This article, which extends and modifies the analysis offered in an earlier article in this journal (1977), examines what is known of the organization of the supply of slaves for the trans-Atlantic trade in Dahomey, with particular emphasis on the relative importance of local slave-raiding and the purchase of slaves from the interior, and on the evolution of a group of private merchants within Dahomey. It is argued that initially the kings of Dahomey sought to operate the slave trade as a royal monopoly, and relied exclusively upon slave-raiding rather than purchasing slaves from the interior. From the mid-eighteenth century, however, Dahomey did seek to operate as a ‘ middleman’ in the supply of slaves from the interior, and since its kings did not normally attempt to control this aspect of the trade this involved the emergence of a private sector in the slave trade. Although merchants in Dahomey were in origin state officials, licensed to trade on behalf of the king or ‘caboceers’ (chiefs), they subsequently acquired the right to trade on their own account also and thus became in some measure independent of the state structure. The autonomy and wealth of the merchant community in Dahomey were further enhanced by the transition from slave to palm oil exports in the nineteenth century, when leading merchants moved into large-scale oil production, using slave labour supplied by the king. There were recurrent tensions between the monarchy and the merchants over commercial policy and over the monarchy's expropriatory fiscal practices, and the conflict of interests between the two was exacerbated by the development of the oil trade, undermining the solidarity of Dahomey in the face of the European imperialism of the late nineteenth century.

Drawing on port entry records for 487 ships disembarking nearly 80,000 captives in Cartagena de Indias, the primary slaving port in early colonial Spanish America, this article provides a new assessment of the relative importance of major African provenance zones for the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century transatlantic slave trade. Upper Guinea and Angola furnished roughly equal shares of forced migrants to Cartagena between 1570 and 1640, with a smaller wave of captives from Lower Guinea. While Angola eventually replaced Upper Guinea as the main source of slave traffic to Cartagena, the shift was more gradual than scholars have previously believed.

The Ghanaian forest was well settled by agricultural communities prior to the opening of the Atlantic trade in the late fifteenth century. The most prominent of these settlements were earthworks sites, construction of which began in the first millennium ce and continued until their abrupt abandonment prior to the mid-fifteenth century. In this article, previous archaeological data are evaluated in light of current research to provide a plausible alternative hypothesis for the history of the Akan, placing that history in a much broader and deeper context.

Social control of trypanosomiasis in African history deserves further study. The pioneering work in this field is John Ford's respected but neglected The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology (1971). While Ford's arguments have received support from recent findings in immunological, epidemiological and epizootiological research, they have rarely met with evaluation or engagement, either in historical or scientific literature. Historians have tended to describe trypanosomiasis control as a matter of avoiding contact with tsetse fly. In so doing they have implicitly rejected the position of Ford, who regarded infrequent contacts between tsetse and mammalian hosts as necessary for the maintenance of host resistance. Ford believed that host resistance, rather than avoidance of tsetse, was the basis of trypanosomiasis control. The historical nature of Ford's work requires that a satisfactory evaluation of The Role of the Trypanosomiases make use of historical, as well as scientific, data. The evidence of trypanosomiasis and cattle-keeping from one region of north-eastern Tanzania supports Ford and suggests that other explanations of trypanosomiasis control are inadequate. The Tanzanian evidence shows that precolonial societies coexisted with, but could not avoid, tsetse. They could not eradicate tsetse because scarcity of water prevented permanent occupation of large areas. Tsetse and trypanosomiasis did not prevent cattle-keeping, but helped to keep the region's cattle population low and confined it to relatively densely settled neighbourhoods. Social control of trypanosomiasis collapsed during the pre-Second World War period of colonial rule. Economic and political developments were primarily responsible for a series of famines between 1894 and 1934. Famine-induced depopulation allowed steady spread of tsetse and wildlife reservoirs of trypanosomes into formerly cultivated areas which had been free of tsetse before the colonial period.

A series of articles on firearms in Africa published in the Journal of African History in 1971 raised a number of questions which have not been given adequate attention since those articles appeared. In the present paper an attempt is therefore made to shed some light on some of these questions in relation to West Africa in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the basis of import figures from England total imports during this period was estimated to be between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum, excluding imports into the Congo–Loango area which Phyllis Martin estimated to be about 50,000 yearly at this time. These guns went largely to the major slave exporting regions of West Africa, especially the Bonny trading area. The sellers of slaves showed a very strong preference for firearms, which is an indication of a strong connexion between guns and the acquisition of slaves. This reinforces the gun-slave cycle thesis. The evidence fails to support the idea that firearms were used primarily for crop protection in West Africa in the eighteenth century. If this were so it should have been reflected in the European goods demanded by sellers of agricultural commodities. It is likely, however, that the use to which firearms were put in West Africa changed after 1900. While the quality of firearms imported into West Africa during the period of this study was generally low, it would seem that those firearms largely served the purposes for which the African buyers purchased them.

Depuis la synthèse précédente, les recherches archéologiques se sont développées et diversifiées en Afrique Centrale.

Pour la préhistoire, des recherches prometteuses sont effectuées sur les processus géomorphoiogiques au Congo, ce qui permettra de mieux comprendre les problèmes posés par l'interpretation des vestiges découverts dans les formations sableuses.

Du Gabon à l'Angola, on assiste à un intérêt croissant pour les vestiges des populations qui exploitent la zone littorale depuis l'âge de la pierre récent et qui sont responsable de nombreux amas coquilliers.

A l'intérieur du continent, au Congo et au Rwanda, une série de nouvelles dates se rapportent à l'âge de la pierre récent, sans qu'il soit possible de préciser les limites temporelles de ces industries.

Dans la moitié sud du Cameroun et à l'est de la Centrafrique, divers témoignages indiquent que depuis au moins le dernier millénaire avant notre ère cette partie de la forêt etait occupee par des populations sedentaires, utilisant de la ceramique, des haches polies et pratiquant sans doute une forme d'agriculture.

La fonte du fer semble débuter dans la région de Yaoundé vers le quatrième siècle avant notre ère. A l'est, au Rwanda et au Burundi, la métallurgie du fer paraît au moins aussi ancienne et l'on ne peut tout à fait exclure qu'elle soit même beaucoup plus ancienne, mais cela reste controversé. Au Congo, un fourneau pour fondre le fer a pu être daté du cinquième siècle de notre ère, tandis qu'un fourneau pour fondre le cuivre était daté du treizi`eme siècle de notre ère. Au Zaïre, dans la région du Shaba, la fonte de ces métaux remonte au quatrième siècle de notre ère.

Enfin, des séries systématiques de datations permettent d'esquisser durant l'âge des métaux les bases d'évolutions régionales au nord Cameroun, en Centrafrique, dans la cuvette centrale au Zaïre, et au Rwanda.

Concern about desiccation – the effects of deforestation on climate and soils – was an early and pervasive theme in colonial science, present at the onset of West Africa's colonial era and with roots in previous centuries. As a set of scientists' ideas linked to soil and forest conservation policy, the impact of desiccationism was initially muted, struggling unsuccessfully in nascent administrations with more pressing political and administrative agendas. But by the end of the colonial period it can be argued that anxiety about desiccation had become a cornerstone of development practice and state penetration. This article uses a case study to consider the transformation of the status of the ‘science’ of desiccation within colonial development agendas, the responses this transformation eventually provoked and its enduring legacy.

Our reflections here complement what has, in West African studies, become a general consensus about shifts in colonial forest policy. From the outset, many colonial administrations – both francophone and anglophone – were concerned both about the effects of forest loss on climate, hydrology and soils, and about the effects of ‘irrational and wasteful’ exploitation of forest as an economic resource. But early policy imperatives to establish reserves either failed to reach the implementation stage or could not be implemented due to the resistance they engendered, both from populations and indeed from agricultural or political administrations. A significant phase of reservation, at least in West Africa's humid forest and transition zones, began only in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and was pursued until the mid 1950s by colonial states which increasingly gained the strength to impose unpopular policy despite resistance. From this perspective, and given that nationalist sentiments in pre-independence struggles were often pitted against repressive colonial forest services, it could be hypothesized that independence would bring regimes more responsive to local concerns and more likely to heed resistance. Yet such a view, focusing simply on state capacity in changing political contexts, overlooks qualitative changes in the configuration of science-policy relationships within the state, a reconfiguration that it is necessary to grasp if we are to understand how post-colonial forest policy was less a rupture than a continuation or, indeed, reinforcement.

This second part of a study of cowrie currencies in West Africa deals with the value of cowries from the fourteenth century in various parts of West Africa, in terms of gold and silver, and currencies based on these, and also in terms of commodities. An attempt has been made to use this information to throw light on such problems as the effects of the slave-trade on the economy of West Africa, and also on the extent of the internal exchange economy before the beginning of the colonial period.

The kingdom of Dahomey is often presented as the classic instance of the operation of a royal monopoly of the Atlantic trade in West Africa. Detailed study establishes, however, that there was never any such royal commercial monopoly in Dahomey, although there were attempts to establish such a monopoly in the 1780s and in the 1850s. The kings of Dahomey enjoyed a number of commercial privileges, and controlled the distribution of the war captives taken by the Dahomian army, but they were never the sole sellers of slaves. There was always an important group of private merchants in Dahomey, who were mainly concerned with marketing the slaves imported into the kingdom from the interior. The replacement of the slave trade by the palm oil trade in the nineteenth century strengthened the position of the private merchants, since they were able to move into the production of oil as well as marketing it. The kings of Dahomey also engaged in the production of oil for export, but were not able to establish as complete control of the production of oil as they had exercised over the ‘production’ of slaves.

The so-called ‘mfecane’ has been explained in many ways by historians, but never adequately. Julian Cobbing has absolved the Zulu of culpability for ongoing regional conflicts, but his work is severely flawed in its use of evidence. Cobbing is incorrect to argue that the Delagoa Bay slave trade existed on a large scale prior to the disruptions beginning in 1817, and European slaving therefore cannot have been a root cause of political turmoil and change, as he claims. Cobbing correctly identifies European-sponsored slave-raiding as a major cause of violence across the north-eastern Cape Frontier, but his accusations of missionary involvement are false. Jeff Guy's interpretation of the rise of the Zulu kingdom based on environmental factors is inadequate because he examined only stock-keeping and not arable land use, which led him to false conclusions about demography and politics. In this paper I argue that the socio-political changes and associated demographic turmoil and violence of the early nineteenth century in southern Africa were the result of a complex interaction between factors governed by the physical environment and local patterns of economic and political organization. Increasing inequalities within and between societies coupled with a series of environmental crises transformed long-standing competition over natural resources and trade in south-eastern Africa into violent struggles.

Historians usually trace the start of the first civil war in the Southern Sudan to the Torit mutiny of 1955. However, organized political violence did not reach the level of civil war until 1963. This article argues that 1955–62 was a period of increasing political tension, local low-intensity violence, and social and economic stagnation. It shows how these conditions influenced the attitudes of government officials, informed the policies that they pursued, and made a Southern insurgency likely. This historical analysis helps explain why a full-scale civil war began in late 1963 and why it was not avoided.

In a field like Africa it is reasonable to hope for some assistance from linguistic data for the general study of prehistory. In fact there is a real temptation to use material of this kind in such a way that the results cannot be verified, or, to put it more baldly, to make guesses that are no better than other guesses. Clearly the serious investigation of the prehistory of Africa demands something more than speculative hypotheses, and for this reason it is essential that any conclusions drawn from linguistic information shall be based on a firm basis of codified data.

This article investigates the development and employment of African medical auxiliaries during the German campaign against sleeping sickness in colonial north-western Tanzania. A case study from the kingdom of Kiziba demonstrates how widespread illness and colonial public health interventions intersected with broader political and social change in the early twentieth century. Ziba auxiliaries known as gland-feelers operated within overlapping social and occupational contexts as colonial intermediaries, royal emissaries, and familiar local men. The changing fortunes of the campaign and its auxiliaries illustrate how new public health interventions became a means for the kingdom's population to engage with or avoid both royal and colonial power.

The peoples of south-eastern Nigeria have been involved in trade for as long as there are any records. The archaeological sites at Igbo-Ukwu and other evidence reveal long distance trade in metal and beads, as well as regional trade in salt, cloth, and beads at an early date. The lower Niger River and its Delta featured prominently in this early trade, and evidence is offered to suggest a continuity in the basic modes of trade on the lower Niger from c. A.D. 1500 to the mid-nineteenth century. An attempt to sketch the basic economic institutions of the Igbo hinterland before the height of the slave trade stresses regional trading networks in salt, cloth, and metal, the use of currencies, and a nexus of religious and economic institutions and persons. It is argued that while the growth of the slave trade appears to have been handled without major changes in the overall patterns of trade along the lower Niger, in the Igbo hinterland a new marketing ‘grid’, dominated by the Arochuku traders, was created using the pre-existent regional trading networks and religious values as a base.

This article uses a series of love letters exchanged between an African Anglican priest and a teacher-in-training before their marriage to investigate the relationship between the fashioning of the individual self, marriage, and community at the dawn of Tanganyika's independence. When seen through marriage's historical position as an institution central to community composition, these letters illustrate how the family – and the intimate process of building families – could become an alternate site of national imagination. These two young lovers understood their marriage as an explicitly political act of community composition, and cast themselves as characters in the drama of national imagination. In negotiating their twentieth-century marriage, Rose and Gideon became political innovators, selecting, producing, and testing the content and boundaries of the nation.

This article investigates the relationship between different phases of Somali political activity in Kenya. A clear contrast emerges between the focus, the aims and the methods adopted by the Somali pastoralists along the northern frontier and those adopted by the Isaq and Herti Somali traders in Nairobi and Isiolo. The attitude of the former towards the Colonial Government was essentially negative. Yet, while they tended to be resisters par excellence and fought against the Government on a large number of occasions between 1893 and 1916, this article shows that their resistance was much more limited than has generally been supposed and that they were never united on a clan basis in their resistance. In fact intra-clan rivalries seriously undermined the effectiveness of their activities Moreover, certain weaker Somali segments actively cooperated with the Government in order to obtain military and political support for their positions which were threatened by stronger groups.

On the other hand, Isaq and Herti traders attempted to manipulate the political institution in order to obtain additional privileges within the system. Their agitation had positive goals, for they campaigned to gain Asiatic status. They put pressure on the central organs of Government and hired lawyers to plead their case. They wrote numerous petitions and memorials to governors of the colony, to Secretaries of State and even to two British kings. They formed well-organized political associations and had contacts in British Somaliland and England. Yet, by a curious irony, it seems that the Somali Exemption Ordinance of 1919, which represented the closest they came to achieving non-native status, was not passed as a result of their campaigns. In fact, their later agitation achieved nothing; it seems to have represented a futile effort to counter the gradual erosion of privileges obtained at an earlier date.

One of the main characteristics of the Isaq and Herti agitation was its essentially sectarian character. In fighting to obtain Asiatic status they emphasized traits that isolated them from other Somali groups, and they even ended by denying that they were Somali. As such, there was a considerable disparity between their aims and those of the Somali Youth League which emerged in 1946 as the main vehicle of mass Somali nationalism, uniting the Somali pastoralists and traders in one group.

Colonial rule embodied as a concomitant aspect ideological justifications based on racial and cultural differences, acceptance of which by the governed led to the development of a symbiotic relationship between the cultures of paternalism and subservience, a symbiosis often involving numerous ‘working misunderstandings’ arising from the application of conceptual models which had proven meaningful under quite different circumstances. This article examines the conceptual models which influenced European perceptions of Tiv society, the consequent ‘working misunderstandings’ which underlay the symbiotic relationship between government and a society subject to its jurisdiction but which had its own particular traditions, and the changes which appear to have occurred in Tiv value systems, institutions, and traditions in response to new situations. It is hoped that it will be of general interest to social and political historians, as well as those concerned with methodological problems relating to the use of ethnographic data.

The rise of the Zulu power in the early nineteenth century has conventionally been treated as the outstanding example of a contemporary southern African process of ‘state-formation’, which was associated with revolutionary social changes. This paper advances an alternative view, that there were strong continuities with established forms of chieftaincy in the region, and in particular that the Zulu political system was based on a traditional, pan-Nguni homestead form of organization.

The Zulu homestead was divided into right and left sections, each with its own identity and destiny. This opposition was mapped into the layout of ordinary homesteads and royal settlements. It was carried through into the organization of regiments. The homestead and its segments provided both the geographical and the structural nodes of the society. The developmental cycle of the homestead ideally followed a set pattern, creating a fresh alignment of units in each generation. The points of segmentation were provided by the ‘houses’, constituted for each major wife and her designated heir. Each of these houses represented the impact, within the homestead, of relationships sealed by marriage with outside groups, whose leaders threw their weight behind particular factions in the political processes within the family.

Until 1471 the Wangara had enjoyed a monopolistic position in the Akan gold trade, consigning bullion to the markets of the Western Sudan (see the first part of this paper). The Portuguese entered the trade in the late fifteenth century, but experienced difficulty in deflecting gold to the coast. The strong demand for labour in the Akan country obliged them to import slaves from other parts of West Africa in order to achieve competitiveness. In 1477 Jenne – the principal northern outlet for Akan gold – fell to the Songhay, and for a time the Wangara were induced to do at least some of their business with the Portuguese. Subsequently the Wangara found markets for their gold as far west as the Gambia river. In the mid-sixteenth century the ruler of Mali, his frontiers crumbling on all sides, made a bid to take control of the Wangara gold trade. His troops occupied Bitu or Bighu, the Wangara entrepot on the edges of the Akan forest country, and he may (just possibly) have ordered an attack on Elmina, the principal Portuguese post on the coast to the south. If there was such a move against Elmina, it certainly failed, and at least some of the troops in Bitu did not return to Mali but set up their own state locally: Gonja. The developing Atlantic economy, built around new supplies of gold and new demands for slaves, eclipsed the older Mediterranean economy of which West Africa had been a geographically peripheral but commercially central part. The decline of Mali, and with it Bitu, was irreversible.

Among all the African kingdoms to survive the Partition intact, Buganda is conspicuous for the way in which European overrule, so far from obstructing, positively accentuated the pattern of her pre-Colonial history. With regard to Buganda's political development, this continuity has already received a good deal of comment. Less emphasized, but intimately related to her internal continuity, is the perpetuation of Buganda's imperialist past, especially in the guise of Ganda participation in the extension of British influence throughout the Protectorate of Uganda.