Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1981"

Iron is iron 'til it is rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting*

Abstract: Archaeological evidence and historical accounts have been used to examine the impact of trade and ecology on the decline of West African iron industries. Environmental changes including an increasingly desiccating climatic shift and widespread deforestation as a direct result of fuel procurement over centuries of iron-smelting and European coastal exploitation, seriously affected the survivability of these industries. While the increasing importation of European iron bars and other manufactured goods necessitated a certain amount of technological innovation, the only viable long-term response and adaptation to the ecological devastation became the increased reliance on imported supplies of iron.

Famine and disease in the history of Angola, C. 1830-1930.

Abstract: A survey of the evidence relating to famine and disease in Angola between 1830 and 1930 is presented. It is noted that climatic instability contributed to maintaining a precarious balance among food resources population and disease before the nineteenth century. "From the 1830s the gradual decline of the overseas slave trade and rise of commerce in raw materials and cash crops brought important demographic changes. These contributed to the worsening famines and epidemic crises of the late nineteenth century. Commercial instability and rural depopulation hindered the growth of Portuguese plantation prosperity." The author notes that although similar crises aided Portuguese military conquest malnutrition continued to be a problem into the twentieth century and on occasion drove Angolas African population to revolt. (EXCERPT)

The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 and the spread of cassava cultivation on the lower Niger: a study in historical linkages.

Abstract: A. G. Hopkins has observed that where new plants and seeds were adopted it was because they were seen as useful additions to the existing range of foods, or because they were regarded as good substitutes to the crops they displaced. This view is confirmed by a close study of the changing food patterns on the Lower Niger since 1520. Prior to 1919, cassava was hardly cultivated on the Lower Niger even though it was widely grown in the neighbouring Niger Delta. This was essentially because the people of the Lower Niger did not consider cassava as a good substitute for yams. However, after 1900 the Lower Niger became the scene of wars of resistance against the imposition of British rule. These wars not only resulted in a constant disruption of the agricultural activities of the local people, they also caused food shortages. The situation was worsened by the First World War and by the pandemic of influenza of 1918–19 which drained the nation's productive capacity and caused an unprecedented food scarcity. Under the circumstances, the people of the Lower Niger were constrained to accept cassava, at least as a supplement to the dwindling stocks of food. And as soon as it was realized that the new crop enjoyed a number of advantages over yams, its cultivation rapidly spread to all parts of the Lower Niger where it began to threaten the older staples. The speed with which this innovation was adapted clearly points to the degree of the food crisis that accompanied the pandemic influenza of 1918–19.

The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali: Evidence from Jenne-Jeno*

Abstract: The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted.Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-jeno have established that iron-using and manufacturing peoples were occupying the site in the third century B.C. The settlement proceeded to grow rapidly during the first millennium a.d., reaching its apogee between a.d. 750 and 1100, at which time the settlement exceeded 33 hectares (82 acres) in size. The archaeological data are supported by the results of site survey within a 1,100-square-kilometre region of Jenne's traditional hinterland. During the late first millennium a.d., several nearby settlements comparable in size to Jenne-jeno existed, and the density of rural settlements may have been as great as ten times the density of villages in the hinterland today.Evidence from excavation and survey indicates that Jenne participated in inter-regional exchange relations far earlier than previously admitted. The stone and iron in the initial levels at Jenne-jeno were imported from outside the Inland Delta; levels dated to c.a.d. 400 yield copper, presumably from distant Saharan sources. The importance of the abundant staple products of Jenne's rural hinterland, including rice, fish and fish oil, is examined in a reassessment of the extent of inter-regional commerce and the emergence of urbanism during the first millennium a.d. Jenne-jeno may have been a principal participant in the founding of commercial centres on the Saharan contact zone of the Bend of the Niger, rather than a product of the luxury trade serviced by those centres.

Slavery, Social incorporation and surplus extraction; the nature of free and unfree labour in South-East Africa

Abstract: This essay questions the generally held view that the northern Nguni were not involved in the slave trade. It is shown that elements of the Ngwane (Swazi), Ndwandwe (Gaza and Jere) and possibly Mthethwa (Zulu) confederations were involved in the sale of slaves captured in the hinterlands of Lourenco Marques and Inhambane. In the 1840s the terms of the slave trade turned against suppliers as British and anti-slavery activities caused a rise in slavers' overheads, a surfeit of saleable slaves on the coast and a consequent price drop. The export of slaves through Lourenco Marques and Inhambane became unprofitable as the two trading posts were unable to compete with the safer embarkation points north of the Zambezi. As the export of slaves from the coastal settlements south of the Zambezi declined, the trade from this area took on a new form as engage labour for the Indian Ocean islands and as non-contracted and unprotected ‘migrant’ labour for Natal and Kimberley. Slave suppliers ceased to sell slaves for export through Lourenco Marques and Inhambane because far higher prices could be obtained from Transvaal Boers and from domestic purchasers. But it was the rise of domestic slavery in the Gaza state that finally ended the maritime export of slaves as by the 1860s, with the loss of labour through warfare and increasingly through migrant labour, it was more profitable to use slaves locally than to export them.Domestic slavery in the Gaza state is treated as a dynamic social relationship in which the slave, as against the kinsman, had no rights and was consequently entirely dependent upon his master for his means of production and reproduction. It was this dependence which resulted in the extreme exploitation defined here as slavery. Slavery should not be seen merely in a functionalist sense as a form of socio-political incorporation aimed at expanding the size of the ruling group. In a society controlled by kinship rights and obligations, slavery provided a man with a means of accumulating wealth and attracting followers. Thus slave labour was realized in the form of repatriated wages; female children born of concubines provided their fathers with brideprices while male children had limited kinship rights and were therefore more exploitable than ‘legal’ offspring. Slave labour also released Gaza Nguni women from agricultural work and allowed them to concentrate on the child-producing and child-raising activities that ensured a putative Gaza Nguni ‘purity’ and, consequently, the perpetuation of the exploitative structure of Gaza society.In a society that had no concept of ‘free’ labour, i.e. labour freed from its former means and relations of production, the distinction between slave and non-slave labour was often blurred, and a disadvantaged kinsman could hypothetically be materially worse off than a slave. Zulu and Swazi forms of servility are examined and are shown to have been only marginally different from Gaza slavery. From this it is deduced that Gaza slavery had its roots in the relations of production taken northwards from the Nguni area. Slavery is seen as a new and more exploitative social relationship that arose in response to the emergence of new forms of production in southern Mozambique.

Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810–1895

Abstract: The distinguishing feature of the Malagasy slave trade in the nineteenth century was the co-existence of two competitive slave networks, the one feeding Malagasy slaves to meet the demand of long-distance and regional markets in the western Indian Ocean, and the other channelling Malagasy war captives and East African slaves on to the markets of Imerina. The export of slaves from Madagascar had long existed, but the import of slaves was a new and distinctly nineteenth-century phenomenon, the result of the rise of the Merina empire, whose economy was based on a huge, unremunerated and servile labour force. As the empire expanded, so its labour requirements grew, to conflict sharply with the increasing demand for labour on the neighbouring plantation islands as they shifted over to the production of sugar. Creole merchants found themselves obliged to find alternative labour supplies, and from the 1830s they were moving rapidly down the west coast of Madagascar, where they purchased slaves from chiefs independent of Merina control. Until the outbreak of the Franco-Merina war of 1882–5, the slave-trade networks remained remarkably stable, despite local rivalries. This was due largely to the presence of the Arab Antalaotra, an experienced body of middlemen, and the Indian Karany who supplied the capital for the trade. The war effectively broke the power of the Merina regime, and as the imperial economy crumbled, so security of trade collapsed across the island. Though the disruption of legitimate commerce initially spurred the slave trade, it also strengthened creole calls for French intervention. This occurred in 1895, and the following year the French authorities abolished slavery in Madagascar. This, and the effective military occupation of the island by the French, reduced the Malagasy slave trade to a trickle by the first years of the twentieth century.

State and Society, Marriage and Adultery: Some Considerations Towards a Social History of Pre-Colonial Asante

Abstract: The present paper is one of a series of essays in the social history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (presently situated in the Republic of Ghana). It concentrates on an examination of the phenomena of marriage and adultery in the Asante past, and it seeks to locate the fundamental subject of relations between the sexes within the broader framework of the superordinate relationship between the state and the social formation. Anthropological and historical work on Asante is reviewed in the light of these concerns, and an attempt is made to identify and to describe some of the crucial concepts and imperatives embedded in the ideology of the state. The argument is adduced throughout that the state was interventionist in relation to the social formation, and that it was the state that simultaneously defined the rules making for differentiation and presided over (and monitored) the rewards and penalties surrounding this process. The accumulation (the consumption) of women is interpreted as being one strand in the economics of power and differentiation; similarly, compensatory damages for adultery (ayɛfere sika) and the phenomenon of ‘child marriage’ (ɔyere akoda) are interpreted as indicators of the relations of power between men. The paper concludes with the presentation of a small sample of career histories; these are intended to convey some idea of the interventionist power of the state in peoples' lives. Underlying and informing the detailed matter of the paper is a general concern with the understanding of ideology and thought – an exercise in reconstruction that is a sine qua non for the writing of Asante (and African) social history.

Archers, musketeers, and mosquitoes: the Moroccan invasion of the Sudan and the Songhay resistance (1591-1612).

Abstract: This paper reinterprets the invasion of Songhay by the Sa'did Sultan Mulāy al-Mansūr's mercenaries led by the Pasha Judar. The battle of Tondibi in March 1591, and the subsequent defeat of the Askiya Isḥāq II, marked a turning point in both Moroccan and West African history. The paper assumes a strong relation between the invasion, the Mediterranean problems and the commercial needs of the Sa'did. Al-Mansūr wanted to regain control of the gold trade to stimulate the economy of his kingdom. However, his expeditionary forces got bogged down in the fly-infested southern swamps because of an unexpected protracted war of resistance led by the Askiya Nūḥu. Revolts in the cities and the countryside led to repression and the exile of a group of prominent ‘ulamā’ in 1594. The Moroccans also suffered from a lack of administrative coordination as demonstrated by the competition between the governor and the treasurer. All these problems culminated in a disaster. By 1612, unable to match the mobility of the resisters, the musketeers refused to do battle with the Songhay archers. Finally, the qā' id AH al-Talamsānī deposed the Pasha, and the Sultan began to lose control of his troops. As Songhay and Morocco experienced serious crises in the seventeenth century, Europe's domination of international trade became uncontested. The invasion swallowed up both the conqueror and the conquered.

A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold*

Abstract: There is a general consensus among West African historians that the Island of Gold, known to Arab geographers as Wangara and to European cartographers as Palolus, refers to the Bambuk/Bure goldfields. This article examines the evidence for an alternative identification of the Island of Gold with the Inland Niger Delta, where the place name Wangara would be derived from Soninke long-distance traders (Wangara). Many of the details on the Island of Gold provided in the original sources can be shown to apply more convincingly to the Inland Niger Delta than to Bambuk/Bure. Until now, this hypothesis has not received serious consideration, partly because of the belief that the Inland Delta and its most important entrepot, Jenne, did not play a significant role in long-distance trade networks until the fourteenth century. This is contradicted by archaeological evidence for a major urban centre at Jenne-jeno by 900 a.d.The existence in the later first millennium a.d. of the Soninke town of Jenne-jeno, and the oral traditions which maintain that the western Inland Delta was the heartland of the Soninke trade diaspora, combine to indicate that commerce along the Middle Niger was substantial by the early second millennium. Indirect confirmation of this trading activity is found both in al-Bakri's discussion of riverine trade routes along the upper Niger Bend and in al-Idrisi's account of the Wangara along the Middle Niger. The continuing identification of the Inland Niger Delta region as the Island of Gold from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries implies that part of this trade involved gold. A possible early gold source in Lobi is suggested.

Monopolists and Speculators: British Investment in West African Rubber, 1905–1914

Abstract: During the classical period of colonialism, from the 1890s to the 1940s, much private Western investment in Africa was conducted through investment waves – short-lived booms related to demands for, and prices of, particular raw materials. One such burst of foreign financial interest occurred between 1905 and 1914 when, against the background of a climacteric in tropical rubber, 55 companies with a total nominal capital of £5 9 million were floated in Britain to undertake rubber production in Africa. The article, seeking to understand why British capital, largely responsible for the dramatic growth of rubber planting in Asia, made such little lasting impact in Africa, focuses upon the 26 companies set up for West African operations. It notes their high failure rate, which was related to the predominance of interest in wild rather than planted rubber. Two principal reasons are adduced for the lack of commercial success of the 18 companies exploiting wild rubber concessions. The first, political and commercial opposition aroused by the exercise of monopoly rights over a natural forest product, is illustrated by the experience of three relatively large concerns in Liberia and the Ivory Coast. The second, an inadequate financial and managerial structure, is most obvious among companies with assets in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria, mainly fraudulent or near-fraudulent concerns floated to feed speculation in rubber shares during 1909–10. Their promotion involved the shadier fringes of the Edwardian capital market and was connected to the Gold Coast mining shares boom of 1900–1. These businesses made almost no contribution to the West African rubber trade.

Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903–1945

Abstract: The study of migrant labour in Africa has tended to emphasize social form rather than historical context. This study of the immense migrant labour force that worked the Northern Nigerian tin mines is placed in the context of the ongoing subsumption of labour and existing social relationships by capital. Colonial conquest was required for the establishment of tin mining in Nigeria on a capitalist basis to serve the industrial needs of the West. Pre-colonial social organization prevented the release of sufficient labour for this purpose. After conquest, a migrant labour force was built up in conjuncture with a growing reserve army of labour by means of cash taxation, penetration of the market, weakening of slavery and state use of forced labour. In the second decade of the twentieth century there was substantial pressure from mineowners for the colonial regime to institute Rhodesian-style labour recruitment methods, but this was ultimately rejected because of the costs involved, the desire to encourage cash crop growth and the overarching aim of social stability. As a result, it was largely market forces which threw up the pool of labour that worked the mines, notably from the cash crop poor parts of Northern Nigeria and neighbouring French colonies. Initially, migrant labour was the most satisfactory option for many Northern Nigerian peasants, whose wages earned most in the pre-World War I era. The purchasing power of a miner's wage tended to decline, but social forces continued to throw up cheap labour. In World War II, the state instituted forced labour to mine tin, but the scheme was expensive, unproductive and opposed by business. The 1940s represented the nadir of worker poverty and the war was followed by a period of heightened social and political resistance to capital and the state. The tin mines both helped to cause and profited from the decay of the older mode of production in Northern Nigeria.

Change and Continuity in the British palm oil trade with West Africa, 1830–55

Abstract: The utilization of a relatively unused source, the Customs Bills of Entry, enables the structure of the British side of the West African palm oil trade to be studied in detail. Three main developments emerged in the period from 1830 to 1855 when the introduction of regular steamer services radically altered the trade. Firstly, Liverpool's pre-eminence as the main British palm oil port began to be challenged by Bristol and London; secondly, Britain's reliance on the Niger Delta as a source of supply appears to have proportionately declined, and thirdly, new traders entered the trade, especially after 1840, and challenged the hegemony of the older, established merchants. These structural changes suggest that the organization of the British side of the oil trade, hitherto controlled by a few large Liverpool traders, was breaking down from the 1840s and that this contributed to increased tension and rivalry among British traders in West Africa. This in turn helps to explain the development of the aggressive behaviour between British traders and African middlemen, noted in the Niger Delta in the 1860s, which led to the subsequent appeals for British imperial intervention.

The Volta River Salt Trade: the Survival of an Indigenous Industry

Abstract: Salt has been produced in Ghana since at least the sixteenth century at many coastal sites. By the nineteenth century commercial production was concentrated in the lagoons east of Accra, and especially at Songor Lagoon just west of Ada. Here the Ada Manche and the priesthood controlled production. Much salt consumed in Asante and further north came from Accra, Ningo and Songor, and an increasing proportion went up the Volta River by canoe. The share of salt trade in the hands of the Ada traders is reflected in their virtual monopoly of the river traffic and their settlement in trading communities along the river. The British attempted to regulate and tax the trade, but market forces were more important in determining price. Salt from Ada was generally preferred to imported salt and to salt from other local sources, but the alternative of imported salt helped regulate the local prices. The importance of Daboya as a source of salt seems to have been somewhat exaggerated. Salt from Ada continued to predominate in much of Ghana in the twentieth century, but the river traffic was gradually replaced by motor transport, and the hold of the Adas on the distributive network broken. Salt continued to be produced by traditional methods at Songor until quite recently. It is still produced by traditional means for a fairly wide sale at Keta Lagoon, east of the Volta.

Muslim Women in Mombasa Muslim Women in Mombasa 1890–1975 . By Margaret Strobel. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979. Pp. xiii + 258. £12.30.

Abstract: we must reach for our lecture-notes. At the same time, we will be wiser. The differing textures of Kenya's settler life, the adventures of the pioneering years, the hopes of permanence and the frightening impact of Mau Mau are all well conveyed. Also coming through the text one can feel the economic hazards: the perennial ones of climate and the developing ones of the unprofitability of a small mixed farm faced by competition from larger mechanized land-units. For regional specialists some of the letters are of particular interest. One is a description of a Sports Day held in 1938 by the Independent Schools Association; Nellie perceptively noted that part of its aim was 'to show how they can organize'. Another makes reference to a brief boom for settler farmers arising from Italian military purchases in 1935. Some vignettes of the Emergency are also useful how one reacted to a nightwatchman who arrived with an open letter stating 'Bearer is a Police Informer', for example. Of perhaps the greatest interest, though, are the letters covering the period from Lancaster House (i960) onwards — the apprehensions, anguish, departures and deaths from despair, and on occasion by suicide. Here also are contrasts: old-established settler associations and clubs voted, often unanimously, to admit farmers of all races, but at the last Nakuru agricultural show ' No European paid the slightest attention to any African, or vice versa'. Independence Day on the farm was celebrated with a party, gifts of food and sports for the labourers and their children. But there were also intimidations: overtly in the form of marauders and occasional physical assaults; covertly in, for example, the form of a letter received by a settler vendor of a farm from its new purchaser, a senior African civil servant, which said: 'The matter of my cheque bouncing is entirely between you and your bank.' A letter of Nellie's in 1935 epitomizes both the old order in Kenya and the charm of this book for historians: I've marked all the breeding rabbits' ears, which is a loathsome job, and makes one feel sick. Two squealed which was awful. You do it with lamp-black, so my hands and the rabbits' ears were the same colour as Suya's face... I've developed a passion for book-keeping. I've tackled it most seriously, and find all sorts of exciting things happen that you wouldn't expect. I did the rabbit accounts thoroughly. Without depreciation, we made a profit of Sh 40/odd, and with depreciation a loss of Sh 35/-. I have started the most lovely books for 1935 and think I shall pursue my studies even unto accountancy. It does instead of crosswords, up to a point. . . Do you know the 'sinic conception of Yin and Yang'? You ought to, it's fun.

Recent Archaeological Research and Radiocarbon Dates From Eastern Africa

Abstract: Research over the past five years or so indicates that in north-western and central Kenya and northern Tanzania pastoralism is much older than previously supposed. Radiocarbon dates from the central Rift valley and the Serengeti plains suggest the presence of domestic cattle by about the sixth millennium b.c. Early pottery traditions in the central Rift valley and around Lake Turkana have been more precisely identified. A continuing research project in the southern Sudan has revealed early pottery with possible northern affinities and rouletted pottery of the first as well as second millennia a.d. In north-western Tanzania, iron would still seem to have been smelted as early as the sixth century b.c. The use of iron, and perhaps of rouletted ware, by pastoral peoples in central Kenya is now dated to the late first millennium a.d. In Malawi, food-production would still seem to have been introduced early in that millennium, but the introduction of cattle has now been dated to the third or fourth century a.d., some centuries earlier than had previously been supposed. In Zambia, the surprisingly early dates for Situmpa pottery have apparently been confirmed. On the east coast, excavations at Hafun, Mogadishu and Manda have enabled more precise dating of the periods during which these ancient ports flourished, while a comprehensive survey programme has refined our knowledge of monumental sites along the Kenya coast.

Portuguese, Chikunda, and Peoples of the Gwembe Valley: the Impact of the ‘Lower Zambezi Complex’ on Southern Zambia

Abstract: The role of the ‘Lower Zambezi complex’ which developed out of Portuguese and African interaction is examined in the light of recent research in the Gwembe valley, an area of the Middle Zambezi on the far periphery of Portuguese penetration from the east coast. The origins of Lower Zambezi contacts with the peoples of southern Zambia are traced to the late seventeenth century and their development and expansion are examined, on the basis of oral tradition and written sources, through the reopening of Zumbo in 1862, the defeat of the Ndebele at the Kafue confluence around 1870 and the consequent establishment of permanent trading posts in the Gwembe, down to the late 1880s when the increasingly disruptive activities of the Chikunda and their muzungu leaders led to general and successful resistance against them in the form of an armed rising. The effects of the ‘Lower Zambezi complex’ are related to the development of political authority and the introduction of technical and cultural innovations in the Gwembe. Chikunda and muzungu activities are shown to have differed in their effects between the Gwembe and their much better-known and more destructive penetration of the Luangwa valley in the 1880s, partly because of the decentralized nature of Gwembe society.

Riziculture and the founding of monarchy in Imerina

Abstract: Many observers of Merina history have suggested that the organization of labour required to build and maintain irrigation works for paddy rice growing formed the basis of Merina monarchy. Though little direct evidence is available, inferences from land-use models and consideration of oral traditions and written accounts help to explain why irrigated riziculture became popular and how it spread through the central highlands to Imerina.Rice had been cultivated on the east coast of Madagascar for centuries and reached Imerina through the southern plateau but the hydraulic technology of Merina paddy rice growing arose from local needs from the late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries. As swidden farmers exhausted the forests, paddy rice cultivation and water management systems attending it became increasingly important. Though irrigated riziculture enhanced the value of co-operative labour among hitherto isolated groups within Imerina, it cannot be seen as the direct cause of the monarchy's authority. It is suggested instead that the sacredness of land and the accumulation of rights in newly irrigated land by those who controlled water hastened the evolution of a rigid social hierarchy which exalted a few and subjugated the rest.

Who Were the Vai

Abstract: The Vai of northwestern Liberia speak a Northern Mande language, fairly closely related to Manding. Previous attempts to date the breakaway of the Vai from their Manding homeland have been unconvincing. The most we can say is that they probably reached the coast more than 500 years ago. The leaders of the Mani or Kquoja invasion of Sierra Leone in the mid-sixteenth century almost certainly spoke a contemporary version of Vai. There is little evidence of a direct connexion between the movement of the Vai towards the coast and that of the Ligbi towards eastern Ivory Coast, despite linguistic similarities. More probably the Vai entered present-day Sierra Leone in company with the Kono. Traditions that the Kono were ‘left behind’ sound misleading: it is more likely that the Kono, Vai and speakers of the now extinct ‘ Dama’ language formed a continuous band from eastern Sierra Leone to the sea, cutting off the Gola and Kisi from other Mel speakers. Later (perhaps before the mid-seventeenth century) this band must have been split by the westward movement of Southwestern Mande speakers. The ‘migration’ of the Vai need not have involved a mass exodus or conquest. What was probably involved was the gradual creation of trade corridors, with a few Northern Mande speakers resident on the coast and a large number carrying salt, dried fish and other wares from the coast towards the head of the Niger. Although the corridors were eventually to some extent disrupted, the Vai language survived near the coast, because of its importance in trade and because links with the Manding were never entirely severed.

The Failure of European Mining Companies in the Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast

Abstract: European mining companies in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast failed because they were unable to solve the problem of ‘primitive accumulation’. Their failure to solve the problem of primitive accumulation was attributable to a variety of factors, including financial manipulations by ‘share-pushers’ and ‘concession-mongers’, managerial and technological inadequacies, and the refusal of the colonial state to employ that degree of force which would have been necessary to overcome the resistance by Africans to the sale of their labour-power to the mines. The resistance mounted by African gold diggers was such that they not only refused to sell their labour-power to the mines, but also out-produced the European mining companies for most of the period under review, while those few Africans who did sell their labour-power to the mines formed a small and highly transient labour force which engaged in a largely individualistic form of resistance characterized by their consistent refusal to work at the pace demanded by management, and to turn over to management the entirety of their day's output. Thus not only did the resistance of Africans contribute to the failure to solve the problem of primitive accumulation, and to the consequent weakness of the European mining companies, but conversely the weakness of the European mining companies contributed to the structuring of the mines'labour force, and to the forms of resistance waged by mineworkers.

The Jaga Reconsidered

Abstract: Joseph Miller has argued that the ‘Jaga’ invasion of Kongo in 1568 was primarily an internal rebellion supported by people from Matamba or from Makoko and the Pool. In this article I suggest that the Jaga were more probably dislocated Kongo or Tio from the lower middle Kwango. They were the ancestors of the seventeenth-century ‘Muyaka’, who raided slaves for the Makoko market. Their invasion of Kongo probably began as slave raiding. It continued as an attempt to break the Makoko king's monopoly of slave trade outlets by gaining direct access to the European traders. The invaders succeeded in temporarily overthrowing Kongo for two reasons. Firstly, Kongo was generally ill adapted to withstand sudden invasion. Secondly, the Kongo ruling elite was divided while undergoing radical political and social change. The restoration of Kongo by Portuguese forces had two important consequences. Firstly, it confirmed and advanced the changes in the ruling elite which had begun in the early sixteenth century; it thereby laid the foundation for a monopoly of the throne by a slave-based patrilineal royal segment descended from Afonso I. Secondly, the restoration facilitated the development of a new cloth-trade route from Okango through Sao Salvador to Luanda which compensated the mani Kongo for his loss of coastal monopoly on slave exports. This new trade enabled Kongo to suvive economically and politically into the later seventeenth century.

An East African Radical: the life of Erica Fiah*

Abstract: Erica Fiah's neglected life is a very valuable source of information on African political thought and action in colonial Tanganyika. His mission education imbued him with strong Christian values and a belief in British culture and civilization. Coming to Tanganyika from Buganda he was always rather alienated from the local society and culture, and was therefore inclined to seek a political and social community with educated Africans throughout the territory, or with the traders and workers in Dar es Salaam. He too would have liked to be the ‘Mwalimu’ of the Tanganyikan people. In his relations with the colonial government he clearly went a step further than Martin Kayamba or the African Association of his day, who relied on maintaining and exploiting the paternalism of the Government and its patron–client relationship with Africans. Fiah's attitude was one of ‘loyal opposition’, which he expressed first through his own Garveyite association, in the 1930s, and then through his newspaper Kwetu, during the 1940s. Fiah sought to improve and change the existing system, taking more active steps than mere petitioning to make the Government fulfil its moral obligations. This led him into conflict with the African Association in 1936–8; later it also distanced him from the emerging nationalist movement which he had helped fertilize, but whose complete rejection of colonial rule was beyond his intellectual horizon. Fiah's life was not the failure it seemed but a central link in the political transformation of the people of Tanganyika.

Fula Resistance to French Expansion into Futa Jallon, 1889-1896

Abstract: During the period of the European Scramble for Africa, many African rulers, conscious of the military superiority of the European Powers, resorted to the use of diplomacy in a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to maintain the independence of their dominions. This approach was demonstrated in Futa Jallon's resistance to French expansion.Among the methods of resistance used by the Alimamies of Futa were the rejection of the European version and interpretation of treaties, the grant of support to other African resistance movements, and the exploitation of Anglo-French rivalry. The Alimamies also exploited the lack of unity in French administrative organization in West Africa and the complexity of Futa's political constitution. Their resistance, marked by a considerable degree of duplicity, was facilitated by France's dependence on a policy of peaceful expansion towards Futa in contrast to its aggressive approach in many other areas of West Africa. Eventually, Fula resistance collapsed, largely because of the disintegration of the indigenous state, which enabled France to intervene and establish its authority over Futa with remarkable ease, using only a minimum of force.

The Netherlands and the Partition of Africa

Abstract: The Netherlands was almost the only country in Western Europe which took no share of Africa in the course of Partition. This is at first sight surprising. For centuries the Dutch had had a presence on the Gold Coast, while at the Cape they had created the most important white colony in sub-Saharan Africa. True, the Netherlands had given up both possessions before the Partition, but by that time the Dutch were the chief traders on the Congo estuary, which after all was a major flash-point giving rise to the Partition. Curiously enough, no one has sought to examine this seeming paradox. It is therefore the aim of this article to consider the relationship between Dutch commercial expansion and the origins of Partition, and to place this question in the context of the Netherlands' principal imperial interests, in South-East Asia.

La Lutte contre la Trypanosomiase en Côte d'Ivoire, 1900–1945

Abstract: La trypanosomiase ou maladie du sommeil existe a l'état endémique en Afrique tropicale et done en Côte d'Ivoire où elle a constitué de 1900 à 1945 un grave danger. La lutte contre cette endémie a connu deux périodes: la première periode de 1900 à 1938 est une phase de découvertes avec une tentative de lutte organisée en 1931, mais qui fut un échec; la deuxième période 1938–1945 fut plus fructueuse avec la création du Service général autonome de la maladie du sommeil qui parvint à circonscrire l'endémie. Plusieurs hypothèses ont été avancées pour expliquer la diffusion de la trypanosomiase pendant la période coloniale. On a mis en cause tour a tour la pacification et les déplacements de population. En réalité cette diffusion ne s'exerce que lorsque se produit des modifications profondes des milieux physiques et humains à la fois. En ce sens, la mise en valeur coloniale a joué un rôle de premier plan.

The Dente Oracle, the Bron Confederation, and Asante: Religion and the Politics of Secession

Abstract: This paper traces the formation, growth, and contraction of the Bron Confederation, a group of small provinces which seceded from Asante in 1875 and remained independent until British and German acquisition in the mid-1890s. The Confederation was headed by the priest of a traditional religious shrine called Dente. The paper analyses how, operating initially from a solely religious base, the Dente priest achieved real political power over the Confederation. He became increasingly threatening to Asante and entwined in Asante politics, ultimately coming to the attention of European officials. His nemesis lay in the fact that neither Asante nor European strategists could afford to tolerate a successful Bron Confederation. Nevertheless the Confederation coalesced under his leadership and his ultimate authority was religious. A case study in the process of pre-colonial African religious/political synthesis, this paper specifically proposes that the sanctions resulting from religious oath-swearing and the wealth accruing from religious consultation were managed skilfully by the Dente priest and provided the basis for secular economic and political power.

A Voice in the Big House: The Career of Headman Enoch Mamba*

Abstract: During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the administration of the Transkei was instituted, codified and elaborated. The role of the headman was crucial: he was directly responsible to the magistrate, and his ward (‘location’) became the basic administrative unit. The headman's position was also profoundly ambiguous. He was at once a state official (responsible for enforcing new legal, economic and political relationships) and a spokesman for and defender of the inhabitants of his location.Although invested with considerable powers, headmen had to remain responsive to popular pressures. In tracing the career of a single prominent headman, Enoch Mamba, this article demonstrates the possibilities and contradictions within the post. Mamba entered government employment in Idutywa as a clerk/interpreter; was appointed headman in 1893; and was dismissed – after attempting to unseat the magistrate – in 1896. Resilient and resourceful, Mamba won reinstatement by 1904; he served as a highly effective and occasionally authoritarian headman and as District and General Councillor until his death in 1916. He created and led one of the first pan-tribal political organizations in the Transkei and came to play an active role in the (Cape) SANC and the SANNC. As a politician, Mamba remained sensitive to rural issues and differed from urban-based politicians (like Rubusana, Pelem, Jabavu) in his populist and ‘Africanist’ accents.

Forces sociales et idéologies dans la décolonisation de l'A.E.F.

Abstract: La decolonisation de l'Afrique Equatoriale Francaise presente cette particularite que l'initiative en venue des pouvoirs coloniaux, metropolitains et locaux, qui ont su controler de bout en bout le mouvement d'emancipation politique. Ce n'est pas que les Africains aient subi passivement cette evolution. L'analyse des forces sociales montre deux groupes n'ont pas etee en mesure d'intervenir efficacement et durablement sur la scene politique: l'une, la chefferie, apparait comme une force declinante dans la conjoncture 1940–1960, ruinee a la fois par l'eevolution economique, les transferts de revenus au sein de la population africaine, l'affirmation de valeurs nouvelles; l'autre, la masse ouvriere, etait trop emiette, en termes de localisation et d'organisation, pour mener une action autonome. Ce fut done a la classe montante, la petite-bourgeoisie, qu'echut le role politique moteur du cote africain: mais, dans les conditions particulieres de l'A.E.F., cette classe ne fut pas capable, ni peut-etre desireuse, d'elaborer une ideologic et des pratiques anti-imperialistes ou meme seulement anti-colonialistes.

The Rise of Settler Power in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 1898–1923 . By James A. Chamunorwa Mutambirwa. East Brunswick, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980. Pp. 245. $18.

Abstract: as well as Lawson's own informative memoranda); many of these are extremely interesting, but it is not clear by what criteria they have been selected. Moreover, they are presented without annotations, inadequately indexed, and not always accurately transcribed: ( ' I .M. ' Lewis is an obvious misreading of Lawson's writing of 'J.W.'). This devout, learned, determined African Empire Loyalist deserves a memorial better thought-out and better written than this opportunistic piece of book-making.