bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Settler dominance, agricultural production and the Second World War in Kenya
Authors: Spencer Ian
Published: January 2009

The article examines the ways in which European settler farmers successfully used wartime conditions to secure their economic recovery and lay a basis for future economic dominance in Kenya. In 1939–40 farmers attempted with only limited success to persuade the Imperial government to purchase high-priced agricultural products. London's acquiescence was given reluctantly to avoid the possibility of political difficulties. In Kenya, largely due to a shortage of manpower and wartime feelings of solidarity, settlers were drawn extensively into the government positions. After the call for increased production for the Middle East in November 1941 the Agricultural Production and Settlement Board was set up with a network of settler-controlled district committees to direct production and administer the distribution of a range of new subsidies. Various forms of indirect assistance and disguised aid were devised further to assist European producers. Minimum prices were fixed at differential levels for European and African maize growers. Both the War Office and the Colonial Office believed European maize to be overpriced whereas African payments were fixed at a level which depressed production and contributed to the famine of 1943. Cattle prices were also set at levels favouring European settlers. Forcible methods were extensively used in the reserves to collect cattle, some of which were sold to settlers at advantageous prices. Overall, the benefits enjoyed by the settlers during the war years can be sharply contrasted with the economic difficulties experienced by the African farmers. The benefits of increased African cash incomes were more than offset by rapid price rises in all imported goods and meat, forcible cattle purchases and severe food shortages in 1943 and 1944.
The African Press in Kenya, 1945–1952
Authors: Gadsden Fay
Published: January 2009

This paper discusses the African press in Kenya in the years between 1945 and 1952. The growth of an extensive vernacular press was caused by the political frustrations suffered by Kenya's Africans and the political, social and ethnic divisions which separated them. The press can be divided into three major categories: moderate nationalist, regional vernacular and populist newspapers. The moderate nationalist newspapers were edited by members of the educated elite who campaigned for constitutional change and social reforms. The regional vernacular papers were concerned more with local than national issues. The populist press was edited by semi-educated men active in politics at the grassroots level who came to reject the moderate leadership. All these papers publicized the activities of the Kenya African Union and demanded an improvement in the political and social position of Africans in Kenya. But they also expressed the ethnic, political and social hostilities which divided their editors. The decline of moderate leadership was reflected in the closure of their newspapers. The radicals who seized power in K.A.U. in 1951 were supported by the populist press and began new newspapers in 1951 and 1952.

Some of the African newspapers achieved quite large circulations, were distributed by agents throughout the towns of Kenya and attracted some advertising revenue. But they all suffered from lack of money and found it difficult to find and pay a printer, and they suffered also from the lack of experience of their editors. Many newspapers lasted only a short time. But throughout these years there were always a number of newspapers published. These were widely read and were politically influential. The populist press played a direct role in stimulating militant resistance. Government attempts to curb the African press and to replace it with government newspapers were not successful. Only in 1952 when a State of Emergency had been imposed and the government had assumed powers to refuse printing licences and to suppress newspapers could the African press be silenced.
La Lutte contre la Trypanosomiase en Côte d'Ivoire, 1900–1945
Authors: Domergue D.
Published: January 2009

La trypanosomiase ou maladie du sommeil existe a l'état endémique en Afrique tropicale et done en Côte d'Ivoire où elle a constitué de 1900 à 1945 un grave danger. La lutte contre cette endémie a connu deux périodes: la première periode de 1900 à 1938 est une phase de découvertes avec une tentative de lutte organisée en 1931, mais qui fut un échec; la deuxième période 1938–1945 fut plus fructueuse avec la création du Service général autonome de la maladie du sommeil qui parvint à circonscrire l'endémie. Plusieurs hypothèses ont été avancées pour expliquer la diffusion de la trypanosomiase pendant la période coloniale. On a mis en cause tour a tour la pacification et les déplacements de population. En réalité cette diffusion ne s'exerce que lorsque se produit des modifications profondes des milieux physiques et humains à la fois. En ce sens, la mise en valeur coloniale a joué un rôle de premier plan.
A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold
Authors: McIntosh Susan Keech
Published: January 2009

There is a general consensus among West African historians that the Island of Gold, known to Arab geographers as Wangara and to European cartographers as Palolus, refers to the Bambuk/Bure goldfields. This article examines the evidence for an alternative identification of the Island of Gold with the Inland Niger Delta, where the place name Wangara would be derived from Soninke long-distance traders (Wangara). Many of the details on the Island of Gold provided in the original sources can be shown to apply more convincingly to the Inland Niger Delta than to Bambuk/Bure. Until now, this hypothesis has not received serious consideration, partly because of the belief that the Inland Delta and its most important entrepot, Jenne, did not play a significant role in long-distance trade networks until the fourteenth century. This is contradicted by archaeological evidence for a major urban centre at Jenne-jeno by 900 a.d.

The existence in the later first millennium a.d. of the Soninke town of Jenne-jeno, and the oral traditions which maintain that the western Inland Delta was the heartland of the Soninke trade diaspora, combine to indicate that commerce along the Middle Niger was substantial by the early second millennium. Indirect confirmation of this trading activity is found both in al-Bakri's discussion of riverine trade routes along the upper Niger Bend and in al-Idrisi's account of the Wangara along the Middle Niger. The continuing identification of the Inland Niger Delta region as the Island of Gold from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries implies that part of this trade involved gold. A possible early gold source in Lobi is suggested.
Who were the Vai?
Authors: Jones Adam
Published: January 2009

The Vai of northwestern Liberia speak a Northern Mande language, fairly closely related to Manding. Previous attempts to date the breakaway of the Vai from their Manding homeland have been unconvincing. The most we can say is that they probably reached the coast more than 500 years ago. The leaders of the Mani or Kquoja invasion of Sierra Leone in the mid-sixteenth century almost certainly spoke a contemporary version of Vai.

There is little evidence of a direct connexion between the movement of the Vai towards the coast and that of the Ligbi towards eastern Ivory Coast, despite linguistic similarities. More probably the Vai entered present-day Sierra Leone in company with the Kono. Traditions that the Kono were ‘left behind’ sound misleading: it is more likely that the Kono, Vai and speakers of the now extinct ‘ Dama’ language formed a continuous band from eastern Sierra Leone to the sea, cutting off the Gola and Kisi from other Mel speakers. Later (perhaps before the mid-seventeenth century) this band must have been split by the westward movement of Southwestern Mande speakers.

The ‘migration’ of the Vai need not have involved a mass exodus or conquest. What was probably involved was the gradual creation of trade corridors, with a few Northern Mande speakers resident on the coast and a large number carrying salt, dried fish and other wares from the coast towards the head of the Niger. Although the corridors were eventually to some extent disrupted, the Vai language survived near the coast, because of its importance in trade and because links with the Manding were never entirely severed.
Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I. The matter of Bitu
Authors: Wilks Ivor
Published: January 2009

In late medieval and early modern times West Africa was one of the principal suppliers of gold to the world bullion market. In this context the Matter of Bitu is one of much importance. Bitu lay on the frontiers of the Malian world and was one of its most flourishing gold marts. So much is clear from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, both African and European. A review of this body of evidence indicates that the gold trade at Bitu was controlled by the Wangara, who played a central role in organizing trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. It is shown that Bitu cannot be other than Bighu (Begho, Bew, etc.), the abandoned Wangara town lying on the northwestern fringes of the Akan forest country, which is known (from excavation) to have flourished in the relevant period. In the late fifteenth century the Portuguese established posts on the southern shores of the Akan country, so challenging the monopolistic position which the Wangara had hitherto enjoyed in the gold trade. The Portuguese sent envoys to Mali, presumably to negotiate trade agreements. The bid was apparently unsuccessful. The struggle for the Akan trade in the sixteenth century between Portuguese and Malian interests will be treated in the second part of this paper.
Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. II. The Struggle for Trade
Authors: Wilks Ivor
Published: January 2009

Until 1471 the Wangara had enjoyed a monopolistic position in the Akan gold trade, consigning bullion to the markets of the Western Sudan (see the first part of this paper). The Portuguese entered the trade in the late fifteenth century, but experienced difficulty in deflecting gold to the coast. The strong demand for labour in the Akan country obliged them to import slaves from other parts of West Africa in order to achieve competitiveness. In 1477 Jenne – the principal northern outlet for Akan gold – fell to the Songhay, and for a time the Wangara were induced to do at least some of their business with the Portuguese. Subsequently the Wangara found markets for their gold as far west as the Gambia river. In the mid-sixteenth century the ruler of Mali, his frontiers crumbling on all sides, made a bid to take control of the Wangara gold trade. His troops occupied Bitu or Bighu, the Wangara entrepot on the edges of the Akan forest country, and he may (just possibly) have ordered an attack on Elmina, the principal Portuguese post on the coast to the south. If there was such a move against Elmina, it certainly failed, and at least some of the troops in Bitu did not return to Mali but set up their own state locally: Gonja. The developing Atlantic economy, built around new supplies of gold and new demands for slaves, eclipsed the older Mediterranean economy of which West Africa had been a geographically peripheral but commercially central part. The decline of Mali, and with it Bitu, was irreversible.
Decline or Survival? Iron Production in West Africa from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries
Authors: Pole L. M.
Published: January 2009

In the sixteenth century most iron used in west Africa was produced within the region. Extra demand may have been met from the newly established European factors on the coast. By the end of the nineteenth century, in contrast, it was the residue in demand that was satisfied from local sources, the main bulk of iron being imported via the coast and transported inland. For the larger part of this 400-year period imported iron was cheaper than locally-produced iron. What was remarkable, then, was not that iron smelting eventually died out, but that it survived for so long and could be studied in detail in the second half of the twentieth century.

It is argued that, although the decline can be related to production constraints, such as the availability of charcoal, influences originating from the rest of the community can be seen to have prolonged the survival of local iron. The organization of labour of both the iron-smelting and blacksmithing processes, together with the way in which iron was marketed, are central to the analysis. In addition, consumption factors are of the utmost importance. Apart from the prejudice against innovation, the fact that imported iron was plainly not as suitable as local iron for the purposes to which it was put, weakened its impact. Also the ritual attitude to local iron has to be taken into consideration. The present universality of non-local sources has resulted in a change in the regard paid to the metal, but it is argued that the position of the smith is unlikely to alter significantly, since it is more related to his crucial role as supplier of tools for other essential activities such as farming, than to the production of iron itself.
The Natal Sugar Industry, 1849–1905: An Interpretative Essay
Authors: Richardson Peter
Published: January 2009

This paper has sought to examine the basis of capital accumulation in the Natal sugar industry from its beginnings in the late 1840s until the opening of Zululand for white settlement in 1905. It has traced the emergence of plantation production in the colony in the context of developments within the regional sugar market and the shifting patterns of the international trade. It has also sought to elucidate the weaknesses of this system which undermined and finally destroyed it in an extended crisis which lasted from the late 1860s until the turn of the century. Finally it has analysed the productive relations which emerged within this reconstructed industry, identifying the large units of production known as the miller-cum-planter concerns which combined central milling activities and extended areas of cane production in a form of monopolistic control which still profoundly affects the industry today.
Long-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu
Authors: Keim Curtis A.
Published: January 2009

Between 1866 and 1886 Arabized traders from the Nile River trafficked in slaves and ivory in the Mangbetu region of what is today north-eastern Zaire. These Nile traders opened the first direct long-distance trading contacts in the area. European travellers present during the period wrote accounts giving the impression to some modern historians that the traders did extensive damage to several small, welldeveloped Mangbetu kingdoms. These accounts do not furnish an accurate picture of the trader impact on the Mangbetu. The Mangbetu system of rule was less developed than the travellers supposed. At that time Mangbetu rule was still based largely on personality and kinship and not on bureaucracy, tribute, commercial monopoly, divine kingship, or any other institution often associated with strong African kingdoms. Moreover, the trader influence was weaker than the travellers supposed because the intruders were newcomers, operating at a great distance from the Khartoum market, who remained only a short time. Only from 1881 to 1885 did the Egyptian government have some success in regularizing the trade and subduing rebellious rulers. In early 1886 all northerners withdrew from the Mangbetu area as a result of the Mahdist crisis in the Sudan. At that point the Mangbetu kingdoms, and kingdoms built on the Mangbetu model, re-emerged relatively unchanged by the trader experience.
The Dangers of Dependence: Christian Marriage Among Elite Women in Lagos Colony, 1880–1915
Authors: Mann Kristin
Published: January 2009

Repatriated slaves and Christian missionaries introduced Christian marriage into colonial Lagos, and spread new values about polygyny and conjugal relationships and roles. Women among the educated elite strove to marry in church and conform to foreign marital norms, in part because Christianity, European education, and colonial legal and economic changes had altered their opportunities. When they embraced Christian marriage, elite women sacrificed the autonomy and economic independence of illiterate Yoruba women for the privileges associated with membership in the elite. As elite women experienced disappointment and vulnerability created by trying to conform to foreign ideals, some began rethinking aspects of Christian marriage, particularly the wife's economic dependence.
Family and Kinship among the Kongo South of the Zaïre River from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
Authors: Hilton Anne
Published: January 2009

The article considers the changing pattern of kinship relations amongst the Kongo south of the Zaïre river and west of the plateau in the region once dominated by the nuclear Kongo kingdom. It argues that the normative pattern of kinship and family relationship was probably established in the early years of agricultural settlement by the ideology of the kanda, the exogamous matrilineal descent groups which controlled access to land. This ideology dominated family and kinship relationships as long as agricultural production was the dominant economic factor. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the evolution of the trade-based kingdom of Kongo modified the normative pattern established by the kanda, and in the late sixteenth century the acquisition of large numbers of slaves and the use of Christianity as a legitimating ideology effected more profound change. In particular, the elite developed a system of patrilineal descent categories which were used to control trade-based wealth and to organize political relationships. Freedom came to be related more to patrilineal descent category membership and less to kanda membership, whilst the economic and political position of all but the most eminent women deteriorated. When, in the late seventeenth century, changing patterns of trade caused the kingdom of Kongo to disintegrate, the Mwissikongo of the centre adopted a cognatic mode of descent which enabled them to control both agricultural and trade-based wealth. Certain eminent women seized the political opportunities afforded by the crumbling of male-dominated centres of power whilst the definition of slave and free became increasingly problematic. In the north-western province of Sonyo, increased trade-based wealth enabled the dominant patrilineal category to establish itself as a corporate group and to monopolize all positions of power. In the eighteenth century power disintegrated throughout the region and land again became the primary economic asset. The ruling elite sought legitimation in terms of the ideology and descent system of the kanda. The former slave groups sought to establish rights in the same way. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all groups legitimized their holding of land, primarily in terms of the ideology of the kanda and secondarily in terms of the concept of Mbanza Kongo.
Family and Property Amongst the Amhara Nobility
Authors: Crummey Donald
Published: January 2009

Records of Ethiopian property dealings provide insights into the affairs of Ethiopian families. They suggest further, dynamic links between property and family. Amhara rules of descent and inheritance are ambilineal. Each person reckons their ancestry equally through their father and mother and inherits property the same way. Yet, without abandoning their profession of the principles of ambilineal descent and of equal partible inheritance, the Abyssinian nobility subverted these norms, thereby creating ‘families’ out of a welter of ramifying lineages, and ‘estates’ out of disintegrating holdings. Their devices included wills and marriage endowments which privileged one sibling at the expense of others. Another device was the alaqenat, an office which functioned as the head of a family and its affairs. The alaqenat, previously unreported in the Ethiopian literature, appears in a number of documents in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, and the article uses it to trace the affairs of one noble family over a period of six generations. Further comments are made about the links between public office and notions of property. Finally, two wider spheres are addressed. In spite of its radical ambilineality Abyssinian society reveals tendencies common to other societies based on plough agriculture, tendencies towards greater class differentiation based on the accumulation of landed property. And, unlike most other historic societies professing Christianity, Abyssinian society is marked by frequent divorce and marital instability.
Housewives, Maids or Mothers: Some Contradictions of Domesticity for Christian Women in Johannesburg, 1903–39
Authors: Gaitskell Deborah
Published: January 2009

Early twentieth-century missionaries in South Africa invariably subscribed to an ideology of domesticity for African Christian women. Being a housewife and mother was seen as a full-time spiritual vocation. In Johannesburg, for example, women's domestic role within marriage gave point to the whole range of female mission activity. Housewifery was not only taught at special mission schools, but also in women's hostels, a girls' youth movement and a delinquents' institution. These agencies and the African women's prayer unions also sought to combat premarital pregnancy in adolescent girls, because Christian marriage was regarded as the only proper context for motherhood. Maternity was central as well to female medical mission efforts. But the ideology of domesticity was in practice fraught with contradictions in the South African setting. First, housework training inevitably had an ambiguous status since it often aimed at supplying domestic servants to white households. Secondly, full-time motherhood was impossible for urban African women compelled to supplement their husbands' low earnings. White liberals therefore favoured higher African wages partly to free black women financially to fulfil their ‘natural’ child-rearing role. African women themselves have campaigned for domesticity against the authorities' policies of labour control. Bloemfontein in 1913 and Crossroads squatter camp in the late 1970s provide striking examples of such struggles. The Western feminist may see both the family and the role of housewife as oppressive. For the black South African woman, by contrast, the ideology of domesticity infusing these institutions may represent something positive denied her by the state.
Some Changes in the Matrilineal Family System among the Chewa of Malawi since the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Phiri Kings M.
Published: January 2009

In its ideal form, the Chewa family system is supposed to place considerable emphasis on the mother right, the avunculate, uxorilocal marriage, husband's subordination to wife's kin, and importance of female children as future reproducers of the lineage. In practice, however, there are a number of factors which have tended to mitigate the impact of these tendencies in the system, as far as men or husbands are concerned. Attention has been drawn to the fact that a number of important changes in the marriage contract, family residential patterns, exercise of domestic authority, and control or custody of children, have been the result of historical developments. There is therefore a need to understand these developments, even if the changes in the Chewa family system to which they led have not brought about a complete transformation of the system.

Several of these historical developments have been reviewed, as well as the features of patriliny to which they have given rise in several parts of central Malawi. They include the growth of the slave trade in the nineteenth century and the opportunity which this gave to some lineages to acquire women who could be married virilocally; the intrusion of patrilineal peoples like the Ngoni which increased the incidence of virilocal marriage and patrilineal descent; the spread of certain Christian missionary teachings that are in conflict with matrilineal principles of family organisation; and such developments of the colonial period as labour migrancy and cash-cropping which often impinged on relations between husband and wife and family life in general.
African Smoking and Pipes
Authors: Philips John Edward
Published: January 2009

This article first explains the importance of the history of smoking pipes for other historical questions, especially in West Africa, where pipe styles are used to date archaeological levels. A survey of the major theories about African smoking and pipes is presented. This is followed by a review of the published archaeological literature pertaining to smoking pipes found at various sites from around the continent. The various controversies surrounding African smoking customs are then looked at in the light of the available evidence. The most likely hypothesis is that cannabis was smoked in water pipes in eastern and southern Africa before the introduction of tobacco. Further research is called for to prove or disprove this hypothesis. Tobacco is shown to have been introduced to West Africa from eastern North America, most likely by the French coming to Senegambia, though possibly by Moroccans coming to Timbuktu.
Irrigation and Soil-Conservation in African Agricultural History
Authors: Sutton J. E. G.
Published: January 2009

The archaeological study of African agricultural history has concentrated more on origins and the identification of crop remains than on farming techniques and ancient fields. The latter rarely survive, and even then may be of indeterminate age and apparently atypical, such as hillside terracing or irrigation systems. The subject has been further bedevilled by these unusual instances of preserved fields being regarded as relics of ‘intensive’ cultivation by ‘vanished civilizations’. However, a clearer understanding of African agriculture, through ethnographic and ecological approaches, reveals not only its basically extensive character but also the infinite variety of local specializations (or cultural–environmental adaptations, combining ancient African domesticates and introduced crops which have been ‘Africanized’). This provides a perspective for examining peculiarities of the present and past and claimed instances of ‘intensification’. Conversely the concept of specialization allows us to use, with caution, the preserved remains of old field systems to illustrate more typical ones. Many of the archaeological survivals were not so much ‘intensive’ as ‘over-specialized’, often in isolated and circumscribed situations, notably remote hills in both western and eastern Africa. A moderate example is Inyanga in eastern Zimbabwe with its extensive terraced hillsides of the later Iron Age. Here most of the terraces were not irrigated, but there are hints of complex seasonal arrangements and field techniques. A more extreme, even ‘ultra-specialized’ agricultural system, also of the later Iron Age, which was abandoned in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, is that of Engaruka in the northern Tanzanian rift. This was an essentially isolated and self-sufficient settlement in dry country, absolutely dependent on its exquisite irrigation devices. Eventually this community expired, as its soil was exhausted and its water supplies declined.

Finally, there are instances in nineteenth-century East Africa, and from earlier in West Africa, of more open cultural–economic systems producing a surplus for caravans, markets and towns. Technologically these have been no more accomplished or ‘intensive’ than the specializations discussed, but developmentally their achievement has been more effective.
From ‘Death Camps’ toCordon Sanitaire: The Development of Sleeping Sickness Policy in the Uele District of the Belgian Congo, 1903–1914
Authors: Lyons Maryinez
Published: January 2009

When sleeping sickness was discovered to be epidemic in the Congo Free State in 1904, the administration responded by attempting to implement public health measures which had evolved in Europe in relation to plague and cholera epidemics. These measures were to identify and isolate victims and suspected victims of the disease and to map out the infected and uninfected zones. This article describes the early sleeping-sickness campaign of the Belgian authorities in the Uele District of Province Orientale between 1904 and 1914, focusing on the formation of isolation camps or lazarets. Uele district had been identified as a potentially rich and uninfected zone to be protected from contamination by the establishment of acordon sanitaire. Public health policy and practice during this period provides an example of attempted ‘social engineering’ on the part of a colonial authority. While sleeping sickness provided the major impetus for the gradual development of the colonial medical service by the 1920s, the early period between 1903 and World War I was particularly onerous for the African populations in the north-east. The public health policy was perceived by many Africans as one more element in the on-going conquest and exploitation of the region. Examples are provided to demonstrate the ways in which numerous sleeping-sickness regulations affected African societies in Uele.
Farmers, Randlords and the South African state: Confrontation in the Witwatersrand Beef Markets, c. 1920–1923
Authors: Morrell Robert
Published: January 2009

The pervasive importance of gold mining in modern South Africa has become embedded in South African historiography. Despite this, little research has been done to ascertain its impact on the other major sector of the economy, agriculture.

The gold mines had a profound effect upon one particular branch of agriculture – beef farming. The mines purchased large amounts of beef and were able to use their buying power to confront beef farmers in the marketplace. In the recession following the First World War, the mines were caught in a profitability crisis that was to lead to the Rand Revolt in 1922. One of the ways in which mining attempted to ease its position was by cutting back on the cost of the meat it supplied to its African labour force. This initially involved co-operation with a powerful cold-storage company, big ranchers and a number of smaller farmers to form a Meat Producers Exchange. This fragile alliance fell apart when farmers, themselves on the verge of bankruptcy, attempted to take control of the Exchange and raise beef prices. The farmers failed and in 1923 the exchange collapsed.

The victory of the mining and cold-storage companies rested on a number of factors. Farmers were unable to organize effectively because of the defection of ranchers to the mines. Changing economic conditions in 1922 and 1923 permitted the mines to terminate their co-operation with beef farmers. Finally the mines were able to call upon the state for support. The state ensured the demise of the Exchange and the defeat of the beef farmers. In the process it showed itself capable of intervening decisively to protect the interests of certain sections of capital.
Current Research and Recent Radiocarbon Dates from Northern Africa, III
Authors: Close Angela E.
Published: January 2009

This article reports on developments in archaeological research in North Africa during the last four years, as these are reflected in the 350, or thereabouts, radiocarbon (and thermoluminescence) dates that have appeared since the last review. The number of new dates, and new data, becoming available indicate that North African archaeology is flourishing, although, in contrast to the earlier decades of this century, the focus seems now to be moving toward the eastern part of the region, and toward matters of adaptation rather than of simple classification, as exemplified by the new interpretations of the Dhar Tichitt Neolithic in Mauritania.

The lower Nile Valley has yielded evidence for an intensification of subsistence activities in the Late Palaeolithic in two areas, Makhadma and Kubbaniya, both involving fish-harvesting and the latter also witnessing the use of plant-foods on a scale hitherto undocumented for this period.

At the beginning of the Holocene, there is now good evidence for an eighth millennium bc Neolithic in northern Niger, complete with sophisticated ceramics, which complements the evidence already known for similar phenomena further east in the Sahara. There is even a possibility that the Khartoum Mesolithic of the central Nile Valley might be equally old. Our understanding of the Sudanese Neolithic has greatly increased. For the first time, there appears to be a development from the Khartoum Mesolithic into the Khartoum Neolithic, albeit located outside the Valley. The Khartoum Neolithic is more or less confined to the fourth millennium bc, but did give rise to the later Kadada Neolithic. After Kadada, the focus of settlement seems to have shifted outside the Valley until Meroitic times.

In the protohistoric and historic periods, we have a better understanding of the chronology of the Egyptian Predynastic, although not yet of its development; what models exist will be radically modified if the pyramids are indeed as old as the dates on them now indicate. Finally, far from the Nile Valley in northern Niger, there comes detailed evidence of the development of a precocious metallurgical tradition within a Neolithic context.
Trois Hauts Dignitaires Bornoans du XVIeSiècle: Le Digma, Le Grand Jarma et Le Cikama
Authors: Lange Dierk
Published: January 2009

Little attention has until now been directed to the rich information on title-holders contained in the two chronicles of the imām Aḥmad b. Furṭū written in 1576 and 1578 respectively. This neglect is partly due to the very confusing style of the imām's writing. In particular, he refers to the three highest ranking Bornoan officials by translating their Bornoan titles into Arabic: the Digma is called ‘al-wazīr al-kabīr’, the great Jarma ‘al-rā'id al-kabīr’, and the Cikama ‘al-ḥājib’. Once the meaning of these Arabic titles is decoded it appears that the political organisation of sixteenth century Borno owes very little to the Islamic model. Furthermore it becomes clear that the commander of the Bornoan corps of musketeers was the great Jarma, an official of Ngizim origin, and not a Turkish military instructor as one may have suspected.

However, since Ibn Furṭū is mainly concerned with military activities, only a few functions of the three high-ranking court officials emerge from his account; others have to be inferred from the information provided by nineteenth-century European travellers and from more recent anthropological accounts. In Borno the political organisation of the Sayfuwa state fell to pieces in the first half of the nineteenth century, when al-Amīn al-Kānemī and his successors built up a new system of administration. This progressively supplanted the old system, which was based on a great number of court titles and attendant offices. Important elements of the political organisation of the Sayfuwa survive until the present day in some former vassal states of Borno which became independent in the course of the nineteenth century or earlier.
Sacred Acquisition: Andrianampoinimerina at Ambohimanga, 1777–1790
Authors: Berg Gerald M.
Published: January 2009

Between 1775 and 1810 Andrianampoinimerina laid the foundations of the Merina state which in subsequent decades was to rule most of Madagascar. Though various circumstances such as the development of irrigated riziculture and slavery, the monopoly of profits and of muskets from coastal trade, and the manipulation of ritual, contributed in part to the nascent monarchy's strength, they equally touched other political formations within Imerina and elsewhere and therefore do not explain why Andrianampoinimerina's organization endured while others did not. The distinctiveness of Andrianampoinimerina's case is revealed by returning to particular events, those culminating in his first successful attempt to rule at Ambohimanga in 1783. His success depended upon exploiting both good luck and pervasive kinship values which recognized individual financial prowess. Thus the resurgent trade with the east coast did not redefine Merina kinship. Rather, trade provided an expanded arena of economic activity in which Andrianampoinimerina demonstrated superior skill at kinship politics, expanding his kin group and assuming the role of sole mediator between the residents of Ambohimanga and their ancestors.
Bibles and Beads: Missionaries as Traders in Southern Africa in the Early Nineteenth Century
Authors: Beck Roger B.
Published: January 2009

Trade across the Cape frontier in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, and government attempts to regulate that trade, cannot be understood without first considering the role of Protestant missionaries as traders and bearers of European manufactured goods in the South African interior. From their arrival in 1799, missionaries of the London Missionary Society carried on a daily trade beyond the northern and eastern boundaries of the Cape Colony that was forbidden by law to the colonists. When missionaries of the Methodist Missionary Society arrived in the mid-1810s they too carried beads as well as Bibles to their mission stations outside the colony. Most missionaries were initially troubled by having to mix commercial activities with their religious duties. They were forced, however, to rely on trade in order to support themselves and their families because of the meagre material and monetary assistance they received from their societies. They introduced European goods among African societies beyond the Cape frontiers earlier and in greater quantities than any other enterprise until the commencement of the Fort Willshire fairs in 1824. Most importantly, they helped to bring about a transition from trade in beads, buttons and other traditional exchange items to a desire among many of the peoples with whom they came into contact for blankets, European clothing and metal tools and utensils, thus creating a growing dependency on European material goods that would eventually bring about a total transformation of these African societies.
Writing South African Legal History: A Prospectus
Authors: Chanock Martin
Published: January 2009

This article outlines the approach to the writing of South African legal history being taken in a book in progress on the South African legal system between 1902 and 1929. It suggests that legalism has been an important part of the political culture of South Africa and that, therefore, an understanding of legal history is necessary to a comprehension of the South African state. It offers a critique of the liberal notion of the rule of law as a defence against state power, arguing that in the South African context ideological and legitimising explanations of law should be de-emphasised in favour of an approach which emphasises the instrumental nature of law in relation to state power. Elements of the existing legal and historical literature are briefly reviewed.

The basic orientation is to consider the South African legal system as essentially a post-colonial British system rather than one of ‘Roman-Dutch law’. The study is divided into four parts. The first looks at the making of the state between 1902 and 1910 and considers the role and meaning of courts, law and police in the nature of the state being constructed. The second discusses ‘social control’. It considers the ideological development of criminology and thought about crime: the nature of ‘common law’ crime and criminal law in an era of intensified industrialisation; the development of statutory criminal control over blacks; and the evolution of the criminalising of political opposition. The third part considers the dual system of civil law. It discusses the development of Roman-Dutch law in relation to the legal profession; and outlines the development of the regime of commercial law, in relation to contemporary class and political forces. It also examines the parallel unfolding of the regime of black law governing the marital and proprietal relations of blacks, and embodied in the Native Administration Act of 1927. The final segment describes the growth of the statutory regime and its use in the re-structuring of the social order. It suggests that the core of South African legalism is to be found in the emergence of government through the modern statutory form with its huge delegated powers of legislating and its wide administrative discretions.
The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature
Authors: Lovejoy Paul E.
Published: January 2009

Recent revisions of estimates for the volume of the trans-Atlantic slave trade suggest that approximately 11,863,000 slaves were exported from Africa during the whole period of the Atlantic slave trade, which is a small upward revision of my 1982 synthesis and still well within the range projected by Curtin in 1969. More accurate studies of the French and British sectors indicate that some revision in the temporal and regional distribution of slave exports is required, especially for the eighteenth century. First, the Bight of Biafra was more important and its involvement in the trade began several decades earlier than previously thought. Secondly, the French and British were more active on the Loango coast than earlier statistics revealed. The southward shift of the trade now appears to have been more gradual and to have begun earlier than I argued in 1982. The greater precision in the regional breakdown of slave shipments is confirmed by new data on the ethnic origins of slaves. The analysis also allows a new assessment of the gender and age profile of the exported population. There was a trend toward greater proportions of males and children. In the seventeenth century, slavers purchased relatively balanced proportions of males and females, and children were under-represented. By the eighteenth century, west-central Africa was exporting twice as many males as females, while West Africa was far from attaining such ratios. In the nineteenth century, by contrast, slavers could achieve those ratios almost anywhere slaves were available for export, and in parts of west-central and south-eastern Africa the percentage of males reached unprecedented levels of 70 per cent or more. Furthermore, increasing numbers of slaves were children, and again west-central Africa led the way in this shift while West Africa lagged behind considerably.

This review of the literature on the demography of the slave trade provides a context to assess the revisionist interpretation of David Eltis, who has argued recently that the slave trade and its suppression were of minor importance in African history. It is shown that Eltis' economic arguments, based on an assessment of per capita income and the value of the export trade, are flawed. The demography of the trade involved an absolute loss of population and a large increase in the enslaved population that was retained in Africa. A rough comparison of slave populations in West Africa and the Americas indicates that the scale of slavery in Africa was extremely large.
Timbuktu Under Imperial Songhay: A Reconsideration of Autonomy
Authors: Gomez Michael A.
Published: January 2009

Songhay sources compiled in the seventeenth century portray the relationship between Gao, the political capital of the state, and Timbuktu, the religious and commercial centre, as abnormally important. The view is that Timbuktu was not only autonomous, but a source of important political influence over policy decisions at Gao. A consensus of contemporary scholars has embraced this depiction. In contrast, the present study argues that Timbuktu was not autonomous, but that Gao was sucessful in achieving its original objective in capturing the city: financial profit. In addition, the evidence is consistent in outlining the relatively negligible political influence of Timbuktu over Gao. The Timbuktu-centric chronicles are largely responsible for this distortion; it is therefore necessary to approach these sources with even greater caution. It is also desirable to re-examine the roles of other sahelian entrepots during the imperial Songhay period to determine more accurately their relative importance.
The South African War (1899–1902): context and motive reconsidered
Authors: Porter Andrew
Published: January 2009

Since 1899 the idea has been widely held that the South African War was no isolated episode but one illuminating the fundamental characteristics of British expansion, both in the nineteenth century and beyond. Cross-reference between the particulars of South African history and theories of imperialism has long been a fact of intellectual life. This process, however, often seems to reflect less the fruitful interplay of new knowledge and evolving hypotheses than the progressive entrenchment of separate schools of thought. The purpose of this article is to highlight the gulf between different approaches, with reference to recent work; and to suggest that, notwithstanding the work of the last decade, little headway has been made in linking the development of South Africa's economy and mineral resources to the War of 1899 in any but the most general and self-evident of ways. It argues that the case for interpreting the origins of the war in the main from a metropolitan and political perspective retains considerable persuasiveness and explanatory power. Finally it puts forward an alternative way of seeing in the struggle representative features of British expansion.
The ‘Igbo Scare’ in the British Cameroons, c. 1945–61
Authors: Amaazee Victor Bong
Published: January 2009

La peur de la domination de la tribu Ibo constitua l'une des raisons majeures pour la décision du Sud-Cameroun Britannique à voter en 1961 pour quitter le Nigéria complètement et de s'unir avec la République du Cameroun. Dès les années 1920, après que la Grande-Bretagne avait obtenu un mandat international sur un part de l'ancienne colonie allemande, elle le gouvernait comme apanage du Nigéria, et le développement, que ce soit économique ou culturel, était très tardif. Les indigènes faisaient concurrence à grande peine aux immigrants du Nigéria, surtout les Ibos, dont la résilience et l'ingéniosité dans le commerce, alliés à leur manque de modestie dans le succès, provoquaient l'envie. Les politiciens camerounais contribuaient aux stéréotypes ethniques en incitant des rumeurs fantasques. Certes, des autres rivalités importaient aussi, mais dans les élections de 1954, 1957 et 1959 le mécontentement avec les liaisons au Nigéria fut clairement associé aux sentiments anti-Ibo.
The Development of Caste Systems in West Africa
Authors: Tamari Tal
Published: January 2009

Endogamous artisan and musician groups are characteristic of over fifteen West African peoples, including the Manding, Soninke, Wolof, Serer, Fulani, Tukulor, Songhay, Dogon, Senufo, Minianka, Moors, and Tuareg. Castes appeared among the Malinke no later than 1300, and were present among the Wolof and Soninke, as well as some Songhay and Fulani populations, no later than 1500. All the West African castes ultimately developed from at most three centers, located among the Manding, Soninke, and/or Wolof. Migration is the key process explaining the current distribution of caste people. Formation of blacksmith and bard castes among the Manding may be related to the Sosso–Malinke war, described in the Sunjata epic, which led to the founding of the Mali empire. As they evolved over time, castes acquired secondary specializations or changed occupations, and moved up or down in rank relative to other social groups. Although marriage alliances took place within a caste or among a limited number of castes, castes did not form demographic isolates. Children of caste men and slave concubines had caste status, while free persons taken captive in war sometimes claimed to be caste members. Assimilation of local artisans to a caste may have occurred when caste institutions were first introduced into a given area.