Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1990"

Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya

Abstract: This article explores the imaginative meanings of Mau Mau which white and black protagonists invented out of their fearful ambitions for the future of Kenya. Within the general assumptions of white superiority and the need to destroy Mau Mau savagery, four mutually incompatible European myths can be picked out. Conservatives argued that Mau Mau revealed the latent terror-laden primitivism in all Africans, the Kikuyu especially. This reversion had been stimulated by the dangerous freedoms offered by too liberal a colonialism in the post-war world. The answer must be an unapologetic reimposition of white power. Liberals blamed Mau Mau on the bewildering psychological effects of rapid social change and the collapse of orderly tribal values. Africans must be brought more decisively through the period of transition from tribal conformity to competitive society, to play a full part in a multi-racial future dominated by western culture; this would entail radical economic reforms. Christian fundamentalists saw Mau Mau as collective sin, to be overcome by individual confession and conversion. More has been read into their rehabilitating mission in the detention camps than is warranted, since they had no theology of power. The whites with decisive power were the British military. They saw the emergency as a political war which needed political solutions, for which repression, social improvement and spiritual revival were no substitute. They, and the ‘hard-core’ Mau Mau detainees at Hola camp who thought like them, cleared the way for the peace. This was won not by any of the white constructions of the rising but by Kenyatta's Kikuyu political thought, which inspired yet criminalised Mau Mau.

Trypanosomiasis Control in African History: An Evaded Issue?

Abstract: Social control of trypanosomiasis in African history deserves further study. The pioneering work in this field is John Ford's respected but neglected The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology (1971). While Ford's arguments have received support from recent findings in immunological, epidemiological and epizootiological research, they have rarely met with evaluation or engagement, either in historical or scientific literature. Historians have tended to describe trypanosomiasis control as a matter of avoiding contact with tsetse fly. In so doing they have implicitly rejected the position of Ford, who regarded infrequent contacts between tsetse and mammalian hosts as necessary for the maintenance of host resistance. Ford believed that host resistance, rather than avoidance of tsetse, was the basis of trypanosomiasis control. The historical nature of Ford's work requires that a satisfactory evaluation of The Role of the Trypanosomiases make use of historical, as well as scientific, data. The evidence of trypanosomiasis and cattle-keeping from one region of north-eastern Tanzania supports Ford and suggests that other explanations of trypanosomiasis control are inadequate. The Tanzanian evidence shows that precolonial societies coexisted with, but could not avoid, tsetse. They could not eradicate tsetse because scarcity of water prevented permanent occupation of large areas. Tsetse and trypanosomiasis did not prevent cattle-keeping, but helped to keep the region's cattle population low and confined it to relatively densely settled neighbourhoods. Social control of trypanosomiasis collapsed during the pre-Second World War period of colonial rule. Economic and political developments were primarily responsible for a series of famines between 1894 and 1934. Famine-induced depopulation allowed steady spread of tsetse and wildlife reservoirs of trypanosomes into formerly cultivated areas which had been free of tsetse before the colonial period.

Tsetse Fly in Western Narok, Kenya

Abstract: This article studies the expansion of tsetse fly in one part of Kenya Maasailand between 1900 and 1950. It follows the lines of investigation first suggested by Ford's work and examines in detail the interaction between changes in four elements in the Mara ecosystem: climate, vegetation, land use and tsetse. Tsetse was able to expand because its habitat expanded and the spread of bush and fly into the grasslands both caused, and was facilitated by, shifts in patterns of Maasai grazing and occupation in the area. Up to the 1890s, the Mara Plains were regularly grazed by Maasai herds; but the general depopulation of Maasailand in the aftermath of the rinderpest pandemic and civil war left the region vacant until after 1900 and allowed the spread of bush cover which was then colonised by tsetse. When Maasai returned, they altered their grazing patterns to avoid such areas. However, the progressive encroachment of tsetse-infested bush continued and was not halted until bush-clearing schemes and closer grazing forced the fly to retreat by destroying its habitat. The study is set within the wider context of ecological change and capitalist development in East Africa and suggests that the common assumption that colonial capitalism was responsible for the disruption of the ecosystem and, therefore, for the spread of disease and environmmental degradation needs careful re-examination in the light of a more sophisticated understanding of the processes of ecological change.

The Youngmen and the Porcupine: Class, Nationalism and Asante's Struggle for Self-determination, 1954–57

Abstract: This article examines the origins, background, composition and policies of the National Liberation Movement, a mass political organization founded in Asante in September, 1954. The central aim of the NLM was to advance Asante claims for self-determination and to oppose the CPP in their advocacy of a constitutional settlement with the British colonial government–a settlement that would bring about a unitary government in an independent Gold Coast [Ghana]. The analysis developed here places the ‘youngmen’ of Asante, the nkwankwaa, at the centre of these events. It is argued that this somewhat enigmatic group was the catalyst behind the formation of the NLM and the resurrection of Asante nationalism that it represented. The nkwankwaa forged a dynamic popular front of resistance in Asante to what they termed the ‘black imperialism’ of Nkrumah and the CPP. In exploring the pivotal role of the nkwankwaa in the rebirth and reconstruction of Asante nationalism, the discussion addresses the legacies of indirect rule in Asante, the importance of cocoa, the development of class, and the ambiguous role of Asante's political intelligentsia. Most crucially, it is suggested that the political development of the NLM turned upon the struggle within Asante between the nkwankwaa and the Asantehene (backed by the chiefs and Asante's political intelligentsia) over the very definition of ‘nation’ and of ‘self-determination’. Thus, the article highlights the historical conflicts and contradictions within Asante society–contradictions which were softened by but not subsumed within Asante nationalism, and conflicts which were distorted, but not overshadowed, by the resilience of Asante Kotoko in the face of the centralized state. The reasons for the tenacity of Asante nationalism lay not in the struggle between Asante and what was to become the Ghanaian state, but in the unresolved struggles within Asante society.

Alcohol, racial segregation and popular politics in northern rhodesia

Abstract: Historians who have studied the rise of African opposition to colonialism in Northern Rhodesia have concentrated largely on the development of political parties and their campaigns for political rights. This paper explores some of the social and cultural elements of the popular movement against British rule through an examination of challenges to restrictions on the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages. In Northern Rhodesia as in much of British-ruled east, central and southern Africa, the colonial government banned the consumption by Africans of all European-type alcoholic drinks and placed tight restrictions on the brewing and sale of grain beers. In the immediate postwar period racially discriminatory alcohol regulations emerged as a highly emotional issue and remained so despite liberalization of the restrictions on beer and wine. But the focus of popular anger was the municipal grain beer monopolies and attempts on the part of the authorities to stamp out an illegal beer trade conducted by women brewers. Beginning in the mid-1950s this anger erupted in a series of protests and boycotts directed against municipal beerhalls. The protesters, many of whom were women, opposed the exclusion of Africans from a potentially lucrative sector of trade as well as the supposedly immoral and degrading characteristics of the beerhalls. Examination of the struggle over the beerhalls illuminates some of the diverse and contradictory sources and objectives of popular political expression during this period and in particular sheds light on the interplay among issues of race, class and gender in the nationalist movement.

Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905–6

Abstract: The Mahdist uprising of 1905–6 was a revolutionary movement that attempted to overthrow British and French colonial rule, the aristocracy of the Sokoto Caliphate and the zarmakoy of Dosso. The Mahdist supporters of the revolt were disgruntled peasants, fugitive slaves and radical clerics who were hostile both to indigenous authorities and to the colonial regimes. There was no known support among aristocrats, wealthy merchants or the ‘ulama. Thus the revolt reflected strong divisions based on class and, as an extension, on ethnicity. The pan-colonial appeal of the movement and its class tensions highlight another important feature: revolutionary Mahdism differed from other forms of Mahdism that were common in the Sokoto Caliphate at the time of the colonial conquest. There appears to have been no connection with the Mahdists who were followers of Muhammad Ahmed of the Nilotic Sudan or with those who joined Sarkin Musulmi Attahiru I on his hijra of 1903.The suppression of the revolt was important for three reasons. First, the British consolidated their alliance with the aristocracy of the Caliphate, while the French further strengthened their ties with the zarmakoy of Dosso and other indigenous rulers. The dangerous moment which Muslims might have seized to expel the Europeans quickly passed. Second, the brutality of the repression was a message to slave owners and slaves alike that the colonial regimes were committed to the continuation of slavery and opposed to any sudden emancipation of the slave population. Third, 1906 marked the end of revolutionary action against colonialism; the radical clerics were either killed or imprisoned. Other forms of Mahdism continued to haunt the colonial regimes, but without serious threat of a general rising.

Mtunya : Famine in Central Tanzania, 1917–20

Abstract: In the Dodoma Region of central Tanzania the people called Wagogo name a famine that struck between 1917 and 1920 the Mtunya—‘The Scramble’. This famine came after both German and British miliary requisitions had drained the arid region of men, cattle and food. The famine, which killed 30,000 of the region's 150,000 people, is more than just a good example of what John Iliffe has called ‘conjunctural poverty’. The Mtunya and the response to it by both the people of the region and the new colonial government also shaped the form of the interaction between local economy and society and the political economy of colonial Tanganyika. The Gogo, in their own interpretation of the famine, stress the ways in which this famine made them dependent on the colonial economy. For them, this famine represented a terrible loss of autonomy, a loss of the ability to control the reproduction of their own society.

Society, State and Nationality in the Recent Historiography of Ethiopia

Abstract: Events since 1974 have challenged fundamental assumptions about Ethiopian history, calling in question the country's borders and internal coherence, the nature of its social order, the centrality of its monarchy and Zionist ideology to the maintenance of the polity, and the viability of the peasant way of life. In so doing they challenge a young, but vigorous, historiography, one founded in the 1960s with the creation of a History Department at what is now Addis Ababa University and of an international coterie of scholars. Its early stages were marked by archivally-based studies of Ethiopia‘s international emergence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and of trade and politics. Its later stages were marked by a steady growth in the number of contributors and in the emergence of major new themes many of which depend on the use of indigenous sources, both oral and written. Class and class relations; economy, state, and society; the Kushitic- and Omotic-speaking peoples; the use of social anthropology—such are the concerns of contemporary historians of Ethiopia. These concerns inform new work on agrarian issues and on the roots of famine, on urbanization, on the nature of the twentieth-century state, on the revolution itself and on the roots of resistance and social unrest, and on ethnicity. Meanwhile, more traditional work continues to glean insights from the manuscript tradition and to bring to light major new texts both Ethiopian and foreign. The article surveys this material and concludes by noting the persistence of certain limitations—the lack of work on women or on pastoralism, the scarcity of it on Islam, the heavy emphasis on that part of the country lying west of the Rift Valley, and the absence of an integrating synthesis—and the prospective integration of work on Ethiopia into the mainstream of African historiography.

Text and Testimony in the Tribunal de Première Instance, Dakar, During the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract: Historians have recently come to appreciate the importance of studying the colonial legal system and the potential in mining court cases for historical data. This article is a preliminary effort to present a methodology for the study of the records of the entry level civil court, the tribunal de premiere instance, in Dakar, Senegal. The records are somewhat peculiar, because they are the consequence of the extension of the legal rights to the African originaires of the four communes of Senegal, which empowered them to bring civil cases before this court. However, these records share with records from other courts in colonial Africa problems of determining how the litigants' ‘testimony’ was shaped by the legal procedures of the court. This article, therefore, focusses on the context in which litigants' testimony was transformed into the texts we read as court records. In particular, it examines how the phases of litigation and how the court's bias towards written evidence shaped the court records. This research was stimulated in part by the need to locate new sources providing African ‘voices’ about the changes associated with the transition to colonialism. This article concludes with an appraisal of the historical potential of using court records for African social history.

Sickle Cell Anaemia, Genetic Variations, and the Slave Trade to the United States

Abstract: Examination of the DNA of individuals with sickle cell anaemia who reside in various geographical areas in Africa has led to the conclusion that the gene for this genetic disease arose separately in three different locations. Similar studies of sickle cell anaemia patients in the United States provide considerable information about the frequency in the United States of these three genetic variations. On the basis of such data, it is possible to estimate the percentage of slave imports from a given African locale into the United States. When this is done, there is general concordance with previous conclusions from such sources as language studies, shipping data, etc.

The ‘Igbo Scare’ in the British Cameroons, c. 1945–61

Abstract: La peur de la domination de la tribu Ibo constitua l'une des raisons majeures pour la decision du Sud-Cameroun Britannique a voter en 1961 pour quitter le Nigeria completement et de s'unir avec la Republique du Cameroun. Des les annees 1920, apres que la Grande-Bretagne avait obtenu un mandat international sur un part de l'ancienne colonie allemande, elle le gouvernait comme apanage du Nigeria, et le developpement, que ce soit economique ou culturel, etait tres tardif. Les indigenes faisaient concurrence a grande peine aux immigrants du Nigeria, surtout les Ibos, dont la resilience et l'ingeniosite dans le commerce, allies a leur manque de modestie dans le succes, provoquaient l'envie. Les politiciens camerounais contribuaient aux stereotypes ethniques en incitant des rumeurs fantasques. Certes, des autres rivalites importaient aussi, mais dans les elections de 1954, 1957 et 1959 le mecontentement avec les liaisons au Nigeria fut clairement associe aux sentiments anti-Ibo.

Hendrik Albertus and his ex-slave Mey: A drama in three acts

Abstract: This essay draws on documents relating to a single extraordinary episode, and on supporting materials, to illustrate aspects of the mentalites of slaves, slave-owners, and Protectors of Slaves in the British South African colony of the Cape of Good Hope. The narrative follows the story of a slave, Mey, who was harshly beaten twice within six days in 1832. Mey, and several other slaves who had been whipped for the same offence, accepted the first punishment; Mey complained about the second, which he alone suffered, to a colonial official called the Protector of Slaves. The Protector vigorously investigated the complaint. Mey's master, Hendrik Albertus van Niekerk, co-operated only reluctantly with the investigation. As the Protector pursued the case, van Niekerk suddenly brought it to an end by manumitting Mey, giving cash compensation to the other slaves he had whipped, and paying legal fines. The behaviour of each of the men fails to conform to the roles conventional wisdom has prepared for masters, slaves, and colonial officials. The essay demonstrates that the men were not eccentric, but that they were both rational and representative of their class. Mey acted as he did because the slaves had developed a ‘moral economy of the lash’ and because the second beating fell outside the boundaries of acceptable punishment by those standards. The Protector prosecuted van Niekerk with determination because he believed the punishment had been brutal and capricious and because Mey was a good slave who had been wronged. Hendrik Albertus freed Mey and compensated the other slaves because he refused to accept the legitimacy of the Protector. He settled the case before he was forced to visit the Protector's office or face Mey in court. To have honored the law and to have answered Mey's charge directly would have been to dishonor himself. He would have compromised the power and authority on which his honor as a slave-owner rested. Hendrik Albertus valued his honor more highly than one slave and a few pounds Sterling.

The Establishment of Long-Distance Trade Between Sierra Leone and Its Hinterland, 1787-1821

Abstract: One of the principal objectives of foreign settlements in nineteenth-century West Africa was the establishment of extensive regular trade with Africans, especially residents of the distant, fabled interior. The attainment of this goal, however, proved very difficult. The most spectacular success was achieved by the British settlement at Sierra Leone, which in the early 1820s managed to establish substantial regular trade with the distant hinterland. Its early efforts to achieve this objective, however, were unsuccessful. Until 1818 the development of long-distance trade with the hinterland was impeded by the desultory nature of such efforts, Sierra Leone's opposition to slave trading, competition from established coastal marts, obstructions caused by intermediate states and peoples, and the weaknesses and limitations of the Colony's policy towards commerce and the interior. By 1821, however, the marked decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, the active co-operation of Futa Jallon and Segu, two major trading states in the hinterland, and certain other important developments in the Colony and the interior, combined to establish such trade on a regular basis.

Timbuktu Under Imperial Songhay: A Reconsideration of Autonomy

Abstract: Songhay sources compiled in the seventeenth century portray the relationship between Gao, the political capital of the state, and Timbuktu, the religious and commercial centre, as abnormally important. The view is that Timbuktu was not only autonomous, but a source of important political influence over policy decisions at Gao. A consensus of contemporary scholars has embraced this depiction. In contrast, the present study argues that Timbuktu was not autonomous, but that Gao was sucessful in achieving its original objective in capturing the city: financial profit. In addition, the evidence is consistent in outlining the relatively negligible political influence of Timbuktu over Gao. The Timbuktu-centric chronicles are largely responsible for this distortion; it is therefore necessary to approach these sources with even greater caution. It is also desirable to re-examine the roles of other sahelian entrepots during the imperial Songhay period to determine more accurately their relative importance.

The South African War (1899–1902): context and motive reconsidered

Abstract: Since 1899 the idea has been widely held that the South African War was no isolated episode but one illuminating the fundamental characteristics of British expansion, both in the nineteenth century and beyond. Cross-reference between the particulars of South African history and theories of imperialism has long been a fact of intellectual life. This process, however, often seems to reflect less the fruitful interplay of new knowledge and evolving hypotheses than the progressive entrenchment of separate schools of thought. The purpose of this article is to highlight the gulf between different approaches, with reference to recent work; and to suggest that, notwithstanding the work of the last decade, little headway has been made in linking the development of South Africa's economy and mineral resources to the War of 1899 in any but the most general and self-evident of ways. It argues that the case for interpreting the origins of the war in the main from a metropolitan and political perspective retains considerable persuasiveness and explanatory power. Finally it puts forward an alternative way of seeing in the struggle representative features of British expansion.

A Dura Revolution and Frontier Agriculture in Northwest Ethiopia, 1898-1920

Abstract: This article describes the rapid growth and decline of the production of dura (Sorghum vulgare) in the frontier region adjoining the border of northwest Ethiopia, Sudan's Kassala Province, and the southwest frontier of Italian Eritrea between c. 1900 and the 1920s. This short-lived agricultural revolution resulted less from the slow, incremental adaptation of local agriculture than from a conjuncture of events, including the presence of a fertile but depopulated vertisol plain (the Mazega), the rise of a major food market in Eritrea, the availability of archaic forms of labour, the presence of entrepreneurial managers, and the immature state of colonial/imperial interests in the region. The precipitous decline of food production in the region in the early 1920s resulted from the dissolution of this historical conjuncture. The article concludes by suggesting that African history in general and agricultural history in particular has tended to be ‘Whiggish’, emphasizing progressive change at the expense of conjunctural and often short-lived episodes.

Early Wolof States Les Anciens Royaumes Wolof (Sénégal). Volume 1: Le Grand Jolof (XIIIe–XVIe Stècle). Par Jean Boulégue. Blois: Editions Façades (diffusion Karthala, Paris). Pp. 207. Not priced.

Abstract: subjects on the historian's agenda: crime, 'native administration', nutrition, the diminution of famine in later colonial Africa, monastic poor relief in Ethiopia, osu slavery among the Igbo, administrative history in South Africa. Underlying such reminders is the awareness that though the very poor are most visible in towns, most are still in the countryside, where the extent of family care inevitably eludes close analysis. As is to be expected from John IlifTe, the prose is terse and pithy. Abstractions are kept to a minimum; pathos is concentrated in vivid and abundant quotations; there are fleeting moments of sardonic humour. Some pages are in what might be called the omniscient Gallic mode of social history (by no means peculiar to French scholars), which has been known to lapse into the accumulation of instances, liberally quantified, and gathered from large expanses of space and time. Iliffe is certainly partial to numbers, but his material is rigorously organised, the overall design respects chronology and geography, and there is no shortage of signposts. It must be regretted, more than usually, that the publishers could not place the notes at the foot of the page. With impressive restraint, the author has confined them to source-citations, yet these are necessarily so numerous as to occupy almost eighty pages. If placed below the text, they would average between a fifth and a quarter of each page, yet there they would have greatly eased the task of the enquiring reader. Still, the book has been made instantly available in paperback, and at a fair price. This is only fitting for a work which constitutes a majestic summa, drawing on more than fifty years of African studies to bring within a common frame the weak, the voiceless and the self-effacing as well as the articulate and strong.

…And in Southern Africa The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa . Edited by Leroy Vail. London: James Currey, 1989. Pp. xxii + 422. £25.00 (£12.95 paperback).

Abstract: Johnson's paper on Nuer and Dinka in Sudan, but also in Prunier on Uganda and Pelissier on Mozambique. The other theme is ' divide and rule': Pelissier sees the Portuguese as a weak colonial power, especially dependent on it, and Esoavelomandroso emphasizes the French use of it against the Merina in Madagascar. Prunier, however, sees the British tribalization of Uganda as arising more from 'une profonde et honnete betise', which believed both in 'tribes' as an enduring African fact and in their manipulability by the state. The role of missions as catalysts of ethnicity emerges as a theme in relation to Madagascar, Burundi (a paper by Gahama and Mvuyekure) and Angola. Iroko's paper on ethnonyms in the R.P. of Benin — now there's a preposterous toponym for you! — shows the colonial power's adoption of local stereotypes, especially those of the Fon for their neighbours. Two papers present micro-studies of urban ethnicity: Diouf on the Lebu of Rufisque, and Goerg on tribal headmen in Conakry, compared with British practice in Freetown and Dar-es-Salaam. Section IV deals with contemporary ethnic politics, and on the whole contains less original material. Coquerel's short account of Inkatha and Nicolas's on Nigeria add little to what specialists have described elsewhere. Magnant relates Sara ethnic consciousness to the conflicts in Chad. Clarence-Smith, in one of the few chapters to employ a specific theory of ethnicity — here Benedict Anderson's ' imagined communities' -gives a crisp account of Angola. Finally, two pairs of papers. On the Guineas, Lopes vainly seeks to reconcile Amselle's rehabilitation of ethnie with Marxian pieties about the priority of la lutte de classes, in relation to GuineaBissau; and, much more interesting, A. M. Sow shows how Sekou Toure exploited ethnic hostility (against the Fula) as an instrument of his statist politics. On the Swahili, Constantin shows how in Tanzania they moved from being an essentially interstitial group, mediating coast and interior, rulers (whether Arabs or Europeans) and ruled, to being the bearers of a valued idiom of national integration; while Kagabo argues that in Central Africa the Swahili have been a social category traders, Muslims, strangers rather than an ethnie, because not of a territorial and political character.

THe Volume, Age/Sex Ratios, and African Impact of the Slave Trade: Some Refinements of Paul Lovejoy's Review of the Literature *

Abstract: IN the December, I 989, issue of the Journal of African History, Paul Lovejoy offered another of his careful updates of the state of research into the volume of the Atlantic slave trade, this time combining the exercise with a useful discussion of sex ratios in the traffic and a review of the overall impact of the traffic on sub-Saharan Africa.1 In a brief response I would like, first, to offer some fine tuning to Lovejoy's assessments of volume and age/sex ratios and, second, to reflect on Lovejoy's restatement of his well-known 'transformation thesis' attributing the increased use of slaves in nineteenthcentury Africa to the ending of Atlantic slave exports. My main objective is merely to push ahead the effort to make sense of this most appalling longdistance migration in history. The latest revision in the numbers of Africans entering the Atlantic trade stems partly from the Mettas-Daget catalogue of French slaving ships. Charles Becker and David Richardson have each computed different totals for the French eighteenth-century slave trade from this same published source.2 The divergence is not surprising. The Catalogue is a complex document, and any total derived from it hinges on a number of assumptions.' Anyone using it as a source should specify the adjustments they make with some precision. My own aggregate count is 982,I22.4 Becker and Richardson

Poverty and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland: A Critique of Iliffe's Thesis

Abstract: John Iliffe has argued that the Yoruba, almost uniquely among African peoples not substantially affected by the world religions, had developed by the nineteenth century a syndrome of institutions – a culture of begging, the valorization of poverty, asceticism – more typical of literate, stratified societies with intensive agriculture. It is agreed that the Yoruba towns of the nineteenth century knew poverty on a substantial scale, aggravated by the endemic warfare and social upheaval. However, the supposed ‘indigenous tradition of begging’ which Iliffe cites as evidence, is shown to rest on a cultural misreading of social practices reported by the missionaries, notably the offering of cowries to the devotees of gods, especially Esu. These acts were not almsgiving to beggars but sacrifices to deities, continuous with other forms of sacrifice. The ‘beggars’ were by no means always poor. Sociologically, offerings to the devotees of deities ranged from a ‘commercial’ mode, where material blessings were anticipated in return, to a ‘tributary’ mode (particularly common with devotees of Sango) where they were analogous to placatory sacrifices (etutu). So dominant was the notion of sacrifice that a concept of Islamic origin, saraa, originally meaning ‘alms’, came to take the meaning of ‘sacrifice’ in Yoruba (as in many other West African languages). Other aspects of the alleged poverty/asceticism syndrome are shown to be equally invalid. The pronounced this-worldliness of Yoruba religious attitudes is incompatible with idea that the poor might enjoy special religious favour. Acts of self-mortification did not indicate an attitude of religious asceticism. There was no ideal that religious personnel should be poor. It is argued in conclusion that the changes which we can see in Yoruba religion arise from the active engagement of Yorubas with external influences, rather than purely from endogenous developments or purely reactive responses.

The Spectre of a Second Chilembwe: Government, Missions, and Social Control in Wartime Northern Rhodesia, 1914–18*

Abstract: The 1915 Chilembwe Rising in Nyasaland had important political repercussions in the neighbouring colonial territory of Northern Rhodesia, where fears were raised among the Administration about the activities of African school teachers attached to the thirteen mission denominations then operating in the territory. These anxieties were heightened for the understaffed and poorly-financed British South Africa Company administration by the impact of the war-time conscription of Africans and the additional demands made by war-time conditions upon the resources of the Company. Reports of anti-war activities by African teachers attached to the Dutch Reformed Church in the East Luangwa District convinced both the Northern Rhodesian and the imperial authorities of the imperative need to strictly regulate the activities of its black mission-educated elite. Suspected dissident teachers were arrested, while others were diverted into military service where their activities could be more closely supervised. With the 1918 Native Schools Proclamation, the Administration laid down strict regulations for the appointment and employment of African mission teachers. The proclamation aroused the vehement opposition of the mission societies who, confronted by war-time European staff shortages, had come to rely heavily upon their African teachers to maintain their educational work. The emergence in late 1918 of the patently anti-colonial Watch Tower movement, which incorporated many African mission employees within its leadership, weakened the opposition of the missions, and served to consolidate the administration's perception of the African teachers as a dangerous subversive force. Strong measures were implemented by the administration soon after the end of the war, with large numbers of Watch Tower adherents being arrested and detained.

Generational Conflict in the Umarian Movement after the Jihād : Perspectives from the Futanke Grain Trade at Medine

Abstract: This article attempts to correct the stereotype which portrays the Futanke who joined in the jihād of al-ḥājj Umar Tal in western Mali as militant Muslim warriors who were not responsive to opportunities in production and trade. It shows that Futanke officials and settlers in the area of Jomboxo (southwestern Karta) responded quickly to the possibility of producing grain, on the land and with the slaves acquired during the jihad, and marketing it at the nearby river factory of Medine, where French officials and merchants, resident African traders and nomadic gum caravan leaders converged in a brisk commerce for three decades in the late nineteenth century. The grain sales were a response to strong demand from the desert-side economy and gum trade as well as to French needs for provisions. These emerging economic interests brought the settlers into conflict with Umarian officials and a younger generation of Futanke, recruited in the 1870s and 1880s and eager to wage war to accumulate wealth and establish their position. This social and generational cleavage hindered the effort to mobilize resistance against French encroachment and conquest.

The Carrier Corps The Carrier Corps. Military Labor in the East African Campaign 1914–1918. By Geoffrey Hodges. New York and London: Greenwood Press, 1988. Pp. xxiii + 244. £28.95.

Abstract: it. The emphases are on the spread of education and Christianity, with an apology for saying so little on the economy. Both the framework and the themes covered are very familiar. They revolve round the major changes during the colonial era. These changes are narrated in a paradoxical manner: the people hated colonial rule but loved its positive elements, especially the education and social services that were introduced. The chapter on colonial administration shows that the region lost its ' democratic character' with the imposition of warrant chiefs. These chiefs were blamed for inaugurating a 'painful era of political and social disharmony, political corruption, authoritarianism, and various forms of colonial oppression and exploitation' (p. 199). The people's hostile reaction to the chiefs is said to have given birth to the native authority system of local administration in the 1930s. This, too, was not a satisfactory arrangement, and another re-organization had to be undertaken in the 1950s. Other chapters are devoted to the economy, education and religion. On the economy, the author uses his data on road and railway construction to reach the conclusion that exploitation and oppression accompanied British rule. Western education is described as an agent of transformation. It encouraged 'extreme individualism' and altered the patterns of authority by enabling the newly educated elite to control and dominate political affairs. The success of the expansion of Western education owes much to the colonial government, the people themselves, and the missionaries. The missions receive the most prominent attention in the book: they were credited for their great contributions to education and religion, even if Professor Ekechi regards missionaries as iconoclasts.

Slavery and the Slave Trade in Colonial Africa

Abstract: The European conquerors of Africa found themselves to be rulers of slave populations whose numbers reached into the millions. The new rulers, rather than emancipate the slaves they encountered, adopted gradualist policies; they abolished overt slave trade, and later de-legalized slavery. While censuses of interwar slave populations were hardly feasible, it may be that several million Africans remained in slavery in 1920, a total perhaps comparable to the number of New World slaves in I86o.1 This collection of essays addresses directly the problem of slavery in twentiethcentury Africa.2 The title emphasizes the end of slavery, yet the content of the chapters gives almost equal emphasis to the continuation of slavery well into the colonial era. Suzanne Miers, co-editor of a well-known collection which focused on nineteenth-century slavery, has now joined with Richard Roberts to produce this sequel.3 Roberts and Miers introduce the book with an interpretive dilemma: 'Slavery in Africa sometimes ended suddenly, causing widespread disruption, and sometimes petered out with apparently minimal repercussions. Some scholars, therefore, see its demise as precipitating a crisis, while others view it as a nonevent ". ' Did the world of African slave-holders end with a bang or with a whimper? Various contributions to the volume support each alternative. Raymond Dumett and the late Marion Johnson, contesting Gerald McSheffrey's earlier analysis, argue that the ending of slavery in Gold Coast 'must be one of the quieter social revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries'. Jan Hogendorn and Paul Lovejoy emphasize Lugard's careful efforts to ensure a gradual and smooth end to slavery among the Hausa. Richard Roberts, in contrast, provides

From Colonisation to Avénement : Henri Brunschwig and the History of Afrique Noire

Abstract: Henri Brunschwig (1904–1989) began his career as a notable historian of Germany but became an influential pioneer of African studies in France, first at the Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer (1948–60) and thereafter at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. His own research ranged from Brazza's role in the French occupation of equatorial Africa to the part played by Africans in establishing and sustaining French colonial rule. His lucid and original works of synthesis helped greatly to bring an evolving body of knowledge about the African past into the frame of modern world history. His emphasis both on rigorous standards of source-criticism and on the need for broad horizons in time and space continues to exercise authority over historians in France, Africa, and beyond.

Essai d'Interprétation du Cliché de Kangere (dans la Région des Grands Lacs Africains)

Abstract: The Kangere cliche is widespread in the Great Lakes region of Zaire (Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika), where the Bembe, Fulero, Havu, Lega, Nyindu, Shi, Vira and others live. This cliche has been collected since the 1910s by missionary and colonial administrator researchers. Later it has been heavily used and interpreted in different ways. Thus certain modern scholars have made Kangere the first ‘king’ of the region and the ‘father’ of all bami, that is, the ‘kings’ of various ancient kingdoms existing on the shores of the Great Lakes, including Rwanda and Burundi! Their single aim was to refute the ‘Hamitic myth’.In fact, the Kangere cliche is woven together from different elements taken from various ethnic groups of the region. Its elements were ordered at the same time that they were collected, in the course of the 1910s and the 1920s. They constitute an African response to the preoccupation of the colonial administration of those years: the creation of vast ethnic groups and politically and administratively viable entities. Whites wanted tribes, and blacks created them; whites wanted great chiefs, and blacks created them, the bami.In their interpretation of the Kangere cliche, these researchers quite simply confused, erroneously, the ‘bwami symbol’ of personalized power (which existed in the area, and which chiefs of different ethnic groups possessed) with the ‘bwami state’ or kingdom, of recent, colonial creation.

Muslim Authority Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam . Edited by Donal B. Cruise O'Brien and Christian Coulon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Pp. viii + 223. £25.00.

Abstract: Portuguese is enumerated as a cool million (p. 156). The president of Gabon turns into a tribe and becomes 'the Bongo' (p. 106). Unfortunately such errors are far beyond the limit of the acceptable, even given the difficulties of creating a work of synthesis on so wide a canvas. This kind of project almost forces one into an essentialism. Perhaps inevitably, the typical Africa of this study is one that ranges from the Islamic states of West Africa to the forest peoples of Equatorial Africa, the range covered within the old French colonies. South Africa, the Ethiopian Highlands, even Nigeria, for instance, which fit rather poorly into the range this suggests, are not well integrated into the volume. Perhaps emphasizing differences and contrasts more might have helped here, although Coquery-Vidrovitch also attains a definite coherence from the inbuilt limitations of her range. She differs from many Anglophone writers on contemporary Africa in placing little if any emphasis on economic decline as a source of crisis. Sceptical of the prospects of the African family farm, she at times assumes that the progression to mechanization, to either capitalist or state socialist forms of organization (and with it what she calls neo-colonialism), is virtually inevitable. Not many would be so bold as to praise the Mengistu regime for completely overturning the basic social structure of the Ethiopian peasantry (p. 161). Coquery-Vidrovitch feels that, in general, those processes that belong to ' neocolonialism', such as the formation of a 'bureaucratic bourgeoisie', have been analysed satisfactorily elsewhere and she does not seek to explore them. Her famous African mode-of-production theory of twenty years ago posited a chasm, only crossed by commercial chains and periodic exactions, between the precolonial state and a timeless village life. In a sense, her view of the modern state and its relation to the peasantry is not much different. For Coquery-Vidrovitch, the essential Africa is 'a milieu that demonstrates an extraordinary capacity for absorption, inertia and resistance' (p. 2). The historical pressures that concern her are urbanization and the population explosion. It is these forces that are underlining at once neo-colonial development and rural inertia. On this basis, she sees a bleak short-term future for Africa. She feels, however, that through the depths of the consequent crisis that is now under way, ' in twenty years every aspect that defines Africa today will have undergone an alteration that cannot be foretold' (p. 218) and that grounds for optimism may be there at the end of the tunnel. Her concluding pages with their sweeping historical vision are, in fact, amongst the most provocative and interesting in this volume. In conclusion, this book must be recommended for those who wish to explore French perceptions of Africa and the preoccupations of an eminent, immensely wide-ranging French Africanist, but its poor translation makes it less than the usable synthesis for which we might hope.