bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
John Dunn and Cetshwayo: the Material Foundations of Political Power in the Zulu Kingdom, 1857–1878
Authors: Ballard Charles 
Published: January 2009

John Dunn entered Zululand in 1857. He observed Zulu customs and law and he exploited Zulu soial institutions to his political and economic advantage. His accumulation of land, cattle, wives and clients made him one of the wealthiest men in the Zulu kingdom. Dunn manipulated and utilized his wealth to increase his status and influence. His privileged position with Cetshwayo, his alliances with many clans through marriage and his access to firearms made Dunn a powerful figure in the Zulu kingdom.Dunn's varied career as a trader, labour recruiter, arms supplier and adviser underlines the freedom of political and economic action available to white frontiersmen operating in those zones that straddled the boundaries separating black African states from white colonial societies. The failure of the Zulu royal family to solve the succession question – the essential malaise that plagued the Zulu political system periodically throughout much of the kingdom's history and which, at times, threatened to destroy national unity – presented opportunities for white frontiersmen, like Dunn, to advance their careers. Dunn became involved in Zululand's internal affairs during a period of political turbulence and internecine warfare. The civil war of 1856 had killed off no less than eight potential heirs to the throne and sent Mpande's political career into permanent decline. But new rivalries between the royal princes Cetshwayo, Hamu and Zibepu emerged almost immediately. Cetshwayo used Dunn's assistance to secure his claim to the throne. Dunn's own economic interests prompted him to support Cetshwayo's political aspirations. The control of vital resources, strategic trade routes and firearms was a crucial factor in Cetshwayo's accession in 1873. John Dunn played a major role in providing the material foundations of Cetshwayo's power.
Long distance trade and production: Sinsani in the nineteenth century
Authors: Roberts Richard 
Published: January 2009

This examination of Maraka long-distance trade has underlined a commercial strategy involving both exchange and production. Most of the goods the Maraka traded were either locally produced or re-exports from the desert-side trade. Once the desert-side dimension of Maraka trade was interrupted, as it was following the Umarian conquest of 1861, the linkages holding together Sinsani's economy collapsed.Maraka long-distance trade was characterized by small exclusively male caravans which maximized time constraints in bypassing numerous local markets along the route. The Maraka usually engaged in wholesale transactions, preferring smaller profit margins per unit and a rapid turnaround of goods. The Maraka traded in such a manner because involvement in commodity production at home absorbed much of their time. Profits from Maraka trade were invested in a plantation sector which fed cotton cloth and grain to the desert-side trade and to Maraka long-distance trade southward to the land of kola and down the Niger to Timbuktu.
Some recent radiocarbon dates from Southern Africa
Authors: Hall Martin , Vogel J. C. 
Published: January 2009

In this paper we review radiocarbon dates which have become available over the past three years for the more recent archaeological sites south of the Cunene and Limpopo Rivers, assessing the determinations within the broader context of economy and society. For a framework, we make use of broad physiographic divisions of southern Africa, thus breaking from the artificial constraints of modern political divisions and allowing greater possibilities of synthesisWithin the set of new dates there are several fields in which recent radiocarbon determinations have been particularly important. The nature of hunting and gathering and herding communities in the arid western regions of the sub-continent is now more fully understood and more information is available about the succession of lithic industries in the south-western interior. In the south-eastern coastal areas the geographical extent of the earliest farming communities has been firmly dated. New determinations are beginning to provide a firmer chronology for the succession of ceramic industries in the east, and reassessment of the dating of the important sites of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe demands a revision of concepts of early state development and trading contact with the east coast.
Fula Resistance to French Expansion into Futa Jallon 1889–1896
Authors: McGowan Winston 
Published: January 2009

During the period of the European Scramble for Africa, many African rulers, conscious of the military superiority of the European Powers, resorted to the use of diplomacy in a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to maintain the independence of their dominions. This approach was demonstrated in Futa Jallon's resistance to French expansion.Among the methods of resistance used by the Alimamies of Futa were the rejection of the European version and interpretation of treaties, the grant of support to other African resistance movements, and the exploitation of Anglo-French rivalry. The Alimamies also exploited the lack of unity in French administrative organization in West Africa and the complexity of Futa's political constitution. Their resistance, marked by a considerable degree of duplicity, was facilitated by France's dependence on a policy of peaceful expansion towards Futa in contrast to its aggressive approach in many other areas of West Africa. Eventually, Fula resistance collapsed, largely because of the disintegration of the indigenous state, which enabled France to intervene and establish its authority over Futa with remarkable ease, using only a minimum of force.
Riziculture and the founding of monarchy in Imerina
Authors: Berg Gerald M. 
Published: January 2009

Many observers of Merina history have suggested that the organization of labour required to build and maintain irrigation works for paddy rice growing formed the basis of Merina monarchy. Though little direct evidence is available, inferences from land-use models and consideration of oral traditions and written accounts help to explain why irrigated riziculture became popular and how it spread through the central highlands to Imerina.Rice had been cultivated on the east coast of Madagascar for centuries and reached Imerina through the southern plateau but the hydraulic technology of Merina paddy rice growing arose from local needs from the late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries. As swidden farmers exhausted the forests, paddy rice cultivation and water management systems attending it became increasingly important. Though irrigated riziculture enhanced the value of co-operative labour among hitherto isolated groups within Imerina, it cannot be seen as the direct cause of the monarchy's authority. It is suggested instead that the sacredness of land and the accumulation of rights in newly irrigated land by those who controlled water hastened the evolution of a rigid social hierarchy which exalted a few and subjugated the rest.
New Survey of Archaeological Research and Dates for West-Central and North-Central Africa
Authors: De Maret Pierre 
Published: January 2009

Le présent article fait la synthèse pour l'Afrique centrale des recherches archéo-logiques, et plus particulièrement des datations absolues, effectuées ces quatre dernières années. Comme les autres articles de cette série, seuls sont pris en considération les travaux se rapportant à la fin de l'âge de la pierre et à l'âge du fer. Eu égard à l'immensité de l'aire envisagée, l'archéologie apparaît, en dehors de quelques zones limitées, comme encore fort peu développée. Certains résultats récents méritent cependant d'être notés.Au Cameroun on dispose maintenant de dates qui permettent pour la première fois de situer les débuts de la production de nourriture ainsi que l'apparition de la céramique dans la frange nord de la forêt équatoriale. Plus au sud, à Kinshasa, il a finalement été possible de dater l'âge du fer ancien. Vers l'est, au Rwanda, de nouvelles dates pourraient confirmer que l'âge du fer a débuté dans la région interlacustre un ou deux siècles plus tôt que ce que l'on admet généralement. Dans ce pays et au Burundi l'étude systématique des anciens fourneaux de fonte du fer a été poursuivie. L'apparition des vestiges caractérisant la seconde période de l'âge du fer doit également être reculée dans le temps. Au sud-est, à Lubumbashi, une date conduit à vieillir encore le début de la fonte du cuivre. Dans la dépression de l'Upemba la fouille de plusieurs sites et de nombreuses nouvelles datations permettent de suivre avec précision pendant près de deux millénaires l'évolution sociale, politique, économique et technique de cette important zone de peuplement. Un éclairage nouveau est ainsi porté sur l'origine de l'Etat luba. Différentes recherches en rapport avec les traditions orales et l'histoire récente ont aussi été effectuées au centre du Zaïre, en Angola, au Cameroun au Rwanda et au Tchad.
The significance of Drought, Disease and Famine in the agriculturally marginal zones of West-Central Africa
Authors: Miller Joseph C. 
Published: January 2009

Some 170 references to drought and disease along the south-western coast of Central Africa between 1550 and 1830 suggest that climatic and epidemiological factors motivated the farmers and herders of West-Central Africa in historically significant ways. Nearly all references come from documentary sources and so bear primarily on conditions in the drier and less fertile areas near Luanda and to the south, where African reactions would have been strongest.While minor shortages of rain occurred too frequently to receive much explicit attention in the documents, longer droughts spread more widely every decade or so and attracted notice. Major periods of dryness, extending for seven years or more and touching all parts of the region, occurred perhaps once each century and produced comments throughout the documentation.Localized minor droughts hardly disrupted the lives of Africans, who had presumably devised agricultural and pastoral strategies to take account of such ordinary climatic variation. Two-or three-year rainfall shortages produced banditry and warfare that often attracted Portuguese military retaliation. Major droughts disrupted polities and societies and hence coincided with major turning points in West-Central African history in the late sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries. In the earlier case, agricultural failures produced the famed ‘Jaga’ or Imbangala warriors, who elevated pillage to a way of life and who joined the Portuguese in establishing the Angolan slave trade. The later, protracted drought from 1784 to 1793 coincided with the historic peak of slave exports from West-Central Africa.
Archaeology in West Africa: A Review of Recent Work and a further list of Radiocarbon Dates
Authors: Sutton J. E. G. 
Published: January 2009

This article surveys the latest archaeological research and dating results for West Africa. For the Iron Age, recent fieldwork has been spread widely: especially noteworthy is that bearing on the history of ancient Ghana and Mali. Work on the Late Stone Age appears by contrast to have been rather patchy lately, although various palaeoecological researches continue to improve our understanding of the changing environments affecting West African populations over the last 10,000 years. In south-central Niger, moreover, remains of copper-smelting by a stone-using community are dated to around 2000 B.C. From the same region, as also from northern Ghana, comes further evidence for the inception of the Iron Age during the first millennium b.c.The article is prefaced by some critical comments on the citing and interpretation of radiocarbon datings in historical discussions, and on the meaning of ‘corrected’ and ‘calendar dates’.
The History of the Family in Africa and Europe: Some Comparative Perspectives
Authors: Sabean David Warren 
Published: January 2009

One of the problems with interdisciplinary work is that the outsider to a discipline so often tends to join its discourse at points which seem irrelevant to its practitioners. The experience is not unlike that of the foreign visitor who watches with amazement and not a little sadness as the ‘natives’ abandon those items of their culture which seem to him to be of most value. And the ‘native’ has only impatience for advice to slow down the pace of change.African specialists on the history of the family seem to be entertaining a similar break with their past practices and present significant problems of orientation for the outside observer. The chief dissatisfaction appears to be with the legacy of the powerful generation of anthropologists who emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. They dealt with the organization of large corporate groups and interpreted action, belief and feeling in terms of a few principles derived from the structures of such groups.1 It has become an everyday criticism that this great work suffers from its ‘timelessness’, and of course historians have a professional interest in reiterating the point. More serious is the fact that the older constructs no longer seem to assist in analysing either the new problems that excite the historian aware of what his colleagues elsewhere are doing or the actual findings of new research.To the outside observer – in this case an historian of Europe, whose bedtime reading consists of ethnologies of Africa, Papua-New Guinea, and the like – a confrontation with current research on Africa helps focus issues and problems in his own work and suggests a few points where common discussion might be fruitful.
The Beginnings of Girls' Education in the Native Administration Schools in Northern Nigeria, 1930–1945
Authors: Tibenderana Peter Kazenga 
Published: January 2009

SummaryThe existing works on the history of education in northern Nigeria are generally agreed that the main factor which hindered the spread and development of girls' education in the area during the colonial era was Muslims' opposition to female education. While it is not denied in this article that opposition to female education existed among Muslims, it is argued that this was not the main factor which retarded the advancement of girls' education during the period covered by this article. It is suggested that the British educational policy, which placed much emphasis on co-education, instead of building girls' schools, coupled with the parsimony with which the British administration spent money on girls' education, were mainly responsible for hindering the development of girls' and women's education in northern Nigeria during the colonial era. It is argued that the introduction of co-education made Western education for girls unappealing to many Muslim parents who otherwise would have sent their daughters to school if girls' schools had existed in sufficient numbers. The article attempts to show that this could not be realized as a result of the British administration's unwillingness to spend substantial sums of money on girls' education. It is also suggested that the preferential treatment accorded by the British administration to the aristocracy, in the recruitment of pupils for girls' schools and the W.T.C., was inimical to the advancement of girls' education generally.
Recent Archaeological Research and Dates from West Africa
Authors: McIntosh Susan Keech , McIntosh Roderick J. 
Published: January 2009

This article reports over 250 new radiocarbon dates relevant to recent archaeological research in West Africa. Thanks to the continuing trend towards series of dates from either single sites or groups of related sites, some major blanks on the archaeological map of West Africa have been replaced by well-dated regional sequences. An example is the Malian Sahara, where palaeoenvironmental and archaeological investigations at a large number of sites have clarified the relationship between Holocene climatic change and Late Stone Age occupation. Other areas that were largely archaeological unknowns until the research reported in this article was undertaken include the middle Senegal valley, the Inland Niger Delta, and the Bassar region in Togo. Other research included here reinterprets previously studied, ‘classic’ Late Stone Age sequences, such as Adrar Bous, Kintampo and Tichitt. There are also new dates and details for early copper in Niger and Mauritania which prompt a reconsideration of the true nature of this proposed ‘Copper Age’. Of particular significance to general reconstructions of West African prehistory is the documentation of regional and long-distance trade accompanying the emergence of complex societies along the Middle Senegal and Middle Niger in the first millennium A.D.The article begins with a brief commentary on calibration, in view of the recent publication of high-precision calibration curves. Several prevalent misconceptions of what calibration is and what it ought to do are addressed. We suggest that archaeologists and historians should routinely make reference to calibration in order to avoid misinterpreting radiocarbon results.
‘Soft’ Believers and ‘Hard’ Unbelievers in the Xhosa Cattle-Killing
Authors: Peires J. B. 
Published: January 2009

A substantial minority, perhaps 15 per cent of all Xhosa, refused to obey the prophetess Nongqawuse's orders to kill their cattle and destory their cornl. This divided Xhosaland into two parties, the amathamba (‘soft’ ones, or believers) and the amagogotya (‘hard’ ones, or unbelievers). The affiliation of individuals was partly determined by a number of factors – lungsickness in cattle, political attitude towards the Cape Colony, religious beliefs, kinship, age and gender – but a systematic analysis of each of these factors in turn suggests that none of them was sufficiently important to constitute the basis of either party.The key to understanding the division lies in an analysis of the indigenous Xhosa terms ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. ‘Softness’ in Xhosa denotes the submissiveness of the individual to the common will of the community, whereas ‘hardness’ denotes the determination of the individual to pursue his own ends, even at communal expense. Translated into social terms, the ‘soft’ believers were those who remained committed to the mutual aid ethic of the declining precolonial society, whereas the ‘hard’ unbelievers were those who sought to seize advantage of the new opportunities offered by the colonial presence to increase their wealth and social prominence. The conflict between the social and personal imperatives was well expressed by Chief Smith Mhala, the unbelieving son of a believing father, when he said, ‘They say I am killing my father – so I would kill him before I would kill my cattle.’ Certainly, the division between amathamba and amagogotya ran much deeper than the division between belief and unbelief, and the Xhosa, in conferring these names, seem to have recognized the fact.
‘Kafir Time’: Preindustrial Temporal Concepts and Labour Discipline in Nineteenth Century Colonial Natal
Authors: Atkins Keletso E. 
Published: January 2009

This article attempts to understand in substantive terms the nature of black proletarianization in Natal, South Africa. This is undertaken by moving beyond arid explanations of outside agencies to focus on some of the underlying cultural premises that ordered the day-to-day activities of northern Nguni communities. This article examines their temporal perceptions, exploring within the colonial context the shift from peasant to industrial time, and showing the central role mission churches played in the transition process.Two important disclosures emerge as a result of this study. First, it conclusively demonstrates the existence of a rich history of nineteenth century African labour action (where until now the overwhelming assumption among historians has been that no such activity existed), much of which was related to the struggle over the definition of time. Secondly, it presents a more balanced picture of the migrant worker. One finds groups of labourers who continued to adhere to old attachments, while others adapted in a rather remarkable fashion to the conditions of the industrial workplace. Most striking of all, is that both were capable of dictating the terms of labour, whether they involved demands for the lunar month or the halfholiday and Sabbath rest day.
The Colonial Office, British Business Interests and the Reform of Cocoa Marketing in West Africa, 1937–1945
Authors: Meredith David 
Published: January 2009

This article examines the actions of the British Colonial Office and British business interests in the international marketing of cocoa from Ghana and Nigeria in the later 1930s, when problems in cocoa marketing were brought to head by the expatriate firms forming a ‘Pool’ and the farmers responding to this — and to a sudden fall in their terms of trade — with a ‘hold-up’, which was followed by a British commission of inquiry, and during the second world war and immediate post-war era, when the C.O. imposed a marketing system designed by the expatriate merchant firms and subsequently decided to make it into a permanent peacetime reorganization. The close contact between the CO. and British firms such as the United Africa Company and Cadbury Bros. is brought out, as is the support given by the officials to these companies before and during the war. A further theme is a certain antipathy displayed by the officials for African capitalists in general and cocoa traders in particular and the way in which the war-time scheme squeezed African and other non-British small cocoa-export firms in many cases out of business.The war-time scheme convinced the C.O. that a peacetime system of fixed buying prices which were set well below the world price was desirable as a means of eradicating ‘middleman abuses’ and of building up large ‘stabilization funds’ to protect the cocoa farmers in future years when prices might fall. Continuation of the scheme was thus seen as an act of trusteeship. It was also attractive to the British Treasury because it maximized U.S. dollar earnings for Britain from the sale of West African cocoa. In contrast to interpretations put forward by some other historians, this article argues that the Colonial Office had close, day-to-day contact with the leading British firms involved, that it strongly supported the ‘Pool’ system before and during the early stages of the war, and that the post-war marketing structure was an outcome of the war-time scheme and not of the Nowell Commission report of 1938. Finally, having lost in an unequal struggle with the expatriate firms and the Colonial Office between 1937 and 1944, African international shippers of cocoa were permanently excluded.