IN most African farming systems, hired workers provide only a small part of the total labor devoted to agricultural production, even today. By and large, farm labor in Africa is still family labor. However, during and after the colonial period, many Africans also ran agrarian enterprises on a scale and in a nexus of social relations far removed from the traditional picture of the smallholder cultivating land with family labor. In Cameroon, Duala and Bamileke entrepreneurs mobilized and incorporated labor for cash crop production, a process that necessitated changes in existing social and political institutions. This article explores these economic activities in their cultural context. It aims to show how specific social and cultural systems together framed or determined entrepreneurial activities and to explain why specific ethnic groups enjoyed – at least for a certain period – disproportionate success in adapting to the opportunities of colonial life. Geographically, the paper concentrates on the Mungo region in the Cameroon littoral, part of the Cameroon ‘fertile crescent’ (Fig. I). Since the beginning of the twentieth century this thinly populated region has been one of the country's most important agricultural centers and, as a result, has attracted a large number of immigrants. Between the 1880s and 1950s, despite fundamental differences in the social and economic organization of their respective ethnic groups, first Duala and then Bamileke entrepreneurs emerged as leaders in the region's agricultural development.

This paper joins a growing number of studies which aim to refine our understanding of the historical dimensions of African entrepreneurship. In development studies this new interest stems from a concern about the weakness of African private enterprise and its contribution to poor economic performance. Many authors see African entrepreneurs not so much as individuals but as social classes which are analyzed in their socio-economic and political context.

Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. By DEREK NURSE and THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH. Edited by THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH, with a special addendum by GERARD PHILIPPSON. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 121). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1993. Pp. xxxii+780. $80 (ISBN 0-520-09775-0).

Shanga. The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa. By MARK HORTON. (Memoirs of the British Institute of East Africa, 14). London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996. Pp. xvi+458. £75 (ISBN 1-872-56609-x).

Nurse's and Hinnebusch's Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History is the most comprehensive study yet done of Swahili history through linguistic analysis. It is an encyclopedic work representing many years of research by the authors and other scholars, and it focuses particularly on the emergence and evolution of the Swahili language. The massive and diverse evidence they marshal is, of course, almost entirely linguistic: as such they discuss four basal parameters of language relationship and change, namely lexis, morphology, phonology and tone. (The last two are treated together, and G. Philippson reviews the latter.)

When, in 1896, the Moose kingdoms of contemporary Burkina Faso were incorporated in the colony of Haute Volta, a period of sometimes extreme hardship began for their population as the French colonizers introduced head taxes, forced labour and military recruitment, and, during the 1920s, a programme of forced cotton cultivation. The repressive colonial regime and the concomitant ‘pacification’ of the Haute Volta triggered two major migratory movements among the Moose. First, today's massive migration of Moose towards Côte d'Ivoire is generally understood to have been initiated by forced recruitment during colonial times. Until the eve of Haute Volta's independence in 1960, ‘voluntary’ long-distance migration was mainly directed towards the British Gold Coast and has been explained in terms of either the Moose's need to earn a monetary income to pay taxes or their attempts to escape the repressive French colonial regime. The latter also predominates in explanations of the second migratory movement which was towards the so-called aires-refuges: less controlled areas, situated at the margins of the Moose kingdoms and offering places to hide from colonial exactions. The relatively high population densities in the Moose kingdoms and the space-consuming land use practices are often cited as subsidiary causes.

A Green Place, a Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the Fifteenth Century. By David Lee Schoenbrun. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann: Oxford: James Currey, 1998. Pp. xiv+301. £40 (ISBN 0-325-00041-7); £15.95, paperback (ISBN 0-325-00040-9).

An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400. By Christopher Ehret. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia; Oxford: James Currey, 1998. Pp. xvii+354. £35 (ISBN 0-8139-1814-6).

Recently several historical reconstructions based on linguistic evidence and dealing with ancient times have been published in African history. In 1998 alone there are the two books reviewed here as well as a major work by Gerda Rossel. Linguistic sources contribute much to the recovery of aspects of the past, which would otherwise remain out of reach, and the standard methodologies of historical linguistics are well known to readers of this journal. Yet in practice many historians remain all too often disconcerted by such studies because they have great difficulty in evaluating them: i.e. in linking assertions made to the evidence provided and so to establish the credibility of such statements. This is not just because many historians are unfamiliar with linguistic evidence but because all the evidence necessary for evaluation is usually not available in the work studied, and often enough authors do not clearly indicate where it can be found. Indeed sometimes it is not available at all. In such cases one has to take the statements made by the authors on faith: one believes the author or not. That is clearly unacceptable. For is it not a fundamental rule in history writing that assertions must be substantiated and hence evidence must be cited or provided? Any work without substantiation cannot be considered to be a work of history at all.