Apart from relatively late Semitic influence … the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali.…The incoming Hamites were pastoral ‘Europeans’—arriving wave after wave—better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes.

The present study is intended both as a substantive historical contribution, and as an illustration of the possibilities and the limitations of one particular type of historical inferences that can be drawn from language, namely, the study of words borrowed from one language into another. Two other basic linguistic sources for culture-historical conclusions are not considered here, those based on the relationships and distribution of languages as such, and those based on the reconstructed vocabularies of particular Ursprachen, that is, the ancestral speech-forms of specific groups of genetically related languages. These latter two methods are not excluded either for dogmatic or methodological reasons, but simply because they do not yield relevant results for the particular problems being considered, although they are very useful in other connexions. It should, however, be mentioned that, as will appear at a number of points in the discussion, a valid linguistic classification furnishes an indispensible framework for nearly all inferences drawn from linguistic data including the interlinguistic contact phenomena which are the subject of the present study.

On 8 January 1897 the name of ‘Nigeria’ appeared in print for the first time. It was the title of an article in our leading newspaper, written by Miss Flora Shaw, who at that time ‘did the Colonies for The Times’, as Cecil Rhodes expressed it. Miss Shaw later became the wife of Lord Lugard, the great builder of Nigeria; and one of the greatest of all British Colonial Administrators. And here is what Miss Shaw said.

In 1955 I spent some time at Kota Kota on the western shore of Lake Nyasa where I was fortunate to have as my guide Shehe Khalidi Bin-Amrani, a fine old Yao schoolmaster who, when I first met him, was busily teaching his pupils to read selections of the Koran from handled boards. His father, he told me, was born at Lindi, an important centre of the slave trade from where a well-defined trade route led to Lake Nyasa, but he eventually settled at Kota Kota and led the Arab traders in search of slaves. Khalidi Bin-Amrani actually took part in the last raids.

One of the most sustained and in its effects far-reaching movements of population in the recent history of North Eastern Africa is the expansion of the Hamitic Somali from the shores of the Gulf of Aden to the plains of Northern Kenya over the last ten centuries. Although written historical evidence is available for only a few periods, oral tradition is so abundant, and from a variety of sources both inside and outside Somaliland, so much in agreement, that it is possible to reconstruct much of this Somali migration, at least in broad outline, with what I believe is a fairly high degree of probability.

No general account of the archaeology of Ife has ever been published, although the demand for such an account has been increasing with the growing interest in the art of Ife. This paper attempts to fill the gap by providing a survey of the investigations which have been conducted there. The reader is also referred to a paper by William Fagg and the present author which attempts to summarize the reliable factual knowledge about Ancient Ife, inferring from the archaeological finds evidence of the materials which have not survived. So far as possible repetition here of material contained in that paper is avoided. Moreover, since the archaeologist who works on ethnohistoric problems has other means of investigation than the pick and shovel, this paper will refer to ethnographic accounts as well as to excavations.

No historian of Africa can be indifferent to the fact that alone in Africa south of the Sahara the East African coast possesses a link between history and archaeology in its own medieval mints and also in coins imported from other lands during the past two thousand years. Its history is poorly documented, and its archaeology is still to a great extent in the stage of record and survey; the numerous finds of Chinese porcelain and other imported ceramics can at present only be assigned within a bracket of at smallest fifty years: but in the coin finds there is a key for the future establishment of a precise chronology for all of these.

The peoples who occupy the region between the rivers Sankuru, Kasai and Lulua are called Kuba by their neighbours. They form a congeries of eighteen different tribes subdivided in numerous chiefdoms. These enjoy an internal autonomy but they form a single kingdom ruled by a central tribe, the Bushong, whose chief is king. He exacts tribute from the other chiefdoms and used to control, more or less, their external policy.

Bien que l'île ait été connue des Arabes pendant le Moyen Age, et que sa découverte par les Portugais date de 1500, c'est seulement cette année-ci qu'en a été réalisée, par mes soins, la première histoire synthétique. Et pourtant le nombre d'ouvrages consacrés, en tout et en partie, au passé de Madagascar apparaît plus considérable que pour toute partie de l'Afrique Tropicale. Mais la division de l'île entre des peuples divers ne connaissant du passé que leurs propres ancêtres, et surtout le souci prédominant des Européens de retracer leurs propres aventures ont empêché longtemps la conception d'une histoire totale, que semblait cependant imposer l'unité géographique, linguistique, voire même ethnographique, de ce petit continent si original.

The lack of an adequate work in English—or indeed in any other language—on the history of the Portuguese in Africa before the nineteenth century has long been felt by those interested in what is still, in many respects, the Dark Continent, in so far as its past is concerned. In Africa as in Asia, the Portuguese pioneered the expansion of Europe; and their accounts of the indigenous peoples whom they successively discovered will always be of value as showing the state of those peoples before they were affected by contact with white rule. The reactions of the Portuguese to the African environment, whether in Morocco, Guinea, the Congo, Zambesia, or in Abyssinia inevitably affected not only the inhabitants of those regions but set precedents which were followed to a greater or lesser degree by the other Europeans who came after them.

A Cluster of some eighteen small tribes, numbering in all some 70,000 people, which lives on the rolling heights between the rivers Kasai, Sankuru and Lulua in the Kasai province of the Congo, are called Kuba by their neighbours. They form a kingdom which is in fact a federation of tribes, dominated by a central group, the Bushoong, whose chief is king of the whole congeries. This federation was imposed by the Bushoong upon the other tribes by conquest or threat of arms during the course of the three last centuries. As with all conquest states of which this one, although a federation, is typical, the different tribes controlled do not all have the same culture. One group, comprising the central tribes, is similar in culture and language. It includes the Bushoong, Ngeende, Pyaang, Byeeng, and Bulaang tribes. Other tribes are culturally akin to this group. Still other tribes belong to the Lulua-Luba Kasai cluster. Among these the patrilineal Coofa and the matrilineal Kete may be mentioned. Finally, other tribes like the Ngoombe or Mbeengi participate in the general type of Mongo cultures. The social structure of all the Kuba tribes with the exception of Coofa and Mbeengi is matrilineal. They are grouped in matrilineal clans, which are divided in small autonomous residential lineages, which can be called clan-sections. Clan-sections of different clans make up a village. The village is ruled by a set of dignitaries and a general council composed of the clan-section heads. The tribes of the central group and the ones who are culturally akin to it group several villages in chiefdoms which are ruled by chiefs assisted by councils. In these tribes, with the exception of the Bushoong, different chiefdoms are united loosely on a tribal scale. The Bushoong, who are the most numerous, are constituted in one chiefdom only. The religion of all the tribes of this cluster is very similar. Ancestor worship is practically absent. There are beliefs in a Supreme Being, in nature spirits, and in spirits or forces which control charms. Furthermore, mention must be made for the whole congeries of tribes of a flourishing art, especially decorative art, which is expressed in weaving, matting, woodcarving, ironworking and even architecture.

Slavery in eighteenth-century North Africa, as described in the literature of that era, is the main theme of this paper. However, as the eighteenth century gives an arbitrary division to our topic, the scope of this study has been enlarged. The account of Morocco begins with the reign of Mulay Isma'il (1672–1727) and extends through that of Mulay Sliman (1792–1822). As conditions were much the same throughout both of these rulers' reigns, any division would be meaningless. The account of slavery in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli has been extended in the same manner. The period of the latter eighteenth century was one of decline for all three of these Muslim states. Conditions remained the same until the period of time around 1820. Then naval action by Lord Exmouth, and diplomatic pressure by the combined European powers practically put an end to the holding of Christian slaves.

There are a number of accounts of the strange world of Africa as seen by adventurers, explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and traders in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. By piecing together their accounts we can get quite a good picture of the African lands and peoples which they visited. There was only one, however, who attempted to put down a connected history of what took place in Angola during the first century of its history, i.e. beginning with the founding of Luanda in 1576.

After recovery from his alarming accident at Bagamoyo at the end of 1889, Emin Pasha decided to enter the German service in East Africa. At the beginning of 1890 he was appointed the leader of an expedition into the interior of the continent. Part of Emin's instructions read as follows:

In accordance with instructions received by me from the Imperial Chancellor, and the arrangement made with Your Excellency, I have the honour to give you the following directions with regard to the mission undertaken by you:

(I) Your Excellency is to secure on behalf of Germany the territories situated south of and along the Victoria Nyanza Lake, from Kavirondo and the countries between Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika up to the Muta Nzige and Albert Nyanza, so as to frustrate England's attempts at gaining an influence. I consider that the extension of the line from Kilimanjaro and the Kavirondo Bay to the north west, up to the frontier of the Congo State, constitutes the Anglo-German frontier. Any extension warranted by the circumstances of the sphere of influence just described would be regarded by me as redounding to Your Excellency's special merit.

In studying the early history of the West African states, one of the difficulties encountered is that of establishing a reasonably precise framework of chronology. Eighteenth-century Ashanti, however, would appear to be an exception to this in that the reigns of its kings are dated, although with some degree of variation, in all the standard works dealing with the area. Their authors, from this point of view, have followed either Thomas Edward Bowdich or Joseph Dupuis, both of whom were in Kumasi, the Ashani capital, in the early part of the nineteenth century. In their treatment of traditions and customs, the writings of Bowdich and Dupuis are of great interest and value; the chronologies of the two authors, however, although they contain major differences, can in neither case be regarded as reliable. Fortunately there are in existence written records, hitherto little used, which make it possible to draw up a new and amended chart of the reigns of the eighteenth-century kings, and which furthermore give rise to interesting questions. These are the records of the various European companies engaged in trade on the coast, notably the English Royal African Company (1672–1750), its successor the Company of Merchants trading to Africa (1750–1821), and the second Dutch West Indies Company (1674–1791). Their agents in the forts and settlements were much interested in local developments especially in so far as trade might be beneficially or adversely affected. As a part of their duties, they kept diaries of events and dispatched reports, often of a very detailed nature, to their Companies in London and Amsterdam.

The partition of Africa is one of those historical processes which have been more discussed than studied. Everybody knows that between 1884 and 1898 the soil of Africa was very largely apportioned to the sovereignty of European powers; the results are written on the modern map, the details of the various agreements are not too difficult to check. Most writers on the subject, moreover, have clear views about the historical significance of the whole process; whether they regard it as a beneficent extension of the institutions and values of West European civilization or as an intolerable imposition of alien power, their evaluations derive from prior convictions rather than from empirical study. Despite the importance in contemporary African politics of polemical statements about Imperialism, for coherent accounts of the territorial partition of the continent it is still necessary to look to books written by public men before European archives were available, and indeed before the process itself was complete.

The claims of no people…are respected by any nation until they are presented in a national capacity. (Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, Philadelphia, 1852, p. 210.)

…it is not so much Afro-Americans that we want as Africans. (Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound, London, 1911, p. 173.)

…on us too depends in a large degree the attitude of Europe towards the teeming millions of Asia and Africa. (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, ‘The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind’, African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Philadelphia, XVI, 1900, pp. 102–3.)

French colonial history, during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, was marked by two significant developments—a steady devolution of executive power from Paris to administrators abroad, and the creation of the Ministry for the Colonies in 1894. The basic reason for these changes was simply pressure of work. As communications with an expanding empire improved, the tendency to over-centralize the management of colonial affairs placed an excessive burden on the colonial section of the Ministry for the Navy. The appointment of an Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies who was responsible to a variety of ministers in the 1880's had provided no solution to the volume of business brought from Africa and Asia by the cable and the mail-steamer. Indeed, the example of Algeria where officials had been closely bound to government departments in Paris since 1871 had showed that the formulation of coherent colonial policy under these conditions was too often frustrated by divided responsibilities and changing politicians. Towards the zenith of French expansion, therefore, a single ministry took charge of all, territories except North Africa; and its first task was to apply to other areas the framework of federal administration set up in Indo-China some eight years previously. No longer were the colonies dependent for directives on a sub-department of the French Navy that had founded and protected them. The heterogeneous posts and annexed territories were grouped, as far as pacification and diplomatic conventions would permit, under governors-general who were at once military pro-consuls of empire and civil representatives of republican presidents.