Between the years 1700 and 1820 the Ashantis of central Ghana fought a number of wars in nearly all the territories now comprising modern Ghana. Most interpretations of these wars have linked them with the European trade posts on the southern coast and the Muslim trade settlements in the north. The Ashanti wars were therefore either raids or attempts to open trade-routes to the trade-posts. These interpretations have been possible because writers have ignored the Ashanti expansionary movement before 1700, and have also been unable to interpret correctly the political significance of the institutions by which the Ashanti attempted to extend their rule into some of the conquered territories, and to integrate them into what the Ashanti conceived as ‘Greater Ashanti’—a political community incorporating the conquered Akan states under the rule of the Golden Stool, the supreme stool of Ashanti.

When, then, the pre-1700 Ashanti tradition and the introduction of Ashanti judicial, political and politico-religious institutions into some of the conquered territories are carefully considered, it becomes clear, in the writer's view, that the so-called Ashanti ‘empire’ should be divided into three categories of states: provinces, ‘protectorates’ and tributaries, on the basis of their political distance from Ashanti. The provinces—like the Ashantis mainly Akan-speaking peoples—were considered and treated as part of a Greater Ashanti ‘political structure’. The ‘protectorates’ were treated as allies or protected peoples according as economic or political circumstance dictated. The tributaries formed the economic and manpower base of the Ashanti expansion. But it must be noted that these relationships were fluid, and fluctuated with Ashanti military and political fortunes. Finally, the Ashanti political experiment was halted by the British and was therefore inconclusive. The student can, therefore, hardly reach rigid conclusions.

Lastly it appears that, pre-literate in areas where the history student is faced with an absence of the historian's usual materials, the analysis of institutions is probably one of the most fruitful approaches.

The term ‘balkanization’, as applied to colonial policy in Africa, frequently suggests a European ‘divide and rule’ policy, intended to fragment pre-existing African unity. An examination of the policy of France towards the former federation of French West Africa indicates that the term is inaccurate to describe French policy.

The federation was created by the French for the French. It served to streamline French administration during the period of expansion, to help develop the component territories' economies, and to guarantee the security of French private investments. France conceived of the territories as the basic political units and hence modern political life was implanted there rather than in the federation. Post World War II French public investments flowed chiefly to the territories, common federal services were decentralized as territories acquired expertise and funds to run their own, and the quasi-federal Senate called the Grand Conseil was allowed to expire. Other aspects of French policy had unintended centrifugal effects, such as the metropolitan party structure and consequent dispersal of African representatives in Paris, and the influence of some French parties in Africa. Since 1956, France logically responded to African leaders' demands for more power and eventual autonomy in the territories, and left it to the Africans to decide whether or not to continue their federal relationship.

By 1956, the federation had outlived its usefulness to France. It is improbable that the metropole could have ‘saved’ it, because political territorial roots were too strong, the Africans were not agreed, and relations between France and Africa had already become mainly bilateral with the territories directly. Consequently it appears that the federation, a purely French creation, was simply permitted to fade away once its functions were no longer relevant to French needs. It is true that France preferred eight small, powerless states to a strong federation when national independence approached, but ‘powerless’ and ‘strong’ in this context are but relative terms. The story of the federation of French West Africa suggests that such political structures can survive the colonial period only if they are anchored in fundamental African needs; this was not the case with that federation.

This article examines the organization of the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905–7 in German East Africa, utilizing Professor T. O. Ranger's analyses of other rebellions in East and Central Africa. The rising began in the Rufiji Valley as a peasant protest against a scheme, imposed by the German authorities, for communal cotton growing. But like other African rebellions against early colonial rule, the movement acquired an ideological content from prophetic religious leaders. This ideology enabled the rising to spread far beyond the Rufiji Valley and gave a degree of unity to diverse peoples. Two religious systems were involved. In the Rufiji Valley, the first rebels received a water-medicine from the ministers of the spirit Kolelo. This maji became the symbol of unity and commitment. The expansion of the movement beyond the nuclear area probably followed a pattern of recurrent millenarian movements whose chief object was to eradicate sorcery. Such a movement implied a challenge to established tribal authorities, and was seen by them as such a threat. As the rising spread, it entered areas of stronger tribal organization and also lost something of its revolutionary character. In consequence, the later rebels utilized tribal organization. This development, it is argued, conflicted with the original purpose of overcoming past political and cultural divisions in order to achieve more effective resistance to European rule. Thus, it is suggested, the rebellion demonstrated a tension between ideology and political and cultural reality which is characteristic of mass movements, including later nationalist movements.

A study of the weapons used by the armies is relevant to different aspects of Yoruba history, mainly military and political but also economic and even cultural. The article concerns those weapons which were in use before, as well as after, the general introduction of firearms into Yorubaland (which took place only between about 1820 and 1850). Oral and written tradition provides the background for the surviving weapons. Many of these weapons, or their ceremonial or symbolic counterparts, are preserved for ritual reasons by chiefs and societies.

Two main types of sword were in use among the Yoruba: the two-edged ida, reminiscent (although often only distantly) of European late-medieval swords, and the curved single-edged agedengbe. Various kinds of knives were also carried by warriors. Staff weapons consisted of the spear or lance, used by infantry and cavalry, and the throwing spear or javelin. The most important missile weapon was the bow; an example of a crossbow has also been found. The iron heads and barbs of spears and arrows conform to the main types found elsewhere in West Africa. A variety of percussion weapons (clubs) can be distinguished, in both wood and iron. The war standard provided a rallying point in battle. The arms, accoutrement and dress of the warrior can be reconstructed in some detail.

The evolution of these weapons was affected by the strategy and tactics of Yoruba warfare, the nature of the countryside (savanna and forest), the materials available, and imported prototypes. Most military equipment was of local manufacture, though European, North African and northern Nigerian influence can be detected.

This list contains many scattered dates, most of them from sites either provisionally dated from other sources, or recently excavated. An important series of dates from the Sahara confirm earlier readings for food production in that area. The Daima sequence from Nigeria is dated from the middle of the first millennium A.D. to the closing centuries of the Iron Age.

In East and Southern Africa, two important early Iron Age dates from Kenya have been released. Four dates for Ivuna salt-pans place the site as slightly later than the closing stages of the Kalambo Falls sequence. Two more problematical dates for Engaruka have been announced, as well as a date of A.D. 410 for the Iron Age in Swaziland.

All dates given in this and subsequent lists are radiocarbon ages, rather than readings in calendar years.

The accounts of the Difaqane written in all the major histories of South Africa are based on three books which were written over fifty years ago: G. W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa; D. F. Ellenberger and J. C. Macgregor, The History of the Bosuto; and especially the earliest, G. M. Theal, History of South Africa.

Certain contradictions exist between the story as told in these accounts and the evidence brought to light by the publication of the journals of Robert Moffat and David Livingstone. The object of this study is to reconstruct the events of the wars from the broadest possible evidence to give a more complete description, and thereby to test the revision implicit in the new information.

This revision is required properly to identify the participants in the battles which were observed by Europeans in the western Tswana lands, especially the battle at Dithakong. In the earlier histories all the battles were attributed to the ‘Mantatee’, a name properly applied to one group of Tlokwa ruled at the time by the regentess, MmaNthatisi. Now it is possible to show that these Tlokwa were never in the west, but restricted their migrations to the valley of the Caledon River. Nor can their enemies, the Hlubi of Mpangazita and the Ngwane of Matiwane, be blamed, for they too remained in the east. Rather, the victims of these three bands, the Sotho peoples of the Caledon valley, can be identified as the aggressors among the Tswana beyond the Vaal. Moffat identified the Phuting of Tshane and the Hlakwana of Nkgaraganye. Livingstone demonstrated the role played by Sebetwane and his Fokeng, and Thomas Hodgson implicated Moletsane, the Taung.

While many gaps in our information still exist, this reconstruction seems to justify the revision of the accepted account of the Difaqane.

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.