The flowering of the Atlantic trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries caused many of the West African societies of the near hinterland to orient themselves increasingly toward the coast. This new focus created new geopolitical conformations. Given the nature of the stimulus, trade and politics went hand in hand and entrepreneurial ability could reap political rewards. These possibilities were greatest along the Gold Coast and in the Niger delta where the actual European presence was small in relation to the extent of the trade.

Such a trader cum political leader was John Kabes who, in a career spanning nearly forty years, established the paramount stool of Komenda, hitherto part of the inland state of Eguafo. Kabes began as a trader for the English (and sometimes for the Dutch) and gradually achieved political status which, however it may have been acquired, proved to be lasting because it was acceptable to existing political mores.

Such of Kabes's activities as are known suggest that his success sprang from his ability to wring advantage from the new exigencies of the time and place in ways which enabled him to acquire legitimacy as well as wealth and influence. Although Kabes's career is uniquely documented there is no reason to suppose that it was particularly unusual in its other facets. On this argument it can suggest ways in which other West African trade-derived polities, particularly in the Niger delta, may have coalesced.

The caravan route linking Benghazi and Wadai was probably the most important avenue of long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and the eastern Sudan in the late nineteenth century. It remained economically viable well after 1900, after commerce on routes further west had declined.

Beginning with the Mejabra trader from Jālū who first found a direct route from Cyrenaica to Wadai in 1809 or 1810, this article traces the history of the route in the nineteenth century with special reference to the effects of Wadaian policies on trans-Saharan commerce. The important role of the Mejabra and Zūwāyā merchants from Libya is also considered.

Fluctuating fortunes characterized trading activity along the route between its opening and the years after 1850. Beginning in the 1860s, however, commercial prospects improved steadily. Evidence suggests that the Sanūsīya Muslim brotherhood (ṭarīqa) was largely responsible for increased trade and prosperity along the route at this time. Because the order spanned the route's entire length, it solved many of the problems connected with long-distance commerce. It assured regular communication, relatively rapid transport, the creation of bonds of trust, a system of adjudication and arbitration, and an all-embracing structure of authority to maintain order and respect for judicial rulings. It functioned as a trading diaspora, but its members were not all of the same ethnic group. Rather, adherence to a single ṭarāqa bound merchants together and fostered the security necessary for the trade. The article concludes that the relationship between the brotherhood and commerce was symbiotic. The Sanūsīya sheltered commerce; in turn, the caravan trade brought wealth to the order and united its far-flung domains.

Consular trade returns from Tripoli show a dramatic increase in the proportion of legitimate trade in trans-Saharan exports from the central Sudan in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This article focuses on Damergu, a Sahelian region located on the Tripoli–Kano route, and traces the reactions of North African merchants, local Tuareg rulers, and ordinary villagers to an increase and then an abrupt decline in trans-Saharan trade. North African merchants, who migrated to Damergu from Ghadames or from diaspora communities in Hausa towns, moved south after the decline of trans-Saharan trade in response to commercial opportunities in the savanna. A sharp rise in the importance of legitimate commerce in the Sahel upset the balance of power between two Tuareg groups, but the arrival of the French and the end of trans-Saharan trade eroded the power base of all Tuareg. The third group, villagers, responded to demand for new products by exchanging tanned goat skins and ostrich feathers for cheap European-made cloth and other imports. As trans-Saharan trade ended, they turned their full attention to exports of grain and animals, two forms of production and trade which had existed for some time before the boom in trans-Saharan trade. After 1900 the major change in trade patterns in these staple products was an about-face in the direction of exports corresponding to a secular decline in the desert-side economy. Whereas villagers had once taken millet primarily to Agadez, after 1900 they took progressively greater amounts south to Nigeria.

The pervasive co-ordinating role of the Mwari cult in the Rhodesian risings of 1896–7 is illusory. The cult does not appear to have been linked with the Rozvi empire, the attempts to recreate which Ranger saw as one of the objectives of the priesthood in 1896. The priests were Venda from south of the Limpopo, who had arrived in the Matopos during the middle third of the nineteenth century, and who were for the most part out of action during the risings. The Ndebele did not succumb to cult influence, not even between March and July 1896, but maintained their previous coolness towards the priests. They were led all along by their own chiefs who, in June 1896, made Nyamanda king in succession to Lobengula. This and the wish to drive away the Europeans were the inspirations behind the Ndebele rising. The Shona and Sotho groups who rose with the Ndebele in March came in as allies of the kingdom rather than as minions of the cult. The Shona who rose in June did so not in answer to cult bidding, but in response to European pressures and the opportunity provided by European difficulties in Matabeleland. They also were led by their chiefs. A major theme of the risings is disunity and fragmentation, with the Ndebele fighting a civil war, and some important Shona chiefs collaborating with the British South Africa Company. The Ndebele fell short of a united strategy, as to an even greater extent did the Shona: there was certainly no strategic linkage of the two risings. Not only have the co-ordinating roles of Mkwati and Kaguvi been exaggerated, but their places respectively in Ndebele and Shona society have been misunderstood. They were local figures subordinate to local political structures rather than purveyors of a forward-looking millenarianism. Both the Ndebele and Shona fought to preserve existing institutions and alliance structures. It is above all fallacious to seek in the events of those years a surge of Zimbabwean nationalism or proto-nationalism, which was only to develop this century.

One of the responses of the Transvaal gold mining industry to the economic crisis after the South African War of 1899–1902 was to import Chinese indentured mine labour. To facilitate this process and to integrate it with the overall demands and requirements of the industry, the mining companies established a recruiting and shipping company in 1904, known as the Chamber of Mines Labour Importation Agency. This short-lived company, which was characterized by a high degree of vertical integration, operated as recruiting and shipping agency in China, receiving agent in Natal and co-ordinating and advising agent in the Transvaal. Despite complex arrangements designed to exploit the Chinese labour market, the company was, generally speaking, successful in securing the requisite labour force of suitable size and quality for the Transvaal mines. However, it showed a longer-term susceptibility to competitive pressures in the northern Chinese labour market. The company was amalgamated with WNLA in 1908.

This article presents a picture of the changing character of the Nyassa Company at ground level, and it relates this to changes in the capital interests which controlled the company. In so doing it seeks to explain the undercapitalization which left the area economically undeveloped. During the first period of the company's existence, from 1894 to 1898, its publicly expressed aim was the economic development of Nyassa; but the directors were primarily concerned with financial speculation and the company's influence in Africa spread no further than isolated points on the coast. In the second period of its existence, from 1899 to 1914, the company became a conquering and occupying force; but the expense of overcoming the determined resistance of African political units, plus a more realistic appraisal of the area's economic potential, meant that by 1909 the aim of economic development had been abandoned and the company turned instead to expanding its role as a supplier of migrant labour. In 1913 migrant labour to South Africa ceased, the company changed hands, and shortly afterwards the European war found its way into the area. In the last period of the company's existence, from 1919 to 1929, with only ten years of the charter left since the Portuguese government refused to grant an extension, the principles of finance capital dictated that it was too late for profitable investment in realizing the early visions of extensive economic development. Instead, the company turned to raising the level of hut tax as a means of increasing revenue, and the administration was allowed to expand and intensify the abuses which it seems to have always practised.