bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Akorite?
Authors: Kalous Milan
Published: January 2009

All the many definitions and descriptions of the akori bead published in the last five hundred years have proved inadequate. They appear either pedantically narrow, so that only a hundred years later or a hundred miles away beads also unquestionably called akori by West Africans by their very existence disprove such ‘precise’ characteristics, or, the other extreme, so broad as to be historically useless and logically unsatisfactory. Since all the akori records must be viewed as historical sources more or less reflecting the real situation in the past, we can hardly blame their authors for the akori puzzle; there must have been something wrong in the naming mechanism, in the factual relationship between the word and the thing. It is the main point of this article that the akori phenomenon originated in the existence of various types of natural glass in North and West Africa. An archetypal human attraction to this strange and rare substance can be observed in several culturally very different areas of the world. Understandably, at a later stage people made talismans and beads of this presumably protective material, yet the primeval veneration paid only to the mysterious matter, now under a more sophisticated but basically accidental form, remained the same. It was primarily this matter alone which West Africans tried to discover, test and obtain in European-imported artificial glass after 1500. The complex akori ‘problem’ is a telling and fascinating historical and logical expression of contact between different cultures.
Labour Supply and the Genesis of South African Confederation in the 1870s
Authors: Etherington Norman A.
Published: January 2009

Lord Carnarvon's scheme for a South African Confederation in the 1870s owed much more than has been generally recognized to influences emanating from Natal. Large employers of African labour recognized in the 1860s that the local population could not provide a cheap stable workforce and that immigrant workers from the African interior would be increasingly important to the prosperity of the colony. Theophilus Shepstone, Natal's Secretary for Native Affairs, used all the resources at his disposal to smooth the way for migrant labour. The development of diamond mining in Griqualand West and, to a lesser extent, gold mining in the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal diverted large numbers of African workers away from Natal and set off a frantic search for new sources of labour which underscored the importance of Moçambique and Central Africa as reservoirs of black labour. While planters, traders and officials in Natal worked to keep labour supply routes open between the Transvaal and Portuguese territory, officials in Griqualand West were recommending annexation of territories along the ‘missionary road’ in order to stop Transvaal Afrikaners from blocking labour supply routes from Central Africa. The revival of an active British campaign against the East African slave trade opened another potential source of African labour which Shepstone's former border agent Frederic Elton tried to divert to Natal while serving first as an assistant to Sir Bartle Frere and John Kirk in Zanzibar, and later as British Consul in Moçambique.

Shepstone arrived in London at a crucial point in the development of Carnarvon's thinking on southern African affairs and impressed him with his lucid analysis of the interrelation of African administration, economic development and labour supply. Carnarvon's plans for confederation reflected the advice which he was continously receiving from Shepstone and Elton. Their argument for confederation emphasized the essentially unitary nature of the developing southern African economy.
Blood Partnership in Theory and Practice: the Expansion of Muslim Power in Dar Al-Kuti
Authors: Cordell Dennis D.
Published: January 2009

This article examines the institution of blood partnership, first theoretically, and then with reference to northern Equatorial Africa and Dar al-Kuti, a Muslim slave-raiding and slave-trading state. Contemporary anthropologists described blood partnership schematically as the exchange of blood and of conditional curses between two individuals or groups for the purpose of guaranteeing co-operation. They also suggested that blood partnership created bonds analogous to kinship. Blood alliances were concluded almost exclusively between parties who were not related genealogically, and promoted security, co-operation and long-distance trade. They were particularly important among societies outside highly centralized states, where they provided the ideology and mechanism for wider action embracing unrelated groups. Northern Equatorial Africa was just such an area, and, in the nineteenth century at least, blood pacts were very common. The article looks at blood partnership in the region generally, pointing out how foreigners, Muslims as well as Europeans, adopted the institution as a means of allying themselves with local leaders. Muslim penetration of the region is examined, and the infiltration of thezaribasystem of the southwestern Sudan into Ubangi-Shari (in what is now the Central African Empire) is outlined. The second half of the article deals specifically with Dar al-Kuti. Oral testimony and written evidence are combined to present a picture of blood partnership among the Banda, the most important non-Muslim people included in the state. The analysis is then extended to show how Muslims in the region, mainly the Runga from the Chad basin, led by Kobur and then by al-Sanusi, used blood pacts to foster their political and economic ambitions among non-Muslim peoples south of the Islamic frontier.
The Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 1927–1939, with special reference to East and Central Africa
Authors: Smyth Rosaleen
Published: January 2009

From the 1920s the British government sought to manipulate the powerful new propaganda weapon of the cinema to the advantage of the Empire. Unsuccessful attempts were made to break the American stranglehold on the colonial cinema circuit which was thought to pose a threat to British commercial and political interests. Attempts to control what were seen as the harmful effects of the commercial cinema were made through strict censorship. The Colonial Office provided guidelines for policy and organization. South Africa set precedents for racial discrimination in censorship and segregation in viewing which were adopted in much of East and Central Africa. The Colonial Office and the British Film Institute were both anxious to see an experiment using the film in adult education. Progress was held back through lack of money until 1935 when the Carnegie Corporation decided to finance the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment, a project of the International Missionary Council. The B.E.K.E., an experiment in the production of films for the educational and cultural adjustment of Africans to western society, was conducted in East and Central Africa between 1935 and 1937, with the Colonial Office playing an advisory role. No permanent organization developed out of the B.E.K.E. due to lack of finance and lack of interest among the East African governments. When the British government created the Colonial Film Unit in 1939, its purpose was to make war propaganda films for the colonies. Later in the war, the work of the C.F.U. was extended to the making of instructional films, which became its main function once the war had ended.
Le Colonat Agricole Européen au Congo-Belge, 1910–1960: Questions Politiques et Economiques
Authors: Jewsiewicki B.
Published: January 2009

This article deals both with the political history and with the economy of European agricultural settlement in the Belgian Congo. It concludes that the role of settler farming in the life of the Congo was essentially political. The colonat was only marginal in a colonial economy long based on the extensive exploitation of African labour by industrial and commercial firms. European agriculture was able to compete neither with big business in labour recruiting, nor with African cultivators in price advantage. Settlers only survived with the benefit of government subsidies and a monopoly over some branches of production. White farming was maintained for political reasons both in peripheral regions of the colony, and on the fringes of the larger cities, but from i960 it was rapidly abandoned. In Rhodesia, under different ecological and historical circumstances, black industrial workers were fed by black agricultural workers. In the Belgian Congo it was the African peasant who fed the industrial worker, though for a mean return.
Slaves from the Windward Coast
Authors: Jones Adam , Johnson Marion
Published: January 2009

The ‘Windward Coast’ between Cape Mount and Assini (modern Liberia and Ivory Coast) is credited by Curtin with the export of very large numbers of slaves in the late seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth, but with hardly any in the nineteenth. It is suggested here that the actual figures for the earlier period are much lower, many of those slaves attributed to this stretch of coast in the English trade having come from the region Curtin calls ‘Sierra Leone’, while a large proportion of those carried in French ships came from the Gold Coast or beyond. In the nineteenth century, slave trading continued on the coast between Cape Mount and New Sestos until 1840. More work is needed on available sources. The figures are far too uncertain to be used for a chronological underpinning of oral traditions of peoples a great distance inland.
The Import of Firearms into West Africa in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Richards W. A.
Published: January 2009

The records of probably the biggest Birmingham gun-making firm specializing in the African trade and records of the Dutch West India Company are used in this article to throw more light on the quantities, types and quality of the guns imported into West Africa and on their effects in the eighteenth century. Inikori's estimate of 45 per cent as the proportion of English firearms in the total annual West African import of between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum is probably an underestimate because of the unknown quantities of English guns which were re-exported from Continental ports to West Africa. It is estimated tentatively that 180,000 guns per annum were being imported into the Gold and Slave Coasts by 1730, and that some of the most dramatic effects of the import of guns occurred between 1658 and 1730. A revolution in warfare began in the 1690s in the Senegambian coastal areas and along the Gold and Slave Coasts. The trebling of slave prices and the sharp reduction in gun prices between 1680 and 1720 enabled large militarized slave-exporting states to develop along the Gold and Slave Coasts. There was a strong demand for well-finished and well-proved guns as well as for the cheapest unproved guns, and the dangerous state of many of the guns imported into West Africa has been exaggerated. The reputations of European nations for the quality of their guns fluctuated. There was probably no steady deterioration in the quality of English guns imported between 1750 and 1807, but the quality of the cheapest guns deteriorated during periods of intense competition.
The Karonga War: commercial rivalry and politics of survival
Authors: Kalinga Owen J. M.
Published: January 2009

This article suggests a new explanation for the Karonga War of 1887–9. It argues that the advent of different groups of people into northern Malawi in the 1870s and 1880s drastically altered the delicate balance of power in the region. Initially it had been advantageous to the Ngonde to welcome the Swahili both commercially and as a means of deterring further attacks. The settlement of the Henga-Kamanga in the area greatly increased the security of Ungonde and the Nyakyusa ceased to be a serious threat. This fairly comfortable situation in Ungonde was completely disrupted by the arrival of the Europeans. In the first place the African Lakes Company befriended the Nyakyusa and then the Ngonde, forming a trading post at Karonga which was used by all peoples. The Nyakyusa and the Ngonde thereafter had a common interest and were no longer enemies. In consequence the Henga-Kamanga ceased to have an important role in Ungonde. Secondly, the African Lakes Company seemed to offer better trading prospects. This, plus the fact that the Ngoni were no longer threatening the Ngonde, marked the decline in power of the Swahili. The newly formed alliance between the Ngonde, the Nyakyusa and the Europeans posed a threat to the future of the Henga-Kamanga and the Swahili in Ungonde. All this finally led to the Karonga War.
Preparations for civil war in Tripoli in the 1820s: Ali Karamanli, Hassuna D'Ghies and Jeremy Bentham
Authors: Hume L. J.
Published: January 2009

Karamanli rule over Tripoli collapsed in 1835. But opposition to Yusef Pasha had been building up for over twenty years. Hassuna D'Ghies, the chief conspirator, visited England in the early 1820s and met the seventy-four year old Jeremy Bentham, then busily concerned in drawing up codes of law for Spain, Portugal, Greece and other newly independent states. He readily produced a code for Tripoli, to be introduced with the Pasha's consent or (should he refuse) by armed insurrection. Nothing came of their immediate project, but when D'Ghies returned to Tripoli he tried, during his brief period as Chief Minister, to govern according to Bentham's principles.
The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali: Evidence from Jenne-Jeno
Authors: McIntosh Roderick J. , McIntosh Susan Keech
Published: January 2009

The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted.

Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-jeno have established that iron-using and manufacturing peoples were occupying the site in the third century B.C. The settlement proceeded to grow rapidly during the first millennium a.d., reaching its apogee between a.d. 750 and 1100, at which time the settlement exceeded 33 hectares (82 acres) in size. The archaeological data are supported by the results of site survey within a 1,100-square-kilometre region of Jenne's traditional hinterland. During the late first millennium a.d., several nearby settlements comparable in size to Jenne-jeno existed, and the density of rural settlements may have been as great as ten times the density of villages in the hinterland today.

Evidence from excavation and survey indicates that Jenne participated in inter-regional exchange relations far earlier than previously admitted. The stone and iron in the initial levels at Jenne-jeno were imported from outside the Inland Delta; levels dated to c.a.d. 400 yield copper, presumably from distant Saharan sources. The importance of the abundant staple products of Jenne's rural hinterland, including rice, fish and fish oil, is examined in a reassessment of the extent of inter-regional commerce and the emergence of urbanism during the first millennium a.d. Jenne-jeno may have been a principal participant in the founding of commercial centres on the Saharan contact zone of the Bend of the Niger, rather than a product of the luxury trade serviced by those centres.
Portuguese, Chikunda, and Peoples of the Gwembe Valley: the Impact of the ‘Lower Zambezi Complex’ on Southern Zambia
Authors: Matthews T. I.
Published: January 2009

The role of the ‘Lower Zambezi complex’ which developed out of Portuguese and African interaction is examined in the light of recent research in the Gwembe valley, an area of the Middle Zambezi on the far periphery of Portuguese penetration from the east coast. The origins of Lower Zambezi contacts with the peoples of southern Zambia are traced to the late seventeenth century and their development and expansion are examined, on the basis of oral tradition and written sources, through the reopening of Zumbo in 1862, the defeat of the Ndebele at the Kafue confluence around 1870 and the consequent establishment of permanent trading posts in the Gwembe, down to the late 1880s when the increasingly disruptive activities of the Chikunda and theirmuzunguleaders led to general and successful resistance against them in the form of an armed rising. The effects of the ‘Lower Zambezi complex’ are related to the development of political authority and the introduction of technical and cultural innovations in the Gwembe. Chikunda andmuzunguactivities are shown to have differed in their effects between the Gwembe and their much better-known and more destructive penetration of the Luangwa valley in the 1880s, partly because of the decentralized nature of Gwembe society.
The Volta River Salt Trade: the Survival of an Indigenous Industry
Authors: Sutton I. B.
Published: January 2009

Salt has been produced in Ghana since at least the sixteenth century at many coastal sites. By the nineteenth century commercial production was concentrated in the lagoons east of Accra, and especially at Songor Lagoon just west of Ada. Here the Ada Manche and the priesthood controlled production. Much salt consumed in Asante and further north came from Accra, Ningo and Songor, and an increasing proportion went up the Volta River by canoe. The share of salt trade in the hands of the Ada traders is reflected in their virtual monopoly of the river traffic and their settlement in trading communities along the river. The British attempted to regulate and tax the trade, but market forces were more important in determining price. Salt from Ada was generally preferred to imported salt and to salt from other local sources, but the alternative of imported salt helped regulate the local prices. The importance of Daboya as a source of salt seems to have been somewhat exaggerated. Salt from Ada continued to predominate in much of Ghana in the twentieth century, but the river traffic was gradually replaced by motor transport, and the hold of the Adas on the distributive network broken. Salt continued to be produced by traditional methods at Songor until quite recently. It is still produced by traditional means for a fairly wide sale at Keta Lagoon, east of the Volta.
Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810–1895
Authors: Campbell Gwyn
Published: January 2009

The distinguishing feature of the Malagasy slave trade in the nineteenth century was the co-existence of two competitive slave networks, the one feeding Malagasy slaves to meet the demand of long-distance and regional markets in the western Indian Ocean, and the other channelling Malagasy war captives and East African slaves on to the markets of Imerina. The export of slaves from Madagascar had long existed, but the import of slaves was a new and distinctly nineteenth-century phenomenon, the result of the rise of the Merina empire, whose economy was based on a huge, unremunerated and servile labour force. As the empire expanded, so its labour requirements grew, to conflict sharply with the increasing demand for labour on the neighbouring plantation islands as they shifted over to the production of sugar. Creole merchants found themselves obliged to find alternative labour supplies, and from the 1830s they were moving rapidly down the west coast of Madagascar, where they purchased slaves from chiefs independent of Merina control. Until the outbreak of the Franco-Merina war of 1882–5, the slave-trade networks remained remarkably stable, despite local rivalries. This was due largely to the presence of the Arab Antalaotra, an experienced body of middlemen, and the Indian Karany who supplied the capital for the trade. The war effectively broke the power of the Merina regime, and as the imperial economy crumbled, so security of trade collapsed across the island. Though the disruption of legitimate commerce initially spurred the slave trade, it also strengthened creole calls for French intervention. This occurred in 1895, and the following year the French authorities abolished slavery in Madagascar. This, and the effective military occupation of the island by the French, reduced the Malagasy slave trade to a trickle by the first years of the twentieth century.
The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa
Authors: Wesseling H. L.
Published: January 2009

The Netherlands was almost the only country in Western Europe which took no share of Africa in the course of Partition. This is at first sight surprising. For centuries the Dutch had had a presence on the Gold Coast, while at the Cape they had created the most important white colony in sub-Saharan Africa. True, the Netherlands had given up both possessions before the Partition, but by that time the Dutch were the chief traders on the Congo estuary, which after all was a major flash-point giving rise to the Partition. Curiously enough, no one has sought to examine this seeming paradox. It is therefore the aim of this article to consider the relationship between Dutch commercial expansion and the origins of Partition, and to place this question in the context of the Netherlands' principal imperial interests, in South-East Asia.
Military and Labour Recruitment in the Gold Coast During the Second World War
Authors: Killingray David
Published: January 2009

During the Second World War the British West African colonies supplied raw materials and manpower for the war effort. The small peacetime army of the Gold Coast increased to nearly 70,000 men, including technical and service corps, and was used in overseas campaigns. Most soldiers were drawn from the supposed martial peoples of the Northern Territories but recruiting was extended to Asante and the south in mid-1940. Although formal conscription was only applied to drivers and artisans, a large number of recruits were forcibly enlisted through a system of official quotas imposed on districts and through chiefs. Opposition to military service, especially for overseas compaigns, was widespread and is indicated by the attempts to evade recruiting parties and also the large number of desertions. In order to release labour for the military and also conserve scarce supplies of raw materials, some gold mines were closed. Wartime shortages, inflation and the lack of jobs after the war led to discontent in the Gold Coast but there is little evidence to indicate that this resulted in a significant number of ex-servicemen being drawn into political activity.
From Wealthy Entrepreneurs to Petty Traders: the decline of African Middlemen in Eastern Nigeria, 1900–1950
Authors: Nwabughuogu Anthony I.
Published: January 2009

This paper traces the process of the decline of African middlemen in Eastern Nigeria from wealthy entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth century to petty traders after 1930. Four phases are identified in their decline. During the first phase, 1900–5, the middlemen lost only the political control of their trading areas but benefited commercially. The establishment of colonial rule expanded their market. And with the reluctance of expatriate firms to move into the interior, the continued ignorance of the natives of the actual prices of their produce and of imported goods, and the encouragement from the colonial administrators, African middlemen prospered.

These advantages were lost during the second phase, 1905–16. As the firms began to move inland from 1905, they traded with the natives and fostered a new group of smaller and dependent middlemen. The middlemen's market began to contract and their wealth declined. Their fortunes worsened during the third phase, 1916–30. With the opening of the Eastern Railway to traffic in 1916 and the increased construction of roads during this period, the firms intensified their penetration of the interior, swallowing up what remained of the middlemen's market. The introduction of produce inspection in Eastern Nigeria in 1928 added more hardships for the middlemen, putting many out of business. And by 1930 the trust system, upon which most middlemen depended after 1916 for raising their trading capital, collapsed, leaving most of them impoverished.

Thus, after 1930 African middlemen were no more than petty traders, trading with little capital and making marginal profit. They became incapable of challenging the expatriate firms in the import–export trade as their predecessors had done in the nineteenth century. The firms employed various trade malpractices to ensure that the African traders retained this status until the 1940s.
The Implantation of Kimbanguism in Kisangani, Zaire
Authors: MacGaffey Wyatt
Published: January 2009

Based on interviews with participants and witnesses, together with some documentation, the article describes the means and conditions by which Kimbanguist doctrines were introduced to Kisangani (Stanleyville) between 1945 and 1959, before the foundation of the Church of Christ on the Earth by the Prophet Simon Kimbangu as a national and international church. The special place in the covert theology of the Church of certain events in 1952, at the camp for Kimbanguist exiles in Lowa, is described. Discussion of ethnic rivalries during and after the foundation of the Church is related to the content of the oral traditions, which represent several political tendencies. The conclusion is that Kimbanguism in Upper Zaire differs from that of its place of origin in Lower Zaire in lacking roots in local culture and politics, and in having been primarily a product of nationalist sentiment after World War II.
The Nilotic Contribution to Bantu Africa
Authors: Oliver Roland
Published: January 2009

It is argued that the Nilotic contribution to Bantu Africa consisted essentially in the infiltration of Early Iron Age communities practising a mainly agricultural economy in certain specially favourable environments by a new mode of food production in which cattle-keeping played an important part. This new way of life made possible the food-producing occupation of the drier parts of Bantu Africa, and the interaction between the new and old kinds of food-producers was the essential feature of the Later Iron Age. Wherever the new elements were present, settlement patterns became more dispersed, iron-working and pottery became the occupations of specialists, systems of inheritance changed from matrilineal to patrilineal forms, and political systems tended to become more centralized through the domination of settled cultivators by more mobile and warlike pastoral elites. Although chronological data for the Later Iron Age is as yet greatly inferior to that for the Early Iron Age, it seems likely that the process of Nilotic infiltration began during the last two or three centuries of the first millennium a.d., and spread southward through the centre of the subcontinent, so as to reach the western parts of Zambia and Zimbabwe by the tenth century. The subsequent interaction between the two kinds of food-production came about more gradually over two or three further centuries, and involved many varieties of local evolution in different areas. In southern Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe the local development of metallurgical techniques during this period was as significant as the introduction of pastoralism. But, overall, the Nilotic contribution provided the most essential features of the Later Iron Age.
Malaria and French Imperialism
Authors: Cohen William B.
Published: January 2009

It has been argued that the conquest of disease, particularly malaria, preceded and facilitated the spread of the European empires in Africa. The French experience shows the contrary. Even into the twentieth century surprisingly little use was made of quinine; death rates from malaria remained high. Yet the French empire expanded steadily. As the empire expanded, more and more use was made of indigenous troops. Africans recruited within the conquered territories were sent to conquer new territories. As the number of European combatants fell, so did the European death rate. Then, once the colonies were subjugated, communications and living conditions improved, making life healthier for Euopeans. The lowering of the death rate must therefore be ascribed to the expansion of the French empire rather than to the achievements of medical science.
Which Family?: Problems in the Reconstruction of the History of the Family as an Economic and Cultural Unit
Authors: Vaughan Megan
Published: January 2009

This paper explores some of the major methodological problems associated with the study of the history of the family in Africa. It sets out to explore the problem of the unit of analysis, concluding that the historian must be careful to distinguish between idealized family forms and the reality of family structures. Using both historical and contemporary examples from southern Malawi the paper explores this problem further by analysing the role of the matrilineage vis-à-vis the household over time.

Both oral and written sources specifically concerned with the history of the family tend to emphasize the formal structure of kinship relations and it is difficult to know how these relate to the facts of social and economic organization. Even using present-day evidence it is difficult to integrate cultural perceptions of kinship and family relations with realities – in particular with the economic realities, which may change much faster than cultural norms. In the final section of the paper it is suggested that the nearest we can get to a knowledge of the history of the family, avoiding the problems of ideology and the drawbacks of structural and evolutionary models, is to approach the subject ‘sideways’. By studying other institutions and relationships which impinge on family structures, we may get closer to defining the boundaries of these structures. This approach is illustrated using the example ofchinjira- a non-kin-based relationship between women which exists in parts of southern Malawi. A study ofchinjiraindirectly demonstrates both the strength and the limits of kinship relations.
Poverty in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland
Authors: Iliffe John
Published: January 2009

It is widely believed that pre-colonial Africa south of the Sahara had no problem of poverty (and no beggars or ascetics) except in those few areas which already possessed intensive agriculture, literacy, world religions, and classes with stratified subcultures. This article uses the records of missionaries and evangelists living in nineteenth-century Yoruba towns to demonstrate the existence of paupers, beggars, ascetics and (with less certainty) charitable practices. It also considers the means by which the poor sought to survive. The article suggests that the absence of poverty from pre-colonial Africa is a myth and that the subject deserves fully study.
Kimberley's Model Compounds
Authors: Turrell Rob
Published: January 2009

The compound system that was to become a striking feature of most mining enterprises in Southern and Central Africa was first introduced in the diamond mines at Kimberley. In the period of open mining (1871–1884), Africans lived in open compounds, which gave them the freedom to spend their leisure time where they pleased. In the period of underground mining (beginning in 1885), Africans were isolated from the surrounding town in closed compounds. The closed compounds of the De Beers Consolidated Company were soon regarded as models of social welfare and aspects of their system were copied at other mining centres in Africa. However, this article questions this model for the period before 1903, when there was a complete reconstruction of the compound system and a great improvement in living conditions. Before 1903 the health and mortality record of Kimberley's closed compounds was as bad, in some cases worse, than its imitators to the north in a comparable period of development. In the period of open mining African miners died of sanitation-related diseases. However, when they were forced to live in closed compounds, lung diseases, and in particular pneumonia, which was directly attributable to overcrowded accommodation, poor diet and inadequate protection against major changes in temperature, became the greatest killer on the diamond fields. It is argued here that closed compounds were more models of labour control than of social welfare before 1903. The role and functions of the De Beers convict station are compared with the advantages mining companies derived from closed compounds. Managerial ideology about compound philanthropy is called in question, and it is shown how the closed compound system contributed towards the creation of a disciplined work force, part of which was permanently resident in Kimberley.
Peasant Resistance in Ethiopia: the Case of Weyane
Authors: Tareke Gebru
Published: January 2009

Weyane was a spontaneous, localized peasant uprising with limited objectives. It occurred in 1943 because several disaffected social groups in the eastern part of Tigrai believed that they could defeat or at least extract substantial concessions from a weak transitional government. The multiplicity of objectives roughly correspond to the divergent interests of the participants: the sectarian nobility wanted a greater share in the regional reallocation of power, the semi-pastoral communities of the lowlands were interested in pre-empting feudal incorporation, and the highland cultivators wanted to terminate the excessive demands of officialdom and militia. The convergence of these forces made Weyane possible; the disorganization of the ruling strata and the subsequent defection of a segment of the territorial nobility enormously enhanced the peasants' capacity for collective action. But this very heterogeneity comprised the peasants' objectives. The revolt lacked a coherent set of goals, nor did it have a specific program for social action. The rebels attacked neither the legitimacy of the monarchy nor the ideological basis of the Ethiopian aristocracy. In the end, Weyane buttressed the feudal order, and was probably instrumental in strengthening Ethiopia's neo-colonial link with the West. In the aftermath of rebellion, the Tigrai nobility did get its rights and prerogatives recognized, to the same extent that the nobility in the other northern provinces did. The government undercut the nobility's political autonomy, but paid the price of reinforcing their social position. On the other hand, in reaction to Weyane, the state destroyed the social basis of clan authority and autonomy, and reduced the Raya and Azebo to landless peasants. Weyane marked the end of conflict between centrifugal and centralizing forces, but did not eliminate the social roots of popular protest.
The View from Awdaghust: War, Trade and Social Change in the Southwestern Sahara, from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century
Authors: McDougall E. Ann
Published: January 2009

Early medieval wealth invested in southern Saharan agriculture and warfare tended to produce distinctive groups of dependent cultivators and professional warriors by the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Exchange surpassed initial limitations placed on it by rudimentary pastoral society through the development of the salt industry. The realization of a form of surplus readily convertible into a wide range of commodities was vital to the growth of specialized traders who, in turn, broadened the scope of economic and political activity. Growing professionalism and specialization brought with it new forms of social relations, in this case a variety of forms of dependence, as well as introducing a role for indigenous non-producers like clerics and scholars. An oasis like Awdaghust where warriors, cultivators and traders interacted was bound to experience the growing pains these changes produced.

This paper suggests how an understanding of these social and economic changes can help fill the gaps which still plague the history of Awdaghust. It argues that we need to examine the pieces of written and archaeological evidence we have in the light of the changing forms of agriculture practised in the area, the region's drying climate between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries, and the making of the specialized merchant-clerical groups calledzawāyā. Awdaghust thereby emerges not only as an international caravan terminus, but as a regional centre of agriculture and trade, especially the salt trade, controlled by local pastoralists. It was therefore able to outlive its so-called eleventh-century destruction by the Almoravids, and see itsZnāgamasters turn increasingly towards the salt trade and religion. But its fortunes also depended upon its large servile labour force and sufficient rainfall to support irrigated cultivation. By the fifteenth century, it would appear the drying conditions were severe enough to pose insurmountable problems, possibly even to provoke a slave rebellion said to have brought about Awdaghust's demise.
Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali: Bilali and Surakata
Authors: Conrad David C.
Published: January 2009

As a study of some Islamic factors involved in the construction of oral narrative by Manding bards, this article is chiefly concerned with two distinct cases in which griots have borrowed important legendary figures from the literature of Arabia. It is found that Bilali, described by traditional genealogists as progenitor of the ancient ruling branch of the Keita lineage, originated as Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ, a companion of Muhammad and the firstmu'adhdhin. Genealogies or descent lists of early Malian rulers still contain names that have apparently survived from pre-Islamic times, but in most instances these early forebears of chiefly rank have been moved forward into the Islamic era and displaced as founding ancestors by figures like Bilali, who originated in Muslim Arab literature. Similarly, at the lower levels of the social hierarchy, major artisan classes like the blacksmiths and leatherworkers have adopted their own collective ancestors from Islamic tradition.

In the case of Surakata, collective ancestor of Bambara and Mandinka griots, it is recalled that he began as Surāqa ibn Mālik, in Arab tradition an enemy of Muhammad who became an early convert to Islam, a conversion that seems to have had a special resonance in a West African setting where many people have made the same shift. Pre-Islamic themes in Manding oral tradition have in many cases been obliterated by the bards' preoccupation with Islamic subjects, particularly events from the life and times of the Prophet. However, despite the pervasiveness of Islamic themes, the blood motif found in some accounts of griot ancestry indicates that at least the essence of certain elements of pre-Islamic West African culture survives in Manding oral tradition.
From Hospitality to Hostility: Ibadan and Strangers, 1830–1904
Authors: Falola Toyin
Published: January 2009

The view that Ibadan society in the nineteenth century did not discriminate against strangers, irrespective of their origins in Yorubaland, is now firmly entrenched in the literature. To be sure, Ibadan, a new nineteenth-century Yoruba city-state, founded as a consequence of the political crises of the early decades of the century, did maintain an ‘open door’ policy to strangers, many of whom went there as adventurers, craftsmen and traders, hoping to acquire wealth and fame. This article, however, controverts the view that Ibadan society gave the strangers and the indigenes equal opportunities to wealth and power. It argues that all the key political offices went only to the Oyo-Ibadan group which dominated the city-state. Strangers were also not allowed to participate fully in the leading heights of the economy, with the result that most of the wealthy citizens were also of Oyo-Yoruba origin.

In the 1890s discrimination against strangers was such that a number of moves were made to expel them. However, the British, who imposed colonial rule on Ibadan in 1893, were against the expulsion of strangers.
Concubinage and the Status of Women Slaves in Early Colonial Northern Nigeria
Authors: Lovejoy Paul E.
Published: January 2009

Court records from 1905–6 offer a rare view of the status of women slaves in early colonial Northern Nigeria. It is shown that British officials found it easy to accommodate the aristocracy of the Sokoto Caliphate on the status of these women, despite British efforts to reform slavery. Those members of the aristocracy and merchant class who could afford to do so were able to acquire concubines through the courts, which allowed the transfer of women under the guise that they were being emancipated. British views of slave women attempted to blur the distinction between concubinage and marriage, thereby reaffirming patriarchal Islamic attitudes. The court records not only confirm this interpretation but also provide extensive information on the ethnic origins of slave women, the price of transfer, age at time of transfer, and other data. It is shown that the slave women of the 1905–6 sample came from over 100 different ethnic groups and the price of transfer, which ranged between 200,000 and 300,000 cowries, was roughly comparable to the price of females slaves in the years immediately preceding the conquest. Most of the slaves were in their teens or early twenties. The use of the courts to transfer women for purposes of concubinage continued until at least the early 1920s.
The Development of cotton in Northern Ivory Coast, 1910–1965
Authors: Bassett Thomas J.
Published: January 2009

This article seeks to redress the largely contemporary bias and technologically deterministic approach of agricultural historians of cotton in francophone West Africa. It does this by arguing that the expansion of cotton since the 1960s has depended upon major socio-economic and cultural changes in agrarian production systems during the colonial period as much as on technological innovations in the post-colonial period. The study focuses on the political–economic and socio-cultural processes behind the emergence of an export-oriented, commodity producing peasantry among the Senufo of northern Ivory Coast. A periodization of cotton development is presented in which the gradual dissolution of precolonial production units and the gestation of smaller social units with new economic needs is emphasized. This restructuring of agricultural production systems is related to a complex interplay of internal and external factors, notably coercive state policies, the monetization of Senufo society and the internalization of commodity relations, conflicts between social groups and the direct intervention of foreign agribusiness in the productive process. Despite low levels of cotton output during the colonial period, the resultant transformation of production relations was crucial to the contemporary intensification of cotton growing.
From Sail to Steam: the Impact of the Steamship Services on the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa, 1850–1890.
Authors: Lynn Martin
Published: January 2009

In the late nineteenth century the West African palm oil trade entered a period of difficulties, characterized mainly by a fall in prices from the early 1860s. Part of the reason for this lay in the introduction of regular steamship services between Britain and West Africa from 1852. As steam came to replace sail so the palm oil trade underwent major changes. These changes can be quantified fairly precisely. One effect of the introduction of steamers was the concentration of the British side of the oil trade once again on Liverpool, its original centre. Another effect was the increase in the number of West African ports involved in the trade. The most important impact was the increase in numbers of traders in oil trade from around 25 to some 150. The resulting increased competition in the trade led to amal-gamations becoming increasingly common – a process that culminated in the formation of the African Association Ltd in 1889. It was also to provide the context for the pressure exerted by some traders for an increased colonial presence in the 1880s and 1890s.
Criminality and Conflict in Rural Stellenbosch, South Africa, 1870–1900
Authors: Scully Pamela
Published: January 2009

Local studies are sorely needed in South African historiography in order to illuminate relations between dominators and dominated as the colonial political economy was restructured in the wake of the mineral discoveries of the late nineteenth century. Stellenbosch farmers had to confront, for the first time since emancipation, the implications of the proletarianization of the underclass of the Western Cape. In the context of an expanding economy and diversified labour market, labourers left, or threatened to leave, farm employment. Farmers now recognized that the control and power which they had exercised over labourers was a matter of open conflict. This was a time of depression and uncertainty for farmers who faced competition in their overseas markets, the ruining of their vineyards by phylloxera and what they perceived as insubordination and disloyalty by farm labourers at home. The criminal records of the Resident Magistrate provide the lens through which the article examines the changing dynamics of labour relations on the farms of Stellenbosch district between 1870 and 1900. A comparative perspective helps to inform the analysis of the meaning of theft, arson and assault in rural Stellenbosch. For a time labourers were able to exploit a measure of leverage against the farmers, but this was not to last, and by the early 1900s the tide had again turned in favour of the dominant class.
Iwe Itan Ọyọ: A Traditional Yoruba History and its Author
Authors: FalỌla Toyin , Doortmont Michel R.
Published: January 2009

This article offers a translation of M. C. Adeyẹmi's book, A History of Old and New Ọyọ, completed in Yoruba in 1914. The original text comprises 32 pages, divided into ten short chapters, six of which treat the history of Ọyọ from the origins to 1914. The remaining four chapters examine cultural and political institutions. The translation retains the flavour of the original text which stems from a tradition of Yoruba oral historiography. M. C. Adeyẹmi was trained by the C.M.S., and had a Bachelor of Arts degree in education at Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone. Between 1911 and 1942, he combined the functions of educationalist and missionary. His short book, which refers to no published or unpublished written work, is based on Ọyọ oral traditions describing the major developments in the political history of Ọyọ. The author did not moralise on wars and the collapse of the Ọyọ empire, nor did he use the book as a means of propagating Ọyọ hegemony in Yorubaland.

The book is significant in many ways: it is a representative example of Ọyọ traditions as they existed at the beginning of this century; it complements Johnson's The History of the Yorubas where both describe the same event; it is very useful for understanding how ‘traditional’ historians study society; and it provides new information on Ọyọ in the nineteenth century and on some cultural features of the Yoruba.
Sex Ratio and Ethnicity: a Reply to Paul E. Lovejoy
Authors: Geggus David
Published: January 2009

I feel I should make clear that the ethnicity data in my article were intended only to shed light on the question of sex ratio. They do not provide an accurate reflection of the ethnic make-up of the eighteenth-century French slave trade, nor even of the trade to Saint Domingue. For this reason, I would hesitate to compare them, as Professor Lovejoy does, to Patrick Manning's projections based on decennial samples of plantation papers. The relatively high proportion of Hausa, Nupe and Voltaic slaves that Lovejoy remarks on was caused by the preponderance of post-1780 sources in my sample.