The West African savannah is an area where old and new institutions fill the lacunae that limited statehood has left. Some of them claim a long history, others have emerged recently as a reaction to military and civil crises. The performance of power, its display and presentation, is a theme that all these associations share. They do so on different occasions and by different means, which highlights their diverging ethics and attitudes towards their local communities and the state. This introduction to the guest edited forum outlines central themes of these performances and discusses performativity in West African power associations.

Because of their location at the head of the Mozambique Channel, the four islands of the Comoro Archipelago, Anjouan (or Johanna), Grande Comore (Great Comoro), Mohilla (Mohély), and Mayotte (Mayotta) have been the subject of a considerable body of literature. European ships in need of supplies for their voyages to the east, or along the eastern coast of Africa, stopped at one or all of the islands, and many travelers and ship captains published their observations on the archipelago. Literature dealing with the period before 1800 has been arranged into collections cited below, but the numerous accounts of nineteenth-century travelers ar e scattered in periodicals and books, and the major bibliographical works on the islands, by and large, cover die same ground. This essay brings together accounts of the Comoro Islands arranged in a geographical and historical, although not necessarily chronological, context; and secondary material particularly related to the events and people is also described.

In the Sierra Leone Provinces, customary land law dictates that if an individual from another chiefdom or country wishes to rent land in a certain locality, he visits a landholder or head of an extended family and expresses a desire to be the landlord's stranger. If the landlord accepts the individual as his stranger, he becomes liable for any damages caused by the stranger to other natives' properties. This study applies some recent advances in welfare economics (see, for example, Coase, 1960; Demsetz, 1964, 1968) to pursue some interesting aspects of the landlord-stranger relationship. In particular, it is argued that within traditional society putting the liability for strangers' damages on the landlords' shoulders was efficient in a value-theoretic sense because landlords were more efficient than the government or the damaged parties in collecting damages from strangers and, therefore, that the magnitude of the collection cost would have been greater if the liability had been placed directly on the strangers. The paper also shows rigorously how and why it was that the higher the cost of collecting damages from tenants, the lower was the real income produced by the land. Therefore, if the government of the damaged parties should become lower-cost collectors, putting the liability directly on the strangers for any damage they cause would become the pareto-optimal arrangement.

Few incidents in African colonial history give such an insight into the mentality and the methods of imperialism as the contraband arms trade in Africa. France and England, two of the major powers in Africa, tried to limit the quantity and type of firearms sold in their respective colonies. Fearing African resistance to colonialist control, both nations wanted a definite restriction of weapons and alcoholic beverages, but modern firearms continued to be smuggled and sold in vast numbers. French business representatives sold rifles to the native tribes in English regions, and the British did the same in the French areas. Continually trying to find ways to lessen the chances of African resistance, both states could not halt effectively the lucrative and dangerous business. Because of the old nationalist hatreds and the contemporary desire for new colonial areas, England and France hesitated in halting the arms trade. Additionally, the irrational hatreds and mutual distrusts kept the two powers from reaching any diplomatic agreement, and this in turn threatened the European presence in colonial Africa.

There was constant turmoil over the flow of weapons in all of colonial Africa, especially in two areas: Northwest Africa, or Morocco, and West Africa from Senegal to the southern border of Nigeria. While basically very different in their colonial experiences, these two locations were vital to both English and French colonial expansion. Morocco was close to French-held Algeria and was considered a natural area for France's North African expansion.

Janheinz Jahn's Bibliography is the most useful reference work that bibliographers of African literature have yet produced. One may wish to quarrel with Jahn about his definition of “neo-African literature” or about some of the material he has chosen to include (e.g., unpublished manuscripts, sermons, travel books, political works, monographs) as well as some he has chosen to exclude (e.g., literary works by white African writers, collections of folklore), but one must applaud his thorough documentation and multilingual approach. No other bibliography of African literature has been so comprehensive and so accurate.

However, Jahn himself is aware that “there is no bibliography without gaps,” and he has invited others to help him “fill in these gaps and correct errors” (Jann, p. ix). It is hoped that the following list of additions and corrections will prove useful not only to Jahn but also to librarians, literary scholars, and other bibliographers. It is not to be taken as a complete list, for I have had neither the time nor the resources to check all of Jahn's entries or to search in more than a few libraries for missing titles. Of necessity my emphasis has been placed on materials written in European languages. I would encourage those who are aware of further errors and omissions to publish similar lists so that a more definitive bibliography of African literature can be prepared.

That research by expatriates in Africa should henceforth more obviously point toward the solution of African problems hardly needs restatement. Indeed, merely to restate it may damage further the already strained credibility of American Africanists' desires to conduct research in Africa that is responsive simultaneously to theoretical concerns and to Africa's real needs.

Moreover, even a genuine demonstration of dedication to problem-oriented research is not guaranteed to silence the critics. Real accomplishments may, in the present climate, have no more impact than pious declarations of intent. African studies as conducted by American scholars is presently under such impassioned attack from so many quarters and for so many reasons that even tangible accomplishments may not be given much weight by those who feel only anger and indignation when they consider African studies. Whatever the record may show, critics of both the left and the right in recent months have interpreted African studies in the United States as biased either in one or another direction and as lacking the essential, if ill-defined, quality called “relevance.”

Thus, in Montreal in October 1969 a coalition of African and Afro-American critics dismissed the totality of African studies in the United Sates as irrelevant to Africa. Virtually the entire enterprise was labeled the willing tool of capitalist, neo-colonialist, white racist ideology. Presumably, the record of American Africanists elicited this attack.