This article continues the series started originally by Fagan and continued by Phillipson and Sutton. As before, the great majority of dates have been contributed by the archaeologists concerned, often in advance of their own publications, and I should like to express my grateful acknowledgement to all who have co-operated in this way, as also to Dr John Sutton for his kind assistance in the initial stages of preparation.

The widely accepted argument of Migeod, that the existence of polar morphological types among Mende men is evidence of an ancestral mixture of Mandingo and forest-dwellers, is examined and rejected. Despite the great probability that the ancestry of the Mende is indeed heterogeneous, neither Migeod's argument nor his data support his conclusions. The uncritical acceptance which the argument has had suggests that a general caveat is as important as the particular point.

LES Anyi-Ndényé se trouvent à la bordure occidentale du monde akan, dont ils font partie. La langue qu'ils parlent, l'anyi, est différent du twi (ashanti etc.) et fort proche de la langue du Sefwi (Sayie) et de 1'Aowin (ou Awowin), provinces limitrophes du Ghana occidental. Cependant leur langage tambouriné utilise le twi et la majeure partie du vocabulaire politique, définissant le pouvoir et ses détenteurs, provient directement du twi, langue qui n'est connue aujourd'hui que d'une minorité.

Two necessary conditions for the existence of New World slavery and the slave trade are an acute labour shortage and an elastic supply of coerced labour. Though the former condition has been the mainstay of hypotheses on slavery where high land/labour ratios were viewed as causal determinants, less attention has been given to the role of labour supply responses. This paper joins these conditions in a model which postulates that labour demand stemming from open resource pressures induced a politico–economic supply response in West Africa. The model shows a derived demand for labour evolving over time into a specific demand for slaves as entrepreneurs sought the lowest cost method of expanding the production of agricultural staples. Free and indentured labour were both characterized by inelastic supply, but the supply of slaves was elastic due to factors discussed within a vent for surplus framework. African governments and private traders responded to the new effective demand from the Americas with improved organization which widened the pre-existing market for slaves. The desire for imported goods, with firearms especially significant, plus various technical changes in transport, money, and credit all combined to ensure the further development of the slave trade and the continued maintenance of a longrun elastic supply pattern

Using some examples from recent writing on West Africa, this article suggests that the failure of African historians to appreciate fully the importance of the West Indies in generating British imperial policy in the Atlantic tropics has led to serious distortions and errors of interpretation. For economic, ideological, and historical reasons, Britain's interest in the West Indies greatly exceeded her interest in West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. Her extensive Caribbean involvement and her ideological commitment to the successful outcome of slave emancipation powerfully influenced her policy in West Africa. In assessing the motives which generated imperial actions in the tropical Atlantic and in evaluating the impact of those actions upon Africa, it behooves historians to develop a broader, trans-Atlantic comprehension of the roots of British imperial policy.

Ras Alula played a significant role in the political history of northern Ethiopia during the period between the Egyptian invasion in 1875 and the Italian defeat at Adwa in 1896. Alula became well-known in Ethiopia and Europe for his role in shaping his country's relations with its African neighbours and with European powers. But his role in the internal history of Ethiopia was no less significant. This son of a peasant managed to avoid the restricted local agrarian social ladder by becoming the best general of the Tigrean emperor Yohannes IV (1872–89). As the ‘king's man’, Alula's power was based on his position in the court and on the province (Eritrea) over which he was appointed. But the leading Tigrean families rejected him. When Yohannes died and Eritrea was lost to the Italians, Alula became the most powerful champion of Tigrean independence from the new Shoan emperor, Menilek II. A Tigrean court seemed to be his only opportunity to maintain his position of a ‘king's man’, without which he would have to return to the local agrarian social ladder. After four years of resistance to the new Shoan hegemony, Alula submitted to Menilek and was rewarded with the long-desired position of ‘the king's man’. His recognition of Menilek may be regarded as a fatal blow to Tigrean independence.

The strike at the Wankie Colliery in 1912 offers the labour historian of central Africa an opportunity to explore in some depth the economic and social context of an African response within a colonial industry. The system of cheap labour at Wankie periodically combined with severe production pressures to produce outbreaks of scurvy amongst the African miners. In normal years, workers alleviated the need for nutritious food by scouring the surrounding countryside but this was not possible in a drought year. Under drought conditions the outbreak of scurvy, limited access to alternative food resources and the maldistribution of rations within the compound all assumed increased importance. The policies and practices of the acting compound manager and his black compound staff served further to exacerbate tensions in the Wankie compound and precipitate a strike.

Although the strike at Wankie offers further evidence of worker consciousness in early Rhodesian industry the events in the compound should not be interpreted as a sign of real or potential African radicalism. Closer examination of the African responses at Wankie reveal the essentially conservative nature of many of the demands made by the workers. It seems possible that in Rhodesia the power of the state over a colonial political economy and the repressive nature of the compound system combined to inhibit more radical responses. At Wankie, workers questioned the functioning of a repressive system, not the system itself. In many respects events at Wankie were typical of the Rhodesian mining industry and as such the strike serves to illustrate the vulnerable class position of African workers in a colonial economy.

This article attempts to examine the reaction of the anti-colonial nationalists in British West Africa to the diplomacy of their ruling colonial power with regard to the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of 1935–6. This reaction was largely influenced by the nationalists' claim to special relationship with Britain and their firm belief not only in British power but also in the British ‘gospel of equity and fair-play’. Consequently, when Britain and France, because of their obsession with the need for security, failed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of the symbolic and sole surviving black empire of Ethiopia, these race- conscious nationalists rashly concluded that there was a concerted plot among the whites against the black race. This belief was reinforced first by the refusal of Britain and France to supply arms to Ethiopia during the conflict; secondly, by the infamous Hoare–Laval peace pact of December 1935, which would have compromised Ethiopia's independence had it been implemented; and thirdly, by British recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Disenchantment with the League of Nations, coupled with the disillusionment with the diplomacy of the colonial powers during the crisis, led the articulate nationalists to begin seriously to reconsider their relationship with Britain and the whole doctrine of the ‘civilising mission’. Their nationalism shifted from the idea of working within the trusteeship concept to a more militant anti-white pan-Africanism.

This article surveys a number of recent attempts to explain Ganda receptivity to change during the last hundred years, and suggests that the supposed Ganda ‘urge to excel’ was as much a result of modernization as its principal cause. The article also stresses that modernization in Buganda has proved an extremely patchy business, but that before any serious attempt can be made to relate the patches to more general theories it is necessary to tackle a variety of prior problems. Among those requiring especial attention in Buganda are political ideologies articulated by particular interest groups, the economic fortunes and misfortunes of political agitators, and certain unintended consequences of particular shifts in British colonial policy.