Ancient and early Byzantine authors: Diodorus (II, 55), ‘Pseudo-Callisthenes’, Cosmas Indicopleustes and Procopius Caesarensis—mention the navigation of the Indian Ocean by ‘Ethiopians’ of the African Horn and the Axumite Kingdom in their own ships. The hoard of Kushana gold moneys found at Dabra-Dammo confirms this. The legend in the Kebra Nagast of Ethiopian military expeditions to India incorporates reminiscences about sea voyages to India by ancient Axumites.

The study of Central African history is still in its infancy. Valuable indications can, however, be obtained by combining the study of oral traditions with that of Portuguese documentary evidence for events taking place near the coasts. It has long been known, for instance, that the overthrow of the powerful Songye rulers of the Luba country indirectly caused long-distance migrations, one of which, that of the Imbangala, came into contact with the Portuguese in Angola. Previous analyses of this migration have suggested that it culminated in the early seventeenth century. In this paper an attempt has been made to show that the Imbangala arrived in Angola much earlier, probably by the mid sixteenth century and certainly before 1575. This date indicates that the Luba invasion of Lunda, which was the direct cause of the migration, probably took place in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Finally, it has been tentatively suggested that the overthrow of Songye rule and the establishment of a new, expansionist Luba empire might have taken place as much as a century earlier, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century.

African Oral traditions differ critically from recorded history in their treatment of time. Time is relative and ‘Historical time’ is replaced by ‘structural time’. Eastern Nigerian traditions have a beginning, the ‘remote past’, and an end, ‘the recent past’ and episodes which should belong to a middle period between these extremes are pushed either into the ‘remote’ or the ‘recent past’ or are forgotten altogether. This can be seen as soon as Eastern Delta traditions are compared with the relevant European historical records.

Without slaves from Africa, reported an early Portuguese source, ‘it is impossible to do anything in Brazil’ Although prior arrivals are suspected, the first known landing of slaves from Africa on Brazilian soil took place in 1552. In 1580, five years after the founding of Loanda and on the eve of Brazil's sugar boom, there were no fewer than 10,000 Africans in Brazil. Fifty years later, Pernambuco alone imported 4,400 slaves annually from Africa. It also contained 150 engenhos, or a third of the total sugar-mill and plantation complex in Brazil. In 1630, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) captured Pernambuco, and within a decade Portugal had abandoned Brazil to the Dutch. It was ultimately the decision of local settlers, the moradores, to fight the West India Company that led to restoration of Portuguese control in 1654. The Dutch retreat from Brazil, however, was secured through a joint Afro-Portuguese effort which gave the Black Regiment of Henrique Dias its colonial fame. If early settlement and a sugar-based economy could not have been sustained without the African labourer, neither could the Portuguese continue to hold Brazil without the African soldier. The subsequent evolution of Brazil is no less a story of Euro-African enterprise. Exploitation of gold and diamonds in the eighteenth century, pioneering shifts of population from the coast to the interior, dilution of monoculture, formation of mining states or advent of an abolitionist movement in the nineteenth century were all dependent on the same combination. The blend of race, language and culture in contemporary Brazil confirms this evolution.

This preliminary discussion of the process of assimilation in eighteenth-century Senegal considers how Africans were drawn into the French colonial community through employment; trade; marriage and concubinage; and also through the Portuguese Creole communities to the south of Cape Verde. The extent of their assimilation is discussed with reference to religion; participation in civic institutions; and the acceptance of certain European values. Finally the question of how deeply the colonial community was influenced by African values is briefly raised.

The History of Dahomey, written by Archibald Dalzel in 1793, has been used extensively as a source for Dahomean history. This article shows that the book is a polemic written in order to counter the charges of the British anti-slave trade movement and to prevent any further Parliamentary action being taken against the trade.

Accounts by 179 Africans of how they came to be enslaved are analysed. The Africans were drawn from a wide range of tribes in Western tropical Africa: their accounts were recorded in Freetown around 1850, and appear in S. W. Koelle's Polyglotta Africana of 1854. The majority of the informants were men enslaved before they were aged thirty; who shortly after enslavement were taken to the coast and shipped, then recaptured, liberated, and brought to Freetown; and who had lived in Freetown for a decade before they were interviewed. One third of the informants had been enslaved after capture in war, another third had been kidnapped by other tribes or by fellow-tribesmen. The remainder had not been enslaved by direct violence, but had been sold by relatives or superiors, Sometimes to meet a debt, sometimes, after a judicial process, as criminals.

In most of Ethiopia the Galla preserved, to a great extent, their ‘democratic’ traditional social and political institutions until the twentieth century. However, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, one hears of five Galla centralized despotic monarchies in southwestern Ethiopia. It seems that this was the culmination of a long process by which the authority of the traditional officeholders among the Macha Galla was gradually strengthened. As the Macha became more sedentary, they were greatly influenced by the Sidama among whom they lived and by Muslim merchants from north Ethiopia who settled in the area from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The most famous among the Macha monarchies were Limmu-Enarea and Jimma-Kakka. It is believed that Enarea was established by Bofo (Abba Gomol), the son of Boku, in the first or possibly in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Jimma-Kakka emerged in the 1830s, after a number of Jimma tribes were united by Abba Jifar-Sana.

One is led to believe that the monarchical system was adopted by the Macha tribes in order that they might be better able to take advantage of the revival of trade between southwestern Ethiopia and the coast. Enarea and Jimma clashed continuously, from the late 1830s, over the issue of the revenue from this trade. Finally, in the third quarter of the century Jimma emerged triumphant and Enarea sank again to obscurity.

It is intriguing to speculate on the possible crucial influence of commerce, aided by Sidama tradition and Islam, on the emergence of the Macha Galla monarchies.

By Article 17 of the Treaty of Uccialli, the Italian Government did not intend to establish a protectorate over Ethiopia, but only to preponderate among all the other Nations by obliging Menelik to use the Italian channel as portalettere (postman); even so, Antonelli was authorized to modify or even to suppress this article. When Antonelli discussed the matter with Menelik, the latter refused to accept an obligation; both negotiators agreed that the text of the Article should reflect only an option. This agreement was correctly transcribed in the Amharic text, but not in the Italian one. Antonelli, giving more weight to oral than to written understandings, left unchanged the original wording of the draft he had brought from Rome, i.e. consente (Menelik binds himself to use Italy as postman).

Against the opinion of Antonelli, Crispi decided to take advantage of Article 17, using the opportunity created by the General Act of Berlin, 1885. In October 1889 he notified the Article to the signatories of the said Act, in spite of the fact that Ethiopia was not on the African coast and that Article 17 was not a formula on which a protectorate could be based. The acknowledgement of such a notification gave birth to the Italian protectorate. It was at this moment that the imbroglio was created, by Crispi and not by Antonelli.