The Ogba are an Igbo-speaking group, situated in the extreme south-west of the Igbo area, in the modern Rivers State of Nigeria (though the maps in this book, which depict only the Ogba country itself, do not convey a very clear sense of its location). This history of the community, written by its current Eze (king), sets out to cover the entire sweep of its history, from ‘the origin of the Ogbas’ (attributed to the fourteenth century) to the colonial period (post-independence history being treated only cursorily). It is based mainly on local oral traditions, taken partly from colonial Intelligence Reports, but also including extensive new material collected by the author; some use is also made, for the colonial period, of contemporary documents from British and Nigerian archives, and for prehistory, of archaeological evidence.

The foundations of Afro-European relations were laid in the first one hundred or so years of contact, the period from the 1440s to at least the 1550s during which Portuguese activities in Guinea proceeded without grossly damaging interference from other European powers. From 1482 up to the final disaster of capture by the Dutch in 1637, the fort of Sáo Jorge da Mina was the principal base for official Portuguese activities, ‘Mina’ being the conduit for the most extensive sea-export of gold. Despite its economic value to the crown, and its international status as the symbol of the Portuguese claim to sovereignty over Guinea and monopoly of the sea-export trade of western Africa, the fort had probably less lasting influence on early Afro-European relations than had the less heralded, and even more poorly recorded, activities of private Portuguese traders in western Guinea. Nevertheless, the history of the fort, when Portuguese, deserves close attention, and these two volumes by Joseph Bato'ora Ballong-wen-Mewuda represent a brave attempt to provide an analytical account.

Randall Fegley's bibliographical compilation is clearly not among the best of the World Bibliographical Series. The objective of the collection is to present a solid guide of the country to the non-specialist, and compared to other volumes in the series, Fegley's work lacks polish and perspective. The volume is marked by spelling errors. Accents in French names and titles are most often ignored. Important authors' names are misspelled: Gilles Sautter becomes ‘Giles’ in the text and ‘Sautte’ in the index; Jean-Claude Willame becomes ‘Willaure’. Ironically, the listing of the latter's book, Patrimonialism and Change in the Congo, a political science essay on Zaïre, illustrates the mistake Fegley denounces in his preface (p. xiii) : most English-speaking readers confuse Zaïre and Congo. The well-known collection of essays edited by P. Gifford and W. R. Louis is wrongly entitled by Fegley as Transfers of Power in Africa, and presented as a single volume (p. 68). Some titles are also poorly categorized, like René Gauze's The Politics of Congo-Brazzaville. Gauze's 150-page text is devoted to Congolese politics during the colonial period, with a 50-page supplement on the decade 1962 to 1972 written by Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff. It is nevertheless classified only under ‘Post-colonial politics’ (p. 71). Jan Vansina's Paths in the Rainforest, best classified in pre-colonial history, is listed just once under ‘Politics, General’.

James Newman has given us an ambitious book. He explores three interlocking themes: a dialectic between the demography of human communities and the productive character of their environments; the roles of trade and politics in generating growth in political scale; and the development of cultural identities. The first three chapters review the emergence of hominids, the Stone Ages, and the transition to agriculture. Here we meet his sources: physical geography, archaeology, historical linguistics, the occasional human genetic datum and some documentary historical material (including mention of dynastic oral traditions). Newman handles most, though not all, of the best of the secondary literature in these fields. The second part of the book amplifies his central themes for each of the continent's conventional regions. At a total of 201 pages, the brevity of the text alone will appeal to undergraduate teachers.

Lesotho's 1979 Land Act was, at least in conception, a major innovative piece of legislation. This book therefore arouses expectations. In some areas the book does indeed fulfill expectations, but in others it will unfortunately leave the reader disappointed or misled.

The sub-title tells all for this extremely useful work. Included are citations to 884 honors papers, master's theses, and doctoral dissertations emanating from Benin (89 titles), Burkina Faso (119 titles), Congo (50 titles), Côte d'Ivoire (81 titles), Guinée (64 titles), Mali (207 titles), and Sénégal (274 titles), produced from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s. (Gabon is covered in similar fashion by Christopher Gray, History in Africa 21 (1994), 413–33, who lists 87 items for that country.) The entries are arranged by author within each country and each includes all the relevant bibliographical details as well as a set of key words. Only the proper names in the latter, however, are included in the work's two indexes (which might better have been combined, especially since some items – e.g. Nzema – are wrongly placed).

The identification of the various sub-groups of the Yoruba offers a challenge to historians, particularly since large numbers of Yoruba-speaking people were deported into the African diaspora. In this contribution to Yoruba historiography, Adediran analyses the history of the western Yoruba sub-groups, especially those resident in République du Benin and also in Togo. This study expands upon Adediran's Ph.D. thesis (Awolowo University, 1980) and is based on oral traditions and archival materials, as well as an excellent grasp of the published literature.