This paper traces the formation, growth, and contraction of the Bron Confederation, a group of small provinces which seceded from Asante in 1875 and remained independent until British and German acquisition in the mid-1890s. The Confederation was headed by the priest of a traditional religious shrine called Dente. The paper analyses how, operating initially from a solely religious base, the Dente priest achieved real political power over the Confederation. He became increasingly threatening to Asante and entwined in Asante politics, ultimately coming to the attention of European officials. His nemesis lay in the fact that neither Asante nor European strategists could afford to tolerate a successful Bron Confederation. Nevertheless the Confederation coalesced under his leadership and his ultimate authority was religious. A case study in the process of pre-colonial African religious/political synthesis, this paper specifically proposes that the sanctions resulting from religious oath-swearing and the wealth accruing from religious consultation were managed skilfully by the Dente priest and provided the basis for secular economic and political power.

Erica Fiah's neglected life is a very valuable source of information on African political thought and action in colonial Tanganyika. His mission education imbued him with strong Christian values and a belief in British culture and civilization. Coming to Tanganyika from Buganda he was always rather alienated from the local society and culture, and was therefore inclined to seek a political and social community with educated Africans throughout the territory, or with the traders and workers in Dar es Salaam. He too would have liked to be the ‘Mwalimu’ of the Tanganyikan people. In his relations with the colonial government he clearly went a step further than Martin Kayamba or the African Association of his day, who relied on maintaining and exploiting the paternalism of the Government and its patron–client relationship with Africans. Fiah's attitude was one of ‘loyal opposition’, which he expressed first through his own Garveyite association, in the 1930s, and then through his newspaper Kwetu, during the 1940s. Fiah sought to improve and change the existing system, taking more active steps than mere petitioning to make the Government fulfil its moral obligations. This led him into conflict with the African Association in 1936–8; later it also distanced him from the emerging nationalist movement which he had helped fertilize, but whose complete rejection of colonial rule was beyond his intellectual horizon. Fiah's life was not the failure it seemed but a central link in the political transformation of the people of Tanganyika.

La décolonisation de l'Afrique Equatoriale Française présente cette particularité que l'initiative en venue des pouvoirs coloniaux, métropolitains et locaux, qui ont su contrôler de bout en bout le mouvement d'émancipation politique. Ce n'est pas que les Africains aient subi passivement cette évolution. L'analyse des forces sociales montre deux groupes n'ont pas étée en mesure d'intervenir efficacement et durablement sur la scène politique: l'une, la chefferie, apparaît comme une force déclinante dans la conjoncture 1940–1960, ruinée à la fois par l'éevolution économique, les transferts de revenus au sein de la population africaine, l'affirmation de valeurs nouvelles; l'autre, la masse ouvrière, était trop émietté, en termes de localisation et d'organisation, pour mener une action autonome. Ce fut done à la classe montante, la petite-bourgeoisie, qu'échut le rôle politique moteur du côté africain: mais, dans les conditions particulières de l'A.E.F., cette classe ne fut pas capable, ni peut-être désireuse, d'élaborer une idéologic et des pratiques anti-impérialistes ou même seulement anti-colonialistes.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the administration of the Transkei was instituted, codified and elaborated. The role of the headman was crucial: he was directly responsible to the magistrate, and his ward (‘location’) became the basic administrative unit. The headman's position was also profoundly ambiguous. He was at once a state official (responsible for enforcing new legal, economic and political relationships) and a spokesman for and defender of the inhabitants of his location.

Although invested with considerable powers, headmen had to remain responsive to popular pressures. In tracing the career of a single prominent headman, Enoch Mamba, this article demonstrates the possibilities and contradictions within the post. Mamba entered government employment in Idutywa as a clerk/interpreter; was appointed headman in 1893; and was dismissed – after attempting to unseat the magistrate – in 1896. Resilient and resourceful, Mamba won reinstatement by 1904; he served as a highly effective and occasionally authoritarian headman and as District and General Councillor until his death in 1916. He created and led one of the first pan-tribal political organizations in the Transkei and came to play an active role in the (Cape) SANC and the SANNC. As a politician, Mamba remained sensitive to rural issues and differed from urban-based politicians (like Rubusana, Pelem, Jabavu) in his populist and ‘Africanist’ accents.

During the period of the European Scramble for Africa, many African rulers, conscious of the military superiority of the European Powers, resorted to the use of diplomacy in a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to maintain the independence of their dominions. This approach was demonstrated in Futa Jallon's resistance to French expansion.

Among the methods of resistance used by the Alimamies of Futa were the rejection of the European version and interpretation of treaties, the grant of support to other African resistance movements, and the exploitation of Anglo-French rivalry. The Alimamies also exploited the lack of unity in French administrative organization in West Africa and the complexity of Futa's political constitution. Their resistance, marked by a considerable degree of duplicity, was facilitated by France's dependence on a policy of peaceful expansion towards Futa in contrast to its aggressive approach in many other areas of West Africa. Eventually, Fula resistance collapsed, largely because of the disintegration of the indigenous state, which enabled France to intervene and establish its authority over Futa with remarkable ease, using only a minimum of force.

During the classical period of colonialism, from the 1890s to the 1940s, much private Western investment in Africa was conducted through investment waves – short-lived booms related to demands for, and prices of, particular raw materials. One such burst of foreign financial interest occurred between 1905 and 1914 when, against the background of a climacteric in tropical rubber, 55 companies with a total nominal capital of £5 9 million were floated in Britain to undertake rubber production in Africa. The article, seeking to understand why British capital, largely responsible for the dramatic growth of rubber planting in Asia, made such little lasting impact in Africa, focuses upon the 26 companies set up for West African operations. It notes their high failure rate, which was related to the predominance of interest in wild rather than planted rubber.

Two principal reasons are adduced for the lack of commercial success of the 18 companies exploiting wild rubber concessions. The first, political and commercial opposition aroused by the exercise of monopoly rights over a natural forest product, is illustrated by the experience of three relatively large concerns in Liberia and the Ivory Coast. The second, an inadequate financial and managerial structure, is most obvious among companies with assets in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria, mainly fraudulent or near-fraudulent concerns floated to feed speculation in rubber shares during 1909–10. Their promotion involved the shadier fringes of the Edwardian capital market and was connected to the Gold Coast mining shares boom of 1900–1. These businesses made almost no contribution to the West African rubber trade.