bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Les Rois de Gao-Sané et les Almoravides
Authors: Lange Dierk 
Published: January 2009

In recent years the impact of the Almoravid movement on the sahelian societies has been the object of some debate. Ancient Ghana seemed to be the most rewarding area of investigation, since al-Zuhrī (1154) and Ibn Khaldūn (end of the fourteenth century) suggested its ‘conquest’ by Almoravid forces. The evidence provided by these narrative sources has been disputed, but it could not be discarded.A new field of investigation was opened by the discovery in 1939 of a number of royal tombstones in Gao-Sané close to the old capital of the Gawgaw empire. The dates of the epitaphs extend from the early twelfth to the late thirteenth century. However, none of the Arabic names given to the rulers of Gao-Sané seemed to correspond to any of the names provided in the chronicles of Timbuktu, theT. al-Sūdānand theT. al-Fattāsh. A closer look at the epitaphs shows that the third ruler of Gao-Sané, called ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb and also Yāmā b. K.mā and who died in 1120, is in fact identical with Yama Kitsi mentioned in the chronicles. The available evidence suggests that by 1080 the local Berbers of Gao-Sané were able to seize power from the earlier Qanda/Kanta dynasty of Old Gao. This change of dynasty was certainly not the result of a military conquest, although it is likely that Almoravid propagandists contributed to arouse the religious fervour of the local Muslims in both Gao-Sané with its community of traders and Old Gao with its Islamic court members and dynastic factions. The clear message of the Gao epitaphs is that the new rulers of Gao-Sané, the Zāghē, tried to establish good relations with members of the former ruling clan resorting to a policy of intermarriage. By the middle of the thirteenth century the Zāghē rulers were so much integrated into the local Mandé society that they adopted the title Z.wā (Zā) which was originally the title of the Kanta rulers. Thus it would appear that in spite of the far-reaching dynastic effects resulting from the religious and political upheaval of the Almoravid period, there was no major incursion of Berber people into the kingdom of Gawgaw. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that the basic institutions of the original‘Mande’ society were destroyed only in the course of the fifteenth century, when Songhay warrior groups from the east under the leadership of the Sonni radically changed the ethnic set-up of the Middle Niger. In spite of these changes the Zarma, whose aristocracy descend from the Zā, preserve the tradition of their origin from Mali until the present day.
Contesting Clothes in Colonial Brazzaville
Authors: Martin Phyllis M. 
Published: January 2009

The significance of dress in mediating social relations was deeply rooted in the Central African experience. In pre-colonial times, clothing, jewellery and insignia conveyed identity, status, values and a sense of occasion. Those with access to European trade cloth and second-hand clothes integrated them into their dress. Central Africans had a strong sense of the “politics of costume” long before new sources and ideas of clothing arrived with colonialism.Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, then became the scene of opportunity, experimentation and choice. Foreign workers from West Africa, the French Antilles and the Central African coastal regions pioneered new styles which were quickly appropriated and adapted by other townspeople. Europeans, in their attire, also seemed to confirm the importance of dress and were a model for those who considered themselvesévolués.In handing out clothing, European employers and missionaries had their own agenda, which was rejected by many townspeople as an autonomous fashion sense developed in Bacongo and Poto-Poto, the African districts of Brazzaville. With an entrenched monetary economy, cloth and clothing became widely available to all with cash. Styles, costs and values became issues of contention. Clothing not only symbolized change but became a vehicle for change.In the late colonial period, the sources allow a deeper understanding of the relationship of dress to controversial social issues. Clothing became an arena for contesting and asserting class, gender and generational roles.
Harär Town and its Neighbours in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Caulk R. A. 
Published: January 2009

The survival of the Semitic-speaking, Muslim townsmen of Harär in the midst of animist Oromo (Galla) who migrated into the eastern highlands of modern Ethiopia in the late sixteenth century and settled as pastoralists is something of an anomaly, at least in the eastern Rift. Other pre-migration settlements of Muslim farmer-traders, presumably also speaking a southern Semitic language, appear to have been submerged and displaced. The Haräri's good fortune is not to be explained by their use of firearms and simple fortifications. Economic interdependence, the awe the newcomers felt for the town's saints and the greater cohesion of the townspeople probably played a greater role than mere self-defence.A balance of power was needed, however, if the town was not to be swamped. This equilibrium seems to have been upset at the very time that the trade of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden was revived by Egypt in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Neither the succession to the amirate of pacifist princes nor the betrayal of the town to outsiders by the half-Oromo ruler, Amir Muhammad ibn Ali (1856–75), can correctly be blamed for this reverse although these are the excuses given in Haräri tradition. Rather, the repeated appeal to sections of the Oromo by factions within the town in struggles for the throne from the 1820s led to the Haräri becoming clients to neighbours who were still overwhelmingly animist herders little concerned with the commerce on which the townsmen's prosperity depended and little attracted to the titles and Muslim insignia with which the amirs rewarded those of the cultivating Oromo minority who paid taxes and rents in grain and supplied the town with other foodstuffs and its market with crops for export.Though denigrated in the town's traditions, Amir Muhammad ibn Ali began the systematic proselytization of the surrounding Oromo and sought to induce more of them to cultivate crops for sale. Conversion and farming for the town's market, along with the appointment from the town of officials to replace the Oromo's elected officers, were the means by which, during the Turco-Egyptian occupation (1875–85), rulers with greater military resources obliged the confederation of the four great Oromo clans around the town (the Afran-Qallu) to adopt a way of life more in harmony with the interests of the townsmen. Despite the conquest of Harär and the surrounding Oromo and Somali by non-urban, Christian Ethiopians in the brief reign of Muhammad Ali's son, Amir Abdallahi (1885–7), the Islamic and mercantile legacy of the town was deeply enough rooted by then to flourish among the Afran-Qallu and to distinguish them, like the Haräri themselves, from their conquerors.
The Political Organization of Traditional Gold Mining: the Western Loby,c. 1850 toc. 1910
Authors: Perinbam Marie 
Published: January 2009

Gold production in the Loby region to the west of the Black Volta in the precolonial period was exclusively in the hands of lineages grouped in largely autonomous little towns, 118 in the area under study, of which Jebugu was the largest. The various peoples were a mixture of Voltaïc language speakers, who formed the majority, with Mande speakers linked to the wider Mande world. Government was not centralized, but operated at three levels of lineage organization. At the first, Level I,sukulaor units of residence for each self-governing kin group joined together as the wards of each town, under a resident chief. At Level II, each kin group in eachsukulacame under the authority of the head of its lineage, who lived in one of the larger, ‘chiefly’ towns perhaps several days' journey away. At Level III, this lineage organization for the Mande speakers was linked to the Mande-Jula capitals outside the Loby region, at Kong, Bonduku, Bobojulasso and Buna. So far as gold was concerned, this three-layered political system was a commercial organization which brought producers and distributors together in response to market demands. Voltaïc-speaking producers at Level I were linked through the lineages to Voltaïc and Mande-speaking distributors at Level II; while both producers and distributors on these levels were collectively linked to the Mande-speaking distributors on Level III, who connected the region with the outside world. The control of distributors over producers was indirect, and exercised solely through the market. This picture from the nineteenth century of fiercely independent gold miners, with traditional skills, beliefs and rights, operating only in the absence of central government, confirms accounts of gold production in the western Sudan dating from the Middle Ages, and offers a valuable case for study.The picture is supplemented and enhanced by what happened after the arrival of the French in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the changes they introduced in the political organization of the Loby region in 1898. The evidence shows that, until the end of World War I, Loby gold production remained largely in the hands of traditional miners, who retained their links with the old commercial-political lineage system, which continued to market the bulk of the Loby gold. The influence of the colonial state, which for all practical purposes must have been perceived as none other than a fourth political level imposed above the existing three, was itself indirect, and of a familiar kind. In response to an increased demand for gold on the coast, Loby producers raised both their output and their sales, demonstrating the effectiveness of their traditional organization.
Early Missionaries and the Ethnolinguistic Factor During the ‘Invention of Tribalism’ in Zimbabwe
Authors: Chimhundu Herbert 
Published: January 2009

There is evidence from across the disciplines that at least some of the contemporary regional names of African tribes, dialects and languages are fairly recent inventions in historical terms. This article offers some evidence from Zimbabwe to show that missionary linguistic politics were an important factor in this process. The South African linguist Clement Doke was brought in to resolve conflicts about the orthography of Shona. His Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects (1931) shows how the language politics of the Christian denominations, which were also the factions within the umbrella organization the Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference, contributed quite significantly to the creation and promotion of Zezuru, Karanga and Manyika as the main groupings of dialects in the central area which Doke later accommodated in a unified orthography of a unified language that was given the name Shona. While vocabulary from Ndau was to be incorporated, words from the Korekore group in the north were to be discouraged, and Kalanga in the West was allowed to be subsumed under Ndebele.Writing about sixty years later, Ranger focusses more closely on the Manyika and takes his discussion to the 1940s, but he also mentions that the Rhodesian Front government of the 1960s and 1970s deliberately incited tribalism between the Shona and the Ndebele, while at the same time magnifying the differences between the regional divisions of the Shona, which were, in turn, played against one another as constituent clans. It would appear then that, for the indigenous Africans, the price of Christianity, Western education and a new perception of language unity was the creation of regional ethnic identities that were at least potentially antagonistic and open to political manipulation.Through many decades of rather unnecessary intellectual justification, and as a result of the collective colonial experience through the churches, the schools and the workplaces, these imposed identities, and the myths and sentiments that are associated with them, have become fixed in the collective mind of Africa, and the modern nation states of the continent now seem to be stuck with them. Missionaries played a very significant role in creating this scenario because they were mainly responsible for fixing the ethnolinguistic maps of the African colonies during the early phase of European occupation. To a significant degree, these maps have remained intact and have continued to influence African research scholarship.
The ‘House’ and Zulu Political Structure in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Kuper Adam 
Published: January 2009

The rise of the Zulu power in the early nineteenth century has conventionally been treated as the outstanding example of a contemporary southern African process of ‘state-formation’, which was associated with revolutionary social changes. This paper advances an alternative view, that there were strong continuities with established forms of chieftaincy in the region, and in particular that the Zulu political system was based on a traditional, pan-Nguni homestead form of organization.The Zulu homestead was divided into right and left sections, each with its own identity and destiny. This opposition was mapped into the layout of ordinary homesteads and royal settlements. It was carried through into the organization of regiments. The homestead and its segments provided both the geographical and the structural nodes of the society. The developmental cycle of the homestead ideally followed a set pattern, creating a fresh alignment of units in each generation. The points of segmentation were provided by the ‘houses’, constituted for each major wife and her designated heir. Each of these houses represented the impact, within the homestead, of relationships sealed by marriage with outside groups, whose leaders threw their weight behind particular factions in the political processes within the family.
João dos Santos Albasini (1876–1922): the Contradictions of Politics and Identity in Colonial Mozambique
Authors: Penvenne Jeanne Marie 
Published: January 2009

This essay considers the life and career of the leading Mozambican intellectual of the early twentieth century, João dos Santos Albasini (1876–1922). A journalist and political activist, Albasini took advantage of the political space opened by Portugal's First Republic (1910–26) to challenge the articulation of colonial policy with respect to citizenship, land alienation, labor conscription and opportunities for education and economic participation. As a founding member of theGrêmio Africano, a Lourenço Marques social group and political lobby, he helped launch the group's newspapers,O Africano(1908–19) andO Brado Africano(1918–74). With theGrêmionewspapers as his vehicle, he sharply contrasted colonial and Republican ideals with the racism and injustice Mozambicans faced in the colonial capital of Lourenço Marques (today Maputo). The Portuguese deemed Albasini a worthy opponent, in part because of his ability to employ Portugal's most revered cultural symbols with an ironic twist.The essay considers two sets of questions. The first set relates to the definition and analysis of issues Albasini highlighted and pursued. What was Albasini's political and social vision of possible choices within this seemingly fluid era? How does one recover and interpret Albasini's vision and style? Are their meaning and value to be found within the discourses of class struggle, ethnicity, assimilation and nationalism? To what extent did Albasini's vision shape contestation of political and social policy in colonial Mozambique in the critical first quarter of the twentieth century?A second set of questions confronts Albasini's place in local society and his legacy. Who comprised theGrêmio Africano?What was it about João dos Santos Albasini that inspiredGrêmiomembers and subsequent generations of Mozambicans to view him as a beacon? What did the rest of the local population think about Albasini, during his lifetime and after? What was his impact, and how did it relate to the broader issues of politics, historical agency and identity in early twentieth-century southern African history?
Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History
Authors: Fage J. D. 
Published: January 2009

This paper examines three views which have been widely held about slavery and the slave trade in West Africa, and which have tended to mould interpretations of its history, especially for the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. These are:(1) That the institution of slavery was endemic in, and a natural feature of, indigenous West African society, so that when foreigners arrived in West Africa with a demand for slaves, West Africans were able immediately to organize an export trade in slaves on an ever-increasing scale.(2) A contrary view, that it was the external demands for labour which led to a great growth of the institution of slavery in West Africa, and so corrupted its indigenous society.(3) A view which may or may not be combined with (2), namely that the external demand for slaves became so considerable that there was a disastrous effect on its population.Relevant evidence is touched upon from about the eleventh century onwards, and a fourth interpretation is developed which seems better to fit the economic and social realities which can be ascertained.In essence this is that economic and commercial slavery and slave-trading were not natural features of West African society, but that they developed, along with the growth of states, as a form of labour mobilization to meet the needs of a growing system of foreign trade in which, initially, the demand for slaves as trade goods was relatively insignificant. What might be termed a ‘slave economy’ was generally established in the Western and Central Sudan by about the fourteenth century at least, and had certainly spread to the coasts around the Senegal and in Lower Guinea by the fifteenth century.The European demand for slaves for the Americas, which reached its peak from about 1650 to about 1850, accentuated and expanded the internal growth of both slavery and the slave trade. But this was essentially only one aspect of a very wide process of economic and political development and social change, in West Africa. The data recently assembled and analysed by Curtin for the volume and distribution of the export slave trade do not suggest that the loss of population and other effects of the export of labour to the Americas need have had universally damaging effects on the development of West Africa. Rather, it is suggested, West African rulers and merchants reacted to the demand with economic reasoning, and used it to strengthen streams of economic and political development that were already current before the Atlantic slave trade began.
Historical Change in an Ibo Polity: Asaba to 1885
Authors: Isichei Elizabeth 
Published: January 2009

Asaba is an Ibo town, which, because of its position on the Niger, came into relatively early contact with Europeans. This means that we have materials for its history in European records for more than a hundred years. This article is based on these records, and on present-day oral traditions. It begins with an account of Asaba's traditional social and political structure, and its former role in the economic life of the lower Niger.Asaba traditions relate in detail how the town was founded by a man from Nteje, east of the Niger, called Nnebisi. There is less information about its subsequent history, though it seems that it went through a significant changefrom the rule of a single Eze to a system of personal titles, like that found in eastern Iboland. Some attempts have been made to make a king list for Asaba, but it does not seem possible to establish either this or any other useful chronological framework other than that provided by family genealogies. These suggest that Nnebisi lived in the seventeenth century. The main theme in Asaba's external history is her changing relationship with her powerful neighbour, Benin.The choice of Onitsha, rather than Asaba, as a missionary and trading centre, meant that Asaba went through a period of relative eclipse. The first C.M.S. missionaries came to the town in 1875, but they had little impact on Asaba life. In the middle eighties, Asaba became the administrative capital of the newlyestablished Royal Niger Company. The impact of the Company on Asaba, though great, was short-lived. But one result of its choice of Asaba as a capital was the renewal of missionary endeavour, both Catholic and Protestant, in the town. This in its turn was to have a very great impact on Asaba's way of life.
Sekonyela and Moshweshwe: Failure and Success in the Aftermath of the Difaqane
Authors: Sanders P. B. 
Published: January 2009

Sekonyela's downfall is commonly attributed to his personal defects—to the love of war by which he alienated his neighbours, and to the rough treatment by which he alienated his own people, Conversely, Moshweshwe's rise to power is commonly attributed to his love of peace and to his benevolence.This article does not seek to refute the traditional assessments of the characters of the two chiefs, but to suggest that as explanations for their diifering fortunes they are inadequate. Basically Sekonyela failed because, after 1829, he was poorer than Moshweshwe. The Tlokwa had to kill and consume many of their cattle during the first two years of the difaqane, and it seems that they never fully recovered their former prosperity. Moreoverj they suffered further heavy losses in the war with the Korana and their allies in the early 1840s. Sekonyela, therefore, was not in a position to attract and bind thousands of followers to himself by sustaining them. Hence, to a large extent, his raids on his neighbours' herds, and his unpopularity among his own people.Moshweshwe, however, retained most of his cattle during the difaqane, and in 1829 conducted two richly rewarding raids against the Thembu. Thereafter his wealth far surpassed Sekonyela's, and it was mainly because of this that he was able to attract and hold so many followers.The territorial expansion of the Sotho naturally brought them into conflict with the Tlokwa, and in 1853, after the British had indicated that they were not prepared to interfere in this dispute, Sekonyela was overwhelmed by Moshweshwe's superior forces.
Irish Neolithic Landscapes and Land Use Systems: The Implications of Field Systems
Authors: Cooney Gabriel 
Published: January 2009

I approach this paper as a prehistorian whose research has been primarily in areas with little or no surviving evidence for prehistoric fields, so that my only close encounter with field systems has been at Kilmashogue and other sites in the uplands just to the south of Dublin (figure 1 shows the location of the main areas and sites in Ireland mentioned in the text). These are certainly fixed in space but unfortunately are as yet floating in time (Cooney, 1985). But this personal predicament is in fact central to the problems approached in this paper: that while there is increasing evidence for prehistoric field systems in Ireland, they are frequently perceived as occurring in the archaeological record only in certain areas; that the relationship between them and other aspects of the archaeological record is not always clear; and that there are major problems in dating these field systems.My second introductory point is to comment that the sequence of the title is deliberate. The significance of field systems must be seen in the context of what would have been the contemporary cultural landscape and land use, and the various interpretations which have been made of these. The occurrence of field systems has major implications for the way we view the human impact on the environment and use of the land during the Neolithic period in Ireland (4,000 – 2,500 BC).