Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1975"

Peanuts and Colonialism: Consequences of the commercialization of peanuts in West Africa, 1830–70

Abstract: The commercialization of peanuts on the Upper Guinea Coast began along the Gambia River in the early 1830s, expanded to southern Guinea and northern Sierra Leone in the late 1830s, and Senegal and Portuguese Guinea in the early 1840s. African cultivators and traders responded to the new marketing opportunities with remarkable swiftness, and everywhere peanut cultivation spread it occasioned far-reaching economic and social changes for the societies concerned. A rapidly growing demand for peanuts in France, together with favourable changes in French tariffs, greatly benefited French and Senegalese traders in competition with British and Sierra Leonean rivals. The consequence was that the former attained a dominant commercial position on the Upper Guinea Coast by the 1860s, an advantage that would be exploited in the achievement of French political hegemony over much of the area in the colonial partition which followed.

The Chronology of the Iron Age in Bantu Africa

Abstract: Mrs Barbara Ottaway has proposed that the interquartile range of the radiocarbon dates available for a given industry will provide an estimate of the floruit of that industry. The present paper examines some four hundred radiocarbon dates which have so far been processed from Iron Age sites in Bantu Africa, and concludes that the intersextile range provides a more accurate approximation for the floruit of individual industries than does the interquartile range. This approach permits the presentation of a more precise inter-regional synthesis of Iron Age chronology than has previously been attempted. It is demonstrated that the earliest manifestations of the Early Iron Age Industrial Complex are in East Africa. Further to the south, two distinct streams of the Early Iron Age are recognized: that in the eastern part of the sub-continent had penetrated as far to the south as the Transvaal some centuries before the western stream spread into what is now Zambia. The inception of the later Iron Age, around the eleventh century A.D., is shown to have been at least as rapid as was that of the Early Iron Age.In view of the greater precision which the above methodology imparts to the radiocarbon-based chronology, a brief discussion is presented of the calibrations which dendrochronological studies provide between radiocarbon ages and calendar ages. It is concluded that, for the period of the sub-Saharan African Iron Age, the corrections which are called for are minor in comparison with the standard errors of individual radiocarbon dates; and the application of such calibrations to Iron Age dates is not recommended.

The end of red rubber: a reassessment

Abstract: The African rubber boom, which lasted from 1890 to 1913, had a significant economic and political impact on many parts of Africa. While the broad outlines of the boom were determined by the world market, the numerous local and regional variations were influenced more by the depletion of the rubber supplies. The factors that influenced the depletion varied according to whether the region in question was a free trade area or a concession area.The end of the notorious concession companies in the Congo Independent State has generally been attributed to the efforts of English and Belgian reformers. Recent research on Abir, a major Congo concession company, has revealed that attempts at reform were ineffective, and that exhaustion of the of the rubber supplies had caused the rubber system in the Abir concession to break down by 1906, when serious debate on the Congo question was just beginning in Europe.The article shows how the Abir system, which was designed to constantly increase production, led to depletion of the rubber resources. When the depleted areas merged, the territory passed into a period of crisis during which Abir lost control and production plummeted. Production figures for other Congo concession companies suggest that events in their territories followed a similar pattern.

The making of an imperial slum: Nyasaland and its railways, 1895–1935

Abstract: This paper is meant to be a contribution towards assessing the impact of the colonial experience upon Nyasaland, concentrating upon the decision-making processes involved in building the railways that served Nyasaland and the impact that they had upon Nyasaland's economy. In the early 1890s British metropolitan interests became alive to the strategic and commercial importance of Portuguese East Africa south of the Zambezi. To further British interests in the area, imperial decisions were taken to protect the British proxy there, the Mozambique Company. This protection included support for the Trans Zambesia Railway project. This support was calculated to protect British interests from American commercial threats, but the cost of the railway was placed upon the Nyasaland administration. Lumbered with the burden of the railway guarantees, Nyasaland's economy stagnated in the 1920s and African agricultural development was impeded. As a result, by the end of the twenties Nyasaland was being described as ‘the Cinderella of Africa’.In the late 1920s a second major project was approved. This was the construction of the Zambezi bridge. Again, the decision to build this was not taken with the interests of Nyasaland in mind, but rather in order to provide steel orders for a stagnating British steel industry in 1929. The one possible moneymaker for the bridge and railway system, coal from Moatize, was prevented from being developed lest it compete with Welsh coal. And when the decision to build the bridge was made, it was decided that Nyasaland should pay.

Smallpox inoculation in Africa

Abstract: Inoculation for smallpox, the forerunner of vaccination, has had a long and variegated history. The earliest known descriptions of the practice in sub-Saharan Africa were given by African slaves in colonial America in the early and mid-eighteenth century. Subsequently it is mentioned in accounts from widely scattered parts of the continent. It seems to have been most extensively used in the Western and Central Sudan, Ethiopia and Southern Africa. Local diffusion patterns emerge from the evidence available at this time, but broader questions of origin must await further investigation. Similarly it is as yet impossible to assess its demographic impact in Africa although it clearly provided some defence against smallpox in spite of the risks involved.

Underdevelopment and Class Formation in Ovamboland, 1845–1915

Abstract: The Ovambo and their Nkhumbi neighbours live in a flood plain, which is artificially divided by the present frontier between Angola and Namibia. From the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, they underwent a process of underdevelopment and class formation linked to the evolution of commercial relations with western societies. Between 1845 and 1885 the ivory trade temporarily enriched the Ovambo and widened the productive base of their economy through the introduction of fire-arms. At the same time, however, fire-arms became a necessity, and thus forged permanent links of dependence on western societies. Cattle replaced ivory as an export item after the elephants had been shot out, but pressure on the Ovambo's own cattle resources were largely avoided by systematic raiding in southern Angola. After the turn of the century natural disasters and effective Portuguese resistance to raiding made this solution inoperative, and led to a general impoverishment of Ovambo society. The social impact of this impoverishment was extremely uneven, for the kings and their followers passed it on to the more vulnerable members of society through a system of harsh and arbitrary taxation. A new stratum of men without cattle was thus forced to turn to migrant labour in Namibia and Angola. The colonial conquest of 1915 froze this situation into a permanent system of recurrent labour migration.

Land, labour and capital in Natal: The Natal Land and Colonisation Company 1860–1948

Abstract: The history of the London-based Natal Land and Colonisation Company is explored against the background of the evolving political economy of rural Natal. In the early years of the colony, white-controlled farming operations consistently failed. The landholdings of bankrupt colonists passed into the hands of a small group of men with capital. In 1861 this group activated its links with financiers in Britain to float the Natal Land and Colonisation Company. The Company ‘bought’ 250,000 acres of surplus lands from them in return for an injection of metropolitan capital into productive operations to be carried out on the remaining mainly coastal lands, or into further speculative activity. In fact, white-controlled farming activity in the interior continued to stagnate. Money which the Company loaned to white farmers in the 1860s, secured as mortgages on their farms, was not repaid, and the Company took over the lands of the bankrupt until in 1874 it controlled 657,000 acres in Natal. Anxious for a sizeable and more reliable source of income, the Company, in common with some colonists, concentrated on extracting rent from Africans, as yet the only successful farming population of the Natal interior. The increasing importance of this source of income to the Company was rudely interrupted in the 1890s by a fundamental shift in the Natal political economy. New mining centres in South Africa looked to Natal to furnish some of their needs for raw material and labour. The balance of economic and political forces favoured those who demanded labour, not rent, from Natal Africans. The Company switched its capital in good time out of renting land to African farmers and into renting and property development in the growing urban areas of white South Africa. Its properties were brought within the empire of the Eagle Star Insurance Company in 1948.

Bantu, Galla and Somali migrations in the Horn of africa: a reassessment of the Juba/Tana area*

Abstract: This article offers a new reconstruction of Bantu, Galla and Somali migrations in the Horn of Africa, with particular reference to the area between the Juba and the Tana rivers. It is suggested that Garre or proto-Garre Somali gained control of the area between the Juba and the Tana rivers before the Galla arrived in this area, and that in the process the Garre were responsible for pushing Bantu-speaking peoples back to the river Tana. However, it is also argued that the area initially controlled by Bantu-speaking peoples in the Horn of Africa was much more limited than is generally assumed. It is then suggested that around the sixteenth century the Orma Galla migrated to the coast from southern Ethiopia via the Lorian Swamp and the river Tana and not by the river Juba as is generally argued. The arrival of the Orma led to a further retreat of Bantu-speaking peoples towards the Sabaki river, and then to a retreat of the Somali northwards in the direction of the Juba river. In this way the nineteenth-century Somali drive southwards can be seen to some extent as a reconquest of land occupied earlier by them.

The prehistorical, implications of Guthrie's comparative Bantu Part I: Problems of internal relationship

Abstract: After a brief survey of the organization of Guthrie's Comparative Bantu, consideration is devoted to the putative prehistorical interrelationships of the Bantu languages, in the light of Guthrie's and subsequent scholarship. The intended ‘introductory’ nature of Guthrie's work is stressed, his comprehensive survey covering only 28 Test Languages (among over 350). Recent criticisms of and divergences from Guthrie's prehistorical conclusions are considered, together with the inadequacy of the ‘genealogical tree’ approach. The apparent contradiction of Guthrie by Henrici and Heine in particular is shown to be less substantial than at first appears: maps based on the work of all three confirm the remoter relationship of NW. Bantu to the remainder, and also a basic East-West division (but with Luba and Bemba occupying an intermediate position). It seems probable that some NW. languages are to be traced directly to a proto-language in the Cameroun area, rather than to Guthrie's Katangan nucleus, but this means only that Guthrie cast his net too wide, not that his whole thesis is false. It is recommended that the use of the term ‘Proto-Bantu’ be clarified by use of the term ‘Proto-Bantu 1’ for an original NW. nucleus, ‘Proto-Bantu 2’ for a secondary nucleus S. of the Congo forest, and ‘Proto-Bantu 3’ for a tertiary (and overlapping) nucleus to the east of 2. An amended version of Guthrie's sequence of Bantu linguistic expansion is proposed, although attention is drawn to the hazards of necessarily basing this on the evidence of modern Bantu languages only. Henrici's statistical treatment of Guthrie's data assists in distinguishing temporal from spatial distance among the Test Languages.

Caudatum sorghums and speakers of Chari-Nile languages in Africa

Abstract: Our study of caudatum sorghums in Africa and the ethnography, history, and archaeology of regions where caudatum sorghums are grown has led us to the following conclusions.The distributions of caudatum sorghums and Chari-Nile-speaking peoples coincide so closely that a causal relationship seems probable.Caudatum sorghums appear to be a product of selection by Chari-Nile-speaking peoples for a hardy crop which will produce a large amount of grain under adverse conditions with a minimum amount of care. Caudatums can produce grain in spite of either droughts or heavy rains during the growing season and can produce grain in places where no other indigenous African crop can grow.Caudatum may be a relatively new race of sorghum. Available evidence indicates it was developed some time after about 350 A.D. and before about 900 A.D., the date for caudatum found at Daima mound, south of Lake Chad.By about 1000 A.D. caudatum was probably being grown in many parts of the savanna belt stretching from the eastern shores of Lake Chad to southwestern Ethiopia. This is assuming that the evidence of caudatum culture at Daima is indicative of a general phenomenon occurring in a region with close intercultural contacts.The large number of varieties of caudatum in the Republic of the Sudan suggests that caudatum sorghums have been grown in the Sudan for a relatively long time and may have been developed there.A caudatum and cattle-based economy has probably been an important factor in making possible the present level of occupation of regions now inhabited by Chari-Nile-speaking peoples.On the basis of oral histories and archaeological remains of people in northern East Africa, we have concluded that caudatum-based agriculture was probably introduced to Uganda and Kenya no later than the period from 1500–1800 A.D., when the Luo occupied the areas in which they live at the present. However, it is not unlikely that caudatums were introduced more than once as various Chari-Nile-speaking groups made their way into East Africa.

Those Igbo-Ukwu radiocarbon dates: facts, fictions and probabilities

Abstract: In the discussion of the reliance which should be placed on the Igbo-Ukwu radiocarbon dates, it is necessary to make certain that what evidence we have is correctly used. The precise locations of the samples used for dating are recalled and possible sources of error discussed. Consideration is given to the arguments for a date later than that suggested by the radiocarbon dates, stemming from the state of preservation of the textiles, the character of the beads, the pottery evidence, analogies with the presumed dating of Ife and Benin, the quantity and the source of the copper, and what is known of pre-European trading patterns in West Africa. The latter is probably the most serious objection to a very early date, but the question will only be settled with the acquisition of more archaeological evidence.

Nzinga of Matamba in a new perspective

Abstract: Nzinga of Matamba, the seventeenth-century African monarch known primarily for her enmity to the Portuguese in Angola, also faced hostility from her own Mbundu people and the opposition of neighbouring African rulers throughout her long career. Her sex disqualified her from many Mbundu political offices reserved for males, and her origins in the lineageless community at the Mbundu king's royal court made her an outsider in terms of the lineage politics of most Mbundu states. But she overcame these disadvantages by skilful manipulation of the aliens present on the Mbundu borders, Imbangala warrior bands, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, and dominated Mbundu politics and diplomacy until her death in 1663. The domestic forces arrayed against Nzinga triumphed after her death, expelling her chosen successors from the Matamba royal title and omitting her name from the oral traditions of the state. These hypotheses, while not susceptible to direct proof, seem probable on the basis of a re-reading of documentary sources in the light of ethnographic and oral historical evidence collected in 1969–1970.

‘Regroupement’ and mobile societies: two Cameroon cases

Abstract: This paper is a comparative study of the impact of colonial rule on two African societies, the Gbaya and the pastoral Fulani, inhabiting the Adamawa Plateau in central Cameroon. The main discussion focuses on the difficulties experienced by the French in their attempts to administer these two politically uncentralized and geographically mobile peoples. Geographical mobility was not the result of population pressure or other ecological constraint but was a political strategy and means of dispute regulation frequently employed by these societies living in a lightly populated region. Conflicting with this structural tendency towards mobility in both societies was the French policy of regroupement, the concentration and resettlement of subject peoples in stable villages. Examination of the historical record reveals that despite more or less stringent attempts on the part of the colonial powers to restructure Gbaya and pastoral Fulani societies along more politically amenable lines, these societies have changed little in this respect up to the present day and continue to pose the same problems of administration for the modern government of the United Republic of Cameroon.

L'impact des interets coloniaux: S.C.O.A. et C.F.A.O. dans L'Ouest Africain, 1910–1965

Abstract: Par l'analyse comparee de l'evolution, depuis le debut du siecle, des deux plus grandes firmes d'import-export de l'Afrique francophone, l'article teste une methode d'analyse des bilans visant a preciser l'histoire des investissements prives dans l'Empire colonial francais, en privilegiant tour a tour les analyses de conjoncture et le trend a long terme. Les firmes ont trouve des le milieu des annees 20 leur extension geographique definitive. La C.F.A.O., representative du commerce colonial marseillais, a toujours ete plus timoree, mais aussi plus rentable dans le cadre restreint de ‘l'economie de traite’ coloniale. La S.C.O.A., plus dynamique et liee aux milieux bancaires, s'est montree plus sensible a la conjoncture (crise de 1921 et grande Depression), mais s'est reconvertie plus tot aux methodes financieres contemporaines. Dans le long terme, ce qui ressort le plus nettement, c'est une croissance reguliere des profits jusqu'au tournant de l'annee-charniere 1952, qui marquait l'apogee de la hausse des cours des produits tropicaux. Au-dela, la deterioration acceleree des termes de l'echange et l'accroissement des charges sociales ebranlerent les profits coloniaux ‘classiques’. C'est surtout depuis l'independance que les firmes ont modernise leurs structures, caracterisees par l'ampleur nouvelle des investissements d'equipement, la diversification des activites et l'internationalisation des investissements. Neanmoins, l'investissement global reste mediocre, et le renversement tardif de la tendance confirme l'hypothese d'un imperialisme colonial francais archaique et malthusien.

African Women in Towns African Women in Towns. By K. Little. Cambridge University Press, 1973. Pp. 250. Hardcovers £4.90, paperback £1.90.

Abstract: (1870-1950). All three figure in over fifty pages. David Jones, who was on the Executive Committee of the Comintern, is described in minute detail and with some redundancy. There are few links between present South African revolutionaries and their predecessors, and the exceptional treatment of these three suggests that the aim is to help build up revolutionary traditions by the creation of a sort of Pantheon for past and present Communist and non-Communist South African revolutionaries, irrespective of their racial origin.

The !Kora wars on the Orange River, 1830 - 1880

Abstract: This article argues that the !Kora, an essentially Khoisan group in central South Africa, consisted not of hereditary tribes, but of people who had chosen a predatory, raiding way of life. It then traces the history of those !Kora who were based on the jungle-covered islands of the middle Orange river, concentrating particularly on the three wars that occurred between them and the Cape Colony: in 1832–4, when the !Kora were led by Stuurman, 1868–9, when they were under Piet Rooi and Jan Kivido, and the final episodes during 1879–80. Pointing out the difficulty that the colonial forces had in reducing the islands, it shows how the !Kora were able to raid up to 250 kilometers across the Bushmanland Flats, and thus make colonial subsistence over a wide area of the northern Cape Colony non-viable. Nevertheless, it argues that the way of life that the !Kora had chosen could not be sustained in face of the consolidation of colonial society, and describes the processes whereby they were destroyed.

The vanishing Mpongwe: European contact and demographic change in the Gabon River

Abstract: A drastic decline of aboriginal populations has been an important by-product of European commercial and imperial expansion in many parts of the world. Europeans have been aware of this phenomenon from the early days of Spanish exploration and conquest when Fray Bartolome de las Casas deplored the rapid collapse of Indian populations in the Caribbean. The problem still seemed acute in the nineteenth century. For example, the young Charles Darwin, describing the decline of the Australian Aborigines, placed most of the blame on alcoholism, introduced diseases, and the loss of hunting grounds. But these factors did not fully explain what appeared to be the impending extinction of a variety of peoples. ‘Besides these several evident causes of destruction,’ he wrote,there appears to be some more mysterious agency at work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we find the same result.

A West African Cavalry State: the Kingdom of Oyo

Abstract: Following an earlier article in this Journal, by Humphrey Fisher, dealing with the role of the horse in the Central Sudan, this article considers the role of cavalry in the kingdom of Oyo. It is suggested that the use of cavalry may have been adopted by Oyo during the sixteenth century. Oyo never became self-sufficient in horses, but remained dependent for its horses upon importation from the Central Sudan, while local mortality from trypanosomiasis was considerable. Evidence relating to the operations of Oyo armies supports the view that cavalry was of substantial military value, while at the same time illustrating the limitations of the military efficacy of cavalry. The acquisition and maintenance of large numbers of horses represented a considerable economic burden for Oyo, and the high cost of maintaining a large cavalry force may have inhibited the establishment of a royal autocracy in Oyo. The decline of the cavalry strength of Oyo in the early nineteenth century was due, it is suggested, to economic difficulties.

Deforestation, the Decline of the Horse, and the Spread of the Tsetse Fly and Trypanosomiasis (Nagana) in Nineteenth Century Sierra Leone

Abstract: From the information presented above, it can reasonably be established that horses thrived on the Freetown peninsula for sixty years and the disease which eliminated them was T. brucei. This disease was prevalent for at least 15 years although it eventually disappeared, probably before 1900. In addition, clearance of the forest, in three overlapping phases, was carried out prior to and during the outbreak.From the ecology of the three species of tsetse fly possibly implicated in the outbreak of the disease in Sierra Leone, it can be deduced that deforestation and the consequent regeneration and cultivation led to favourable conditions for the expansion of at least G. palpalis and G. longipalpis, and possibly also of G. morsitans. Taking into account the information currently available on the inter-relationships between tsetse fly and trypanosome species, it can also be suggested that G. longipalpis was probably the primary source of the disease but that the disease was sustained, particularly around Freetown itself, by G. palpalis and possibly by other biting flies. That G. longipalpis or even G. morsitans probably initiated the outbreak makes the eventual disappearance of the disease more understandable since both of these species relied upon regenerated forest and an abundance of game, resources which diminished as agriculture progressed. It is likely that these primary carriers infected horses and cattle moving between the provinces and Freetown, thereby providing the link in spreading the disease to the Colony.It appears therefore that the removal of the forest led to the outbreak of trypanosomiasis in horses. A different and more rational approach to forestry in Sierra Leone would have avoided this altogether. In fact it is fortunate that the consequences of this indiscriminate deforestation were not more serious since all three tsetse flies in question are carriers of the human sleeping sickness, T. gambiense. For some reason, however, this species of trypanosome, whilst common in the interior, is not prevalent in the coastal areas of West Africa, though there was in fact, an epidemic of this disease in the 1930s in the Kaiahun area, associated with G. palpalis.Since the horse is relatively sensitive to tsetse fly and its associated trypanosomes, this animal is a good indicator of the presence of trypanosomiasis. Dr McCoy in his memorandum mentions that horses thrive in the Gambia and at Lagos and that ‘loin disease’ was unknown in these places. He makes no reference, however, to horses in Ghana. The history of the horse in other parts of West Africa may therefore be worth pursuing in this respect.

Trade, Islam, and the Mahdia in Northwestern Wallaggā Ethiopia

Abstract: The district of Belā Shangul, in the northwestern corner of the present Governorate-General of Wallaggā, Ethiopia, has played a crucial role in the introduction of Islam in western Ethiopia. The present paper attempts to show how the commercial potential of Belā Shangul was the reason for the peaceful penetration of Islam in the region in the nineteenth century, thus creating the basis for the ready acceptance of the Mahdia by the Islamized ruling families of the region later. It is due to the considerable inroads that Islam had made in the region that the first Mahdist envoys were welcomed there, and that they could operate freely from 1882 onwards. The paper further discusses the importance of Mahdist presence in the region, its impact on local society, and its attempts to penetrate the Oromo countries south and east of Belā Shangul. It argues that Mahdist rule over the region was effective until about 1890, and that the favourable attitude shown towards the Mahdia by the region's ruling families became more hostile mainly because of the harsh rule established in Belā Shangul by the Mahdist commander, Khalīl al-Khuzāni, and of the new militant Islam he introduced in the region. Khalīl's campaign of 1886 and Mahdist raids in 1888–90 further alienated the local rulers, who rebelled under the leadership of ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān of Belā Shangul proper. The reported cession of this district by the Khalifa to Menilek of Ethiopia must be seen in the political context of the time: the border district had become too burdensome for Omdurman to rule, yet its commercial and mineral resources made it too valuable to remain a no man's land.

‘Khama & Co.’ and the Jousse Trouble, 1910–1916

Abstract: ‘Khama & Co.’ was the attempt of an African monarch in colonial east-central Botswana to make his state's internal economy self-reliant through participation in commerce. The company was founded in 1910, and flourished, but the ‘Jousse Trouble’ in 1916 obliged the British imperial administration to dictate its closure. Pressures came from commercial interests well established elsewhere in southern Africa, which wished to subordinate African enterprise to white supremacy, and maybe to incorporate the Bechuanaland Protectorate within Southern Rhodesia or the Union of South Africa.

Slavery and Emancipation in Benin, 1897–1945

Abstract: Slavery and pawning were closely related though different institutions in precolonial Benin society. In many areas of Nigeria and indeed West Africa, colonial rule signified the end of the slave trade but domestic slavery was left undisturbed for quite a long time. The earliest of the slave dealing ordinances merely contained clauses in favour of manumission. In Benin, however, for quite peculiar reasons, the British attack on slavery came with the first entry of British troops into the area. First, emancipation was used to facilitate British occupation. Later, the drive for manumission was a strong expression of the British commitment to a principle which grew out of the ad hoc adoption of measures favouring emancipation.In the attack on slavery and pawning in Benin, the native courts were heavily relied upon as well as the use of ordinances and proclamations. The abolition of slavery and pawning created a welter of problems on the social, economic and political planes.This paper examines these problems and how they were handled by the British administration in Benin. Changes in the society which were the byproducts of emancipation as well as factors which made emancipation possible are also discussed.

An Unknown Nigerian Export: Tiv Benniseed Production, 1900–1960

Abstract: The article examines the factors which influenced Tiv initiative and response in the development of the Nigerian export production of benniseed or sesamum indicum. A trade hitherto largely ignored, it has been overshadowed by the Bohannans' classic account, with its emphasis on the subsistence aspect of Tiv economy. It is therefore presented both as a case study of the development of an African export commodity and as a contribution to the broader field of socio-economic history of the colonial era.

The Kisra legend and the distortion of historical tradition

Abstract: The presence of the ‘Kisra legend’ in certain western Sudanic societies has long puzzled historians and anthropologists. Attempts by many to explain the phenomenon have been seen as unsatisfactory. In Section I of this study we noted the fact that the Arabic Kasra or Kesra, having been derived from the title of one or the other of two Persian kings of the sixth and seventh centuries, denotes, in von Grunebaum's phrase, ‘a truly royal style of life’. The profound influences of Perso-Arabic elements on many cultures of the southern and western Sudan, even before the spread of Islam in these areas, strongly suggests the possibility that, rather than by any specific migration, the idea of ‘Kisra’ was borne across the Sahara, to the areas where it took root in the form of the Kisra legends. When the geographical situation of those societies having fully-developed Kisra legends is considered, noting that the most detailed and strongly held legends obtain among societies who were constantly threatened by others who were recognized as technologically, and possibly felt as culturally, superior, and among whom the Kisra idea also existed, the origins and distribution of such legends becomes more plausibly explainable. It has been suggested that, through a selective altering of historical tradition, over time, societies who felt so threatened were able to (1) assert their equality to, if not superiority over, the threatening power; (2) justify their successful maintenance of independence in spite of this threat; and/or (3) thus re-establish a basis for societal unity.

Akan stool succession under colonial rule—continuity or change?

Abstract: This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the reasons for this. On balance, this testimony suggests that a re-interpretation of early Akan political culture using a wider range of evidence is desirable.Although this implies that the impact of colonial ‘indirect’ rule was not as profound as has often been supposed, I have not discussed this problem directly except as it bears on the quality of the data. Nor have I attempted to analyse the day-to-day dynamics of political life, either for the earlier period (which would be impossible on the evidence) or for the colonial period (which would be irrelevant for comparison). Nevertheless, within the restricted compass of stool succession and paramountcy the argument here is that colonial rule involved little fundamental change from earlier practices. If anything, it probably served to delimit a greater range of previous options by seeking to codify them.

The Art of Benin - An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology . By Philip J. C. Dark. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

Abstract: Tanzania, Fort Jesus surely affected in a real, if not easily measurable, way the Swahili and 'old Arabs', and especially the rulers of Pate, Zanzibar and even Kilwa during its revival in the late eighteenth century. Fort Jesus was the symbol of authority and remained so long after the Portuguese were vanquished. The revival of Swahili stone architecture in the eighteenth century when new palaces and even forts were erected should be considered against this background. Not for nothing, moreover, did Seyyid Said of Zanzibar in the early nineteenth century regard the direct control of Mombasa and the Fort as an objective worth so much of his energy and resources.

La Traite Portugaise en Haute Guinée, 1758–1797: Problèmes et Méthodes

Abstract: Nous avons choisi d'etudier une region restreinte d'Afrique et une periode limitee pour mieux pouvoir poser et tenter de resoudre des problemes qui nous semblent au cœur meme de toute reflexion sur l'histoire de la traite des Noirs: l'origine ethnique des captifs, la proportion d'hommes et de femmes, la mortalite, les rythmes annuels, le rapport entre l'offre africaine et la demande europeenne. Nous avons essaye de montrer que tous ces problemes, trop souvent abordes en ordre disperse, sont en realite inextricablement lies.

Myth and legend as functional instruments in politics: the establishment of the Alawī Dynasty in Morocco

Abstract: The paper examines the ‘Ibn Mashʿal episode’ in Moroccan history and explodes its myth. The episode was a non-event; there was no Jew involved, let alone his assassination. The story was false propaganda by al-Rashīd designed for rallying popular support behind his newly-established power. Its acceptance was assisted by the prevalent world-view. Two anonymous Englishmen visiting Morocco in the seventeenth century were the first to commit to writing the ‘national myth’, thus giving it its first seal of authority, which was later reinforced by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Moroccan chroniclers. The mock commemoration of this non-event, by serving as a regular reminder of the redeeming role of the ‘Alawī dynasty, helped to arouse and promote continuing loyalty to the throne. Various distortions have, however, crept into the basic substratum of al-Rashīd's mythical presentation.

African Diplomacy Foreign Relations of African States , Colston Papers no. 25. Edited by K. Ingham. London, Butterworth, 1974. Pp. 344. £10.

Abstract: This book, beautifully produced and exorbitantly priced, is the outcome of a symposium held under the auspices of the Colston Research Society in the University of Bristol. The purpose of the symposium, which included historians, international lawyers and political scientists, was to 'indicate some of the widely ranging questions raised by an incursion into a comparatively virgin field. . . as little trodden by scholars as was the African continent by European explorers before the nineteenth century' (pp. ix-x). As anyone concerned with the study of contemporary African international politics will recognize, this enterprise is as worthwhile as it is difficult. For the historical dilemma which, in varying degrees, affects the behaviour of all 'new' states, is felt in a particularly acute form in independent Africa: on the one hand there is a need (partly no doubt psychological but also practically necessary, for example in the framing of national interests) to refer back to the African past, to the pre-colonial pattern of interstate and inter-society relations, and to African models of diplomatic practice; on the other hand, as a result of the acceptance by the OAU of the territorial settlement established by the European powers, there is, for the most part, a discontinuity between past and present—the diplomacy of contemporary African States and of their pre-colonial predecessors seldom coincide. It is obvious that in fact there must be a complex inter-relationship; but there is nevertheless a very real problem in tracing the influence of past patterns in contemporary African diplomacy.

A Chronicle of Grand Bonny. By E. J. Alagoa and A. Fombo. Ibadan University Press, Nigeria, 1972. Pp. ix + 134. $3.50.

Abstract: The Adloffs' volume is the second in a series of 'historical dictionaries' edited by John Woronoff. The first, already published, was of Cameroon by Victor Le Vine and Roger Nye and further volumes on Swaziland and the Gambia will be appearing later in 1975. Apart from a short introduction, this pen-portrait of the Congo is reduced to dictionary format—Wilfred Peleka is followed by the entry on Petroleum, and Augustin Poignet's biography follows the entry on Planning, for example. It is therefore an easily used work of reference. But it suffers from the defects of such works, being stronger on facts than upon the interpretation of facts. The authors are to be thanked very much more for the extensive biographical information than they are for their rather bland, thin thematic entries. The all-important map on page 16 is marred by its minute lettering. One imagines that teachers will find such works useful aides-mi^moires but hopes that students will use them with caution.