The name ‘Iron Age’ has been given to a complex of post-Stone Age cultures in Southern Rhodesia. The cultures themselves vary very considerably but all are characterized by the use of iron for tools and weapons. Unlike the sequences in Europe and the Near East, that of south Central Africa shows no copper or bronze-using stage between the stone and iron-using phases and even the Neolithic seems to be missing from this part of the world.

Asaba is an Ibo town, which, because of its position on the Niger, came into relatively early contact with Europeans. This means that we have materials for its history in European records for more than a hundred years. This article is based on these records, and on present-day oral traditions. It begins with an account of Asaba's traditional social and political structure, and its former role in the economic life of the lower Niger.

Asaba traditions relate in detail how the town was founded by a man from Nteje, east of the Niger, called Nnebisi. There is less information about its subsequent history, though it seems that it went through a significant changefrom the rule of a single Eze to a system of personal titles, like that found in eastern Iboland. Some attempts have been made to make a king list for Asaba, but it does not seem possible to establish either this or any other useful chronological framework other than that provided by family genealogies. These suggest that Nnebisi lived in the seventeenth century. The main theme in Asaba's external history is her changing relationship with her powerful neighbour, Benin.

The choice of Onitsha, rather than Asaba, as a missionary and trading centre, meant that Asaba went through a period of relative eclipse. The first C.M.S. missionaries came to the town in 1875, but they had little impact on Asaba life. In the middle eighties, Asaba became the administrative capital of the newlyestablished Royal Niger Company. The impact of the Company on Asaba, though great, was short-lived. But one result of its choice of Asaba as a capital was the renewal of missionary endeavour, both Catholic and Protestant, in the town. This in its turn was to have a very great impact on Asaba's way of life.

Toute étude de la question du Haut-Nil doit aujourd'hui prendre pour point de départ l'ouvrage de M. G. N. Sanderson, England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 1882–1899. Rares sont sans doute les students of Africa qui n'ont pas encore eu entre les mains ce maître-livre: par l'ampleur de la documentation, le soin de l'analyse, l'ampleur de vues aussi, il s'est d'ores et déjà imposé comme un classique. A partir de l'époque de la révolte mahdiste jusqu'aux lendemains de Fachoda, on y suit, dévidé avec une clarté remarquable, l'écheveau des différentes politiques en présence sur le Haut-Nil: anglaise, française, italienne, allemande — sans oublier, bien entendu, celle de Léopold II.

The standard history of the German period in Tanzania has been seriously marred by imperial rivalries and excessive concentration on metropolitan aspects of German policy-making. In the period to 1907, which has heretofore been written off as a time of punitive expeditions and absence of administrative direction, the government in fact developed a secular state education service. The standard curriculum generated by the state was later adopted by missionary schools. The policy was controversial, and the strength of the administration's relatively pro-African position may be explained by the continuity of personnel, by the popularity of the secular schools, and by pessimism among officials as to whether white settlers could make an economic contribution commensurate with their political claims.

A drastic decline of aboriginal populations has been an important by-product of European commercial and imperial expansion in many parts of the world. Europeans have been aware of this phenomenon from the early days of Spanish exploration and conquest when Fray Bartolome de las Casas deplored the rapid collapse of Indian populations in the Caribbean. The problem still seemed acute in the nineteenth century. For example, the young Charles Darwin, describing the decline of the Australian Aborigines, placed most of the blame on alcoholism, introduced diseases, and the loss of hunting grounds. But these factors did not fully explain what appeared to be the impending extinction of a variety of peoples. ‘Besides these several evident causes of destruction,’ he wrote,

there appears to be some more mysterious agency at work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we find the same result.

A contribution to the understanding of one of the many puzzling features of West African art history, this article deals with the stone sculptures found in an area centred in southern Sierra Leone. These ‘nomoli’, as they are usually called, were made and used in the area where they are found, rather than having been imported. The authors believe that these figurines were made by the groups of peoples called ‘Sapes’ by the early explorers of the region. This is partially confirmed by the fact that features of these people at the time of the first contacts seem to correlate with features found on nomoli.

Originally intended as ancestor figures, these stone statuettes are used by some of the modern inhabitants of Sierra Leone as ‘swearing’ devices and to help increase agricultural yields. This latter use, at least, would go along with the authors' contention that the nomoli, after they ceased being regarded as ancestral figures—due to being lost, stolen or forgotten—were regarded as material representations of spirits known as krifi. The similarities between the supposed appearance of some of the krifi and the features of the nomoli would support this hypothesis. The ‘monstrous’ appearance of many of the nomoli might be due to their being carved as representations of krifi or of heads of secret societies.

As to their dating, stylistic relationships between some of the nomoli and some of the ancestral figures in the Sudan, along with an apparent influence from that area dated about the seventh or eight century A.D., might mean that they were first manufactured at that time. Evidence exists that they were still being made in some places in the present century, but this might represent a revival of the art rather than a continuance, since the sale of these figures is quite profitable.

The article examines the factors which influenced Tiv initiative and response in the development of the Nigerian export production of benniseed or sesamum indicum. A trade hitherto largely ignored, it has been overshadowed by the Bohannans' classic account, with its emphasis on the subsistence aspect of Tiv economy. It is therefore presented both as a case study of the development of an African export commodity and as a contribution to the broader field of socio-economic history of the colonial era.

It is still assumed today that Sheikh Mohammad Abdille Hassan's rebellion between 1899 and 1920 in British Somaliland only made an impact in northern and central Somalia. In fact, however, the rebellion also influenced both the southernmost Somali and the administration of the Jubaland Province of the East Africa Protectorate. Anticipation that the rebellion would spread southwards, though unwarranted, led nevertheless to exaggerated fears and ultimately deterred further British involvement in that part of the Protectorate. These fears were not wholly unjustified, for the Jubaland Somali were inspired by Sheikh Mohammad's defiance of alien authority and probably wished to emulate him where possible. Furthermore, there was increasing contact between Mohammad Abdille Hassan's agents and the Juba region. However, it was the actual migration towards the Juba of Marehan who had fought with Sheikh Mohammad that had the most important impact on that area. Sheikh Mohammad's jihads also encouraged other Somali sections to migrate southwards. These migrations were largely responsible for the growing instability south of the Juba. They led to a large increase in the number of guns available and also encouraged inter-tribal fighting. Essentially Sheikh Mohammad's influence was political rather than religious. This distinction becomes clearer on examination of the spread of the Salihiyya tariqa as compared to those areas which were involved in political unrest.

The fourth radiocarbon list contains many new and important dates. Only isolated readings are still available from West Africa, but some later Iron Age sites have recently been dated. The first samples for the Kenya Highlands date food production in that region to the first millennium b.c., while important dates from Uganda confirm the traditional datings of Bigo and Bweyerore. Samples from Kilwa on the Tanzanian coast are somewhat at variance with other dating evidence.

Dates for the Angola Iron Age range between a.d. 760 and the fifteenth century, while the Leopard's Kopje industry of Rhodesia has been dated for the first time.

The list is completed with many isolated dates from all parts of the subcontinent.

The problem raised in this paper is fundamentally that of the value of oral traditions used as historical sources. There is a tendency to accept them uncritically and thereby to perpetuate myths which a little critical investigation would have ended years before. The present writer has attempted to demonstrate that a historian dealing with traditional history must widen his field far beyond the oral traditions which are of immediate interest to him. Like other sources, comparisons with and the cross-checking of the traditions of other countries are essential factors in reconstructing the pre-colonial history of Africa. The results of such an exercise have been shown in this paper, the main purpose of which has been to trace and reassess the causes for the decline and fall of Bunyoro, by using not only the oral traditions of Bunyoro, as has been the practice hitherto, but also those of her neighbours such as Ankole, Buganda, Busoga, Kiziba and Ruanda. The results have shown that the effects of succession wars were less disastrous than is often believed. But the economic and territorial Josses, coupled with the persistent lack of able leadership, were more important than the so-called federalism of the Babito. For a semipastoralist population, cattle plagues may have been as disastrous as other factors. The British no doubt played a role, but it deserves less emphasis than it has hitherto received. By the time of their arrival Bunyoro had declined almost beyond recovery, and it is doubtful whether Kabarega could even have retained Toro. The British treatment of Bunyoro and Kabarega was typical of the reactions of colonial regimes against African resisters. Some of the questions raised in the concluding paragraphs regarding the possible future of Bunyoro had not the British intervened are perhaps too speculative. Nevertheless, they are worth asking, if the history of Bunyoro is to be seen in the right perspective.

My excuse for presenting this summary of Ceŵa tradition and history is that the Ceŵa are a numerous and important people. Numerically they are the most important descendants of the Malawi (the Maravi or Maraves of Portuguese records); and the fact that the name of their ancestors has been adopted by the majority party in Nyasaland led by Dr Hastings Banda, himself a Ceŵa, is one of the indications of their political importance.

This article explores the origins and nature of the reformatory in Cape colonial society between 1882 and 1910. Born in a period of economic transition, its concern was with the reproduction of a labouring population precipitated by colonial conquest. Unlike the prison and compound, which gained their distinctive character from the way in which they were articulated to an emerging industrial capitalist society, the reformatory was shaped by the imperatives of merchant capital and commercial agriculture. Although based on the English model, local social realities quickly began to mould the particular nature of the reformatory in the Cape Colony. Firstly, classification for the purposes of control came to mean segregation in a colonial context. secondly, the needs of commercial agriculture meant that in Porter there was a much greater stress on the apprenticing of inmates than there was in the internal operations of the British reformatory.

The three unsuccessful jihāds against the Wolof state of Kajoor are described as revival and reform movements among a people nearly universally professing Islam, but practising a syncretistic form. The traditional view that these were wars between ‘Pagans’ and ‘Muslims’ is seen as a reflection of the social and political isolation of the clerics as a community, an understandable but on closer examination misleading interpretation based on uncritical reading of clerical sources.

A study of the weapons used by the armies is relevant to different aspects of Yoruba history, mainly military and political but also economic and even cultural. The article concerns those weapons which were in use before, as well as after, the general introduction of firearms into Yorubaland (which took place only between about 1820 and 1850). Oral and written tradition provides the background for the surviving weapons. Many of these weapons, or their ceremonial or symbolic counterparts, are preserved for ritual reasons by chiefs and societies.

Two main types of sword were in use among the Yoruba: the two-edged ida, reminiscent (although often only distantly) of European late-medieval swords, and the curved single-edged agedengbe. Various kinds of knives were also carried by warriors. Staff weapons consisted of the spear or lance, used by infantry and cavalry, and the throwing spear or javelin. The most important missile weapon was the bow; an example of a crossbow has also been found. The iron heads and barbs of spears and arrows conform to the main types found elsewhere in West Africa. A variety of percussion weapons (clubs) can be distinguished, in both wood and iron. The war standard provided a rallying point in battle. The arms, accoutrement and dress of the warrior can be reconstructed in some detail.

The evolution of these weapons was affected by the strategy and tactics of Yoruba warfare, the nature of the countryside (savanna and forest), the materials available, and imported prototypes. Most military equipment was of local manufacture, though European, North African and northern Nigerian influence can be detected.

Nicholas Crispe (1598–1666) played a very important part in the developing of English trading contacts with West Africa in the seventeenth century. He obtained a commanding position within the African company in 1628 and did much to secure the company's reconstitution on a sounder basis in 1631. From 1631 until 1644 Crispe was the driving force behind the trade and, in particular, directed and largely financed the successful English entry into the gold trade of the Gold Coast, where permanent English factories with resident traders were established for the first time and a fort was started at Kormantin. After the Restoration he tried to regain his former position, but was unsuccessful, though his membership of the Company of Adventurers did give him some influence on the trade. Other members of the family were also involved in the African trade, sometimes in a significant way, over the same period.

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.

Small-scale societies, like Avatime in eastern Ghana, established, maintained and developed themselves in a range of ways, in spaces between large, centralized states, in West Africa in the precolonial era. This essay demonstrates the inclusivity and initiative (in terms of both economic entrepreneurship and bricolage) of this small group before its effective destruction by Asante in about 1870, and looks at the ways in which Avatime was reconstructed in the last third of the nineteenth century. In addition, issues of ethnicity and identity are broadly addressed, comparing Avatime's inclusivity with tropes of difference discussed in recent studies of small-scale societies in this journal.