The article considers the changing pattern of kinship relations amongst the Kongo south of the Zaïre river and west of the plateau in the region once dominated by the nuclear Kongo kingdom. It argues that the normative pattern of kinship and family relationship was probably established in the early years of agricultural settlement by the ideology of the kanda, the exogamous matrilineal descent groups which controlled access to land. This ideology dominated family and kinship relationships as long as agricultural production was the dominant economic factor. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the evolution of the trade-based kingdom of Kongo modified the normative pattern established by the kanda, and in the late sixteenth century the acquisition of large numbers of slaves and the use of Christianity as a legitimating ideology effected more profound change. In particular, the elite developed a system of patrilineal descent categories which were used to control trade-based wealth and to organize political relationships. Freedom came to be related more to patrilineal descent category membership and less to kanda membership, whilst the economic and political position of all but the most eminent women deteriorated. When, in the late seventeenth century, changing patterns of trade caused the kingdom of Kongo to disintegrate, the Mwissikongo of the centre adopted a cognatic mode of descent which enabled them to control both agricultural and trade-based wealth. Certain eminent women seized the political opportunities afforded by the crumbling of male-dominated centres of power whilst the definition of slave and free became increasingly problematic. In the north-western province of Sonyo, increased trade-based wealth enabled the dominant patrilineal category to establish itself as a corporate group and to monopolize all positions of power. In the eighteenth century power disintegrated throughout the region and land again became the primary economic asset. The ruling elite sought legitimation in terms of the ideology and descent system of the kanda. The former slave groups sought to establish rights in the same way. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all groups legitimized their holding of land, primarily in terms of the ideology of the kanda and secondarily in terms of the concept of Mbanza Kongo.

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.

The legal emancipation of slaves in Zanzibar and on the Swahili coast of Kenya was enacted in 1907, but the measure was not enforced on Lamu Island until 1910. The slave-owners of Lamu were already in dire straits from the decline of their plantations on the mainland and from the changes accompanying colonial rule which, by contrast with Mombasa, left Lamu Island as an economic backwater. They were little inclined to co-operate with the provisions of the legislation and were actively abetted in this by some their slaves. Emancipation was therefore a more protracted process than in those parts of the coast where alternative opportunities had opened up for ex-slaves and for landowners. Those who were gradually liberated either emigrated elsewhere or entered into new forms of dependent relationships with the Afro-Arab aristrocracy. Meanwhile, slavery lingered on under the noses of British officials.

This article reports on developments in archaeological research in North Africa during the last four years, as these are reflected in the 350, or thereabouts, radiocarbon (and thermoluminescence) dates that have appeared since the last review. The number of new dates, and new data, becoming available indicate that North African archaeology is flourishing, although, in contrast to the earlier decades of this century, the focus seems now to be moving toward the eastern part of the region, and toward matters of adaptation rather than of simple classification, as exemplified by the new interpretations of the Dhar Tichitt Neolithic in Mauritania.

The lower Nile Valley has yielded evidence for an intensification of subsistence activities in the Late Palaeolithic in two areas, Makhadma and Kubbaniya, both involving fish-harvesting and the latter also witnessing the use of plant-foods on a scale hitherto undocumented for this period.

At the beginning of the Holocene, there is now good evidence for an eighth millennium bc Neolithic in northern Niger, complete with sophisticated ceramics, which complements the evidence already known for similar phenomena further east in the Sahara. There is even a possibility that the Khartoum Mesolithic of the central Nile Valley might be equally old. Our understanding of the Sudanese Neolithic has greatly increased. For the first time, there appears to be a development from the Khartoum Mesolithic into the Khartoum Neolithic, albeit located outside the Valley. The Khartoum Neolithic is more or less confined to the fourth millennium bc, but did give rise to the later Kadada Neolithic. After Kadada, the focus of settlement seems to have shifted outside the Valley until Meroitic times.

In the protohistoric and historic periods, we have a better understanding of the chronology of the Egyptian Predynastic, although not yet of its development; what models exist will be radically modified if the pyramids are indeed as old as the dates on them now indicate. Finally, far from the Nile Valley in northern Niger, there comes detailed evidence of the development of a precocious metallurgical tradition within a Neolithic context.

The professional Nigerian nationalist historiography which emerged in reaction against the imperialist Hamitic Hypothesis – the assertion that Africa's history had been made only by foreigners – is rooted in a complex West African tradition of critical dialogue with European ideas. From the mid-nineteenth century, western-educated Africans have re-worked European ideas into distinctive Hamitic Hypotheses suited to their colonial location. This account developed within the constraints set by changing European and African-American ideas about West African origins and the evolving character of the Nigerian intelligentsia. West Africans first identified themselves not as victims of Hamitic invasion but as the degenerate heirs of classical civilizations, to establish their potential to create a modern, Christian society. At the turn of the century various authors argued for past development within West Africa rather than mere degeneration. Edward Blyden appropriated African-American thought to posit a distinct racial history. Samuel Johnson elaborated on Yoruba traditions of a golden age. Inter-war writers such as J. O. Lucas and Ladipo Solanke built on both arguments, but as race science declined they again invoked universal historical patterns. Facing the arrival of Nigeria as a nation-state, later writers such as S. O. Biobaku developed these ideas to argue that Hamitic invasions had created Nigeria's proto-national culture. In the heightened identity politics of the 1950s, local historians adopted Hamites to compete for historical primacy among Nigerian communities. The Hamitic Hypothesis declined in post-colonial conditions, in part because the concern to define ultimate identities along a colonial axis was displaced by the need to understand identity politics within the Nigerian sphere. The Nigerian Hamitic Hypothesis had a complex career, promoting élite ambitions, Christian identities, Nigerian nationalism and communal rivalries. New treatments of African colonial historiography – and intellectual history – must incorporate the complexities illus-trated here.

Shipping, a vital element of maritime trade, has not hitherto received adequate attention in studies on Nigerian colonial economic history. This article therefore fills a gap in the literature by studying aspects of the shipping trade during the First World War, when shipping was indispensable for maintaining economic links between Britain and her colonies. Shipping in Nigeria revolved around the practices of the Elder Dempster Shipping Company, which enjoyed an undisputed monopoly of the trade throughout the war, and the reactions of the colonial government and private shippers to them.

Scarcity of tonnage and higher freights were the chief features of shipping during the war. The allocation of shipping space, however, ranged the colonial government, the shipping company and the Combine (that is, big European) firms against non-Combine shippers. While Elder Dempster's allocation formula suited the government and the Combine firms, it was considered inequitable by other shippers. This arrangement reflected the community of interests between the colonial state and Big Business vis-à-vis smaller traders.

The interests of the government and Elder Dempster were, however, incompatible on the question of ocean freights. Thus, high freights which boosted the firm's turnover were detrimental to the economic interests of the colonial state. The company's monopoly and the non-intervention of the Imperial government enabled it to have its way. Consequently, despite losses at sea, requisition by the Imperial government and rising running costs, Elder Dempster conducted a profitable business during the war. In achieving this, it also served the Imperial interest by effectively linking Nigeria with the metropolis.

On the whole, wartime shipping conditions, particularly Elder Dempster's practical monopoly, were a departure from pre-war trends. There was a gradual return to normality in the early 1920s but the firm remained pre-eminent in the West African shipping trade.

In 1994 the National Party of Mr de Klerk defeated the African National Congress in only one of nine South African provinces, the Western Cape. The reason for this success lay in the support that the NP received from a large majority of Coloured South Africans in this region. Many were worried about the possibility of losing homes and jobs to ‘Africans’, and believed that the ANC was a specifically African party. These worries and beliefs were encouraged by Nationalist Party politicians. But the success of the latter's campaign was premised on the existence of more enduring self-identities, while simultaneously lending them new content.

This article attempts to explain the emergence of different black ethnicities, and particularly the emergence of Coloured ethnicity, in the British Cape Colony, and its capital, Cape Town. Because of a low non-racial franchise and (theoretical) equality of all before the law, the Victorian Cape provided the possibility of formal black political expression – the establishment of parties, electioneering and political mobilization.

The different black ethnicities that emerged were not the inevitable result of different ‘cultures’ or distant historical experiences. But nor were they simply created by élite Ethnic mobilizers in response to white racialization and discrimination, as was sometimes suggested in revisionist South African historiography of the Apartheid era. This historiography was understandably eager to challenge belief in the immutability of race and ethnicity that underpinned ‘separate development’ – a policy which itself served to reshape, perpetuate and reinforce perceptions of ethnic difference.

Labels, like ‘Coloured’ or ‘Native’ may have been imposed by whites and used by black élites to challenge state policies or to demand resources. But the labels had to continue to make sense to those they wished to mobilize. The content of ethnicities could not be purely ‘imagined’ by élites.

Radiocarbon dates published by southern African archaeologists since the last review in this journal (in 1980) illustrate an increasingly complex record of population movement and interaction. Substantial gaps in the distributions of dates reflect the ebb and flow of people in response to changing environmental and social circumstances. More interesting perhaps is the range of intergroup relations now emerging from the last two millennia with the appearance of pastoralists and agriculturalists. Radiocarbon dates, taken along with spatial and formal patterns in the archaeological record, show clearly that the distributions between hunters, herders and farmers and between Stone Age and Iron Age communities were blurred and flexible.

Current attempts at understanding ‘neo-traditionalism’ in Africa stress the limits of invention and warn against according too great a role to colonial intervention. Colonialism nevertheless remains important to our understanding of specific neo-traditionalisms, not only because it forced particular social and economic changes on to African communities but also because of the way that Africans appropriated colonial claims. This article explores how Igbo villages were re-imagined as a result of the complex relations between Igbo ‘sons abroad’ and their hometowns during the colonial period. Appropriating the colonizers' claims to bring ‘progress’, migrants attempted to achieve status and influence in the villages from which they had migrated. These strategies shaped not only how migrants perceived their connection with their village, but also perceptions of the village itself: it came to include the ‘sons abroad’ in a diasporic public sphere that was not in itself geographically defined, but existed through reference to the village.

Omwene hango [the owner of the home] is the only person with true authority to discipline children. So, when your husband died, the authority of omwene hango died with him, and you were left alone.

HISTORIANS of gender have shown the importance of documenting and scrutinizing instances in which gender terminologies are invoked and employed. A compelling instance can be found in an examination of the widows of Maragoli. In this upland rural area of about two hundred square kilometers in western Kenya, the dynamic relations surrounding widowhood provide a useful opportunity to analyze the construction of feminine and masculine categories, as well as the political strategies that emerged out of these categories. Widows in this rural part of Kenya were certainly subject to the limitations imposed on them by the invocation of strict gender categorization – perhaps at this point in their lives more than any other. And yet, surprisingly, these widows were able to use such categories for their own purposes. By expressing their grief publicly – usually in ways that focused on their social and economic needs – Maragoli widows not only reinforced the importance of gender categories but also sought to redress their grievances through these very categories. What is important, though, is that they consciously presented themselves as ‘poor widows’, as idealized stereotypes of suffering females who were believed to become needy and helpless at the death of their husbands. They told their stories in ways calculated to solicit sympathy. And this usually worked to their advantage since it placed men in the difficult situation of having to defend their ‘ideal’ masculinity. Only by helping guarantee the economic livelihood and social status of bereaved widows could men uphold their own self-image. Thus the relationship between them was informed by a reciprocity that suggests that the widows were more than passive recipients of male charity. By presenting their grief publicly so as to solicit relief for their sufferings, widows were actively able to turn what men saw as stereotypical feminine behaviour – emotionality, helplessness and weakness – into strengths. That is, by consciously attempting to make men feel more ‘manly’, Maragoli widows were able – at least partially – to exploit existing gender roles to get what they needed.

This article examines the origins and dynamics of Aberewa, an anti-witchcraft movement that rose to prominence in the Akan forest region of Asante and the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1906–10. It suggests that while the political, social and economic changes of the early colonial period acted as a catalyst for its widespread expansion, Aberewa emerged from an earlier cult called Sakrabundi that was already moving from the savanna into the northern reaches of the Asante empire by the 1880s. The ritual trajectory and popular appeal of Sakrabundi and Aberewa are explored within the context of the ambivalent relationship between the Akan peoples and their northern savanna neighbours. An argument is made for the need to consider witchcraft and anti-witchcraft in Africa as historical processes rather than as a set of structural beliefs and practices.

The article adopts the approach of a group biography in discussing the careers and ambitions of early black South African doctors selecting both those trained abroad, and the first cohorts trained within South Africa who graduated at the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand from 1945–6. It focuses on the ambiguities involved, by looking at tensions between professional altruism and entrepreneurialism in pursuing a medical career, as well as that between self-interest and selflessness in attempting to balance the requirements of a medical practice against those involved in political leadership. The paper highlights the significance of the political leadership given by black doctors in the mid-twentieth century and indicates the price paid for this in loss of medical resources under the apartheid regime. Two annexes provide original data on the medical and political contributions of individuals.

This article reassesses the political alternatives imagined by African nationalists in the ‘first wave’ of Africa's decolonization through the lens of Cameroonian nationalism. After the proscription of Cameroon's popular nationalist movement, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), in the mid-1950s, thousands of Cameroonian nationalists went into exile, most to Accra, where they gained the support of Kwame Nkrumah's Pan-African Bureau for African Affairs. The UPC's external support fed Cameroon's internal maquis (as UPC members called the underground resistance camps within the territories), rooted in culturally particular conceptions of freedom and sovereignty. With such deeply local and broadly international foundations, the political future that Cameroonian nationalists envisaged seemed achievable: even after the Cameroon territories' official independence, UPC nationalists kept fighting. But, by the mid-1960s, postcolonial states prioritized territorial sovereignty over ‘African unity’ and Ghana's support of the UPC became unsustainable, leading to the movement's disintegration.

L'etude des conséquences de l'émancipation des esclaves est d'une grande importance pour la comprehension de l'histoire du travail en Afrique occidentale. Le système social des Soninké de la haute vallée du Sénégal, comme pour beaucoup de peuples sahéliens à l'époque précoloniale, reposait largement sur l'esclavage. L'apparition des migrations de travail chez les Soninké, cependant, s'explique beaucoup moins par l'abolition de l'esclavage que par la disparition progressive du commerce esclavagiste en Sénégambie au dix-neuvième siècle. En effet, c'est alors que furent substitutés à la traite intérieure les migrations saisonnières des jeunes Soninké. Ces migrations, traditionnellement orientées vers le commerce en Gambie, furent détournées vers la production d'arachide dans cette même région, probablement sous l'influence des trafiquants d'esclaves Soninké. Quant à l'émancipation, elle ne créa nullement un exode chez les esclaves nouvellement libérés mais elle permit leur entrée dans la courant des migrations saisonnières. Dans ce sens, l'abolition de l'esclavage fut un phénomêne important dans l'histoire du travail en Afrique occidentale. De plus, elle suscita des transformations dans 1'organisation du travail familial chez les Soninké, qui résultèrent en un surcroît de migrants.

En conclusion, l'histoire des Soninké illustre l'importance de la question des migrations traditionnelles pour la compréhension des migrations modernes en Afrique occidentale, rappelant en cela l'histoire des migrations de travail en Europe, qui furent elles aussi les héritières de courants plus anciens de mobilité géographique.

In his book, Africa; its peoples and their culture history, ethnographer G. P. Murdock has undertaken a tremendous interpretive task based upon a survey of the literature. Of consequence here is his thesis that

… agriculture was independently developed [at about 5000 B.C.] by the Negroes of West Africa. This was, moreover, a genuine invention, not a borrowing from another people. Furthermore, the assemblage of cultivated plants ennobled from wild forms in Negro Africa ranks as one of the four major agricultural complexes evolved in the entire course of human history … The invention of agriculture in Negro Africa is most probably to be credited to the Mande peoples around the headwaters of the Niger in the extreme western part of the Sudan, less than 1,000 miles from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Three main forms of agrarian change are shown to have occurred in the Ngwa region during the period covered in this article. The first was the adoption of a new hand-processing method for palm oil, which can be seen as a response to growing pressures on female labour resources as Ngwa farmers increased their export production of palm oil and kernels. The second was the adoption of cassava by women. This increased their workloads but helped them to fill a hungry-season gap in local food supplies. It formed part of a long-term trend of diversification within Ngwa agriculture. Finally, men began helping with cassava processing. Like their earlier entry into palm-oil processing, this move reflected not only a growing pressure on female labour resources but also a need for men to participate in processing if they were to claim a share of the saleable product. In the concluding sections of the article, gender relations are shown to have influenced farmers' patterns of saving and investment. An awareness of gender is seen to be relevant when considering both the issue of mechanisation and the history of other kinds of agrarian change.

No general account of the archaeology of Ife has ever been published, although the demand for such an account has been increasing with the growing interest in the art of Ife. This paper attempts to fill the gap by providing a survey of the investigations which have been conducted there. The reader is also referred to a paper by William Fagg and the present author which attempts to summarize the reliable factual knowledge about Ancient Ife, inferring from the archaeological finds evidence of the materials which have not survived. So far as possible repetition here of material contained in that paper is avoided. Moreover, since the archaeologist who works on ethnohistoric problems has other means of investigation than the pick and shovel, this paper will refer to ethnographic accounts as well as to excavations.

The caravan trade, a strong chain binding Barbary, the Sahara, and the Negro territories together, was of very remote antiquity. Mauny and Lhote have convincingly shown that as early 1000 B.C. chariots were being drawn across the Sahara along two main routes: a western route from Morocco through Zemmour and Adrar to the banks of the Senegal and the Niger, and a central route from Tripoli through Cydamus (Ghadames), Ghat, and Hoggar to Gao on the Niger. By the fifth century B.C., the desert traffic—mainly in animals such as monkeys, lions, panthers, and elephants, in precious stones like carbuncles, emeralds and chalcedony, and in slaves— had become so important that ‘the Carthaginians began their great Sahara expeditions in an effort to cut out all intermediaries and to get into direct contact with the source of the riches in which they traded’. Three centuries later the Saharan trade was centred on the Tripoli-Fezzan-Bornu route (the Garamantian route) and constituted one of the main sources of the riches of Carthage. The phenomenal development of this desert traffic did not take place, however, until the introduction of the camel into Tripolitania by the Romans probably in the first century A.D. The rapid spread of the camel throughout Barbary and into the Sahara and beyond was begun by the Arabs and the Berbers. The process seemed to have gathered momentum and reached its climax during the Hilalian invasions in the middle of the eleventh century.

The sudden expulsion of the Xhosa across the Fish River in 1811–12 created a practical and conceptual crisis which the traditional political authorities were unable to resolve. Two commoners, Nxele and Ntsikana, emerged in this vacuum, each proposing his own solution to the problems posed by the white irruption. Although these responses were religious responses, they were neither irrational nor incomprehensible. Xhosa religion had long functioned as an instrument for the control of the material world. By incorporating selected Christian concepts with the Xhosa world-view, Nxele and Ntsikana were able to provide the Xhosa with acceptable explanations of past events and prescriptions for future action.

Nxele urged resistance and Ntsikana preached submission, but an examination of their personal histories shows that these final conclusions were more the product of exterior pressure than interior revelation. It may be suggested that the future reputations of the two men, like their past actions, will be determined more by the popular mood than by anything they themselves did or said.

The conventional view of the Moroccan nationalist movement argues that its success was rooted in the experience of the Second World War in Morocco. However, this overlooks the critical differentiation in popular response to nationalist ideas that developed over the period from 1926 to independence in 1956. Whereas the pre-war nationalist movement was urban-based, with a strong middle-class and Salafiyyist tradition behind it, and picked up support from other urban groups that suffered from the Great Depression in the 1930s, it consistently lacked the essential concomitant of a broad rural base. This was in part due to the effective control of rural areas maintained by the French administration, but also arose from the development of a new élite in rural areas that had a clear interest in acquisition and control of land. Although this group had antecedents that originated from pre-colonial times, it was the conditions of the Protectorate and the development of a money-based economy which allowed it to flourish while other aspects of indigenous economic activity declined. This group, which may be considered to constitute a ‘kulak’ class, thus had an evident interest in supporting the French Protectorate authorities, and little concern for nationalist aspirations, particularly since it was also closely associated with the French administration of rural areas through its role in the caïdat. It was only when this élite found its economic interests threatened, and realized that the nationalist movement had the support of the Sultan, that its political concerns were redirected. This change occurred in 1947 with the Tangier speech, in which Mohammed V implicitly rejected French tutelage and, by inference, turned to the nationalist movement to support his dynasty. The speech coincided with the end of the consequences of the 1945 famine, which gave the nationalist movement its opportunity to extend its network into rural areas. It was this development, rather than the Second World War itself, that ensured the ultimate success of the Moroccan nationalist movement.