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Population Density and ‘Slave Raiding’—A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

M. B. Gleave  and
R. M. Prothero
M. B. Gleave
Affiliation:
University of Salford
R. M. Prothero
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

One of the more stimulating aspects of working in the field of African studies is the co-operation between scholars of related disciplines such as is not always found among those working in other parts of the world. Historians have been outstanding in promoting this co-operation and it was therefore gratifying to read Michael Mason's paper in the Journal, in which he uses and comments upon the work of geographers in developing his thesis that the Middle Belt of Nigeria may have been an area of sparse population before slave raiding during the nineteenth century. His paper is well documented, closely argued and apparently authoritative. However, there are several points on which we would take issue with Mason, some of which are so fundamental that it would be unfortunate in our view if they were absorbed into the historical literature unchallenged. It is not our purpose in raising these matters to spark off a fruitless ‘intertribal’ war; it is rather to offer constructive criticism to the advantage of historians, geographers and others.

Type
Other Articles
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1971 , pp. 319 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 Mason, M., ‘Population Density and “Slave Raiding”—The Case of the Middle Belt of Nigeria’, J. Afr. Hist. X (1969), 555–64.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. 551.

3 Harrison Church, R. J., West Africa (1961), 167–8.Google Scholar When discussing the Middle Belt in Nigeria, Harrison Church further clarifies the position, ‘The generally thinly peopled Middle Belt comprises two-fifths the area of Nigeria but has only one-fifth the population. This low density results from slave raiding from south and north, and from the consequentially greater infestation by tsetse and other pests. It is also a “shatter zone” or “no-man's land” between the contrasting northern and southern peoples, and has few large tribes. Physically many of its soils are poor, water is scarce and rainfall variable. Indeed, it seems to have the disadvantages of the south and the north, with none of their advantages.’ (ibid. 446).

4 Agboola, G. A., ‘Some Factors of Population Distribution in the Middle Belt of Nigeria: the Examples of Northern Ilorin and Kabba’, in Caldwell, J. C. and Okonjo, C. (eds.), The Population of Tropical Africa (Longmans, London, 1968).Google Scholar

5 Hance, W. A., African Economic Development (Pall Mall, London, 1967), 5.Google Scholar

6 Hance, W. A., Population, Migration and Urbanization in Africa (New York: Columbia U.P., 1970), 87.Google Scholar

7 Mason, , op. cit. 553.Google Scholar

8 Achazi, Hassan and Mallam, Shuaiba Na'ibi, A Chronicle of Abuja (translated and arranged by Frank, Heath) (Lagos, 1962).Google Scholar

9 See inter alia Morgan, W. B. and Pugh, J. C., West Africa (London: Methuen, 1969), 360–2, particularly Fig. 7.19.Google Scholar

10 For further details see Gleave, M. B., ‘Hill Settlements and their Abandonment in Western Yorubaland’, Africa XXXIII (1963), 343–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 For examples see White, S. ‘Agricultural Economy of the Hill Pagans of Dikwa Emirate, Carneroons’, Farm and Forest, V (1944), 130–4.Google ScholarGunn, H. D., ‘Peoples of the Plateau Area of Northern Nigeria’, Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Western Africa, Part VII (1953), 80.Google ScholarSuffil, T. L., ‘The Birons. A Pagan Tribe on the Plateau, Nigeria’, Farm and Forest, IV (1943), 179–82.Google ScholarGleave, M. B., ‘The Changing Frontiers of Settlement in the Uplands of Northern Nigeria’, Nigerian Geographical Journal, VIII (1965), 127–41.Google Scholar

12 Netting, R. M., ‘Household Organization and Intensive Agriculture: the Kofyar Case’, Africa xxxv (1965), 422–8,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hill Farmers of Nigeria: Cultural Ecology of the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau (Seattle and London: Washington U.P., 1968).Google Scholar

13 Prothero, R. M., Distribution of Population, Northern Nigeria 1952 1/1,000,000, Directorate of Overseas Surveys (London, 1960),Google Scholar and Density of Population, Northern Nigeria 1952 1/1,000,000, Directorate of Overseas Surveys (London, 1961).Google Scholar

14 Mason, , op. cit., 563.Google Scholar

15 Morgan, and Pugh, , op. cit. 280.Google Scholar

16 Pullan, R. A., ‘The Concept of the Middle Belt in Nigeria: an Attempt at a Climatic Definition’, Nigerian Geographical Journal, V (1962), 47.Google Scholar

17 Agboola, , op. cit. 295.Google Scholar

18 Gleave, M. B. and White, H. P., ‘The West African Middle Belt: Environmental Fact or Geographers' Fiction’, Geographical Review, LIX (1969), 523–39. This paper was read originally to the Institute of British Geographers in Sheffield in 1967.Google Scholar