Recent accounts of the proto-history of Africa use data from physical anthropology, but also concepts of race which physical anthropologists in general have abandoned as unsatisfactory; the paper seeks to explain this phenomenon sociologically. Late nineteenth-century political and sociological trends helped to produce patterns of thought which can no longer be regarded as affording adequate explanations of social processes. These patterns combined idealism, or the method of contrasting ideal types, with pseudo-Darwinism, which sought the origins of political development in the interaction of differently endowed groups. In African ethnography of the early twentieth century such concepts led to the view that the continent was inhabited by two groups, Caucasoids and Negroids, and by mixtures of the two which remained mixtures, to be analysed as such. The Caucasoid and Negroid types were regarded as absolute and universal, represented equally in the biological, linguistic, cultural and political aspects of man.

Various theories have been proposed concerning the homeland of the Nubian languages. Current historical and linguistic evidence suggests that it was in Kordofan or Darfur and that Nubian first entered the middle reaches of the Nile between A.D. 200 and 500. There it replaced Meroitic, which appears to have been spoken in the area for a long time. Meroitic may, but has not yet been proved to be a language of the Eastern Sudanic group. If so, the persistence of many cultural traits in the Sudan may be correlated with the stability of the Eastern Sudanic-speakers in the same area.

This study presents a reconstruction of the origins and major movements of the Galla and Somali of Northeast Africa which departs from most of the previous literature on the subject. The traditional view has been that the Galla occupied most of the Horn of Africa until the Somali, beginning about the tenth century, swept south and south-west from the shores of the Gulf of Aden driving the Galla before them. The pressure of the Somali has also been considered the major impetus to the Galla invasions of Ethiopia in the sixteenth century. It is the thesis of this paper that both the Galla and the Somali originated in southern Ethiopia, that the Somali expanded to the east and north much earlier than the Galla, and that the Galla lived only in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya until their migrations began about 1530.

The various Bayajida legends in Hausa folklore describe how Bayajida, son of the king of Baghdad, came to Bornu and married the ruler's daughter. He later fled and came to Daura, fathering the founders of the seven Hausa states. The legends seem to be describing events which happened during the tenth century A.D. and Bayajida may be identical with the Ibāḍite sectary Abū Yazīd who resisted the Fāṭimids of Tunisia until he was killed by them in 947. The debris of his army may have fled across the Sahara and arrived in Bornu, then north of Lake Chad. After some time a part of this rabble which had remained unassimilated moved south-west and interbred with the indigenous inhabitants round Daura, forming the Hausa aristocracies. Different ingredients of the legends may be folk memories of events near Mecca, Berber myths of origin and perhaps Greek mythology, as well as accounting for the introduction of horses and the sinking of wells in rock by the incoming Berbers.

The problem of akori beads consists above all in the question of their [organic or inorganic] composition. If, according to the ‘water theory’, akori were some kind of corals, then how to explain their findings in old graves, where they remained in good state of preservation after the human bones decayed? In the present stage of research the following explanation might be offered: the term of ‘akori’ served for the designation of cylindrical and oval beads of varying composition and colour, made maybe of some now unknown kind of coral, but certainly also of stone or glass; perhaps the akori recovered from the sea-shores and rivers were not really corals but worked jewels from the corpses of those buried in the water or offerings to the sea-deity Olokun. The discovery in Ife of large production of glass beads seems to support this.

Archibald Dalzel, the author of The History of Dahomey, was born in Scotland in 1740. Unable to practise the medical profession in which he had been trained, he entered the service of the Committee of Merchants Trading to Africa (African Committee) in 1763 as Surgeon, and was posted to Cape Coast in West Africa. There he started slave trading, which remained his only stable employment until his death in 1811. Despite the apparent ease with which profit could be gained from the slave trade during that period, and despite the energy and optimism which he put into his ventures, Dalzel was never a success. He was twice declared a bankrupt and died a disappointed man. The only monument which he left behind and by which he is still remembered is his brilliant compilation on the History of Dahomey.

As a contribution to the history of Britain's campaign for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century this article examines, first, the creation of various mixed commissions for the adjudication of vessels captured on suspicion of trading in slaves after the trade had been declared illegal; secondly, the composition of these mixed commissions and the way in which they functioned, with special reference to the several commissions sitting in Sierra Leone which for 25 years dealt with the majority of captured slave vessels; and thirdly, the reasons why after 1839, and especially after 1845, captured ships were increasingly taken before British vice-admiralty courts with the result that the mixed commissions were gradually allowed to run down, although most of them were not abolished until the Atlantic slave trade had been finally suppressed.

The army of Samori Ture in 1887 was recruited from four sources: the regular army of sofa (infantrymen with firearms), the conscripted reserve of kurustigi, detachments sent by chiefs under Samori's protection, and a cavalry force consisting in part, perhaps, of volunteers. The emphasis on infantry rather than cavalry differentiated it from the armies of other nineteenth-century Islamic reformers.

Among the factors which influenced the structure and tactics of the army, as well as the diplomatic and military strategy of the Samorian state, were the supply of firearms and horses. Initially the Samorian army was armed with muskets from the coast, primarily Freetown, and horses from the north-western part of the Sudan. From mid-1891 to mid-1892 the muskets were replaced with breechloaders and repeaters obtained by direct negotiation between Samori and Freetown traders, and during this period or before it an indigenous firearms industry was established. After this, the French advance cut Samori off, partially at least, from his sources of supply; from 1893–98 the search for new supply areas was a major preoccupation of the Samorian regime. Arms came from the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, and horses from the Mossi states. Here, as formerly in the west, Samori was able to use existing trade routes.

In contrast to Dr G. N. Sanderson's belief that ‘down to the collapse of the Mahdist state itself, the Mahdist alliance was the central feature of Menelik's diplomacy’, this article shows that Ethiopia's détente with the Sudan after 1896 was only one part of a carefully constructed, non-committal foreign policy designed to protect Ethiopia against all foreseeable eventualities. If there were anything central in the minds of Ethiopian policy-makers, it could only have been their uncertainty about the outcome of the events which were rapidly reaching a crisis point in the Sudan. Menelik therefore chose not to commit himself to any one policy toward the Sudan until the complicated situation there ran its course. At the same time, he pursued a line of diplomacy in the east and the south which would consolidate his victory over the Italians and which would materially strengthen his Empire.

This article deals with the reaction of the Colonial Office to the problems—commercial and military—posed for the Gambia by the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that in the Colonial Office discussions about these problems two distinctly different attitudes can be distinguished. The younger junior officials tended to advocate government intervention to ameliorate specific economic problems, while the political heads and senior officials remained firmly attached to the dogmas of laissez faire. Conversely, the former group did not share the doubts of the latter as to whether the dogmas of patriotic bravery should be made to apply to African natives.

The subject-matter—the dislocation of commerce consequent upon French failure to purchase her usual share of the groundnut crop, the ensuing financial difficulties of the Gambia government, defence problems revealed after the mis-identification of H.M.S. Highflyer—is based on material from the Colonial Office archives.

This article attempts to contribute towards an understanding of the rise of nationalism in Nigeria and in the Gold Coast by exploring a neglected theme, namely the economic policy of political organizations in the period between the two World Wars. Before about 1918 political organizations did not have a coherent economic policy. After World War I economic problems became more important, and political parties began to take account of them by formulating a programme of economic development. An attempt was made by a man named Tete-Ansa to implement this programme, but he proved unsuccessful. The persistence of economic discontent, together with the failure of moderate leadership, led to the rise of new leaders and to the development of a more radical policy at the close of the 1930's. It was this policy which won mass support, and which played a vital part in the achievement of independence after World War II.