Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1978"

Plantations in the Economy of the Sokoto Caliphate

Abstract: At a time when coastal West Africa was responding to the growth of ‘legitimate’ trade, the Sokoto Caliphate was experiencing dramatic expansion in the plantation sector. Plantations (gandu, rinji, tungazi), which used slaves captured by the Caliphate armies, were established near all the major towns and were particularly important around Sokoto, Kano, Zaria and other capitals. Plantation development originated with the policies of Muhammad Bello, first Caliph and successor to Uthman dan Fodio, who was concerned with the consolidation and defence of the empire. Besides promoting the economic growth of the capital districts of Sokoto and Gwandu, Bello's policy encouraged the expansion of the textile belt in southern Kano and northern Zaria. Similarly, the desert-side market in grain also benefited from the emphasis on plantations. The result was the greater integration of the Central Sudan region into a single economic zone. The role of plantations in the economy differed from that of plantations elsewhere in the world. Market forces tended to be weaker, and no single export crop dominated production. Rather, the orientation towards the desert-side sector indicates that opportunities for expansion were limited, while the importance of textile manufacturing reflects the relatively weak links with European and other textile production. Other differences included a system of Islamic slavery which encouraged emancipation, a close connexion with slave raiding and distribution, and a system of land tenure which often resulted in fragmented holdings. Stronger links with the world economy did develop in parts of the Caliphate towards the end of the nineteenth century. Nupe and Yola were drawn more closely into the world market through the greater use of the Niger and Benue rivers, but these changes only marginally affected the wider Caliphate economy.

Pastoralism and Zimbabwe

Abstract: Excavations at the Zimbabwe (enclosure) of Manekweni, in southern coastal Mozambique, have shown that it belongs to the Zimbabwe Culture which was centred on the Rhodesian plateau. Occupation levels have been dated to between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The faunal evidence indicates that a section of the population benefited from intensive beef production through transhumant pastoralism on the seasonally-fluctuating fringes of tsetse fly infestation. The settlement pattern of Rhodesian Zimbabwe suggests that their siting was determined by the demands of a similar system of transhumance. This model provides a basis from which to begin to reconstruct some aspects of the economies of early Zimbabwe. It is already clear that Zimbabwe were not simply the products of long-distance trade; rather, their economies integrated farming and cattle-herding as well as gold production and foreign trade.

New Light on Early Food Production in the Central Sudan

Abstract: The excavations in the Central Sudanese Neolithic settlement at Kadero resulted in the discovery of a large amount of skeletal remains of domestic animals: cattle, sheep, goats and dogs. Cattle pastoralism was of great economic importance for the Kadero population and it was supplemented by the herding of sheep and goats; the presence of dogs is closely associated with this pastoralism. Preliminary examination of plant impressions on potsherds reveals the presence almost exclusively of sorghum and two kinds of millet, which were most probably cultivated. This may explain the large number of grindstones found in the Kadero settlement. The pastoralism and possible cultivation at Kadero point to a much more developed food-producing economy practised by the Central Sudanese Neolithic population, compared to that of the Esh Shaheinab settlement. Food-production at Kadero was supplemented by food-gathering activities, among which the collecting of molluscs predominated, with hunting and fishing playing a less significant role.The data yielded by the burial ground at Kadero, where the heavily prognathous inhabitants of the local settlement were buried, seem to indicate that the Neolithic Kadero population was an autochthonous one on the Upper (main) Nile. It is assumed that the domestic animals and, perhaps, also the cultivated cereals of the Neolithic Kaderans, as well as of other Central Sudanese populations, were adopted by the local food-gathering human groups following contact with other and alien peoples.

The Food Economy and French Colonial Rule in Central Cameroun

Abstract: French administrative policies during the inter-war period in Central Cameroun created a class of indigenous chiefs who fulfilled crucial functions in the mobilization of manpower and resources from the rural areas for the development of the European sector of the economy. Early problems in organizing food markets to provision the growing non-agricultural sector resulted in a decision to channel agricultural growth through the chiefs rather than to leave it to market forces. The institution of a food requisition system involved the administration in exercising direct control over key aspects of the rural economy through the regulation of production, price control, control of the trading network, and the use of the indigenat to support the rights of chiefs over their subjects. The system succeeded in achieving two purposes at once: it guaranteed a cheap, reliable supply of food to the wage-earning population, thus allowing wages to remain low and stable; and it encouraged the development of a class of wealthy planters in the rural areas whose self-interest lay in support for the colonial administration. However, close control of the economy became impossible in the late 1930s, and the government's dissatisfaction with some of the implications of its own chieftaincy policy resulted in the abandonment of the whole inter-war system. The rural economy which gradually emerged after 1946 was characterized by family-based production units but lacked a well-developed institutional framework appropriate to it.

The South African Native Labour Contingent, 1916–1918*

Abstract: In 1916 the South African government received a request from the Imperial government for the provision of non-combatant African labour for work in France. Despite opposition from white opinion on both political and economic grounds, the South African Native Labour Contingent was formed and recruiting commenced. Although recruiting had the active support of African political leaders, it was not as successful as had been hoped. Distrust of the government's intentions was one important reason for this. The South African government had agreed to the Imperial government's request for labour only on the condition that S.A.N.L.C. units were to be kept segregated from both other military units and the French civil population, and numerous measures (particularly the construction of compounds) were devised to facilitate this. But in practice this proved impossible to implement properly, and South African officers did not have the degree of control over their units that had originally been envisaged. On the African side, there was a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with conditions, and in one incident thirteen Africans were shot dead by their own officers. When the South African government decided to bring the ‘experiment’ to an end early in 1918, many Africans suspected that the reasons for this were not purely military as was claimed. Service in the S.A.N.L.C. was of importance both in terms of the individual experiences of those Africans directly involved, but it acquired also a wider political and symbolic importance, attached particularly to the sinking of the transport, S.S. Mendi, in February 1917 with the loss of over 600 African members of the S.A.N.L.C.

Lango Agriculture during the early Colonial Period: Land and Labour in a Cash-Crop Economy

Abstract: This article seeks to explain the adoption of cotton-growing by the Langi of Uganda in the early twentieth century, on the assumption that considerations of ‘indigenous economics’ (notably labour constraints and the attraction of competing crops) were at least as important as the more usually stressed factors of administrative pressure, price incentives and petty trading by immigrant minorities. On the eve of the colonial period the Langi were already producing planned agricultural surpluses—principally sesame for trade with Bunyoro.Cotton, which was introduced in 1909, could only have been grown on a significant scale at the cost of sacrificing the trade in sesame. This the Langi refused to do until the early 1920s, when the market for sesame declined and the buying price of cotton rose; partial alleviation of the threat of famine and changes in traditional dry-season occupations were also important. From 1931, however, cotton output in Lango ceased to expand. This stagnation was only partly a result of the Depression; once more the Langi found themselves producing as much as was humanly possible, given an extremely tough environment, a simple technology and a fully stretched labour-force.

Repercussions of World War I in the Gold Coast

Abstract: Although on the periphery of the war Gold Coast resources and manpower were mobilized for the imperial war effort. The educated elite and many traditional rulers were loyal and internal conditions, despite the withdrawal of personnel and troops, generally peaceful. Small-scale disturbances occasioned by the war occurred, the most serious in the Northern Territories. The direction and pattern of Gold Coast external trade changed; exports, with the exception of cocoa, contracted and the price of imports rose. Serious shipping shortages exacerbated difficulties. British ‘Combine’ firms increased their hold over Gold Coast commerce. A fall in government revenue held up public works, and railway construction was paid for by an export duty on cocoa. The war brought marked changes to the government fiscal system. Gold Coast troops were used in the West and East African campaigns and prepared for employment in the Middle East. Varying degrees of compulsion were used to recruit carriers and soldiers and resistance to this was widespread. Labour shortages and the withdrawal of whites provided new job opportunities for Africans. Cocoa and palm kernels were subject to imperial direction and control; Governor Clifford opposed the imperial preference scheme for palm kernels. Imperial wartime economic measures fuelled the nationalism of the NCBWA; the Gold Coast elite demanded political representation as a reward for wartime loyalty, while their economic resolutions attempted to displace European commercial interests strengthened during the war. Economic changes further weakened the position of traditional rulers; labour shortages provided wage labour with temporarily enhanced bargaining power. Post-war trouble from ex-servicemen was slight.

Meat and monopolies: Beef cattle in Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1938

Abstract: This paper discusses the history of the beef cattle industry in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and 1938, but does so within the context of the world meat trade in order to examine the relationship between local and international capital. While certain entrepreneurs early recognized Southern Rhodesia as a potentially valuable beef cattle country, full realization of this hinged on breaking into the world meat market dominated by a few large cold storage companies, drawing on production based mainly in Argentina. Throughout these years, Southern Rhodesia faced at best indifference or at worst occasional outright hostility from such companies in its attempts to secure a place in the world market. Only Liebigs, who were primarily involved in meat extract requiring low-grade cattle, could be induced to operate in Southern Rhodesia.The meat industry in Southern Rhodesia enjoyed certain advantages: land was extensive and cheap, labour power was produced and reproduced outside the capitalist sector, and there were stocks of indigenous cattle which were seized or purchased cheaply. But the industry also suffered from lack of capital, inadequate transport, the poor beef qualities of indigenous cattle, and disease. Despite state assistance from an early date, most Rhodesian ranchers proved incapable of rearing quality cattle for the world market. Once co-operative attempts by local capital had failed to secure markets for Southern Rhodesian cattle, further state involvement was necessary. Its limited resources obliged the state to try and attract, or seek partnerships with, international capital. However, the big companies remained uninterested, and Southern Rhodesia was obliged to settle for the Imperial Cold Storage Company which, although of overwhelming importance in southern Africa, was insignificant on a world scale. Contradictions in the state–I.C.S. Company relationship surfaced fairly quickly and in 1938 the local Cold Storage Commission was established.

The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of the Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract: The term ‘Wangara’ has most commonly been used to describe the gold merchants of ancient Mali and Ghana and has been equated with ‘Juula’ (Dyula). This article establishes another meaning for ‘Wangara’, as it has been used in the Central Sudan, particularly Hausaland. There the Wangara were descendants of merchants who were once connected with the Songhay Empire of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since the term is also used in Borgu to describe resident Muslim merchants in the Bariba states, it is postulated that the Wangara were once a Songhay-based commercial group which established diaspora communities in the Bariba and Hausa towns before the Songhay collapse of 1591. It is argued that these Wangara merchants were instrumental in the economic development of the Central Sudan in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were not only associated with commerce but were involved in early leather and textile production and probably were responsible for the introduction of such new products as kola nuts and the spread of the Songhay monetary system, based on cowries and gold. The immigration of the Wangara came at a time when other economic changes were taking place in the Hausa cities and Borno. The combined impact of these developments were such as to mark the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a major turning point in the economic history of the Central Sudan.

African Manpower Statistics for the British Forces in East Africa, 1914–1918

Abstract: For the campaign in East Africa from 1914 to 1918, the British used over 50,000 African troops, and over one million African followers. In 1914 no carrier organization existed, so this had to be rapidly improvised. There were three main carrier forces, based on the East Africa Protectorate, on Uganda and on Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. German East Africa was overrun in 1916 and 1917, but the German forces were not defeated. These offensives necessitated huge numbers of followers. Despite much improved rations and medical services, deaths among followers averaged 10 per cent; over 100,000 must have died. Over 10,000 troops died of disease or were killed, a death rate of 20 per cent. Deaths were most numerous amongst those followers who served for long periods far from home; this applied particularly to those from the East African Protectorate. About half of the million followers were, however, on short contracts or were casual labour. Since they worked nearer home and for shorter periods, their death rate was much lower. During 1916 the carrier force from the East African Protectorate was reinforced from conquered parts of German East Africa, but diminished by 100,000 men through releases, desertions and deaths. Numbers reached a climax in 1917, with the mass levy. The possibility that men enlisted more than once is hard to prove, but long-service carriers on release were unlikely to be fit again for a long time. Many recruits were medically unfit for the mass levy of 1917. During the war very many of the able-bodied male populations of these territories must have served, probably over 80 per cent, but not all at any one time. As it was the main theatre of war, German East Africa probably suffered most, conscriptions being carried out by both Germans and British.

In search of a Marxist Perspective on Pre-Colonial Tropical Africa

Abstract: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. By BARRY HINDESS and PAUL Q. HIRST. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, first published 1975; paperback edition 1977. Pp. vi+3S4. £7.50, pbk £3.75. Relations of Production: Marxist approaches to economic anthropology. Edited by DAVID SEDDON. London: Frank Cass, 1978. Pp. xiii+414. £12.50, pbk £5.50. Production and Reproduction: a comparative study of the domestic domain. By JACK GOODY. Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pp. xiii+157. £6.00, pbk £2.20.

Tawani, Machambero!: Forced Cotton and Rice Growing on the Zambezi

Abstract: Between 1935 and 1960 a peculiar patterning of forced labour developed on Mozambique's lower Zambezi. By the beginning of the Salazar era a particular style of history had been imprinted upon Mozambique. Large scale recruiting of labour for the mines and farms of southern Africa coupled with mass migrations of Mozambique's people to escape the oppressions of Portuguese administration resulted in a severe labour shortage which companies operating in the colony had to face. Exacerbating this problem was the Portuguese decision in the mid-1930s to compel the colonies to produce enough cotton for the demands of the empire. To protect its position vis-à-vis already scarce male labour, the Sena Sugar Estates Ltd., Mozambique's largest employer of labour, formulated a system by which only female labour would cultivate cotton, leaving the men free to work in the company's sugar fields. This system, which was adopted in the 1940s by other employers of labour, led to severe oppression of the local people, notably the women, who were caught between the conflicting demands of interests more powerful than themselves. Only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did the pressures of the forced cultivation system end.

By Ship or by Camel: The Struggle for the Cameroons Ivory Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: Ivory appears to have gone to the Cameroun coast in considerable quantity in the early nineteenth century, while little was being carried across the desert. By the middle of the century this position had been reversed. This paper traces the penetration of Hausa ivory traders to Adamawa and the southern ivory markets, and the subsequent struggle by European firms with posts on the Niger and the Benue to divert the trade back to the sea-borne route. Eventually the Germans in Kamerun had some success in diverting what had become a dwindling trade as the elephants fell victim to modern weapons and to the ‘opening up’ of the country.

German Capital, the Netherlands Railway Company and the Political Economy of the Transvaal, 1886-1900

Abstract: This article tries to throw light on one aspect of the ‘business partition’ of Africa, namely Anglo–erman economic rivalry on the Rand between 1886 and 1900. It examines the activities of the German-owned Netherlands South African Railway Company (N.Z.A.S.M.), which possessed the monopoly of construction and management of all railways connecting the republic with a seaport. The article assesses this company's impact upon the relations of the South African Republic with both the maritime colonies of the Cape and Natal and with Great Britain. Whitehall regarded the N.Z.A.S.M. as the fountainhead of ever-increasing German commercial and political penetration in the Transvaal and also considered the railway company hostile to its interests in that it allegedly discriminated against British commerce. The gold-mining industry also viewed the company with hostility, since its high freightrates increased the price of imported machinery, foodstuffs, etc. The South African Republic, on the other hand, saw the N.Z.A.S.M. as a useful means of access to both the German and Dutch capital markets, while the company arranged for diplomatic lobbying in Berlin and The Hague in favour of the Republic. By 1898, German mining interests on the Rand had managed to persuade Berlin that their interests were not served by either the Kruger regime or the German-owned N.Z.A.S.M. and that an administration more favourably disposed towards their objectives, and possibly imposed by force by the British, should not be opposed. It is therefore argued that the South African War was prompted mainly by the desire to establish British commercial hegemony on the Rand, to safeguard the interests of international mining capital and to create a more pliable polity capable of articulating and responding to these particular economic imperatives.

A Reconsideration of Hausa History before the Jihad

Abstract: It is argued in this paper that what happened in the region of Katsina in c. 1492–3 was not a dynastic change, but the establishment of the institution of ‘kingship’. This ‘kingship’ did not grow out of local pre-existing institutions. Rather, it was imposed on the kinship-society by the leaders of the new (Wangara) community of Muslim clerics and traders. These leaders aimed probably at creating a Muslim state in Katsina. However, owing to the resistance of the indigenous population, they failed to achieve this. Therefore, a rapprochement with the indigenous paramount animistic ‘priest-chief’—the durbi—was attempted. This led to the establishment of an institutional structure defined as ‘dual’ or ‘contrapuntal paramountcy’. Within this institutional structure the durbi became responsible for choosing the sarki or ‘king’. As a consequence, the institution of ‘kingship’ took on some of the characteristics of a ‘sacred’ animistic ‘kingship’.It is further suggested that the evolutionary process outlined for the region of Katsina was paralleled by similar processes in Yauri, Kano and Gobir, and possibly also Zaria. However, in Kano the institution of ‘kingship’ did not originate from within the new community of traders and clerics: rather, the Kano ‘kings’, whose power was traditionally circumscribed by that of the local ‘priest-chiefs’, tried to bring about revolutionary changes with the support of the Wangarawa. But they too apparently failed.It is suggested, finally, that the rapprochement achieved with the animistic ‘priest-chiefs’ alienated the community of clerics and traders; i.e. the community which constituted in a sense the very power-basis of the Hausa ‘kings’. This in turn may explain in part the jihad of 1804.

The War of thangata : Nyasaland and the East African Campaign, 1914–1918

Abstract: During World War I, Africans in Nyasaland were called upon to provide large numbers of soldiers and military labourers for the war effort in eastern Africa. Although a few willingly volunteered, many more objected, and some resisted. In this situation, colonial officals used force to secure the necessary manpower. Africans, therefore, called the conflict ‘the war of thangata’, referring to the growing colonial demands for taxes and for labour rent on European estates. The tasks which the soldiers and carriers were called upon to perform were equally likened to thangata, being ‘work which was done without real benefit’. So far from receiving rewards, Africans found that inadequate food, clothing, and medical care contributed greatly to the sufferings associated with a military campaign. Between 1914 and 1918 wartime manpower requirements, and war service, gave full meaning to colonial rule throughout the protectorate. The response to these demands and this suffering brought, in the form of both traditional and modern religious and social institutions, the first tentative stirrings of African nationalism in Nyasaland.

The Coffee Barons of Cazengo

Abstract: This chapter is based on several months of exploration conducted in 1973 in the previously little-used nineteenth-century archives then housed in the colonial museum at Luanda. At the time when the research was undertaken Angola was the world’s fourth largest producer of coffee. It was therefore interesting to find detailed evidence concerning the origins of colonial land appropriation policies and labour recruitment practices which were later to dominate the economic history of the twentieth century. The work was previously published in 1978 in the Journal of African History (Cambridge University Press). A version of this paper was discussed at the conference on Southern African History held at the National University of Lesotho in August 1977.

World War I Conscription and Social Change in Guinea

Abstract: When the French government introduced military conscription into the A.O.F. in 1912, the Guinean colonial authorities saw the measure as a means of training a local administrative corps to replace the traditional chieftaincy, through whose military defeat the conquest of Guinea had very largely been effected. However, the chiefs had by no means disappeared by 1914, and wartime demands for recruits were too massive to be supplied without their assistance. Their help was bought with promises to consolidate their authority in peacetime. Although able to marshal recruits, the chiefs seem to have been unable to prevent large-scale desertions before the moment of embarkation for France; village populations could also avoid conscription by overland migration out of the A.O.F. The colonial authorities therefore felt constrained to offer substantial inducements, mainly concerning improved social status vis-a-vis the chiefs, to the individual recruits. These contradictory policies were compounded by the recruitment drive of Blaise Diagne in 1918, which involved a further promise to recruits of improved status vis-a-vis the French authorities. The return of ancien combattants to Guinea was marked by outbreaks of strike action among workers in Conakry and along the railway line; by riots in demobilization camps; and by rejection of or agitation against chiefly power in the home cantons to which they dispersed. The anciens combattants did not form a coherent or organized political movement, but remained a conspicuous social grouping between the wars. Although they appear to have been strongly influenced by their experience of war and by contact with French socialists, their conflict with the chiefs seems to have counted for more with them than any confrontation with the French.

World War I and Africa: Introduction

Abstract: The study of the history of Africa during World War I raises two major problems of synthesis and a host of smaller problems. First of all, the sheer diversity of the continent and the extremely uneven nature of its precolonial development, let alone the patchy and differentiated modes of imperial and colonial penetration, make it difficult to see its experience, even of so ostensibly cataclysmic an event as World War I, as a unified whole. Indeed, the diversity of the continent was mirrored in the diversity of its experience of the war, which combined the actual agony of the battlefield for many thousands of black troops both in Africa and in Europe at one extreme, with the undoubted uneventfulness of those same years for many others.

France, Africa, and the First World War

Abstract: World War I marked the final phase of French colonial expansion. France's African war aims were determined not by the cabinet but by the leaders of the colonialist movement and by a handful of African enthusiasts in the colonial and foreign ministries. Most of these men harboured the unrealistic aim of acquiring not merely German territory but also other foreign ‘enclaves’ in A.O.F. At the peace conference, however, France's African gains were limited to mandates over the greater part of German West Africa.Before August 1914 no government had given serious thought to the potential contribution of French Africa, either in men or raw materials, to a war in Europe. The enormous losses on the Western Front led to the recruitment of French Africa's first great conscript army. By the end of the War French Africa had sent 450,000 soldiers and 135,000 factory workers to Europe. The crisis of French food supply also led in 1917–18 to the first concerted campaign, mounted jointly by the colonialists and the colonial ministry, for the mise en valeur of the Empire. But France's shipping losses made it impossible to increase her African imports.In the aftermath of victory French Africa appeared genuinely popular in France for the first time. The main reason for that popularity was the naive belief that the resources of the Empire would free France from dependence on foreign suppliers and speed her post-war recovery. When the resources of the Empire proved even slower to arrive than reparations, the Empire quickly lost its newfound popularity. The War nonetheless left behind it the myth of the Empire as a limitless reservoir of men and raw materials: a myth which, though dormant for most of the inter-war years, was to be revived by the coming of World War II.

The Study of Slavery in Africa

Abstract: The debate on African slavery is an old one. Eighteenth-century writers adduced the horrors of slavery in Africa as justification for the Atlantic trade. During the nineteenth century, the very same horrors were described in order to encourage, first intervention in African affairs, and then colonial occupation. Ironically, during the very period when European readers were being persuaded of the civilizing mission of empire-builders, newly established and fragile colonial regimes found themselves highly dependent upon traditional chiefs, who in many societies were the largest slave-holders. Thus colonial regimes were pressed by domestic public opinion to abolish or change the institution while their interests within Africa dictated compromise and toleration. The result was a tendency either to seek to convince the European public that slavery within Africa was a benign institution or, more often, simply to ignore its existence. Colonial administrators studied traditional law and looked for native authorities, but paid little attention to the forms of exploitation by man of man. Social anthropologists did even less. They preferred simpler societies where slavery was relatively unimportant, and even when forced to confront servile institutions, they stressed their benign characteristics. The slave lived in the household, participated in his master's culture, had access to privileged positions, and in many cases his children or grand-children were assimilated into the master's culture. In the last decade, there has been a radical turnaround. As historians and historically-oriented anthropologists began to look at the dynamics of social

Rethinking Rural Poverty

Abstract: The irresistible rise of the African peasant as an object of academic concern is probably the most dramatic and possibly the most fruitful development in recent Central African historiography. When T. O. Ranger published his modest pamphlet, The Agricultural History of Zambia, essentially a precis of books by Allan and Hellen, in 1971 it represented one of the very few systematic attempts by a professional historian of the region to enter a field traditionally dominated by social anthropologists and agricultural scientists. Yet within seven years interest in social and economic change has become so intense that today it is almost harder to find Central African historians who are not working on some aspect of the problem, than it is to locate those who are. A number of major studies are promised in the next few years, but meanwhile, thanks to Palmer and Parsons, we now have an interim report in the shape of this collection of essays, some half of which have been previously published in identical or similar form. Together they mirror, not inaccurately, the strengths and weaknesses of much current research, in particular that conducted by historians who have taught at or been associated with the University of Zambia in Lusaka. Ten case studies explore the varied, though in all cases ultimately disastrous, fates of African economies exposed to the impact of colonialism and capitalism in areas as diverse as southern Mozambique, central Angola, western Shaba, Botswana, Barotseland, Ovamboland, the Transkei, the Victoria District of Rhodesia and the Kabwe District of Zambia. Three more general accounts discuss economic change in South Africa (a typically confident overview by Legassick, strong on theory but weak in supporting evidence), Malawi (an impressionistic sketch by Chanock) and Rhodesia (a shrewd survey of the shifting fortunes of African and European farmers by Palmer, extracted virtually word for word from his larger [1977] study). There is a descriptive account by David Beach of the Shona economy prior to the 1870s and analyses of the effect of colonial and imperial policy-making by Bogumil Jewsiewicki, for Katanga, and Leroy Vail, for Nyasaland. Ann Seidman provides a postscript demonstrating, in large part unconsciously, the formidable problems facing any regime today, whatever its political complexion, in seeking to eliminate rural poverty. There is also a solid editorial introduction, which sets the book within its historiographical context and ritually disposes of some of the myths once associated with African farming, before throwing in for good measure a couple of lively sketches on rural change in Swaziland and Lesotho. Detailed maps are supplied: regrettably their complexity strains the eyes, and they are insufficiently captioned.

The Torodbe Clerisy: A Social View

Abstract: It is a salient feature of the great jihāds of the western Sudan that the leadership for these wars of religious fervour should have sprung forth from a single source, the Torodbe clerisy. It was the Torodbe ʿulamā’ who sustained the jihāds in Futas Bundu, Toro and Jallon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and prefigured the jihāds of Usumān dan Fodio and al-Hājj ʿUmar b. Saʿīd, perhaps the most illustrious leaders thrown up by Torodbe Islam.We have long viewed these Islamic revolutions as ‘Fulani jihads’—as consummate examples of the way in which ‘Fulani’ skilfully orchestrated the people in favour of their own views. But it would now appear that those Muslims we have been calling ‘Fulani’ deserved this designation in language and culture only—that they were drawn from diverse strains of Sūdānī society—that Turudiyya suggests a metier and not an ethnic category.The Torodbe clerisy evolved out of that mass of rootless peoples who perceived in Islam a source of cultural identity. Bound in a new persuasion—linked by a common oppression—they shook the sense of ethnic difference and sought to stimulate a counter trend of a levelling nature. Yet, having habitually recruited from all levels, and most notably from the submerged levels of society, the Turudiyya became an increasingly closed world, discoloured of their levelling intentions. This tendency was manifest in Futas Toro and Bundu especially. In these new communities, the Turudiyya took shape as a hereditary ruling class—succession to the imāmiyya became the special preserve of a select few families. The position of slaves in the new order progressively hardened; the ranks of the Turudiyya remained closed to artisans who continued to pursue their traditional crafts.The levelling tendency of the Turudiyya movement seems to have reached its apogee in the ʿUmarian Jamāʿa. Though it is said that al-Hājj ʿUmar b. Saʿid did not extend freedom to his slaves, the ties of Islam and the community of faith came to supplant the old threads of allegiance. Among believers, superiority in the faith or stricter observance of its precepts presented a new passport to honoured status.

Trade and Technology in West Africa: The Case of the Niger Company, 1900–1920

Abstract: This study of the performance of the Niger Company, from surrender of the charter until its acquisition by Lever Brothers Limited, explores the ways in which the corporation organized both for stability and for change. Pooling agreements, contracts, negotiations with colonial governments and shippers aimed at defending the company's monopoly over river communications won before 1900. At the same time, company agents expanded the geographical area and the range of commercial operations into a wide variety of enterprises. Of these, the development of mining on the Bauchi Plateau and participation in the exploitation of northern Nigerian groundnuts were the most important and placed severe strains on the capacity of the firm's personnel, as well as on its working capital. The outbreak of war precipitated a crisis in the export of produce which was temporarily deferred by the exceptional profitability of raw commodities and tin concentrates. By 1919, the need for skilled personnel and greater amounts of capital compounded the difficulties arising from too great a reliance on river transport. The company assisted with railway construction and used the new system to meet commitments in its relationship with the mining companies; but it did not decide to restructure its operations in Nigeria to keep pace with changes brought about by railway communications, particularly at Lagos and Port Harcourt. The study, therefore, draws attention to the importance of technological adaptation in business performance, particularly in the case of an enterprise with a number of generalized functions in a rapidly changing tropical market.

East African Christians and World War I

Abstract: It has usually been supposed that World War I was ‘an injury to the Christian cause’ because of the disruption of missionary work when mission personnel were called up, interned or not replaced. This view is questioned. Evidence is adduced from the history of the church in East Africa to show that African Christians responded to the situation by shouldering responsibilities in a way which surprised the missionaries on their return. The churches best placed to survive were those in which a beginning had been made to train African clergy. Only the Anglicans and Catholics had made any progress in training indigenous leadership by 1914. But even where this had not been done, leaders emerged, and some churches even grew considerably in numbers without any loss of quality. One example of this is drawn from the Usambara–Digo synod of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania. The missionaries' attitudes and actions on their eventual return are surveyed. Often they were surprised to find that in their absence the Christian communities had not disintegrated as they had feared. But almost always their concern was to ‘discipline’ the church, and return to the ways of doing things at the outbreak of war, instead of building on the developments which had occurred in the meantime. This sometimes had disastrous consequences as natural leadership became frustrated. The greatest ‘injury to the Christian cause’ may have been the missions' failure to see that a new method of working was now required of them rather than a return to the old.

Price Fluctuations in the Early Palm Oil Trade

Abstract: A previously unused price series from the Liverpool Mercury provides new information about the early days of the palm oil trade. A boom in 1818 drove prices to their century high, only to be followed in the 1820s by a prolonged depression. The boom may have encouraged merchants to try to bring Bonny into the oil trade, as its development as an important oil port dates from this time. However the depression of the '20s did not prevent the continued expansion of the trade, which was also sustained during the better prices of the 1830s. This information does not affect Northrup's recent suggestion that the slave trade continued to expand in the 1830s, as his evidence is inconclusive and there is no comparable information on slave prices. Yet clearly both trades were carried on side by side at the time. This was not because their supply networks were different. Slaves and oil were both sent from Ibibioland, being peripheral to the main economic activity of that region, domestic agriculture and craftwork.

Measuring the French Slave Trade, 1713–1792/3

Abstract: The recent Curtin–Inikori debate has revealed a basic shortcoming in the historiography of the eighteenth-century French slave trade. In computing the size of the French trade, historians have too long relied either on questionable estimates published by eighteenth-century authors or on published material about one port, Nantes. Enough material exists in various French archives to produce a more accurate appraisal of at least one aspect of the trade. An analysis of captains' reports and other documents shows that French exports from Africa were somewhat greater than Curtin believed, and that Curtin's errors resulted from limitations imposed by the published data. At the same time, it is almost impossible to know how many slaves were imported into the French West Indies during the eighteenth century, as an illegal British trade accounted for a significant percentage of the slaves delivered to the French colonies.

…And Urban The Creation of Elisabethville 1910–1940 . By Bruce Fetter. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976. Pp. xx+211. $8.95.

Abstract: ethniques: consciences sociales, manieres de se sentir, modes de vie parfois, les 'tribus' ne sont pas ces donnees statiques et permanentes qui fondent l'analyse pluraliste. Inseparables des espaces economiques et sociaux ou elles s'inscrivent, les consciences ethniques changent de sens avec eux. Du choix me'thodologique de Bustin de\"coule une version de l'histoire coloniale qui manque de relief. Ceci est aggrave\" sans doute par une pratique insuffisante des sources orales et du milieu. On sent mal dans le livre certaines dimensions de l'histoire vecue des Lunda: P atmosphere troubled et terroriste de Page de la traite dans les annees 1900, les atrocites du poste de Dilolo, les ravages des bandes armies, sont a peine mentionne's; certes c'est le Mwant Yav Muteba que les Beiges soutiennent au debut du sifecle, mais est-il sans interet que Muteba ait aussi ete le principal interme'diaire de la Compagnie du Kasai en pays Lunda? L'effort tenace des Lunda pour survivre a Pappauvrissement syste'matique des ann6es 1920, la morne utopie totalitaire g6r6e par une armee de chefs, de responsables de villages, de clercs, moniteurs, cat^chistes, messagers, etc.: toute cette vie quotidienne parait quelque peu ne\"glige\"e au profit de considerations sur les formes que prend le pouvoir (faut-il des chefs? des sous-chefs? des secteurs? etc.). L'enthousiasme pour les civilizations africaines dont ont tdmoigne^ certains administrateurs devoues ne fait pas oublier que c'est peut-etre dans les regions peiipheriques re'serve'es a Padministration indirecte que la planification coloniale prit son aspect le plus tatillon et le plus disciplinaire. Apres tout, la logique du systeme aboutissait en 1944 a recommander au Mwant Yav Putilisation du velo: ainsi les 'hammock-carriers' (ces pre'cieux HAV, 'hommes adultes valides') pourraient se livrer aux cultures 'e'ducatives'. Ces details sont puise\"s dans les archives consulted par Bustin, mais ils sont absents du livre. S'agit-il de traits futiles ou pittoresques, ou enrichissent-ils notre perception des phenomenes du temps long dans l'histoire Lunda du vingtieme siecle? Est-ce leur absence qui donne un cachet un peu terne au recit qu'on nous propose? Travail consciencieux, fonde\" sur une documentation originale et abondante, le livre de Bustin prepare la voie a une 6tape suivante: celle d'une reflexion sur l'histoire sociale du Zaire colonial.

The Economics of Colonialism in Africa

Abstract: THE economic content and character of colonialism are commonly stressed. Imperial ambitions are supposed to have been fired by needs to find new markets, secure sources of supply of materials, or discharge superfluous savings. The record of a colonial power is judged by how far living standards in a dependency were raised, the structure of livelihoods changed, and possibilities of future economic growth enhanced. The chief grievance against colonial rule is that it involved economic 'exploitation' and impeded advancement of those subjected to it; its principal defence, that it actually quickened their material progress. Even so, too little attention has been given the question of what might be meant by the economics of colonialism, the sub-title of the volume here under review.' This last published volume of the studies of Colonialism in Africa edited by L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan contains an introduction and eighteen other papers. The topics include pre-colonial economies and imperialism in Africa; the 'national styles' of British, French, Belgian, German and Portuguese (but not Italian) colonialism; 'economic mainstays' in agriculture, mining, overseas trade and manufacturing; 'social implications' in labour migration, immigration of non-Africans, the rise of new native elites, and urbanization; and assessment of the colonial economic record. There are thirty pages of bibliography, a dozen maps, and a first-rate index. There are also over one hundred and fifty statistical tables, many of them plucked with insufficient discrimination and explanation from standard works. The book is excellently produced and almost free from misprints. So far as I have observed, few obvious errors have been allowed to reach the printed page.2

Progrès de l'Islam et Changement Politique au Kānem du XIe au XIIIe Siècle: Un Essai d'Intérpretation

Abstract: On admet en général que l'expansion de l'islam était une des principales préoccupations des géographes arabes quand ils décrivaient la situation dans les régions excentriques par rapport au monde musulman. En partant de ce présupposé on aurait pu s'attendre à trouver pour l'ètude de l'histoire d'une région précise, telle que le Kānem, des renseignements amples et explicites nous permettant de dessiner un tableau satisfaisant de la progression de l'islam, au moins dans ses grands traits. En fait, chemin faisant, on découvre que les renseignements qui nous ont été transmis dans ce type de sources, même sur un sujet aussi important, sont si lacunaires et contradictoires que presque rien ne peut être dit avec certitude du processus global dans lequel s’inscrit l'islamisation de la région. Or, dans le cas du Kānem une source interne, longtemps négligée, peut contrebalancer et corriger la vision non seulement lacunaire mais aussi déformant que les géographes arabes donnent du Kānem ancien, le Diwān salātin Bornū. Composée dans l'entourage du roi, cette source elle-même ne présente pas une vue neutre, et, surtout en ce qui concerne des questions touchant à l'islam, elle doit être maniée avec circonspection; mais contrairement aux aperçus aléatoires et sans rapport les uns avec les autres fournis par les géographes arabes, les chroniqueurs autochtones nous présentent une vision d'ensemble rigoureusement chronologique de l'histoire du Kānem dont la critique, à certains égards, est plus aisée.