mortality especially among young children. Colonial medical opinion ascribed these major epidemics to abnormally heavy rainfall and increased vector breeding. Yet they were also a product of long-term trends in the Swaziland political economy – the semi-proletarianization of Swazi herdsmen/cultivators and the subordination of Swazi economic interests to those of South African and local European capital - which produced a state of nutritional vulnerability among many Swazi families. This, vulnerability in combination with short-term economic crises, such as the worldwide depression of the early 19305, and drought, gave rise to famine conditions which greatly increased the severity of subsequent outbreaks of malaria, as seen in the histories of the major epidemics of 1932 and 1946.
Abdul Njai: Ally and Enemy of the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau, 1895–1919
Authors: Bowman Joye L.
Published: January 2009

The protracted subjugation by the Portuguese of Guinea-Bissau was made possible by Abdul Njai and his army of auxiliary troops. Njai became an ally of the Portuguese in the mid-1890s and continued his support for the Portuguese conquest until about 1915. He provided logistical support, and served both as a commander in the Portuguese army and as a recruiter of African troops. Oral as well as written sources indicate that Njai was directly responsible for the successful campaigns fought against the strongholds of resistance to Portuguese authority. As a reward for his services, the Portuguese granted Njai political authority over Oio province. Thus Njai became a kind of ‘warrant chief’ in an area where his only legitimacy was based on force rather than traditional affiliation. Portuguese control remained limited even after 1915 and Njai governed his region as he pleased. African communities in Oio and elsewhere in Guinea-Bissau feared and respected this warlord more than the Portuguese. He thus became a threat to Portuguese colonial officials in Guinea-Bissau as well as their French counterparts in neighbouring Senegal. The Portuguese therefore turned on their erstwhile ally and, after unsuccessful attempts to bring him to heel through negotiation, mounted an expedition which resulted in his capture and deportation in 1919.
African Military Labour and the Building of theOffice du NigerInstallations, 1925–1950
Authors: Echenberg Myron , Filipovich Jean
Published: January 2009

In 1926, the Governor-General of French West Africa issued a decree allowing local administrations to use a portion of the annual military draft as labourers on public works programmes. The only administrations to take full advantage of this decree was that of the French Soudan, where work had already begun on the first phase of the vast Niger irrigation scheme now known as theOffice du Niger. During the next twenty-five years, more than fifty thousand so-called ‘second-portion’ workers from Soudan were assigned to theOffice du Nigerfor a period of three years' service. Ironically, this new system of forced labour to exploit the irrigated land.
Preliminaires pour une histoire des Sao
Authors: Lange Dierk
Published: January 2009

The identity of the Sao to the south of Lake Chad has remained obscure despite the efforts of archaeologists, ethnographers and historians. To solve the problem, it is necessary to look at the historical circumstances in which they passed into legend as the ancestors of the present occupants of the region, namely the creation of the empire of Borno to the west and south of the lake in place of Kanem to the north-east. The conflicts involved in this creation lasted from the beginning of the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, and produced the main historical references to the Sao apart from oral tradition, always as enemies of the new rulers among the native population. The first applies to the fourteenth century, but all the others are from the contemporary record of the campaigns of Mai Idrīs Alauma by Ibn Furṭū in the sixteenth century, where we learn of the Sao-Gafata in the neighbourhood of the Bornoan capital Gazargamo, and of the Sao-Tatala on the flood-plain southwest of the lake. Elsewhere on the flood-plain, the various peoples are referred to by recognisably modern names: Ngama, Makari, Kotoko. It seems probable that in the work of Ibn Furṭū we find the last use of a term which the incoming Kanembu had originally used to describe all the inhabitants of their new Bornoan dominions, then employed as an adjective for each particular population, until with the suppression of the Sao-Gafata and Sao-Tatala it was abandoned except as the name of a legendary people ancestral to Kanuri and non-Kanuri groups alike. The most probable explanation of the term itself is that it meant ‘city’ or ‘city-dwellers’, describing the inhabitants of the walled villages or towns of the flood-plain as perceived by their conquerors the Sayfuwa rulers of Kanem-Borno at the outset of their imperial adventure.
Death and theAsantehene: A Historical Meditation
Authors: McCaskie Thomas C.
Published: January 2009

This paper builds upon the author's previously published work on the forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana). It deals generally with the issue of death in Asante history and culture, and more specifically with the meanings of the mortuary rituals surrounding the deaths ofAsantehenes.These issues are addressed in relation to the extensive anthropological literature concerning the cross-cultural meaning of death. The paper then concentrates on an analysis of the meaning of the very fully documented events that surrounded the death and interment of theAsanteheneKwaku Dua Panin in 1867. These are analysed in relation to cultural norms and historical practices, and the conclusion sets out to locate the meaning of theAsanteheneKwaku Dua Panin's death within the broader framework of Asante historical experience.
Political Ecology in the Upper Nile: the Twentieth Century Expansion of the Pastoral ‘Common Economy’
Authors: Johnson Douglas H.
Published: January 2009

The enduring ethnographic image of the pastoral Nilotes of the Upper Nile of the Sudan is that of peoples structurally opposed to each other with only limited social and economic ties between major ethnic groups. This image is derived from Evans-Pritchard's study of the Nuer, which was based on field work in the early 1930s. This was a time when both the Nuer and the Dinka of the region were subjected to a series of extreme natural calamities (floods, cattle disease, locusts, and crop failures), but were limited in their responses to these challenges through the restrictions on movement and social intercourse imposed on them by government pacification policies. By comparing the 1929–36 period with preceding and succeeding periods of great environmental stress, it is possible to discern a pattern of developing interdependence between contiguous Nuer and Dinka groups, as each sought the resources of the other in reconstructing their economic lives. Evans-Pritchard's description of a ‘common economy’ among the Nuer can be applied to the wider pastoral community in analysing this expansion of social and economic networks.
Society, State and Nationality in the Recent Historiography of Ethiopia
Authors: Crummey Donald
Published: January 2009

Events since 1974 have challenged fundamental assumptions about Ethiopian history, calling in question the country's borders and internal coherence, the nature of its social order, the centrality of its monarchy and Zionist ideology to the maintenance of the polity, and the viability of the peasant way of life. In so doing they challenge a young, but vigorous, historiography, one founded in the 1960s with the creation of a History Department at what is now Addis Ababa University and of an international coterie of scholars. Its early stages were marked by archivally-based studies of Ethiopia‘s international emergence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and of trade and politics. Its later stages were marked by a steady growth in the number of contributors and in the emergence of major new themes many of which depend on the use of indigenous sources, both oral and written. Class and class relations; economy, state, and society; the Kushitic- and Omotic-speaking peoples; the use of social anthropology—such are the concerns of contemporary historians of Ethiopia. These concerns inform new work on agrarian issues and on the roots of famine, on urbanization, on the nature of the twentieth-century state, on the revolution itself and on the roots of resistance and social unrest, and on ethnicity. Meanwhile, more traditional work continues to glean insights from the manuscript tradition and to bring to light major new texts both Ethiopian and foreign. The article surveys this material and concludes by noting the persistence of certain limitations—the lack of work on women or on pastoralism, the scarcity of it on Islam, the heavy emphasis on that part of the country lying west of the Rift Valley, and the absence of an integrating synthesis—and the prospective integration of work on Ethiopia into the mainstream of African historiography.
A Dura Revolution and Frontier Agriculture in Northwest Ethiopia, 1898–1920
Authors: McCann James C.
Published: January 2009

This article describes the rapid growth and decline of the production of dura (Sorghum vulgare) in the frontier region adjoining the border of northwest Ethiopia, Sudan's Kassala Province, and the southwest frontier of Italian Eritrea between c. 1900 and the 1920s. This short-lived agricultural revolution resulted less from the slow, incremental adaptation of local agriculture than from a conjuncture of events, including the presence of a fertile but depopulated vertisol plain (the Mazega), the rise of a major food market in Eritrea, the availability of archaic forms of labour, the presence of entrepreneurial managers, and the immature state of colonial/imperial interests in the region. The precipitous decline of food production in the region in the early 1920s resulted from the dissolution of this historical conjuncture. The article concludes by suggesting that African history in general and agricultural history in particular has tended to be ‘Whiggish’, emphasizing progressive change at the expense of conjunctural and often short-lived episodes.
Mtunya: Famine in Central Tanzania, 1917–20
Authors: Maddox Gregory
Published: January 2009

In the Dodoma Region of central Tanzania the people called Wagogo name a famine that struck between 1917 and 1920 theMtunya—‘The Scramble’. This famine came after both German and British miliary requisitions had drained the arid region of men, cattle and food. The famine, which killed 30,000 of the region's 150,000 people, is more than just a good example of what John Iliffe has called ‘conjunctural poverty’. TheMtunyaand the response to it by both the people of the region and the new colonial government also shaped the form of the interaction between local economy and society and the political economy of colonial Tanganyika. The Gogo, in their own interpretation of the famine, stress the ways in which this famine made them dependent on the colonial economy. For them, this famine represented a terrible loss of autonomy, a loss of the ability to control the reproduction of their own society.