Cupido Kakkerlak's story provides a concrete example of Khoi experience under the impact of colonization at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During his first forty years or so he lived on Boer farms, learned a sawyer's skills, accumulated a little property and reared a family. In 1800, probably as a result of frontier disturbances at the time, he went to the village of Graaff-Reinet. There, in 1801, he met missionaries of the London Missionary Society and was converted. Casting his lot with the mission, he moved with his family to Algoa Bay and was based at Bethelsdorp until 1815. During this period he practised his trade as a sawyer at the same time as he gained prominence in mission work. In 1813 he served as John Campbell's ‘travelling director’ during a trip to the interior that lasted almost nine months. Campbell's proposals – that a number of new stations be established – made heavy demands on mission personnel and other resources. Six ‘native assistants’ were appointed, one of whom was Cupido. In 1817, after a short sojourn among the Griqua, he undertook a mission to the still nomadic Kora near the Harts River. Six years later, when difficulties both in and outside the mission society had multiplied, his services were abruptly terminated. He was then over sixty years of age. For frontier Khoi, hopeful of a new dispensation in the wake of the 1799–1802 war, the L.M.S. missionaries had provided an undreamt-of opportunity. In the interaction between missionary and Khoi, in the first stages of the mission project, Cupido played a leading part.

In the nineteenth century the Portuguese government became engaged in a long struggle with the most powerful of the landowning families of the Zambezi—the famous prazo holders. Beginning as a domestic affair brought about by the weakness of the administration, the wars eventually developed into a struggle for the survival of even the vestiges of Portuguese rule on the Zambezi. The Portuguese government mounted nine expeditions before it was finally successful in 1888. The prazo holders, for their part, gathered round them the tribes and families broken up by the wars and by the raids of the Landim and Ngoni, and their resistance became, by the end, a general struggle of the African peoples of the lower Zambezi, not so much for independence, as against any alteration in the way of life of the ‘Rivers’—against westernization. Most of the fighting centred round the stronghold of Massangano at the junction of the Luenha and Zambezi rivers a few miles below Tete. The ‘aringa’ at Massangano was destroyed finally in 1888 but there are still extensive remains of it and of other sites connected with the Zambezi wars. The expedition reported in this paper made a plan of the ‘aringa’ of Massangano and was able to show the continuity in building tradition between the Portuguese ‘fairs’ built in Mashonaland in the seventeenth century, the Swahili east-coast sites and the nineteenth-century building in the Zambezi valley. The expedition was also intended to form some estimate of the potential of the virtually unworked fields of Moçambique archaeology and tradition, and by making two detailed studies to attract other workers to the same area.

Mitchell maintained that the relationship between the Protectorate Government of Uganda and the Native Government of Buganda was that of protected rule rather than of indirect rule. In order to implement his policy of protected rule, he planned a reorganization in Buganda, involving the substitution of a Resident for a Provincial Commissioner and the withdrawal of district officers to the centre, where the Resident and his staff would offer advice to the Kabaka. Mitchell did not envisage that the Protectorate Government's influence would thereby be weakened, since he assumed that the Kabaka would be obliged to follow advice which was given to him. Under the Agreement of 1900, however, the Kabaka was specifically required to act upon such advice only in the case of the implementation of Lukiiko resolutions. Relations between the Kabaka and both the Protectorate Government and his own Ministers steadily deteriorated during Mitchell's governorship, and the deposition of the Kabaka was even considered. For these reasons, Mitchell proceeded cautiously with his reorganization and it was left to his successor, Dundas, to complete it. Owing largely to the restricted power of the Governor under the Agreement to impose his wishes upon the Kabaka, the changes introduced resulted in a steady decline in the influence which the Protectorate Government could exert in Buganda.

During the 1840s and early 1850s, when France was employing either the mutual right of search with Great Britain or independent naval squadrons to suppress direct French participation in the transatlantic slave trade, French governments condoned commercial relations between French traders and Brazilian or African slave dealers. As of 1840 French merchant vessels were involved in carrying goods destined for the slave trade from France or Brazil to slave stations on the African coast; at times these French freighters were even sold and transformed into Brazilian slavers on the African coast. On several occasions these actions were brought to the attention of the French foreign and colonial offices by concerned French officials in Africa or Brazil, but the governments of both the July Monarchy and the Second Republic consistently instructed their agents to employ only persuasive measures to discourage what they avowed to be indirect French participation in the slave trade. Despite their abolitionist sentiments, French statesmen like François Guizot came to the conclusion that it was impossible to prohibit French nationals from trading with slave merchants because such actions would interfere with the freedom of trade and adversely affect French maritime commerce. French merchants continued to co-operate closely with Brazilian slavers until Brazil abolished the slave trade in the early 1850s.

This article proposes that there is a gap in our current understanding of the globalising and deglobalising dynamics of mid-twentieth-century East Africa, one that might be addressed by consolidating and taking forward recent developments in the historiography of decolonisation. Recent work by international historians has recovered the connected world of the 1940s to 1960s: the era of new postcolonial states, the ‘Bandung moment’, pan-African cooperation, and the early Cold War. Yet East Africa is less prominent in these histories than we might expect, despite the vibrancy of current work on this period in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Bringing these two fields into dialogue, through an explicitly regional East African framework and with a particular focus on individual lives, expands our understanding not only of the ‘globalisation of decolonisation’ but also of the deglobalising dynamics of the following decades that are frequently reduced to a history of global economic crisis.

This paper examines the reasons why the small African state of Thaba Nchu was annexed by the Orange Free State after more than a decade of nominal independence within Free State borders. For some years before 1884 Thaba Nchu had existed in a situation not unlike that of a modern ‘Bantustan’; this was disrupted when a coup was staged against the ruler, Tshipinare, who had relied on Free State support. Fearing instability if the new ruler, Samuel Moroka, became firmly established, Free State forces invaded Thaba Nchu, captured Samuel Moroka, and incorporated the land in the Free State.

The protracted subjugation by the Portuguese of Guinea-Bissau was made possible by Abdul Njai and his army of auxiliary troops. Njai became an ally of the Portuguese in the mid-1890s and continued his support for the Portuguese conquest until about 1915. He provided logistical support, and served both as a commander in the Portuguese army and as a recruiter of African troops. Oral as well as written sources indicate that Njai was directly responsible for the successful campaigns fought against the strongholds of resistance to Portuguese authority. As a reward for his services, the Portuguese granted Njai political authority over Oio province. Thus Njai became a kind of ‘warrant chief’ in an area where his only legitimacy was based on force rather than traditional affiliation. Portuguese control remained limited even after 1915 and Njai governed his region as he pleased. African communities in Oio and elsewhere in Guinea-Bissau feared and respected this warlord more than the Portuguese. He thus became a threat to Portuguese colonial officials in Guinea-Bissau as well as their French counterparts in neighbouring Senegal. The Portuguese therefore turned on their erstwhile ally and, after unsuccessful attempts to bring him to heel through negotiation, mounted an expedition which resulted in his capture and deportation in 1919.

As the oldest and, for a long time, the most important French possession in West Africa, Senegal occupied a privileged position among the French West African colonies. This exceptional status was boosted by the elective institutions conceded to the colony between 1870 and 1880, namely, municipal organization, a conseil général, and deputy representation.

In 1870, ‘Senegal’ was no more than a congeries of scattered military posts and trading stations. By far the most important of these establishments were the quatre communes, famous for their special legal status and their privileged inhabitants, made up of the French and the mulattoes, who controlled the political situation, and the Senegalese. By 1870 the colony had acquired some of the important ingredients which could accelerate the growth of political consciousness: a relatively good communications network; growing urban centres; a developing élite, made up largely of traders and agents of the Bordeaux commercial firms who controlled the economic situation; and an administrative regime which had little or no place for unofficial representation.

The élite demanded a conseil général which alone, they felt, could protect their interests effectively. The outcome of their agitation was determined by three main factors: their influence; the attitude of the local administration, notorious for its hostility to elective institutions; and political vicissitudes in France. The institutions were conceded in the 1870s; that is, during the first years of the Third Republic, when the policy of assimilation began to be consciously applied in French colonies.

The establishment of these institutions widened the gap between the quatre communes, to which the reform was limited, and the rest of Senegal, where the system of indirect rule held sway, and marked the beginning of mutual jealousy and conflict between the two sections. It put Senegal ahead of the rest of French West Africa, which continued until after World War II to be governed in a less liberal fashion. It marked France's first major effort at political assimilation in West Africa, and witnessed the determination of the Bordeaux firms, who had spearheaded the movement for the conseil général, to control not only the economic but also the political life of the colony. And lastly, it helped to create the situation whereby the Senegalese, who had until then been no more than mere pawns on the political chessboard of the French and the mulattoes, emerged, with the advent of Blaise Diagne in 1914, as the politically dominant group in Senegal.

The English-language literature on Algeria generated by the Algerian war of independence and continuing down to the present forms an intellectual as well as linguistic tradition apart from the much more voluminous literature in French. Despite the involvement of French and North African writers who have published in English, it is largely the creation of outsiders looking at the country from British and North American points of view, according to current fashions. The war of independence remains central to its concerns as the great transformer of a colonial into a national society, however that transformation is to be understood. The qualified approval of the nationalist cause by Alistair Horne contrasts sharply with Elie Kedourie's denunciation. Most judgements have been based on the outcome, the political, social and economic performance of the regime, considered as good or bad. Since the death of Boumedienne in 1978, they have tended to be unfavourable. Their largely secular analyses, however, have been called in question since 1988 by the rise of political Islam, which has called for a reappraisal of the whole subject of the war and its consequences. Such a reappraisal is still in the future. Meanwhile Ernest Gellner, in dispute with Edward Said over the question of Orientalism, has raised the matter of the role of Islam in the history of Algeria to a high level of generalization, at which the war itself may, paradoxically, return to the forefront of international scholarly concern.

For sixty-one years, from 1895 to 1955, the area known as the Transkeian Territories was the scene of an ‘experiment’ in local government based on district councils of elected members under the chairmanship of White magistrates. These councils were essentially advisory, and initiated proposals for expenditure on a range of parochial matters such as the building and maintenance of roads and bridges, water conservation, postal services and fencing. The twenty-six district councils were integrated into the United Transkeian General Council, or Bunga, which met annually in Umtata, and which was composed of delegates from the District Councils and the magisterial District Chairmen. The General Council operated engineering and agricultural departments, and spent considerable sums on soil and water conservation.

John Iliffe has argued that the Yoruba, almost uniquely among African peoples not substantially affected by the world religions, had developed by the nineteenth century a syndrome of institutions – a culture of begging, the valorization of poverty, asceticism – more typical of literate, stratified societies with intensive agriculture.

It is agreed that the Yoruba towns of the nineteenth century knew poverty on a substantial scale, aggravated by the endemic warfare and social upheaval. However, the supposed ‘indigenous tradition of begging’ which Iliffe cites as evidence, is shown to rest on a cultural misreading of social practices reported by the missionaries, notably the offering of cowries to the devotees of gods, especially Esu. These acts were not almsgiving to beggars but sacrifices to deities, continuous with other forms of sacrifice. The ‘beggars’ were by no means always poor. Sociologically, offerings to the devotees of deities ranged from a ‘commercial’ mode, where material blessings were anticipated in return, to a ‘tributary’ mode (particularly common with devotees of Sango) where they were analogous to placatory sacrifices (etutu). So dominant was the notion of sacrifice that a concept of Islamic origin, saraa, originally meaning ‘alms’, came to take the meaning of ‘sacrifice’ in Yoruba (as in many other West African languages).

Other aspects of the alleged poverty/asceticism syndrome are shown to be equally invalid. The pronounced this-worldliness of Yoruba religious attitudes is incompatible with idea that the poor might enjoy special religious favour. Acts of self-mortification did not indicate an attitude of religious asceticism. There was no ideal that religious personnel should be poor. It is argued in conclusion that the changes which we can see in Yoruba religion arise from the active engagement of Yorubas with external influences, rather than purely from endogenous developments or purely reactive responses.