Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1980"

The Iron Age Sequence South of the Vaal and Pongola Rivers: Some Historical Implications

Abstract: The region south of the Vaal and Pongola rivers, being the southernmost on the continent to be settled by Bantu-speaking, Iron Age communities, is important in understanding the spread of these societies. Until recently, archaeological discussion has mostly been based on Schofield's work of the 1930s and 1940s, which is here shown to be substantially incorrect, and an outline of the new sequence is given. New work on the Early Iron Age in Natal is sufficiently advanced to demonstrate a highly selective pattern of site location which, together with what we know of the economy, gives us some insight into the ecology of these communities. This enables us to estimate the limits of distribution in areas where there has been less archaeological exploration. It also indicates that ecological factors are significant in the rapid initial spread of the Early Iron Age. The beginning of the Later Iron Age in this region is characterized not only by an abrupt change in ceramic styles but by other cultural and perhaps economic changes involving site location, architecture and aspects of technology. The most striking single factor is the expansion, beyond the coastal plain and wooded valleys of the Early Iron Age, into much of the interior grasslands. By at least the seventeenth century a dense population was established in many of these areas and their settlements can often be correlated with historically known groups on the basis of oral and ethnological links.

The Banamba slave exodus of 1905 and the decline of slavery in the Western Sudan

Abstract: One of the most important changes to take place during the early colonial period was the transformation from slave labour to free labour. In French West Africa this resulted not from a policy decision by the French administration but from the massive departure of slaves in those societies most reliant on slave labour. The focal event was an exodus from Banamba, a Maraka town which had been a major centre both of the slave trade and of the exploitation of slave labour. During the period before the Banamba exodus, tensions were building up within various slave societies, tensions that reflected themselves in a gradual filtering away of slaves and in occasional slave revolts. The French were generally afraid to deal with these tensions and limited themselves to stopping the slave trade while reinforcing allied elites, most of whom were slave owners. There were three major factors in the exodus:(1) Massive enslavement during the late nineteenth century created large reservoirs of slaves who were homogeneous and remembered a free state.(2) The closing-off of recruitment pushed slave-owners to exploit slave labour more systematically.(3) With the end of warfare and the opening of new opportunities in the cities and in the Senegambian peanut fields, slaves had increasing opportunities to go elsewhere.

Archaeology and the prehistoric origins of the Ghana empire

Abstract: Archaeological investigations in southern Mauretania have revealed a wealth of rather spectacular stone masonry villages which were occupied by prehistoric cultivators as early as 1000 B.C. It is argued that the inhabitants of these villages were Negro and very probably Soninke, and that the basic elements of their culture had developed without major influences from outside the area. The apparent sophistication and complexity of this cultural manifestation, combined with the close fit of developments in this area with Carneiro's theory of state formation, suggests that this prehistoric complex represented at least a powerful chiefdom which embodied many of the characteristics of subsequent West African states. The first demonstrable outside influences in the area began about 600 B.C. with the arrival of Libyco-Berbers from North Africa. Rather than causing still further cultural advances, the initial effect of this contact was the collapse of this sociopolitical organization. But with subsequent adjustment, plus the potential from trans-Saharan trade carried out by the North Africans, the basic, pre-existing pattern re-emerged, resulting eventually in a second and much more powerful African political organization in this area – the Ghana Empire.

Current Research and Recent Radiocarbon Dates from Northern Africa, II

Abstract: This article reports on developments in archaeological research in North Africa during the last four years, as these are reflected in the 350, or thereabouts, radiocarbon (and thermoluminescence) dates that have appeared since the last review. The number of new dates, and new data, becoming available indicate that North African archaeology is flourishing, although, in contrast to the earlier decades of this century, the focus seems now to be moving toward the eastern part of the region, and toward matters of adaptation rather than of simple classification, as exemplified by the new interpretations of the Dhar Tichitt Neolithic in Mauritania.The lower Nile Valley has yielded evidence for an intensification of subsistence activities in the Late Palaeolithic in two areas, Makhadma and Kubbaniya, both involving fish-harvesting and the latter also witnessing the use of plant-foods on a scale hitherto undocumented for this period.At the beginning of the Holocene, there is now good evidence for an eighth millennium bc Neolithic in northern Niger, complete with sophisticated ceramics, which complements the evidence already known for similar phenomena further east in the Sahara. There is even a possibility that the Khartoum Mesolithic of the central Nile Valley might be equally old. Our understanding of the Sudanese Neolithic has greatly increased. For the first time, there appears to be a development from the Khartoum Mesolithic into the Khartoum Neolithic, albeit located outside the Valley. The Khartoum Neolithic is more or less confined to the fourth millennium bc, but did give rise to the later Kadada Neolithic. After Kadada, the focus of settlement seems to have shifted outside the Valley until Meroitic times.In the protohistoric and historic periods, we have a better understanding of the chronology of the Egyptian Predynastic, although not yet of its development; what models exist will be radically modified if the pyramids are indeed as old as the dates on them now indicate. Finally, far from the Nile Valley in northern Niger, there comes detailed evidence of the development of a precocious metallurgical tradition within a Neolithic context.

Serawoollies, Tillibunkas and Strange Farmers: the Development of Migrant Groundnut Farming along the Gambia River, 1848–95

Abstract: Local and long-distance labour migrants were an important element in commercial groundnut farming along the Gambia river during the mid-nineteenth century, well before colonial partition. Seasonal and periodic circulation of migrant farmers had prior equivalents in the movements of traders across the Western Sudan, especially those associated with slaving. Traders were important in the development of groundnut cultivation and the initiation of migrant farming, when they realized the groundnut trade could be a valuable replacement for the abolished slave trade. In the pre-colonial era migrant farmers payed ‘custom’ to local rule for the land they farmed. This arrangement eventually gave way to a system of shared labour-time with individual host farmers in return for land. This change was accelerated by the abolition and decline in domestic slavery, which provided a new pattern for the Strange Farmer system. Thus the mobility of population in the Western Sudan, together with the evolution of the Strange Farmer system, provided vital marginal inputs of labour in an area of low population densities and facilitated the development of groundnut farming during the era of legitimate trade.

Office, land and subjects in the history of the Manwere fekuo of Kumase: an essay in the political economy of the Asante state

Abstract: The fundamental reasoning underlying this paper is that, in seeking to advance our understanding of the material basis of political power in pre-colonial African polities, particular attention must be paid to the detailed reconstruction over time of the triumviral relationship between office, land and subjects. Acknowledgement is freely made of the fact that, for many (if not most) areas of Africa, this type of reconstruction is either exceptionally difficult or frankly impossible. This paper is concerned with the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) – a case evincing considerable institutional continuity and structural vigour, and one, moreover, sufficiently richly documented to permit the type and level of reconstruction posited. Specifically, and taking into account the substantial body of research already carried out on the general political history of Asante, this paper deals with patterns of authority over land and subjects as evidenced by the offices contained within the Manwere – one of the ten administrative/military fekuo of Kumase. The Manwere was created by Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin (1834–67), and in seeking to account for the political imperatives underlying the foundation, the paper explores the context of the reign and the biography and career of the first Manwerehene, Kwasi Brantuo. Particular attention is paid throughout to the way in which the relationship between office, land and subjects within the Manwere was modified or otherwise altered by the nature of the political vicissitudes through which the Asante polity passed in the period between – broadly – the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Underlying the paper, and supplying context to its conclusions, is a general consideration of the philosophy of the Asante ethic concerning such matters as wealth and accumulation, the nature of authority, and the conceptualization of citizenship.

Slaves and society in Western Africa, c. 1445— c. 1700

Abstract: Published European first-hand accounts of the coastlands from Senegal to Angola for the period c. 1445-c. 1700 are examined to see what light they throw on the extent to which institutions of servitude in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa were autonomous developments or a response to external demands for African slaves. It seems clear that when, in the early years of this period, European traders first approached societies along the western African coasts, they were commonly offered what they called ‘slaves’ in exchange for the goods they had brought. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that a slave class was necessarily a feature of western African coastal societies when these were first contacted by Europeans. It is clear, for instance, that the Europeans preferred to deal with societies which had developed monarchical governments, whose leaders had control of sufficient surpluses to make trade worthwhile. The evidence suggests that in these societies most individuals were dependants of a ruling and entrepreneurial elite, but that there was also social mobility. A category of dependants that particularly attracted the notice of the European observers was women, whom men of power and wealth tended to accumulate as wives (and hence as the potential mothers of still more dependants). The necessarily limited supply of women may have been a factor encouraging such men to seek to increase their followings, and thus their status, power and wealth, by recruiting other dependants by forcible, judicial and economic means. While many such dependants, or their offspring, would be assimilated into the social groups commanded by their masters, the latter were certainly willing to contemplate using recently acquired or refractory recruits in other ways, such as exchanging them for alternative forms of wealth.

Some recent radiocarbon dates from Southern Africa

Abstract: In this paper we review radiocarbon dates which have become available over the past three years for the more recent archaeological sites south of the Cunene and Limpopo Rivers, assessing the determinations within the broader context of economy and society. For a framework, we make use of broad physiographic divisions of southern Africa, thus breaking from the artificial constraints of modern political divisions and allowing greater possibilities of synthesis Within the set of new dates there are several fields in which recent radiocarbon determinations have been particularly important. The nature of hunting and gathering and herding communities in the arid western regions of the sub-continent is now more fully understood and more information is available about the succession of lithic industries in the south-western interior. In the south-eastern coastal areas the geographical extent of the earliest farming communities has been firmly dated. New determinations are beginning to provide a firmer chronology for the succession of ceramic industries in the east, and reassessment of the dating of the important sites of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe demands a revision of concepts of early state development and trading contact with the east coast.

The Import of Firearms into West Africa in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract: The records of probably the biggest Birmingham gun-making firm specializing in the African trade and records of the Dutch West India Company are used in this article to throw more light on the quantities, types and quality of the guns imported into West Africa and on their effects in the eighteenth century. Inikori's estimate of 45 per cent as the proportion of English firearms in the total annual West African import of between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum is probably an underestimate because of the unknown quantities of English guns which were re-exported from Continental ports to West Africa. It is estimated tentatively that 180,000 guns per annum were being imported into the Gold and Slave Coasts by 1730, and that some of the most dramatic effects of the import of guns occurred between 1658 and 1730. A revolution in warfare began in the 1690s in the Senegambian coastal areas and along the Gold and Slave Coasts. The trebling of slave prices and the sharp reduction in gun prices between 1680 and 1720 enabled large militarized slave-exporting states to develop along the Gold and Slave Coasts. There was a strong demand for well-finished and well-proved guns as well as for the cheapest unproved guns, and the dangerous state of many of the guns imported into West Africa has been exaggerated. The reputations of European nations for the quality of their guns fluctuated. There was probably no steady deterioration in the quality of English guns imported between 1750 and 1807, but the quality of the cheapest guns deteriorated during periods of intense competition.

Long distance trade and production: Sinsani in the nineteenth century

Abstract: This examination of Maraka long-distance trade has underlined a commercial strategy involving both exchange and production. Most of the goods the Maraka traded were either locally produced or re-exports from the desert-side trade. Once the desert-side dimension of Maraka trade was interrupted, as it was following the Umarian conquest of 1861, the linkages holding together Sinsani's economy collapsed.Maraka long-distance trade was characterized by small exclusively male caravans which maximized time constraints in bypassing numerous local markets along the route. The Maraka usually engaged in wholesale transactions, preferring smaller profit margins per unit and a rapid turnaround of goods. The Maraka traded in such a manner because involvement in commodity production at home absorbed much of their time. Profits from Maraka trade were invested in a plantation sector which fed cotton cloth and grain to the desert-side trade and to Maraka long-distance trade southward to the land of kola and down the Niger to Timbuktu.

Bū Himāra's European connexion: the commercial relations of a Moroccan warlord

Abstract: The rural rebellion and dissidence of Jilālī ibn Idrīs al-Zarhūnā al-Yūsufī, alias Bū Ḥimāra, was among the most debilitating of the crises to afflict the Moroccan central government (makhzan) during its final decade of freedom from formal French control. Bū Ḥimāra, falsely declaring himself to be Mawlay MuḤammad, older brother of the reigning sultan, and thereby rightful claimant to the Sharifian throne, held sway over much of the northeastern part of the country between 1903 and 1909. Though the rebellion never extended beyond this region, the makhzan's protracted attempts to stamp it out contributed significantly to Morocco's political instability and fiscal collapse. The movement, under Bū Ḥimāra's leadership, may be divided into two major phases: the first, lasting about six months, when the revolt had the character of a mass popular protest against the makhzan; the second, from late 1903 to 1909, when Bū Ḥimāra, with a reduced and fluid band of partisans, settled into the role of regional warlord, ruling over a petty state apparatus in the mountainous Northeast. During the longer second phase, his paramountcy was similar in form and objective to that of other regional strong men who carved out principalities in peripheral areas of the country, building their power on access to modern firearms in defiance of the makhzan. This paper argues that the success and tenacity of Bū Ḥimāra's dissidence was dependent on his ability to develop connexions with the wider world of European commerce: merchandise and commodities trade yielding customs revenue, importation of firearms, relations with Algerian businessmen, and mining concessions. These forms of external support are examined and evaluated, leading to the conclusion that Bū Ḥimāra's principal objective from late 1903 onward was not active rebellion but rather an effort to maintain his political and military captaincy over the Northeast, drawing on whatever external resources were available. Though he successfuly defied the government for several years, his increasing association with European commercial and mining interests undermined his popular support and ultimately led to his downfall.

Settler dominance, agricultural production and the Second World War in Kenya

Abstract: The article examines the ways in which European settler farmers successfully used wartime conditions to secure their economic recovery and lay a basis for future economic dominance in Kenya. In 1939–40 farmers attempted with only limited success to persuade the Imperial government to purchase high-priced agricultural products. London's acquiescence was given reluctantly to avoid the possibility of political difficulties. In Kenya, largely due to a shortage of manpower and wartime feelings of solidarity, settlers were drawn extensively into the government positions. After the call for increased production for the Middle East in November 1941 the Agricultural Production and Settlement Board was set up with a network of settler-controlled district committees to direct production and administer the distribution of a range of new subsidies. Various forms of indirect assistance and disguised aid were devised further to assist European producers. Minimum prices were fixed at differential levels for European and African maize growers. Both the War Office and the Colonial Office believed European maize to be overpriced whereas African payments were fixed at a level which depressed production and contributed to the famine of 1943. Cattle prices were also set at levels favouring European settlers. Forcible methods were extensively used in the reserves to collect cattle, some of which were sold to settlers at advantageous prices. Overall, the benefits enjoyed by the settlers during the war years can be sharply contrasted with the economic difficulties experienced by the African farmers. The benefits of increased African cash incomes were more than offset by rapid price rises in all imported goods and meat, forcible cattle purchases and severe food shortages in 1943 and 1944.

The Garvey Movement in British West Africa

Abstract: The paper seeks to present new information concerning the activities of the West African branches of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The author has included biographical profiles of the British West African Garveyites to integrate the Garvey movement into the history of West African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.It is argued that Garveyism was welcomed in British West Africa by the older cultural nationalists who saw Garveyism as an extension of Blyden's ideas. Pan-African sentiments of racial unity and solidarity of African and American blacks, pride in the history of the race, and self-help projects had wide circulation in West Africa from the latter part of the nineteenth century, as a result of Blyden's influence. Joining the branches of the U.N.I.A. was a practical demonstration of a long-standing commitment to cultural and racial nationalism among the West African elite.The Garvey movement also marked the beginning of a new era in West African nationalism. Garvey's radical pronouncements on freeing Africa from colonial rule were unacceptable to the older cultural nationalists who dominated the Garvey groups. They disavowed any interest in organizing a central nation for the race. However, Garvey's ideas may have had long-term effects. By the 1930s the idea of independence from colonial rule seemed more attractive to the West African nationalists. Garvey was one of the first to speak out boldly for freedom from colonialism.The concrete achievements of the West African branches of the U.N.I.A. were small indeed. Nigeria had the most Garveyite activity in British West Africa. There was an agent for the Black Star Line in Lagos and a branch of the U.N.I.A. and A.C.L. The Gold Coast had the least Garveyite activity, probably because of their involvement in the National Congress of British West Africa and also because of their more critical attitude towards co-operation with American blacks. They believed that Africans were best qualified to lead any joint efforts for intra-racial co-operation.

Slaves from the Windward Coast

Abstract: The ‘Windward Coast’ between Cape Mount and Assini (modern Liberia and Ivory Coast) is credited by Curtin with the export of very large numbers of slaves in the late seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth, but with hardly any in the nineteenth. It is suggested here that the actual figures for the earlier period are much lower, many of those slaves attributed to this stretch of coast in the English trade having come from the region Curtin calls ‘Sierra Leone’, while a large proportion of those carried in French ships came from the Gold Coast or beyond. In the nineteenth century, slave trading continued on the coast between Cape Mount and New Sestos until 1840. More work is needed on available sources. The figures are far too uncertain to be used for a chronological underpinning of oral traditions of peoples a great distance inland.

The African Press in Kenya, 1945–1952

Abstract: This paper discusses the African press in Kenya in the years between 1945 and 1952. The growth of an extensive vernacular press was caused by the political frustrations suffered by Kenya's Africans and the political, social and ethnic divisions which separated them. The press can be divided into three major categories: moderate nationalist, regional vernacular and populist newspapers. The moderate nationalist newspapers were edited by members of the educated elite who campaigned for constitutional change and social reforms. The regional vernacular papers were concerned more with local than national issues. The populist press was edited by semi-educated men active in politics at the grassroots level who came to reject the moderate leadership. All these papers publicized the activities of the Kenya African Union and demanded an improvement in the political and social position of Africans in Kenya. But they also expressed the ethnic, political and social hostilities which divided their editors. The decline of moderate leadership was reflected in the closure of their newspapers. The radicals who seized power in K.A.U. in 1951 were supported by the populist press and began new newspapers in 1951 and 1952.Some of the African newspapers achieved quite large circulations, were distributed by agents throughout the towns of Kenya and attracted some advertising revenue. But they all suffered from lack of money and found it difficult to find and pay a printer, and they suffered also from the lack of experience of their editors. Many newspapers lasted only a short time. But throughout these years there were always a number of newspapers published. These were widely read and were politically influential. The populist press played a direct role in stimulating militant resistance. Government attempts to curb the African press and to replace it with government newspapers were not successful. Only in 1952 when a State of Emergency had been imposed and the government had assumed powers to refuse printing licences and to suppress newspapers could the African press be silenced.

African Kingdoms The Kingdoms of Africa . By Peter Garlake. Oxford: Elsevier-Phaidon. 1978. Pp. 152, illus. £4.95.

Abstract: archive-based history need not be Eurocentric, since a surprising amount of African experience and thought, even for quite early periods, has found expression in the written word. Again, 'capitalism' figures prominently in his story, but 'the capitalist mode of production' does not; and there will not be universal welcome for his suggestions that Tanganyikans have always disliked living in aggregated villages and that during the colonial period 'capitalist values and aspirations spread very widely indeed'. Dr Iliffe does not use history as a weapon, but neither is he a bloodless neutral. Affection for 'his' country is implicit in every line, and no one could have written a more eloquent description of the miseries and disasters that attended and followed the colonial conquest, and which must leave every reader as astonished as he is by the resilience of the survivors. But his account is all the more impressive because he does not feel it necessary to claim that everything in the colonial experience was for the worst, or that beforehand all was sweetness and light. 'It was', he says, 'in their treatment of supposed witches that the insularity and cruelty of the old Tanganyikan societies was most vividly revealed.' And still more challenging is his assertion that 'unlike followers of world religions, few Africans had transformed suffering and fear of death into hope of life. They were naked before evil.' This is not the kind of book that has an easily summarized message; indeed the author reminds us once or twice too often that history is 'complex'. He accepts, however,' enlargement of scale' as one of the leading themes of his story, and treats it as a gain, but one that was achieved at heavy cost-and, moreover, very imperfectly achieved. 'Capitalism. . .did provide the means to escape historic poverty, but obstructed that escape within the colonial period.' For a paradox emerges from the periodization that is perhaps his most original contribution (even though he acknowledges a hint from Jacques Berque's study of the Maghrib between the wars.) The early period of colonial rule, which was the most ruthlessly destructive, was also the most creative. By 1929, when the most spectacular disasters were over, diminishing returns were setting in, partly because of depression and war, partly because of the declining energies of Britain, but also for reasons inherent in the colonial economic system.

Labour and the transport problem in imperial Madagascar, 1810–1895

Abstract: The absolute dependence upon human labour for the transport of goods and travellers in nineteenth-century Madagascar can only be understood in terms of the peculiar nature of the imperial Merina structure. A justifiable fear of European attack and takeover led the Merina regime to rely on ‘Generals “Hazo” and “Tazo”’ (forest and fever) and an underdeveloped road network to hinder and ultimately prevent any foreign military force reaching the central plateau. Simultaneously, however, the regime wished to expand both internal and external trade so as to be accepted as an independent member of the international trading community. It therefore needed an efficient transport and communications system. This was created through an imperial porterage organization of slave and forced ( fanompoana ) labour. This system held attractions for the Merina political elite, by being both servile and unpaid. Investment in alternative transport arrangements remained unattractive. The deterrents were natural conservatism, lack of capital, and the significant profits to be made from hiring out slave porters to carry trade commodities which increased in volume from the 1860s. Under these conditions an indigenous ‘proto-trade union’, based upon the growing organizational strength of the maromita (porter) movement emerged in the island. Its power however rested on the absence in the Merina economy of any alternative transport system. When the French colonial regime instituted a modern road and rail transport network from 1895, the imperial porterage system disintegrated.

Charles Atangana of Yaounde

Abstract: Charles Atangana (c. 1880–1943) is an African chief whose career defies easy categorization. He was one of several thousand Beti headman's sons in central Cameroon, and not in the line of succession to replace his father as lineage chief within this acephalous society. However, he became a houseboy to the Germans who moved to the Yaounde district in the 1880s, was sent to a mission school by them, and rose from being medical assistant, clerk and interpreter to Oberhauptling, or Paramount Chief, of this group of perhaps 500,000 persons in 1914. No sooner had he achieved a position of power than he lost it with the coming of World War I. Atangana led the German exodus to Spanish Guinea, and then was sent to Spain by the Germans, who expected him to testify on their behalf at the Versailles peace talks, but he was never called on. After returning to Cameroon he was eventually returned to a position of power by the French, who never had the complete confidence in him the Germans had shown. The 1920s and 1930s brought increasing difficulties to Atangana and other appointed Beti chiefs. To begin with, chiefs were an alien institution imposed on the Beti; the French were not satisfied with them because few of them could deliver the tax revenues and workers for public-works projects in the desired quantities; the Beti became increasingly estranged from them because they did not care for the heavy demands they made. As a generation of school-educated Beti emerged in the 1930s, the chiefs' role was increasingly questioned. Atangana could never be considered a resistance figure; he believed it was useless for the Beti to fight the Europeans, and he accepted the religion and culture of the Europeans. At the same time he did much to advance African interests. He often interceded with the Europeans on behalf of individual Africans, and actively supported campaigns like the sleeping-sickness eradication effort of the French. Within the limited possibilities open to him, he steered a middle course, as he saw it.

Mortality in the eighteenth-century French slave trade.

Abstract: The eighteenth-century French slave trade claimed the lives of at least 150,000 African captives and 20,000 French crewmembers. Traditionally, the ‘Middle Passage’ has been held responsible for these deaths, but detailed information from the port of Nantes shows that the time spent on the African coast could be just as deadly as the crossing, at least for the crew. During the century nearly 8 percent of the crews died along the coast, compared with 5 per cent at sea. The African death rate for the crew actually rose in the second half of the century because increased competition made for longer stays in Africa. At the same time, faster crossing times led to a decline in the death rate at sea and yielded a fairly constant overall rate for the century.The situation was somewhat different for the captives. Although the data are less comprehensive, they indicate a generally declining mortality rate during the century. This was due ultimately to reduced sailing times from Africa to the West Indies. Like the crewmembers, the captives benefited from the quicker crossings of the post-1763 period. Unlike the crew, however, captives were less affected by the increased time in African waters. More familiar with the African environment, they did not suffer as much from the extended stay along the coast, and by the end of the century slave mortality was lower than crew mortality. Unfortunately, the data are lacking to relate mortality either to trading sites in Africa or to Caribbean destinations.

The ‘Germanophone’ elite of Douala under the French mandate

Abstract: The centres of early Western education in West Africa, from whom came the junior staff of the Europeans in the early and middle colonial periods, included Douala, whose people provided most of such staff in German Kamerun and then in French Mandated Cameroun. The development of these coastal elites, insufficiently studied generally, has a particular historical interest in Douala because of the change of colonial regime.The influences of Christianity and German education on the Dualas was extensive by 1914. Duala clerks, however, adapted readily to work under French rule. The Dualas generally profited as owners of urban land and of cash crop plantations under the French, until the 1930s, as under the Germans.Continual anti-colonial protests were made under both regimes. But those against the French were attributed to the German culture or pro-German feelings of the protest leaders, or even active German intrigue among them. In fact former staff of the Germans who lived in the French period off plantation and other self-employment income were the hard core of protest leaders behind such acts as the 1929 self-government petition. Notable among them was Ferdinand Edinguele Meetom. But other ‘Germanophones’ were loyal to the French and helped to form their indispensable clerical staff. Generally, they continued to develop on the same lines under both regimes, with little change.

Urbanization and urban history in West Africa

Abstract: Africa's towns have, since the 1940s, presented the social sciences with one of the greatest fields of their endeavours. They were the scene of a new diversity of social and planning problems, but more importantly they seemed both to typify and to generate the great cultural and political changes of the nationalist period. The field has never been entirely dominated by one genre of work, and here we have examples of two very distinct classes of reflection on African towns: general studies of 'urbanization', very much social science rather than history and thus characteristic of the great bulk of writing on towns so far; and a clutch of studies of particular towns, mostly not the work of scholars who call themselves ' historians' but nonetheless much more definitely drawn towards a historic treatment. It is symptomatic that Enid Schildkrout, in the introduction to her excellent book on the Kumasi zongo, should be 'uncertain whether [she] is writing anthropology or history'; and it prompts consideration of how social scientific concern with the nature of the urban, and the historians' concern with how cities came to be and changed, relate to one another. As a great compelling fact, urbanization gave most pause to anthropologists, who responded, in the late 1950s and 1960s, by specifying 'urban anthropology' as one of their subdisciplines and contributed greatly to 'African urban studies' as a new interdisciplinary field. Few have been more prolific in their writings than P. C. W.

Migration, Commerce and Community: the Mīzābīs in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Algeria*

Abstract: The Mīzāb is an Ibādī community consisting of seven cities clustered in an arid rocky region 350 miles south of Algiers. Having established these settlements nearly a millennium ago, the Mīzābīs, as the inhabitants came to be known, struggled against formidable environmental odds and managed not only to survive but to prosper. By the sixteenth century the Mīzāb had become an important northern Saharan market. During the following centuries, the Maghrib witnessed a remarkable movement of Mīzābī men to coastal cities where they attained prominence in a variety of professions while leaving their roots firmly implanted within their distant oasis community.Following a brief historical background to settlement in the Mīzāb, this article sketches the ecological constraints of an urban community in a region virtually devoid of resources. It then traces the history of the commercial dispersion to the North during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and discusses the probable causes of emigration. The Mīzābīs were forced by environmental constraints to seek outside sources of support. Their rise to prominence in the Regency of Algiers may have been related to declining Saharan commerce and new commercial opportunities in the North. The organization and function of Mīzābī corporations in Algiers and other northern cities are described. Finally, this article relates an Ibācī reform ethic to Mīzābī commercial success and concludes with some reflections on religious ideology and environmental demands as contributing factors to the long-term Mīzābī role in commerce.

Polanyi, Peukert and the political economy of Dahomey

Abstract: THOSE who knew Werner Peukert and his work were shocked and saddened by the news of his suicide in 1978; the full extent of the loss to African studies is apparent from his thesis on the Atlantic slave trade of Dahomey, published under the title Der atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey, I1750-1797 (Wiesbaden, Steiner-Verlag, 1978). It had been hoped to publish in the Journal of African History a shortened English version of an article covering some of the main points of the thesis, but this was uncompleted at the time of his death. Werner Peukert was born in what is now Czechoslovakia in I942, the son of a Professor of Slavonic Languages. He studied at the Institute of Ethnology at the Karl-Marx University in Leipzig, and later worked at the Humboldt University in East Berlin; in 1970 he emigrated to West Germany, and worked as scientific assistant at the Institute of Ethnology of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt-am-Main, completing his PhD Dissertation in I975. He combined with his ethnographic discipline an understanding of the use of quantitative methods in economic history, on which he wrote an important article in Paideuma in I976. Peukert was therefore uniquely qualified to undertake an interdisciplinary study, drawing on the insights of the Eastern European as well as the Western traditions of anthropology and economic history. He himself contrasts the 'misuse' of the social sciences and the hindering of relevant research in the interests of 'the ruling elite in the eastern totalitarian system' with the opposition to all general theories and their application in the Western democratic sphere; he hoped to combine the theoretical approach of the social sciences with the exact and quantitative methods of modern economic history. In addition, he believed that his methods and theoretical approach could be applied to the creation of a general theory of anthropology. Peukert's starting-point for his study of eighteenth-century Dahomey is the work of Polanyi, which doubtless appealed to him on account of its strong theoretical basis. In his summary he confesses that he began the investigation in the hope of demonstrating 'with socio-economic exactitude' one of the principal components of Polanyi's theory, the 'Atlantic theory' according to which the main determinant of Dahomey's political and social structure derived from the Atlantic slave trade. He also draws attention to the extent to which Polanyi's interpretations of Dahomey have been taken over by others, including many who do not accept his general theoretical reconstruction. Inevitably, Peukert's book begins with a discussion of Polanyi's 'substantivist' theory, of which he regarded Dahomey as the prime example. Polanyi's theory, according to Peukert, stands or falls by the closeness to reality of his assertions about Dahomey. Peukert found (evidently to his own surprise) that none of the familiar aspects of Polanyi's Dahomey were true, at least for the period covered by his study ( 740-97); there was no royal monopoly of the slave trade, except for a brief period; no 'status traders' working exclusively for the king without thought of gain; no 'administered trade' with set prices; no neutral port of trade in the sense used by Polanyi. Slaves were obtained mainly by trade, not by slave-raiding campaigns; though there was a royal monopoly on the import of guns, they were few in number,

Literature and history in Africa

Abstract: These lines are from one of the laments over 'economic exploitation, political subjugation and cultural humiliation' contained in Werner Lange's Domination and Resistance: Narrative Songs of the Kafa Highlands. There are fifteen of these laments among 63 songs recorded by Lange in 1972-3 among the Gonga-speaking peoples of the Kafa highlands of south-western Ethiopia. Lange describes how 'when performed before an audience of local peasant farmers', the laments 'invariably evoked audible sighing: by intermittently lowering their eyes, bowing and gently nodding their heads as well as muttering barely recognisable sounds of despair, the listeners poignantly expressed their grief and understanding'. There seems no reason to doubt the sincerity of this description, but the reader may well wish to question the uses to which Lange has put it. Having neatly circumvented the problem of how representative the songs are of peasant 'consciousness', he presents his whole collection as example of resistance to feudal oppression by poverty-stricken indigenous serfs and declasse descendants of former landlords, and as 'expressing a history of self-sacrificing conflicts.. .spelling ultimate victory for the peasantry and other segments of the working population'. These fascinating and remarkable songs stubbornly resist such imposed meanings. Their subject is not the plight of the peasantry but the plight of a feudal aristocracy, dethroned by the Menelik conquest and mourned by bards who belong to a long line of court singers and who as the above quotation makes clear resent their own loss of status in the general collapse of a stratified society. The sentiments in song after song are incorrigibly elitist. Thus a widow, in an eloquent and moving elegy to her husband, complains:

Preparations for civil war in Tripoli in the 1820s: Ali Karamanli, Hassuna D'Ghies and Jeremy Bentham

Abstract: Karamanli rule over Tripoli collapsed in 1835. But opposition to Yusef Pasha had been building up for over twenty years. Hassuna D'Ghies, the chief conspirator, visited England in the early 1820s and met the seventy-four year old Jeremy Bentham, then busily concerned in drawing up codes of law for Spain, Portugal, Greece and other newly independent states. He readily produced a code for Tripoli, to be introduced with the Pasha's consent or (should he refuse) by armed insurrection. Nothing came of their immediate project, but when D'Ghies returned to Tripoli he tried, during his brief period as Chief Minister, to govern according to Bentham's principles.

The Karonga War: commercial rivalry and politics of survival

Abstract: This article suggests a new explanation for the Karonga War of 1887–9. It argues that the advent of different groups of people into northern Malawi in the 1870s and 1880s drastically altered the delicate balance of power in the region. Initially it had been advantageous to the Ngonde to welcome the Swahili both commercially and as a means of deterring further attacks. The settlement of the Henga-Kamanga in the area greatly increased the security of Ungonde and the Nyakyusa ceased to be a serious threat. This fairly comfortable situation in Ungonde was completely disrupted by the arrival of the Europeans. In the first place the African Lakes Company befriended the Nyakyusa and then the Ngonde, forming a trading post at Karonga which was used by all peoples. The Nyakyusa and the Ngonde thereafter had a common interest and were no longer enemies. In consequence the Henga-Kamanga ceased to have an important role in Ungonde. Secondly, the African Lakes Company seemed to offer better trading prospects. This, plus the fact that the Ngoni were no longer threatening the Ngonde, marked the decline in power of the Swahili. The newly formed alliance between the Ngonde, the Nyakyusa and the Europeans posed a threat to the future of the Henga-Kamanga and the Swahili in Ungonde. All this finally led to the Karonga War.

John Dunn and Cetshwayo: the Material Foundations of Political Power in the Zulu Kingdom, 1857–1878

Abstract: John Dunn entered Zululand in 1857. He observed Zulu customs and law and he exploited Zulu soial institutions to his political and economic advantage. His accumulation of land, cattle, wives and clients made him one of the wealthiest men in the Zulu kingdom. Dunn manipulated and utilized his wealth to increase his status and influence. His privileged position with Cetshwayo, his alliances with many clans through marriage and his access to firearms made Dunn a powerful figure in the Zulu kingdom.Dunn's varied career as a trader, labour recruiter, arms supplier and adviser underlines the freedom of political and economic action available to white frontiersmen operating in those zones that straddled the boundaries separating black African states from white colonial societies. The failure of the Zulu royal family to solve the succession question – the essential malaise that plagued the Zulu political system periodically throughout much of the kingdom's history and which, at times, threatened to destroy national unity – presented opportunities for white frontiersmen, like Dunn, to advance their careers. Dunn became involved in Zululand's internal affairs during a period of political turbulence and internecine warfare. The civil war of 1856 had killed off no less than eight potential heirs to the throne and sent Mpande's political career into permanent decline. But new rivalries between the royal princes Cetshwayo, Hamu and Zibepu emerged almost immediately. Cetshwayo used Dunn's assistance to secure his claim to the throne. Dunn's own economic interests prompted him to support Cetshwayo's political aspirations. The control of vital resources, strategic trade routes and firearms was a crucial factor in Cetshwayo's accession in 1873. John Dunn played a major role in providing the material foundations of Cetshwayo's power.

The subjection of a South African state: Thaba Nchu, 1880–1884

Abstract: This paper examines the reasons why the small African state of Thaba Nchu was annexed by the Orange Free State after more than a decade of nominal independence within Free State borders. For some years before 1884 Thaba Nchu had existed in a situation not unlike that of a modern ‘Bantustan’; this was disrupted when a coup was staged against the ruler, Tshipinare, who had relied on Free State support. Fearing instability if the new ruler, Samuel Moroka, became firmly established, Free State forces invaded Thaba Nchu, captured Samuel Moroka, and incorporated the land in the Free State.

The political elite of Imerina and the revolt of the Menalamba : the creation of a colonial myth in Madagascar, 1895–1898

Abstract: The revolt of the Menalamba occurred over a wide area of central Madagascar, mostly in the kingdom of Imerina, in the two years following the French invasion of Madagascar in 1895. A mysterious aspect has always been the question of who, if anyone was its leader. The official version (of the French government) was that the movement was inspired or directed by a number of magnates at the old Merina court. Recent research in previously unopened archives has thrown new light on the question: the role of the old oligarchy in the uprising was virtually nil. Notes, French sum