Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1968"

Connexions between ‘Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism In East and Central Africa. Part I

Abstract: A recent authoritative review of developments in African historiography pointed to one 'kind of synthesis which has always seemed worthwhile undertaking’, the attempt to trace ‘an historic connexion between the last-ditch resisters, the earliest organisers of armed risings, the messianic prophets and preachers, the first strike-leaders, the promoters of the first cautious and respectful associations of the intelligentsia, and the modern political parties which (initially at least) have been the inheritors of European power’

The Early Iron Age in Zambia—Regional Variants and some Tentative Conclusions

Abstract: The Early Iron Age people appear to have been responsible for the introduction into Zambia of pot-making, metallurgy and, less certainly, food production. Recent research has greatly increased the known number of Early Iron Age sites in Zambia and a number of regional variants have been defined, based largely on the typology of the associated pottery. Radiocarbon dates suggest that these groups are all to be dated to the first millennium a.d. and that they are contemporary with, and related to, the earliest known Iron Age in Rhodesia and some East African sites. It is suggested that the Early Iron Age people slowly spread into eastern Africa from an area west of Lake Tanganyika during the first few centuries a.d. Some related sites are known from this westerly region. This hypothesis can be compared with Oliver's interpretation of Guthrie's linguistic evidence; but the use of archaeological and linguistic arguments together is impossible until proof is available that the Early Iron Age people spoke Bantu languages.

Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa

Abstract: This paper attempts to provide a frame of reference for evaluating the role of ordinary rural Africans in national movements, in the belief that scholarly preoccupation with elites will only partially illumine the mainsprings of nationalism. Kenya has been taken as the main field of enquiry, with contrasts and comparisons drawn from Uganda and Tanganyika. The processes of social change are discussed with a view to establishing that by the end of the colonial period one can talk of peasants rather than tribesmen in some of the more progressive areas. This change entailed a decline in the leadership functions of tribal chiefs who were also the official agents of colonial rule, but did not necessarily mean the firm establishment of a new type of rural leadership. The central part of the paper is taken up with an account of the competition between these older and newer leaderships, for official recognition rather than a mass following. A popular following was one of the conditions for such recognition, but neither really achieved this prior to 1945 except in Kikuyuland, and there the newer leaders did not want official recognition. After 1945 the newer leadership, comprising especially traders and officials of marketing co-operatives, seems everywhere to have won a properly representative position, due mainly to the enforced agrarian changes which brought the peasant face to face with the central government, perhaps for the first time. This confrontation, together with the experience of failure in earlier and more local political activity, resulted in a national revolution coalescing from below, co-ordinated rather than instigated by the educated elite.

Bantu Expansion: The Evidence from Physical Anthropology Confronted with Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence

Abstract: Processes of expansion in central and eastern Africa, independently evidenced by linguistics, anthropobiology and archaeology, display such similar patterns that they may be regarded as facets of the same sequence of events. This paper develops mainly the anthropobiological evidence by using new methods of analysis based on multivariate distances. It ends with a coherent synthesis of the contributions of the three disciplines to the problems of Bantu expansion.

The Value of Imported Ceramics in the Dating and Interpretation of the Rhodesian Iron Age

Abstract: Since the start of archaeological investigation in Rhodesia, isolated sherds of imported Chinese ceramics have been found in the important Iron Age ruins of Zimbabwe, Khami and Dhlo Dhlo. More recently, abundant finds of both Chinese and European glazed wares have occurred in excavations of early Portuguese trading stations within Rhodesia. All such imports are here redescribed from an examination of the finds and from a detailed study of the early excavator's reports. As a result, some important early misdescriptions and misunderstandings become apparent. The dating evidence provided by the imports is therefore also re-examined.Very rare sherds of Chinese celadons are virtually the only imported ceramics found in the later deposits at Zimbabwe, and at five other sites. These may be correlated with finds from J. S. Kirkman's excavations in trading settlements of the East African coast, and are dated certainly earlier than the sixteenth century. The finds from four other sites, the most important being the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins, consist mainly of Chinese blue-and-white porcelains and their European imitations. They correlate well with finds not only from the seventeenth and early eighteenth century Portuguese trading stations in Rhodesia, but also with finds from contemporary deposits at Fort Jesus, Mombasa. The precise dating of the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins within this period, as suggested by the imports, shows Khami to belong to the early seventeenth century with Dhlo Dhlo a century later. The divergence between the Khami, Dhlo Dhlo and Portuguese imported ceramics and those of Zimbabwe is sufficiently striking to suggest strongly that Zimbabwe was of negligible trading power by the time the Portuguese penetrated the interior in the sixteenth century. Evidence bearing on this, particularly from the 1958 Zimbabwe excavations, is discussed in detail.Glass beads and glass are the only other imports to survive in Central African archaeological contexts and are of considerably less chronological value than the ceramics. They are, however, also considered, as are the pattern and extent of the trade with the interior evidenced by these imports.

Bantu Genesis—Archaeological Reflexions

Abstract: The article presents a reassessment of the archaeological background for the prehistory of the Bantu movements. The differences between the Channelled wares of Central Africa and the Dimple-based wares of East Africa are demonstrated and the greater abundance of Dimple-based ware sites noted. In both cases the distribution is largely in areas suitable for primary cultivation such as river valleys and lakeside areas. It is suggested that both wares are derived from pottery traditions originating to the west of their eastern African distribution areas. Recent evidence would indicate that iron working spread to sub-Saharan Africa both from West Africa and also, via the East African coast, from the Red Sea, and that the earliest iron-using peoples in southern Africa were probably not all negroes. It is also suggested that a negro foraging population was perhaps present in Central Africa before the arrival of agriculture. On agricultural origins, it is noted that some agriculture existed in the Rift valley area by perhaps as early as 1000 b.c., though the main expansion of agriculture is postulated as being of western origin. In conclusion it would appear that the West African origins of Bantu genesis are more important than suggested by Oliver in Journal of African History, Volume VII, and almost certainly antedate the 2000 years timescale previously advanced.

Aspects de L'Archeologie Ethiopienne

Abstract: Au premier millenaire avant notre ere, l'Ethiopie entre en contact avec la culture semitique. Cette recontre donne lieu a l'elaboration assez rapide d'une synthese ou l'element aborigene — les Proto-Ethiopiens — s'assimile une religion, des usages etrangers et se cree de nouveaux modes d'existence. Les plus anciens monuments archeologiques temoins de ce fait, trouves sur les hauts plateaux du nord, datent des environs du cinquieme siecle avant J.-C. Ce sont essentiellement des statues, un trone sculpte en pierre, des inscriptions ,des autels votifs. La culture ethiopienne de cette periode derive de la culture sudarabique, et s'en distingue. Un processus d'evolution est alors amorce dont l'aboutissement sera l'instauration du pouvoir axoumite aux premiers siecles de l'ere, et la fondation d'Axoum comme capitale d'un royaume dont la duree s'etendra sur un millenaire.On peut diviser en trois periodes le deroulement de l'antiquite ethiopienne: periode sudarabisante, periode intermediaire, et periode axoumite. Deux sites illustrent les etapes de cette evolution: Matara, surtout par sa stratification, et Axoum ou recemment une mission de l'Institut Ethiopien d'Archeologie a mis au jour les vestiges importants d'une demeure seigneuriale (château) de la periode axoumite.Dans ce bilan de l'acquis nouveau en archeologie ethiopienne, nous donnons un bref apercu des recherches en prehistoire et protohistoire. Les faits marquants sont principalement les resultats obtenus par une mission internationale dans la basse vallee de l'Omo (notamment, la decouverte du Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus) et les travaux de J. Chavaillon sur le site de Melka-Kontoure oa se trouvent en stratification quasiment toute la serie des industries de la prehistoire africaine depuis la Pebble Culture.

Sheep and Central Sudanic Peoples in Southern Africa

Abstract: This paper, building on the evidence of Bantu words for sheep, develops the hypothesis that livestock-keeping was introduced to southern Africa by people speaking Central Sudanic languages. It is suggested in particular that livestock may have been spread south from western Tanzania, one branch dispersing directly to southern Africa and another eastward to the Indian Ocean seaboard. It should be possible to test this hypothesis further as our knowledge of the languages involved, especially the Central Sudanic languages, grows.

The Swahili Community of Mombasa, 1500–1900

Abstract: The Swahili community of modern Mombasa is composed of an amalgam of the descendants of the city's early ‘Shirazi’ settlers and more recent immigrant Swahili groups, most of which migrated south to Mombasa Island during or after the sixteenth century. It appears likely that the ‘Shirazi’. dynasty and its retainers were themselves derived from older Swahili settlements along the southern Somali coast. After the ‘Shirazi’ polity was destroyed by. the Portuguese and their local allies in 1591–93, Mombasa's accretions of foreign Swahili gradually reorganized themselves into twelve mataifa or ‘tribes’. These twelve mataifa grouped themselves into two separate and sometimes hostile confederations, the Thelatha Taifa (The Three) and the Tisa Taifa (The Nine). Political unity was maintained by means of a loosely structured state system in which foreign dynasties of Omani Arabs, first the Mazrui and later the Busaidi, bridged the gap between the two confederations. During the Mazrui period (approximately 1735–1837), Mombasa was an independent city-state which enjoyed political hegemony over much of the Kenya and north Tanzania coasts. Under Busaidi rule (1837–95) the city lost its independence and was incorporated in the Zanzibar Sultanate. Differences between the Thelatha Taifa and the Tisa Taifa slowly faded during the Busaidi period and have almost disappeared since 1900. Though precolonial social and political structure is still perceptible in the modern Swahili community of Mombasa, it has for the most part become vestigial.

The Decolonization of North African History

Abstract: Since independence the countries of North Africa have been occupied almost exclusively with the establishment of a new society. An important part of this activity has been directed towards a solution to the problem of symbols and values: the construction of an image of themselves for their own contemplation and for export to the world outside. One aspect of this general problem of acculturation is concerned with interpretations of history and the evaluation of one's own place in historical evolution. Starting from the premiss that North African history has largely been a monopoly of French scholarship since 1830, contemporary historical writers in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco have found it essential, before entering upon problems of historical interpretation, to rewrite their own history. Discovery of this first requisite has generated a spirit shared by all those writers preoccupied with this problem, however much they might disagree on solutions to it, which is best expressed by the phrase ‘decoloniser l'histoire’. The subject is vast, and I should like here only to indicate several of the problems, with their proposed solutions, so far treated by writers dealing with the history of Algeria.

Gungunyane the Negotiator: A Study in African Diplomacy

Abstract: Gungunyane, paramount chief of the Shangana of Gazaland, 1884–95, was a very shrewd diplomat. A study of his diplomacy with Europeans suggests that his major goal was Shangana independence of action. From the beginning of his reign, Gungunyane was pressured to give concessions in both economic and political spheres. His capital was on the edge of the Rhodesian plateau until mid-1889, when the chief moved a large portion of his people as well as his capital southward to the Limpopo valley, Mozambique. This significant dislocation influenced later negotiations with Portugal. Although the chief was a strong personality, he was subject to pressures from his immediate—and in this case, warlike—African advisors. In negotiations with the British South Africa Company, the Mozambique Company and the Portuguese government, the African leader enjoyed the benefits of a fearful military reputation, a wide-reaching espionage system, and conflicts between British and Portuguese concession-seekers. A master of playing both ends against the middle to maintain his freedom of movement, Gungunyane found, nevertheless, that his diplomatic programme was undermined by Portuguese superiority in the use of firearms, disunity among the Shangana and their tributaries, and growing social disintegration caused by alcoholism, emigration, and European encroachment. His final military defeat by Portuguese forces in 1895 was not a true index of his talent as an African diplomat.

Ibn-Ḥawqal, The Cheque, and Awdaghost

Abstract: It is generally accepted that Ibn-Ḥawqal crossed the Sahara and visited Awdaghost in 951/2 to be the first Arab geographer who reached the gates of bilād al-Sūdān. This is inferred from what he says about a cheque he saw in Awdaghost. A critical analysis of the references to this cheque suggests that it was a bill of debt owed by a trader from Sijilmāsa resident at Awdaghost to another trader from Sijilmāsa. The transactions between the two were part of the trans-Saharan trade, with one partner resident at Awdaghost and the other at Sijilmāsa. The bill must have been held by the creditor, whom Ibn-Ḥawqal could have met at Sijilmāsa.It was from this man that Ibn-Ḥawqal recorded the information about the ruler of the Ṣanhāja in the southern Sahara, and probably also about his relations with Ghana and other Sudanese polities. Another valuable piece of information, about the abandoned route from Ghana to Egypt, was collected in the oases of Egypt. Also, the detailed list of Berber tribes inhabiting the area between Tadmekka and Air could have been obtained in North Africa, rather than at Awdaghost, because communications in the Sahara were more frequent between north and south than between west and east.Ibn-Ḥawqal's description of the Sahara is stereotypic and adds nothing to what earlier geographers had to say, and the same applies to his words concerning Awdaghost itself. Towns and kingdoms in the Sudan mentioned by Ibn-Ḥawqal had already been recorded earlier by al-Yaʻqūbī, Ibn al-Faqīh and al-Masʻūdī. For a traveller who crossed the Sahara, Ibn-Ḥawqal's information is rather poor, but if he collected his information north of the Sahara, as this paper suggests, his labours as an inquisitive geographer are praiseworthy.

Nyungu-ya-Mawe and the ‘Empire of the Ruga-rugas’

Abstract: The introduction by the Arabs of new forms of storable wealth, together with fire-arms and gunpowder, into the interior of nineteenth century East Africa gave a direct stimulus to tribal warfare. Among the Nyamwezi of West Central Tanzania, who had practised long-distance trade in ivory before the Arab penetration took place, charismatic war-leaders appeared who created new hegemonies over the smaller, traditional units of these multi-chiefdom societies. These leaders attempted to capture the trade and control the main lines of communication. Mirambo was the most famous of them, but Nyungu-ya-Mawe, who was his exact contemporary (both died in 1884) was, perhaps, more successful. Nyungu created a polity which outlasted his own lifetime by more than a decade.Like Mirambo, he used a corps of professional soldiers called Ruga-ruga to carry out his conquests. The latter included most of the 20,000 square miles of Ukimbu and a part of southern Unyamwezi as well. He skilfully adapted the chiefly institutions of the Kimbu to a wider hegemony, and to an economy based on the large-scale exploitation of Kimbu resources in ivory. By his appointment of vatwale, lieutenants or military governors, as his military, political and economic agents in the various provinces of Ukimbu, he was able to hold his ‘empire’ together. The proliferation of small chiefdoms had been endemic to the Kimbu, a people with a forest economy that imposed both the need for small, political units, and for freedom of movement over a wide area. Nyungu and his vatwale halted this process.Nyungu was Mirambo’s ally in the early years, and was supported by him as the loyalist candidate for the important Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe (Tabora). Later, however, in 1880, when Nyungu defeated Mirambo’s powerful vassal, Mtinginya, and seized control of the central caravan route to the coast, relations between the two men became strained. When the Germans dismantled Nyungu’s hegemony in 1895, they destroyed the only realistic attempt ever made to unify an area of extreme political complexity.

The Dilemma of Press Freedom in Colonial Africa: The West African Example

Abstract: One of the most striking features of the African nationalist movement is the great effort that was made to safeguard the freedom of the press. As British subjects, most of whom were trained in Britain, educated Africans assumed that they were entitled to enjoy a free press, which was an essential ingredient in the British political tradition. Their newspapers were almost unavoidably highly critical, and colonial administrators sought to control them. A variety of factors contained official repressive enthusiasm, and these provide the key to the relatively small number of press prosecutions and the seeming reluctance to enforce press legislation. The situation is illustrated from the history of the early nationalist newspaper press in former British West Africa.

African Divisional Politics in the Cape Colony, 1884 to 1910

Abstract: African voters played an important part in many electoral divisions of the Cape Colony between 1884 and 1910. Traditional leaders, particularly headmen, exercised some influence, but declined in the period under review. Ministers of religion, school-teachers and others of the new strata created by colonial society were given a leading role, but in the absence of patronage they were limited to persuasion, and decisions on candidates to support were taken collectively, often at mass meetings that included a wider polity than those on the voters' roll. Ad hoc African electoral committees were formed to bring candidates to the notice of the politically conscious and to implement decisions once these were taken. White candidates established committees of their own and sometimes these overlapped with the African committees. African electoral agents employed by candidates played an important part in running a campaign. The network created by these African committees provided the basis for territory-wide organizations.

Local roots of policy in German East Africa

Abstract: The standard history of the German period in Tanzania has been seriously marred by imperial rivalries and excessive concentration on metropolitan aspects of German policy-making. In the period to 1907, which has heretofore been written off as a time of punitive expeditions and absence of administrative direction, the government in fact developed a secular state education service. The standard curriculum generated by the state was later adopted by missionary schools. The policy was controversial, and the strength of the administration's relatively pro-African position may be explained by the continuity of personnel, by the popularity of the secular schools, and by pessimism among officials as to whether white settlers could make an economic contribution commensurate with their political claims.

The Nineteenth-Century Gold ‘Mithqal’ in West and North Africa*

Abstract: One of the units in which prices and exchange-rates are expressed by nineteenth-century travellers is the gold mithqal. This paper is an attempt to discover, and if possible to make some sense of, the various values of the gold mithqal at different times and places in West and North Africa during the nineteenth century.

Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars

Abstract: The Hehe now live mainly in the Iringa and Mufundi districts of Tanzania. Little is known of their early history before the mid-nineteenth century, when chief Munyigumba of Ng'uluhe extended his rule over the other chiefdoms of the Usungwa highlands and central plateau of Uhehe. By his death in ca. 1878 he had also won important victories against the chiefs of Utemikwila, Usangu and Ungoni.After Munyigumba/s death the Hehe suffered a temporary set-back when Mwambambe, who had been a subordinate ruler under Munyigumba, tried to usurp the chiefship, killed Munyigumba's younger brother and caused one of his sons, Mkwawa, to flee to Ugogo. However, eventually Mwambambe was killed in battle against Mkwawa, and his surviving followers, whom he had recruited from Kiwele, fled. By 1883, when Giraud visited Uhehe, Mkwawa was the unchallenged ruler of his father/s lands, and under him the Hehe, who had only recently acquired political unity, had extraordinary military success. Their most important raids were on the caravan route which ran from Bagamoyo on the coast to Lake Tanganyika. By 1890 these raids were a threat to German authority and a major obstacle in the way of colonization and the development of trade. In spite of the Germans' effort to make peace with them, the Hehe persisted in attacking caravans and the people who had submitted to the Germans so, in 1891, a German expedition was sent to Uhehe. This was ambushed and defeated by the Hehe, who then continued their raids, causing the Germans to return in 1894 with a larger expedition and destroy the Hehe fort. Chief Mkwawa may have attempted suicide in the fort, but he was persuaded to flee and then maintained his resistance to the Germans until 1898 when he shot himself to avoid capture. The Hehe then submitted to the Germans. Mkwawa's own determination not to surrender was a very important factor in the long struggle. During this war the Germans acquired a respect for the Hehe which has affected the way that the Hehe have been regarded and treated ever since.

Field Techniques for Collecting and Processing Oral Data

Abstract: Oral tradition as a source for African history has been subject to a certain amount of controversy in recent decades. These discussions have clarified both the uses and the problems of oral data; they have.raised important methodological issues, but they have also beclouded others. At the higher theoretical levels, the debate has involved the philosophy of history and the nature of historical knowledge. These issues are both interesting and important, but the discussion is not very helpful to the working historian.

Masai and Kikuyu: an historical analysis of culture transmission

Abstract: The tendency of East African Bantu tribes to borrow cultural features from pastoral or semi-pastoral ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ peoples has often been observed, but thus far only two serious attempts have been made to explain this phenomenon. Herskovits first put forward the idea that the tribes of East Africa formed a ‘cattle complex’ epitomized and shaped by the ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ pastoralists. In a more limited study, LeVine and Sangree concluded that the proclivity of a Bantu tribe to borrow from a ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ group was dependent upon the relative population size of the peoples in question, the success or failure of the Bantu group in defending itself against attack, and the need of the Bantu to ally themselves with a ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ tribe.The tentative history of relations between the Bantu Kikuyu and the ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ Masai established in this paper suggests that both these theories err. Beginning with the first meeting of the two tribes about 1750, the Masai inflicted great damage on the Kikuyu while both were resident on the plains near Mount Kenya. When the Kikuyu secluded themselves in the forests after about 1800, they began to experience a significant degree of success in warding off the Masai, without any need for allies. Yet borrowing went on almost without interruption throughout both periods.The actual nature of that borrowing was very different from the process which Herskovits imagined. Rather than being influenced by the way in which cattle functioned in Masai society, the Kikuyu were much impressed with the Masai as militarists, and this is reflected by the fact that the Kikuyu borrowed far more from the Masai military system than from anything relating to cattle.

Bunyoro and the British: A Reappraisal of the Causes for the Decline and Fall of an African Kingdom

Abstract: The problem raised in this paper is fundamentally that of the value of oral traditions used as historical sources. There is a tendency to accept them uncritically and thereby to perpetuate myths which a little critical investigation would have ended years before. The present writer has attempted to demonstrate that a historian dealing with traditional history must widen his field far beyond the oral traditions which are of immediate interest to him. Like other sources, comparisons with and the cross-checking of the traditions of other countries are essential factors in reconstructing the pre-colonial history of Africa. The results of such an exercise have been shown in this paper, the main purpose of which has been to trace and reassess the causes for the decline and fall of Bunyoro, by using not only the oral traditions of Bunyoro, as has been the practice hitherto, but also those of her neighbours such as Ankole, Buganda, Busoga, Kiziba and Ruanda. The results have shown that the effects of succession wars were less disastrous than is often believed. But the economic and territorial Josses, coupled with the persistent lack of able leadership, were more important than the so-called federalism of the Babito. For a semipastoralist population, cattle plagues may have been as disastrous as other factors. The British no doubt played a role, but it deserves less emphasis than it has hitherto received. By the time of their arrival Bunyoro had declined almost beyond recovery, and it is doubtful whether Kabarega could even have retained Toro. The British treatment of Bunyoro and Kabarega was typical of the reactions of colonial regimes against African resisters. Some of the questions raised in the concluding paragraphs regarding the possible future of Bunyoro had not the British intervened are perhaps too speculative. Nevertheless, they are worth asking, if the history of Bunyoro is to be seen in the right perspective.

The Cwezi Cult

Abstract: In the broad scope of the traditional history of the Interlacustrine region of East Africa, perhaps no problem is more complex, nor more interesting, than that of the Cwezi (or Chwezi), the powerful figures with one foot among the gods and one foot in the world of man. These figures, recalled through spiritpossessioji. in most of the Interlacustrine region, are remembered in traditions which are, by nature of their religious character, difficult to use in historical reconstruction. The Cwezi are said to have dominated most of the region for some two or three generations in perhaps the fourteenth or fifteenth century, only then to disappear (variously, to the south, down a hole, to the slopes of a volcano), later returning to possess people from time to time. Some of their power may be attributed to their association with 'sacred kingship', the introduction or beginnings of which in the region may have been contemporaneous with their living dominance. The sounder opinions concerning the Cwezi are largely built on collations of archaeological data and the small body of traditions in which they are mentioned. Few scholars have tried to approach the Cwezi problem through structural analysis of the Cwezi cult and traditions past and present. Now comes a far-reaching work which undertakes such an analysis—Le Rwanda et la civilisation interlacustre, by Luc de Heusch of the University Libre de Bruxelles. De Heusch does not restrict his attention to the spirit-possession cult. He examines such other problems as the emergence and growth of the Rwanda kingdom, the transformation of a clan structure to a caste structure, and the applicability of the term 'feudalism' to Interlacustrine social systems. But his central theme is the spirit-possession cult as it developed out of the collapse and defeat of the brief Cwezi dynasty. The author, accepting the historicity of the Cwezi rulers, attempts to set them in historical context. He focuses upon the defeat and flight of the Cwezi, crucial, according to his own thesis, to the emergence of the Cwezi myth and the possession-cults built around the central Cwezi figures. Concerning this demise of the Cwezi, the author departs considerably from the scheme set forward by Oliver in the History of East Africa. The central variance concerns the position of the Hinda, the founders of a number of kingdoms in the southern and western parts of the Interlacustrine region. De Heusch draws on Haya traditions which assign Kibi I, founder of the Kiziba kingdom, to the lineage of the Mukama of Bunyoro, through Ruhinda, the eponymous Hinda. Haya testimony also asserts that the Bito royal clan in Kiziba is related to the Hinda clan. This leads de Heusch to the conclusion that the Hinda are, like the Mukama of Bunyoro, Nilotic Bito. In the author's

The Extension of British Rule to Anlo (South-East Ghana), 1850–1890

Abstract: Anlo is in South-East Ghana. During the pre-colonial period she made herself thoroughly hated by her neighbours. Thanks to this unpopularity, when Denmark and later Britain decided to subdue Anlo, each found ready allies amongst Anlo' s neighbours.In 1850 Britain ‘acquired’ jurisdiction over Anlo from Denmark. This proved a false start. Britain withdrew in 1859. In 1874, however, jurisdiction was resumed. Even now the extension of jurisdiction was piecemeal. Initially only the coastal area within the range of the artillery of the fort at Keta was under any semblance of jurisdiction. Anlo tended to ignore the colonial administration. In 1885 and 1889 there was armed resistance which took some time to crush.Nevertheless, this time British jurisdiction had come to stay. Over the years it extended in scope and intensity. By 1890 when Britain had demonstrated her ability to enforce compliance with her laws, Anlo became a regular part of Britain's colony of the Gold Coast.

The Crispe Family and the African Trade in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract: Nicholas Crispe (1598–1666) played a very important part in the developing of English trading contacts with West Africa in the seventeenth century. He obtained a commanding position within the African company in 1628 and did much to secure the company's reconstitution on a sounder basis in 1631. From 1631 until 1644 Crispe was the driving force behind the trade and, in particular, directed and largely financed the successful English entry into the gold trade of the Gold Coast, where permanent English factories with resident traders were established for the first time and a fort was started at Kormantin. After the Restoration he tried to regain his former position, but was unsuccessful, though his membership of the Company of Adventurers did give him some influence on the trade. Other members of the family were also involved in the African trade, sometimes in a significant way, over the same period.

The establishment of elective institutions in Senegal, 1869-1880

Abstract: As the oldest and, for a long time, the most important French possession in West Africa, Senegal occupied a privileged position among the French West African colonies. This exceptional status was boosted by the elective institutions conceded to the colony between 1870 and 1880, namely, municipal organization, a conseil general, and deputy representation.In 1870, ‘Senegal’ was no more than a congeries of scattered military posts and trading stations. By far the most important of these establishments were the quatre communes, famous for their special legal status and their privileged inhabitants, made up of the French and the mulattoes, who controlled the political situation, and the Senegalese. By 1870 the colony had acquired some of the important ingredients which could accelerate the growth of political consciousness: a relatively good communications network; growing urban centres; a developing elite, made up largely of traders and agents of the Bordeaux commercial firms who controlled the economic situation; and an administrative regime which had little or no place for unofficial representation.The elite demanded a conseil general which alone, they felt, could protect their interests effectively. The outcome of their agitation was determined by three main factors: their influence; the attitude of the local administration, notorious for its hostility to elective institutions; and political vicissitudes in France. The institutions were conceded in the 1870s; that is, during the first years of the Third Republic, when the policy of assimilation began to be consciously applied in French colonies.The establishment of these institutions widened the gap between the quatre communes, to which the reform was limited, and the rest of Senegal, where the system of indirect rule held sway, and marked the beginning of mutual jealousy and conflict between the two sections. It put Senegal ahead of the rest of French West Africa, which continued until after World War II to be governed in a less liberal fashion. It marked France's first major effort at political assimilation in West Africa, and witnessed the determination of the Bordeaux firms, who had spearheaded the movement for the conseil general, to control not only the economic but also the political life of the colony. And lastly, it helped to create the situation whereby the Senegalese, who had until then been no more than mere pawns on the political chessboard of the French and the mulattoes, emerged, with the advent of Blaise Diagne in 1914, as the politically dominant group in Senegal.

Annular eclipse maps

Abstract: The purpose of these maps, like those of the total solar eclipses published earlier,1 is to enable a historian rapidly to identify an apparent reference in his sources to a solar eclipse, or to ascertain the moments at which eclipses might have been witnessed over specific areas in Africa. The originals have again been that have not yet been published or reported. An annular eclipse (Lat. annulus, ring) occurs when the umbra, the Moon's shadow, falls short of the Earth's surface, so that for someone standing in the track of the eclipse merely the central portion of the Sun is obscured, and a ring of sunlight still appears round the dark body of the Moon. The maps show the central paths of the eclipses; as in the case of total eclipses, the tracks can vary in width from near zero to a maximum of, in a few instances, about 200 miles, and, as with total eclipses, a partial eclipse is produced on either side of these tracks. For the purpose of identifying a reference to an eclipse, however, it is essential to remember that the effects of a total eclipse-the sudden onset of darkness, the drop in temperature, the view of the corona and of the glowing, blood-red prominencies of the Sun (precisely the phenomena most liable to cause the greatest alarm among unprepared spectators)-are never produced during an annular eclipse. Thus, whereas in a clear sky the occurrence of a total eclipse would certainly be noticed and cause acute alarm, an annular or a partial eclipse of even a high magnitude might well pass unobserved.3 When attempting to identify an eclipse reference, one should therefore always begin by consulting the maps showing the paths of the total eclipses, for even if totality did not apparently occur at the particular point referred to in the source, the possibility that a total eclipse was witnessed close to this point and by the same ethnic group should always be considered. There seem in fact to be at least three relatively well-

The Transkeian Council System 1895–1955: An Appraisal

Abstract: For sixty-one years, from 1895 to 1955, the area known as the Transkeian Territories was the scene of an ‘experiment’ in local government based on district councils of elected members under the chairmanship of White magistrates. These councils were essentially advisory, and initiated proposals for expenditure on a range of parochial matters such as the building and maintenance of roads and bridges, water conservation, postal services and fencing. The twenty-six district councils were integrated into the United Transkeian General Council, or Bunga , which met annually in Umtata, and which was composed of delegates from the District Councils and the magisterial District Chairmen. The General Council operated engineering and agricultural departments, and spent considerable sums on soil and water conservation.

The Nyamwezi The Political Organization of Unyamwezi. By R. G. Abrahams. Cambridge University Press, 1967. Pp. xvi + 208, tables, illustrations, maps. 50s. The Peoples of Greater Unyamwezi. By R. G. Abrahams. Ethnographic Survey of Africa. Edited by Daryll Forde. East Central Africa, Part XVII. London: International African Institute, 1967. Pp. ix + 95, tables, map. 17s. 6d.

Abstract: This is a work of popular anthropology which describes the social behaviour of the people of Kongo in terms which should be comprehensible even to historians. M. Balandier is at his best when describing such matters as the fine balance which had to be struck in the succession to stately office between legitimate inheritance and political ability. He is also expert at explaining the sexual symbolism and imagery which played so great a role in the daily life of Kongo, and so falsely caused the missionaries to see it as a society devoid of moral codes. In places the treatment contains historical depth, and we see the effects of introducing European patrilineal inheritance, or of the impact of large numbers of predominantly male expatriates on marriage customs and social mores which they do not understand. In general, however, historians are liable to be a little disappointed that the picture remains rather static; the setting is historical, but within it there is a lack of progress through time. To overcome this flatness, a potted political history of Kongo has been inserted by way of introduction. This however, is the least satisfying part of the book; it carries our knowledge little farther than did Cuvelier, and will leave the reader more impatient than ever for a serious historical study of what must surely be one of Africa's best documented kingdoms. Occasionally in this section the use of sources is under-critical, as on page 17, where it is stated that the Kongo 'certainly' dominated, drove back, or assimilated the Ambundu who previously inhabited their kingdom; this unfootnoted assertion may have been derived from a statement by Van Wing and should surely be left open to a wide element of doubt. This, however, does not detract from the overall usefulness of a handbook which neatly summarizes the published accounts—though not the correspondence and documents in Brasio— of the Kongo kingdom, and sheds on them the insight of a social anthropologist.

British rule and indigenous organization in Nigeria: a case-study in normative-institutional change

Abstract: The article examines administrative policy in Idoma (Northern Nigeria) as a response to two dilemmas confronting the colonial power: (1) how to reconcile a persistent, even if varyingly intense, commitment to indirect rule with a desire for institutional change; (2) how to reconcile a synthesis of the two with the longrange objective of normative change, including ‘progress’ and ‘administrative efficiency’. While normative change remained a long-range colonial objective, institutional change assumed the highest short-range priority.Institutional change involved a pendular course of development: on the one hand, cultivation of strong chieftaincy and centralization based on the Fulani model; on the other, ‘democratization’, rooted first in traditional Idoma constitutionalism, and finally in Western notions of majoritarian local government. These developments are traced through three historical phases. (1) 1908–1930: occupation, pacification, boundary adjustment, and the quest for an indigenous leadership; (2) 1931–1945: systematic implementation of, and subsequent retreat from, the policy of Indirect Rule; (3) Post-World War II: centralization and ‘democratization’ of the Idoma Native Authority or local government establishment. Paradoxically, ‘democratization’ promoted the centralization of authority in Idoma.By 1960, when Nigeria became independent, it could fairly be said that the colonial power's culminating exercises in institutional change were successful. Politically and administratively, Idoma was centralized as never before. That it had yet to experience the efficiency which might have resulted from longrange normative change did not detract from that achievement.

Madagascar and Africa II. The Sakalava, Maroserana, Dady and Tromba before 1700

Abstract: Linguistic research has revealed a Bantu ‘substratum’ among the few ethnic relics of western Madagascar that survive in what became known as the Sakalava empire. Early in the 1600's, two Jesuits familiar with both sides of the Mocambique Channel, discovered that some 300 miles of western Malagasy littoral bore the name of Bambala and were inhabited by Bantu-speaking agriculturalists, whose idiom was only modified by Malagasy loans. Bambala's African colonies were sub-divided into riverain chiefdoms, the largest of which was Sadia, with some 10,000 inhabitants in 1617. From it, the Sakalava warriors fanned out in the 1620's, came into contact with the southwestern Maroserana dynasty and gave it an empire by 1690 stretching from St Augustine Bay to present-day Majunga.Maroserana kings adopted two of Bambala's politico-religious institutions, while the empire-building gradually decimated the original Sakalava warriors and swept away Bambala's Bantu speakers by ± 1710. Pastoralists from north, south and east replaced the former agricultural peoples while retaining the name ‘Sakalava’. But, there is no doubt that the first Malagasy empire was an African creation, and doubly so since association with gold confirms anew the close links between the Maroserana and gold-bearing Mwene Mutapa.