Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 1997"

Punt and aksum: egypt and the horn of africa

Abstract: The ancient Egyptians tended to consider both their immediate and more remote neighbours either as excellent sources of luxury trade items and slaves, at times of political power and strength, or as uncivilized forces threatening to destroy and overwhelm the Egyptian Nile Valley. This was true not only of cultures within Africa; those in the Aegean, the Levant, Cyprus and Mesopotamia also were viewed from one or the other perspective, occasionally both at the same time. All these, together with Nubia and Libya, have received much scholarly attention and, whilst we probably will never fully understand their ancient relationship to Egypt, we have a fairly good idea, ‘hearing’ the story from both sides when surviving evidence allows, what their attitudes towards each other were at various times in their history.This article deals with what is surely the least investigated aspect of ancient Egyptian relations with its neighbours, simply because we know comparatively little about the two major successive cultures concerned – Punt and Aksum – in the ancient world.

The contributions of linguistics to the study of history in africa

Abstract: The work of historical and comparative linguists has long interested African historians. By classifying languages into families, linguists provide models of their historical development that may point to historical events and processes that occurred among peoples speaking those languages. Once classified, linguists can then reconstruct earlier forms of present languages, thus providing direct evidence of words, their meanings and historical influences in the past. Finally, linguists seek to explain innovations that are revealed in their reconstructions by pointing to a combination of internal linguistic developments and different forms of contact that occurred among speakers of different languages.Simple classification, based largely on counting cognate words in related languages (a technique known as lexicostatistics), is still a very common activity, however, and thus the one most historians rely on, but lexicostatistics gives only a very limited, and often deceptive, view of language history. Historians should thus be aware of its limitations as well as the potential of a number of important techniques now employed by linguists, including the Comparative Method, reconstruction of ancestral languages, and contact models.

The volume of the early atlantic slave trade, 1450–1521

Abstract: ALTHOUGH slaves were the most common merchandise in the Portuguese-dominated opening period of the seaborne trade between Europe and Africa, relatively little conclusive information is available on their overall numbers. Even less is known about the distribution of these early exports of slaves in space and time, although these are two of the key factors in assessing the much debated societal impact of the early Atlantic slave trade and the role of slavery in West and West-Central African economic, social and political life.

Archaeological views on a history of landscape change in east africa

Abstract: Some 2,500 years ago along the western shores of Victoria Nyanza, Bantu-speaking iron workers began to practise their industry in the area today known as Buhaya. This article examines the archaeological evidence for the history of iron technology in Buhaya from that earliest period until the present century. Of particular interest is the destructive impact of iron production and agricultural settlement on the forest resources of the region. Between 200 B.C. and A.D. o, iron-producing communities appeared along the shores of Victoria Nyanza. In the first half of the first millennium A.D., iron production and settlement increased dramatically, with hundreds of sites scattered across the landscape as far as Lake Ikimba, about 25 km. to the west of Victoria Nyanza. Charcoal excavated from iron-smelting furnaces near Kemondo Bay show that wet, gallery forests grew along the lake shore at that time, and that the smelters used a wide variety of species of wood for their industry. These forests quickly disappeared, and by A.D. 400 iron producers were exploiting secondary regrowth and less accessible swamp forests. The pollen record and the sedimentary evidence show that forests in the interior also shrank rapidly at the same time and that the area experienced a severe erosion event in the late fifth century A.D., shortly before a decline in iron smelting during the seventh century. Abandonment of the region - except for the littoral of Victoria Nyanza -followed in the second half of the first millennium A.D. Some of the Rutaran-speaking population then moved to the grassy plains of southern Uganda. Archaeological evidence shows that the region, partly reforested, was quickly reoccupied during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries A.D. According to evidence from historical linguistics, the new occupants brought more cattle and a larger number of varieties of bananas than their predecessors. Thereafter iron technology prospered again, but employed techniques that were more

Iron age gao: an archaeological contribution

Abstract: Recent discussion of 'medieval' Gao has relied primarily upon historical evidence as a means to reconstruct and interpret events in the Niger Bend region prior to the development of the Songhai empire in the early fifteenth century A.D. The results of archaeological excavations and surveys conducted in the Gao region in 1993 allow a preliminary contribution to be made to this subject based upon this new source of evidence. It is argued that the development of Gao was more complex than previously thought, and that the settlement structure within Gao, which served to facilitate both trans-Saharan and inter-regional trade, also reflects possible defensive concerns and the gradual acceptance of Islam. It is concluded that archaeological research, utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach, offers the means to further understand events in this region prior to, and indeed during, the period of the Songhai empire, without sole reliance upon written or oral historical evidence, which can often be biased and contradictory.

The great debate and the origins of south african historiography

Abstract: The fundamental preoccupation with race in later historical writing in South Africa has its origins in the Great Debate between liberals and their enemies in the early nineteenth century. Standard overviews of South African historiography date the emergence of racially structured histories to the second half of the nineteenth century. For Saunders, the making of the South African past and its thematic ordering in terms of race only began in the 1870s ‘when the first major historian [G. M. Theal] began to write his history’. Prior to Theal's monumental efforts, ‘only a few amateur historians had turned their hands to the writing of the history of particular areas or topics’. Likewise, in Smith's analysis, also published in 1988, the construction of South African history in terms of race is seen almost exclusively as the product of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a very brief introductory section, Smith suggests that what little historical writing there was before the middle of the nineteenth century is scarcely to be taken seriously, and his study offers no more than a bare outline of historiographical developments before Theal and his heirs.

The annual volume and regional distribution of the british slave trade, 1780–1807

Abstract: New, more complete and more detailed estimates of the volume and regional distribution of the British slave trade from 1780 to 1807 are presented. Conclusions are based on a data-set of 3, 3 68 voyages leaving ports in Great Britain or British America, including ventures organized by non-British merchants. More detailed information than previously utilized in similar studies comes from Liverpool muster rolls, Caribbean gazettes and Lloyd's Lists and indicates that more than 8 per cent of British ships headed out to Africa did not embark slaves along the coast. Previous studies have overestimated the volume of the late British trade because they did not take such ship losses into account. By developing the data on a year-by-year basis, according to the seven embarkation areas conventional in quantitative studies on the Atlantic slave trade (Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Windward Coast, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra and West-Central Africa), and by examining individual ports in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, this paper shows that British trade from Senegambia, the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin has been underestimated for the years from 1780 to 1807, whereas British slave exports from the Bight of Biafra and West-Central Africa have been overestimated. Further, historians have understated the numbers of slaves exported from the Windward Coast. At ports in the Bights where the British dominated the slave trade, such as New Calabar, Bonny and Old Calabar, the data indicate cyclical supplies of slaves that reached their ceilings about every five years. In the Bight of Benin, data from Whydah, Porto-Novo and Lagos illustrate how Dahomian wars in the early 1800s disrupted slave supply routes. Previous studies, which have produced only decennial data, have thus left hidden significant annual fluctuations that suggest supply and demand factors in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Famine and wild pigs: gender struggles and the outbreak of the majimaji war in uzaramo (tanzania)

Abstract: Late in 1907 a missionary from Kisserawe in German East Africa complained of a spate of ngoma ritual dances among the Zaramo people. In particular he singled out an ngoma conducted by women to ameliorate a drought that was threatening that year's maize crop. As the women danced around a well, dressed as men and brandishing muskets, they appealed for rain from ‘their god’. Several aspects of this ngoma make it remarkable. It occurred following the Majimaji uprising in German East Africa, which the Germans put down with such violence as to make war as a tactic of resistance unpopular if not untenable. The ngoma was attended by Christian and non-Christian African women alike, suggesting a purpose whose expediency cut across competing belief systems. Finally, although cross-dressing was an aspect of certain Zaramo rituals, the symbolic appropriation of men's social roles by dress and wielding of weapons made this ngoma anomalous and suggests that the participants were consciously and purposefully reshaping gender roles at this time. The timing and symbolism of the ngoma make it clear that it was a reaction to the threat of famine, which had become a recurrent aspect of Zaramo life by 1907 and a symptom of ongoing rural social change ushered in by colonial rule. The larger question is whether changing perceptions of gender roles intersected with the Majimaji war (1905–7), and whether Majimaji had an underlying meaning for rural Tanzanian societies that has escaped the attention of historians. If so, it suggests that the prevailing conception of Majimaji needs to be questioned and re-examined.

Khomo lia oela: canteens brothels and labour migrancy in colonial Lesotho 1900-40.

Abstract: This study analyzed the income generation and survival strategies of Basotho women from Lesotho during 1900-40. Women from poor and labor migrant households during the economic depression of the 1920s and the 1930s resorted to commercial brewing of Sotho beer and sale of commercial sex. This household strategy served to provide income and to challenge patriarchal control. The sex and beer trade offered the Basotho migrant traffic a service. Colonial government made attempts to control the trade without success. Basotho society treated women as minors. Womens access to means of production was mediated by the relationship with men as husbands or fathers. Women provided agricultural labor and helped brew beer for ceremonies. Womens reproductive role was useful for providing additional labor and male heirs. Women were trained from early infancy to show modesty and good manners. Women entered mens domain of politics only when serving beer and food. There is evidence in the practice of "bonyatsi" that extramarital relations offered a way to increase wages and was widespread. Labor migration changed the practice of bonyatsi. Polygamy declined during 1900-46 as the practice of elopement increased. Elopement usually meant only payment of a small fine rather than a "bohali" price. However during the depression men eloped impregnated women and left for work in South Africa without paying a fine. The prolonged absence of men changed the marriage practices. Ill treatment by in-laws widowhood and divorce forced women into brothels. Two cases of women prostitutes illustrate the nature of the trade.

Becoming a child of the house: incorporation, authority and resistance in giryama society

Abstract: In the later nineteenth century, accumulators within Giryama society - in the local hinterland of the East African coast - were able to some extent to reinterpret the kinds of obligation and claim imposed by kinship. Without any overt change in the incorporative ideology of seniority and kinship, these men built up homesteads composed in large degree of outsiders, who were under their control to an unprecedented degree. In doing so, they undermined former structures of ritual and political authority, and made possible a rapid growth in the number of people who were called Giryama, and in the territory occupied by 'Giryama'. The presence of a ready supply of slaves at the coast was fundamental to the ability of the powerful to transform relationships with the incorporated. At the beginning of the colonial period, an accommodation developed between the 'new men' of Giryama society and administrators; but these 'new men' soon found that the abolition of slavery and other changes had drastically reduced their ability to control negotiations over status with dependants. With their ability to accumulate dwindling, the accumulators lost their authority, and their inability to exercise authority in support of the demands of colonial officials precipitated a destructive conflict which hastened the eclipse of the accumulators.

The politics of commercial transition: factional conflict in dahomey in the context of the ending of the atlantic slave trade

Abstract: This article examines the background and significance of the disputed royal succession in Dahomey following the death of King Gezo in 1858, when the accession of the designated heir apparent Badahun (Glele) was contested. This dispute reflected divisions over the practice of human sacrifice, which Gezo was seeking to curtail; Badahun was associated with a conservative opposition to Gezo's reforms and his accession marked the repudiation of his father's policies. It is argued that the controversies over human sacrifice related to disagreements within the Dahomian ruling Elite about how to respond to the decline of the Atlantic slave trade. Gezo in the 1850s was seeking to promote the export of palm oil as a substitute for slaves. This policy implied the demilitarization of the Dahomian state and this in turn implied an attack on human sacrifice, which in Dahomey was bound up with the culture of militarism. The case thus illustrates the ideological dimension of the 'crisis of adaptation' posed for West African rulers by the transition from the slave trade to commercial agriculture. The divisions arising from this crisis persisted beyond Glele's accession, into the late nineteenth century, when they undermined the solidarity of the Dahomian Elite in the face of European imperialism.

Government policy and the nigerian palm oil export industry, 1939–49

Abstract: This paper examines the role of the imperial and colonial governments in the formulation of policy towards the Nigerian palm oil export industry between 1939 and 1949. It argues that for most of the war years colonial officials in Nigeria accepted that metropolitan needs and conditions should dictate policy in the oil palm produce industry. However, towards the end of the war, they began to question whether policies centred around the requirements of the metropole would preserve the future competitiveness of the industry. Thereafter, they pressed for measures which gave priority to the problems and necessities of the local industry and the colonial economy. While colonial policy was sensitive to the concerns of imperial and local government officials, for most of the period under review it was reluctant, and on occasions, unable to accommodate the measures necessary to harmonize imperial and colonial goals. Consequently, the anticipated expansion in palm oil exports failed to materialize and the future competitiveness of the industry remained in doubt.This article fills an important void in the current literature on the Nigerian palm oil export industry. To date insufficient attention has been paid to the thinking within imperial and colonial government circles which underpinned the policies adopted in the industry during World War II and the early post-war years, and which led to the failure of policy makers to achieve their objectives. Moreover, the current literature ignores the vigorous debate between the Colonial Office and the Nigerian colonial government, and among colonial government officials, over the best means by which the needs of the local palm oil industry could be reconciled with the demands of the metropole, especially between 1942 and 1949.

Innovation and conflict : Cloth dyers and the interwar depression in Abeokuta, Nigeria

Abstract: BY the twentieth century, the southern Yoruba town of Abeokuta was integrated into the international economy both as an exporter of cash crops and an importer of manufactured products. It became one of the primary producing areas of cocoa and kola nuts in western Nigeria. Abeokuta's integration into the international economy had a profound effect on its local textile industry. As weavers gained access to European threads and dyers gained access to European cloth, relations of production were transformed. Both sets of producers became dependent on European trading firms for their raw materials and were thus brought squarely into the nexus of international trade. Dyeing, which was predominantly a women's industry, benefited substantially from this economic relationship. Dyers' access to cloth as well as credit from the European firms allowed them to become autonomous producers of tie-dyed cloth, adire, that was in great demand across Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Senegal and the Belgian Congo.

‘the product of civilization in its most repellent manifestation’: ambiguities in the racial perceptions of the apo ( african political organization ), 1909–23

Abstract: Historical writing on the coloured community of South Africa has tended to accept coloured identity as given and to portray it as fixed. The failure to take cognizance of the fluidity of coloured self-definition and the ambiguities inherent to the process has resulted in South African historiography presenting an over-simplified image of the phenomenon. The problem stems partly from an almost exclusive focus on coloured protest politics which has had the effect of exaggerating the resistance of coloureds to white supremacism and largely ignoring their accommodation with the South African racial system. Furthermore, little consideration has been given to the role that coloured people themselves have played in the making of their own identity or to the manner in which this process of self-definition shaped political consciousness. This is particularly true of analyses of the period following the inauguration of the Union of South Africa in 1910, a time when the legitimacy of coloured identity was not in any way questioned within the coloured community and when coloured protest politics was dominated by one body, the African Political Organization (APO).

The Colonial Experience in Education: Historical Issues and Perspectives. Edited by ANTONIO NÓVOA, MARC DEPAEPE, ERWIN V. JOHANNINGMEIER. (Pedagogica Historica: Supplementary Series, Vol. 1.) Gent: CSHP, 1995. Pp. 382. Belg. Fr. 1200 (ISSN 0030-9230; ISBN 90-800947-3-6).

Abstract: This special issue of Pedagogica Historica , a journal published from the University of Gent, presents a selection of eighteen papers from an international conference on the history of education held in Lisbon in 1993. The texts are in English and French, although there are no contributors from France or Britain. The contributions deal with general themes and European backgrounds as well as colonial experience. Six which relate to Africa will be briefly described here.

The Frontier States of Western Yorubaland, 1600–1889. By BIODUN ADEDIRAN. Ibadan: Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique, 1994. Pp. x + 248. No price given (ISBN 978-2015-25-3).

Abstract: The identification of the various sub-groups of the Yoruba offers a challenge to historians, particularly since large numbers of Yoruba-speaking people were deported into the African diaspora. In this contribution to Yoruba historiography, Adediran analyses the history of the western Yoruba sub-groups, especially those resident in République du Benin and also in Togo. This study expands upon Adediran's Ph.D. thesis (Awolowo University, 1980) and is based on oral traditions and archival materials, as well as an excellent grasp of the published literature.

Tributors, Supporters and Merchant Capital: Mining and Underdevelopment in Sierra Leone. By ALFRED ZACK-WILLIAMS. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995. Pp. vii + 239. £40 (ISBN 1-85628-466-2).

Abstract: Diamonds were discovered in Sierra Leone in 1930, and in 1934 sole mining rights were granted to the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), a subsidiary of the London-based Consolidated African Selection Trust, part of De Beers empire. In 1956, partly to restrict the increasingly prevalent illicit mining, and partly for political reasons, SLST opened part of its lease to mining by licensed miners under the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme (ADMS). The Sierra Leone government took over 51 per cent of the SLST shares in 1970, and a new company, the National Diamond Mining Company (NDMC), was formed. In 1980 SLST sold out to British Petroleum and left Sierra Leone.

WHO PEOPLED AFRICA The Peopling of Africa: A Geographical Interpretation . By J AMES L. N EWMAN . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv + 235. £17.95 ( ISBN 0-300-06003-3).

Abstract: James Newman has given us an ambitious book. He explores three interlocking themes: a dialectic between the demography of human communities and the productive character of their environments; the roles of trade and politics in generating growth in political scale; and the development of cultural identities. The first three chapters review the emergence of hominids, the Stone Ages, and the transition to agriculture. Here we meet his sources: physical geography, archaeology, historical linguistics, the occasional human genetic datum and some documentary historical material (including mention of dynastic oral traditions). Newman handles most, though not all, of the best of the secondary literature in these fields. The second part of the book amplifies his central themes for each of the continent's conventional regions. At a total of 201 pages, the brevity of the text alone will appeal to undergraduate teachers.

RECENT TRENDS African History From Earliest Times to Independence. By PHILIP CURTIN, STEVEN FEIERMAN, LEONARD THOMPSON and JAN VANSINA. Second edition. London and New York: Longman Group, 1995. Pp. xvi + 546. £25 (ISBN 0-582-050707).

Abstract: A revised version of this well-known university textbook provides an opportunity to review some of the tendencies in African historiography since the publication of the original version in 1978 which marked ‘the coming of age of African history’ after 25 years of research. This new version is intended to reflect ‘a new level of maturity’ in African historiography with the publication of all the 16 volumes of the Cambridge History of Africa and the Unesco General History of Africa, of which only a few had appeared by 1978. The text has been ‘reworked, updated and expanded’; the book has been redesigned and reset, and the maps have been redrawn and new ones added.

Uganda: A Century of Existence. By P. G. OKOTH. Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 1995. Pp. 278. £14.95, paperback (ISBN 9970-02-0226).

Abstract: This book is a collection of essays presented by Makerere University academicians at a Faculty of Arts conference held in April 1994 to commemorate the centenary of Uganda's foundation as a state. The papers are grouped broadly by discipline, separate sections covering history, philosophy, linguistics, literature and social and cultural studies.

Three Decades of Production of Historical Knowledge at Dar es Salaam . By I. N. K IMAMBO . Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press, 1993 [publ. 1994]. Pp. v + 23. $6.95; £3.75 ( ISBN 9-9766-0180-8). (Distributed by African Books Collective.)

Abstract: This brief but welcome pamphlet is Professor Kimambo's ‘Exit lecture’ (his term) from the University of Dar es Salaam, where he was a senior lecturer in the Department of History from 1965 to 1969, became a full professor in 1970, spent the next thirteen years as Chief Academic Officer, and returned to History in 1983. It replaces the professorial Inaugural Lecture he never had time to prepare while CAO.