bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The rubber trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the nineteenth century: African innovation and market responsiveness
Authors: Dumett Raymond 
Published: January 2009

The export trade in wild rubber occupies an important place in the nineteenth-century economic history of the Gold Coast and Asante, and the impetus which it gave to the future economic development of the country was greater than is commonly recognized. The timely development of this new product by African entrepreneurs and up-country producers in the 1880s enabled the colony to diversify its export bill at a time when flagging prices for palm products and dwindling supplies of ivory, monkey skins, and surface gold threatened economic stagnation. Between 1884 and 1898 Gold Coast rubber exports registered a twenty-five fold increase in volume, thereby placing the country among the top five rubber producers of the world.An analysis of the Gold Coast rubber trade contributes to the demolition of certain myths concerning the economically passive role of West Africans in the development of their own hinterlands. European agencies—whether mercantile or governmental—contributed only indirectly to the development of the local rubber trade. No doubt the general protection and opportunity for exercise of individual initiative which the British colonial government provided enabled the Gold Coast to escape the excesses of forced labour and expropriation which marred European concessionaire rubber operations in other parts of Africa. But it was chiefly the myriads of African merchants, middlemen and producers who supplied the driving force of the local trade during the nineteenth century.The rubber trade accelerated the pace of economic change in Asante and other interior states where the pull exerted by the sea-borne export sector previously had been minimal. It is clear that the number of people involved in trading generally—whether as middlemen or producers—increased greatly as a result of the lucrative returns to be gained from rubber tapping. With rubber trade expansion came a growing demand by producers for a wider range of European merchandise imports, plus the acceptance of a uniform metallic currency which facilitated market transactions throughout the interior. Finally, the profits saved from rubber tapping became an important source for indigenous capital investment in cocoa-farming, particularly in Asante.
The Daima Sequence and the Prehistoric Chronology of the Lake Chad Region of Nigeria
Authors: Connah Graham 
Published: January 2009

An intensive archaeological field research programme conducted between 1963 and 1969 in the Lake Chad region of Nigeria has established the outlines of a prehistoric chronological sequence for the area. The excavations at Daima form the key to this sequence which also includes excavated evidence from Bornu 38, Kursakata, Shilma, Yau, Ajere and Birnin Gazargamo together with surface information from 70 other sites. Twenty radiocarbon dates indicate settlement of the area from the end of the second millennium B.C. (or the last quarter of the second millennium if the dates are corrected to calendar years) to the sixteenth or seventeenth century A.D. Evidence of occupation earlier than the second millennium B.C. may have to be sought in the highlands south of the lake area.In the firki clay plains, south of the lake, it may be possible to trace the evolution of a Late Stone Age pastoralist economy into an Iron Age cereal cultivator economy. In the undulating sandy country, west of the lake, village settlements focused around the Yobe River seem to have developed, in response to external stimulus, the urban civilization which historical sources indicate at Birnin Gazargamo by the sixteenth century A.D. The contrasting environments designated ‘Firki’ and ‘Yobe’ had an important influence on the character of human settlement indicated by the archaeological evidence.It is suggested that the prehistory of this region merits far greater attention than it has yet received and that the presence in this area of settlement mounds, with substantial depths of deposit, offers a wonderful opportunity for large-scale excavation programmes. Further surface investigations would also be justified, however, as the writer suspects that more prehistoric sites remain to be located in the area.
The General Strike in Zanzibar, 1948
Authors: Clayton Anthony 
Published: January 2009

This article examines a three-week long strike in Zanzibar City in August and September 1948. The strike began among labourers from the mainland at work in Zanzibar port, but spread to all African work-people in the City after an unsuccessful attempt to break the strike by the government. This attempt had led to a major demonstration and confrontation at the entrance to the port, violence being only narrowly averted.While at one level the strike was a Zanzibar sequel to the strikes of the previous year in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, in Zanzibar there was additional significance in the fact that the City and Island's work-force were in very large proportion men from the East African mainland. Zanzibar's dependence on mainland labour had begun in the early decades of the twentieth century. In those years mainland labour had been particularly well-paid, by the standards of the time. By the late 1940s however, mainland labour in Zanzibar was as poor as, perhaps poorer than, its mainland counterparts. Besides, the political structure of the Protectorate aggravated sentiments of alienation since mainlanders were not regarded as permanent residents for whom the government should have any particular concern: nor were mainlanders represented in the legislature.Even after the strike was over the colonial authorities saw only a need for labour reforms rather than political re-structuring to accommodate mainlanders. The strike however had briefly united all Africans, indigenous and mainlander. When, a decade later, this unity of Africans, mainlander and indigenous, town and plantation labourer and peasant, was re-formed, revolution followed. As a portent, therefore, Zanzibar's strike is of particular significance.
Deforestation, the decline of the horse, and the spread of the tsetse fly and trypanosomiasis (nagana) in nineteenth century Sierra Leone
Authors: Dorward D. C. , Payne A. I. 
Published: January 2009

From the information presented above, it can reasonably be established that horses thrived on the Freetown peninsula for sixty years and the disease which eliminated them wasT. brucei. This disease was prevalent for at least 15 years although it eventually disappeared, probably before 1900. In addition, clearance of the forest, in three overlapping phases, was carried out prior to and during the outbreak.From the ecology of the three species of tsetse fly possibly implicated in the outbreak of the disease in Sierra Leone, it can be deduced that deforestation and the consequent regeneration and cultivation led to favourable conditions for the expansion of at leastG. palpalisandG. longipalpis, and possibly also ofG. morsitans. Taking into account the information currently available on the inter-relationships between tsetse fly and trypanosome species, it can also be suggested thatG. longipalpiswas probably the primary source of the disease but that the disease was sustained, particularly around Freetown itself, byG. palpalisand possibly by other biting flies. ThatG. longipalpisor evenG. morsitansprobably initiated the outbreak makes the eventual disappearance of the disease more understandable since both of these species relied upon regenerated forest and an abundance of game, resources which diminished as agriculture progressed. It is likely that these primary carriers infected horses and cattle moving between the provinces and Freetown, thereby providing the link in spreading the disease to the Colony.It appears therefore that the removal of the forest led to the outbreak of trypanosomiasis in horses. A different and more rational approach to forestry in Sierra Leone would have avoided this altogether. In fact it is fortunate that the consequences of this indiscriminate deforestation were not more serious since all three tsetse flies in question are carriers of the human sleeping sickness,T. gambiense. For some reason, however, this species of trypanosome, whilst common in the interior, is not prevalent in the coastal areas of West Africa, though there was in fact, an epidemic of this disease in the 1930s in the Kaiahun area, associated withG. palpalis.Since the horse is relatively sensitive to tsetse fly and its associated trypanosomes, this animal is a good indicator of the presence of trypanosomiasis. Dr McCoy in his memorandum mentions that horses thrive in the Gambia and at Lagos and that ‘loin disease’ was unknown in these places. He makes no reference, however, to horses in Ghana. The history of the horse in other parts of West Africa may therefore be worth pursuing in this respect.
Pottery Types From Archaeological Sites in East Africa
Authors: Posnansky Merrick 
Published: January 2009

1. The few excavated sites with pottery in East Africa, apart from the coast, are confined to Western Uganda and the Central part of the Kenya Rift Valley.2. Where absolute dating is impossible, relative dating by means of cultural introductions, viz., roulette decoration, the tobacco pipe, calabash pseudomorphs and graphite colouring must be used.3. With the establishment of settled agricultural economies the variation of pottery forms increases.4. An origin of pottery in Kenya cannot be accepted. The first pottery though is that of the Late Stone Age hunter-foodgatherers, and has simple forms.5. The developed Elementeitan, Hyrax Hill and Gumban A wares of Kenya are part of an early, though isolated, complex of possible pre-Iron Age cultures.6. The first true Iron Age pottery, the Dimple-based wares of Kenya and Uganda are part of a common Central African complex.7. The roulette cord decoration appears in East Africa within the present millennium. Lanet, Bigo and Renge pottery wares all owe origins to the introduction.8. The Lanet ware bears similarities to Hottentot pottery of Southern Africa and is dated to the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.9. Bigo pottery was widespread over Western Uganda arounda.d.1500. Painted wares at chief sites. Basic forms and decoration continue in succeeding Western Uganda Kingdoms. Ritual ware developed.10. Introduction of tobacco pipes, graphite wares and calabash forms by the late seventeenth century.11. Copying of Banyoro graphite wares by neighbouring royal Uganda potters in last quarter of second millennium.12. Evolution of a distinctive pottery, Entebbe Ware, amongst Lake Victoria hunter-fishing peoples.
The Constitutional History of Ethiopia
Authors: Huntingford G. W. B. 
Published: January 2009

Between 1959 and 1961 I worked with an Ethiopian research student, Gētāčaw Takla Māryām, on the constitutional history of Ethiopia from the Aksumite period (first to fourth centuries A.D.) to the end of the seventeenth century. So far as could be discovered, no serious attempt has yet been made to deal with this subject by means of strict documentation. The first step therefore has been to collect from printed Ethiopic material (mainly written in Ge‘ez) and from Ge‘ez manuscripts a body of documents and charters which will ultimately form the basis of a constitutional history. The aim has been to produce something like Stubbs's Select Charters, for some such basis is an essential preliminary in a field in which be one of the resultes of our study. For place-names the position is a little better, since Conti Rossini produced many years ago an index to names in material published up to 1894; and not long ago I compiled one for the historical texts published in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO).The work on constitutional history, which is still in progress, has involved the study and translation of four categories of document written in Ge'ez; these are:(1) The early Ge'ez (and Greek) inscriptions of the Aksumite period.(2) The Lives of the Ethiopian saints (gadla qedusān) of the sixth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, including the Synaxarium (senkesār) or general collection of lives of saints.(3) The land charters and other documents in the Book of Aksum, from the tenth to seventeenth centuries, with a few attributed to kings from the fourth to ninth centuries.(4) The Chronicles, now mostly available in printed form, either in the CSCO, or published individually; some are to be found in periodicals.
The Introduction and Spread of Maize in Africa
Authors: Miracle Marvin P. 
Published: January 2009

Linguistic evidence strongly suggests that maize penetrated the interior of tropical Africa from the coastal regions, but the timing and mode of its introduction cannot be established. The commonly repeated assertion that the Portuguese brought maize to tropical Africa from the New World cannot be documented at this juncture, although they seem certainly to have had economic motives for doing so.Maize was probably introduced to tropical Africa at more than one point and at different times. Maize was widely grown along the coast from the River Gambia to Sâo Tomé, around the mouth of the River Congo, and possibly in Ethiopia, in the sixteenth century. There is reference to it in all these places, in Zanzibar, and around the mouth of the River Ruvuma in the seventeenth century; and it was not only mentioned but described as an important foodstuff and a major provision for slave ships between Liberia and the Niger Delta during the same century.Much less information is available for the interior, but it clearly seems to have been unknown in Uganda as late as 1861. Until well within the present century, it was neither a major export nor a mainstay of the diet in most of eastern and central tropical Africa, the bulk of the areas where it is now of major importance.
New Light on Medieval Nubia
Authors: P. L.  , Shinnie M. 
Published: January 2009

The importance of the Christian states of Nubia in medieval times has hitherto been under-estimated by historians of Africa. There is now sufficient information to show that they played a significant part in the history of the Nile valley for some 800 years. Not only did the existence of Christian states impose a barrier to the expansion of Islam, but the Dongola kingdom at least was at times an important force in the politics of the area.The recent campaign of excavations made necessary by the building of the Aswan dam has provided much new information about the material culture of the period, and shows a much higher artistic and social development than earlier emphasis on ecclesiastical monuments had suggested. Nubia is now seen to have had a highly developed civilization with considerable urban development. Detailed study of the pottery has made possible more precise dating of buildings and objects, as well as showing periods of increased and decreased trade with Egypt.The discovery of important frescoes in the cathedral at Faras makes it possible to study the artistic development, and also adds new material for a study of the eastern, particularly Persian, influences already suspected in Nubian art. Information about domestic life is made available by the excavations at Debeira West, the first predominantly domestic site to have been excavated, whose material remains provide new evidence on diet, crafts and agriculture.
The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700–1824)
Authors: Arhin Kwame 
Published: January 2009

Between the years 1700 and 1820 the Ashantis of central Ghana fought a number of wars in nearly all the territories now comprising modern Ghana. Most interpretations of these wars have linked them with the European trade posts on the southern coast and the Muslim trade settlements in the north. The Ashanti wars were therefore either raids or attempts to open trade-routes to the trade-posts. These interpretations have been possible because writers have ignored the Ashanti expansionary movement before 1700, and have also been unable to interpret correctly the political significance of the institutions by which the Ashanti attempted to extend their rule into some of the conquered territories, and to integrate them into what the Ashanti conceived as ‘Greater Ashanti’—a political community incorporating the conquered Akan states under the rule of the Golden Stool, the supreme stool of Ashanti.When, then, the pre-1700 Ashanti tradition and the introduction of Ashanti judicial, political and politico-religious institutions into some of the conquered territories are carefully considered, it becomes clear, in the writer's view, that the so-called Ashanti ‘empire’ should be divided into three categories of states: provinces, ‘protectorates’ and tributaries, on the basis of their political distance from Ashanti. The provinces—like the Ashantis mainly Akan-speaking peoples—were considered and treated as part of a Greater Ashanti ‘political structure’. The ‘protectorates’ were treated as allies or protected peoples according as economic or political circumstance dictated. The tributaries formed the economic and manpower base of the Ashanti expansion. But it must be noted that these relationships were fluid, and fluctuated with Ashanti military and political fortunes. Finally, the Ashanti political experiment was halted by the British and was therefore inconclusive. The student can, therefore, hardly reach rigid conclusions.Lastly it appears that, pre-literate in areas where the history student is faced with an absence of the historian's usual materials, the analysis of institutions is probably one of the most fruitful approaches.
The Extension of British Rule to Anlo (South-East Ghana), 1850–1890
Authors: Amenumey D. E. K. 
Published: January 2009

Anlo is in South-East Ghana. During the pre-colonial period she made herself thoroughly hated by her neighbours. Thanks to this unpopularity, when Denmark and later Britain decided to subdue Anlo, each found ready allies amongst Anlo' s neighbours.In 1850 Britain ‘acquired’ jurisdiction over Anlo from Denmark. This proved a false start. Britain withdrew in 1859. In 1874, however, jurisdiction was resumed. Even now the extension of jurisdiction was piecemeal. Initially only the coastal area within the range of the artillery of the fort at Keta was under any semblance of jurisdiction. Anlo tended to ignore the colonial administration. In 1885 and 1889 there was armed resistance which took some time to crush.Nevertheless, this time British jurisdiction had come to stay. Over the years it extended in scope and intensity. By 1890 when Britain had demonstrated her ability to enforce compliance with her laws, Anlo became a regular part of Britain's colony of the Gold Coast.
Ibn-Ḥawqal, The Cheque, and Awdaghost
Authors: Levtzion Nehemia 
Published: January 2009

It is generally accepted that Ibn-Ḥawqal crossed the Sahara and visited Awdaghost in 951/2 to be the first Arab geographer who reached the gates of bilād al-Sūdān. This is inferred from what he says about a cheque he saw in Awdaghost. A critical analysis of the references to this cheque suggests that it was a bill of debt owed by a trader from Sijilmāsa resident at Awdaghost to another trader from Sijilmāsa. The transactions between the two were part of the trans-Saharan trade, with one partner resident at Awdaghost and the other at Sijilmāsa. The bill must have been held by the creditor, whom Ibn-Ḥawqal could have met at Sijilmāsa.It was from this man that Ibn-Ḥawqal recorded the information about the ruler of the Ṣanhāja in the southern Sahara, and probably also about his relations with Ghana and other Sudanese polities. Another valuable piece of information, about the abandoned route from Ghana to Egypt, was collected in the oases of Egypt. Also, the detailed list of Berber tribes inhabiting the area between Tadmekka and Air could have been obtained in North Africa, rather than at Awdaghost, because communications in the Sahara were more frequent between north and south than between west and east.Ibn-Ḥawqal's description of the Sahara is stereotypic and adds nothing to what earlier geographers had to say, and the same applies to his words concerning Awdaghost itself. Towns and kingdoms in the Sudan mentioned by Ibn-Ḥawqal had already been recorded earlier by al-Yaʻqūbī, Ibn al-Faqīh and al-Masʻūdī. For a traveller who crossed the Sahara, Ibn-Ḥawqal's information is rather poor, but if he collected his information north of the Sahara, as this paper suggests, his labours as an inquisitive geographer are praiseworthy.
Nyungu-ya-Mawe and the ‘Empire of the Ruga-rugas’
Authors: Shorter Aylward 
Published: January 2009

The introduction by the Arabs of new forms of storable wealth, together with fire-arms and gunpowder, into the interior of nineteenth century East Africa gave a direct stimulus to tribal warfare. Among the Nyamwezi of West Central Tanzania, who had practised long-distance trade in ivory before the Arab penetration took place, charismatic war-leaders appeared who created new hegemonies over the smaller, traditional units of these multi-chiefdom societies. These leaders attempted to capture the trade and control the main lines of communication. Mirambo was the most famous of them, but Nyungu-ya-Mawe, who was his exact contemporary (both died in 1884) was, perhaps, more successful. Nyungu created a polity which outlasted his own lifetime by more than a decade.Like Mirambo, he used a corps of professional soldiers called Ruga-ruga to carry out his conquests. The latter included most of the 20,000 square miles of Ukimbu and a part of southern Unyamwezi as well. He skilfully adapted the chiefly institutions of the Kimbu to a wider hegemony, and to an economy based on the large-scale exploitation of Kimbu resources in ivory. By his appointment of vatwale, lieutenants or military governors, as his military, political and economic agents in the various provinces of Ukimbu, he was able to hold his ‘empire’ together. The proliferation of small chiefdoms had been endemic to the Kimbu, a people with a forest economy that imposed both the need for small, political units, and for freedom of movement over a wide area. Nyungu and his vatwale halted this process.Nyungu was Mirambo’s ally in the early years, and was supported by him as the loyalist candidate for the important Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe (Tabora). Later, however, in 1880, when Nyungu defeated Mirambo’s powerful vassal, Mtinginya, and seized control of the central caravan route to the coast, relations between the two men became strained. When the Germans dismantled Nyungu’s hegemony in 1895, they destroyed the only realistic attempt ever made to unify an area of extreme political complexity.