Recent archaeological research conducted west of Lake Turkana, Kenya has shed new light on the prehistory of eastern Cushitic and Nilotic speakers in East Africa. The Namoratunga cemetery and rock art sites, dated to about 300 B.C., are clearly related to the prehistory of Eastern Cushitic speakers. The newly defined Turkwell cultural tradition, dated to the first millennium a.d., is associated with eastern Nilotic prehistory. Lopoy, a large lakeside fishing and pastoralist settlement, is discussed in terms of eastern Nilotic prehistory. The archaeological data agrees with the independent findings of historical linguistics.

In earlier publications the present writer was at pains to emphasize that the state of Sinnār was not a mere confederation of nomadic Arab tribes; rather, it rested upon a firm agricultural base and was governed bureaucratically, while incorporating an ingeniously conceived system of nobility. This interpretation, though valid as far as it went, rested largely on evidence from riverain Sinnār and left little room for nomads. The present study, based primarily upon sources from the Sudanese rainlands, proposes that such a view of the place of herdsmen in the society of Sinnār is not well founded, and indeed that the habit of thought which perceives a sharp and enduring distinction between the peoples of ‘ the steppe and the sown’ – however appropriate in other contexts – does not pertain to Sinnār. The vision of rainland life which emerges from the sources here examined reveals a single society of herdsmen and cultivators, a society in perpetual metamorphosis within a framework of possibilities limited by ecology and custom. Ruling houses came and went; tribes grew, sundered and re-formed into new polities. Individuals and groups migrated freely, occasionally over vast distances, and changed their mode of livelihood whenever the opportunity for herding or the necessity for cultivating presented itself. All were subordinate to the state, whose continuity of authority in the long run overshadowed the more ephemeral corporate realities of the moment.

This article attempts to assess the importance of Asante influence in the consolidation of the Fante in the eighteenth century. It shows at the outset that mis-translation of Willem Bosman's early eighteenth-century work has led to an erroneous conception of the Fante polities as being incapable of acting on common interests. Between 1700 and 1724 the Fante conquered surrounding states such as Asebu, Fetu, Cabesterra, Acron (Gomoa), and pockets of Etsi, and established a system of domination over trade on the coast thereafter. It is suggested that this development was not the result of Asante activities on the coast, but rather was linked with the presence of the English, who supplied firearms to the Fante. The Fante were constrained to maintain good relations with Asante because they were determined to be the exclusive middlemen for the slaves which came down from Asante and beyond. At the same time, however, the Fante, like other coastal states (e.g. Aowin, Wasa, Denkyera and Akyem), at times feared invasion by Asante and therefore protected themselves through a system of local political alliances.

Cupido Kakkerlak's story provides a concrete example of Khoi experience under the impact of colonization at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During his first forty years or so he lived on Boer farms, learned a sawyer's skills, accumulated a little property and reared a family. In 1800, probably as a result of frontier disturbances at the time, he went to the village of Graaff-Reinet. There, in 1801, he met missionaries of the London Missionary Society and was converted. Casting his lot with the mission, he moved with his family to Algoa Bay and was based at Bethelsdorp until 1815. During this period he practised his trade as a sawyer at the same time as he gained prominence in mission work. In 1813 he served as John Campbell's ‘travelling director’ during a trip to the interior that lasted almost nine months. Campbell's proposals – that a number of new stations be established – made heavy demands on mission personnel and other resources. Six ‘native assistants’ were appointed, one of whom was Cupido. In 1817, after a short sojourn among the Griqua, he undertook a mission to the still nomadic Kora near the Harts River. Six years later, when difficulties both in and outside the mission society had multiplied, his services were abruptly terminated. He was then over sixty years of age. For frontier Khoi, hopeful of a new dispensation in the wake of the 1799–1802 war, the L.M.S. missionaries had provided an undreamt-of opportunity. In the interaction between missionary and Khoi, in the first stages of the mission project, Cupido played a leading part.

This article examines the institution of blood partnership, first theoretically, and then with reference to northern Equatorial Africa and Dar al-Kuti, a Muslim slave-raiding and slave-trading state. Contemporary anthropologists described blood partnership schematically as the exchange of blood and of conditional curses between two individuals or groups for the purpose of guaranteeing co-operation. They also suggested that blood partnership created bonds analogous to kinship. Blood alliances were concluded almost exclusively between parties who were not related genealogically, and promoted security, co-operation and long-distance trade. They were particularly important among societies outside highly centralized states, where they provided the ideology and mechanism for wider action embracing unrelated groups. Northern Equatorial Africa was just such an area, and, in the nineteenth century at least, blood pacts were very common. The article looks at blood partnership in the region generally, pointing out how foreigners, Muslims as well as Europeans, adopted the institution as a means of allying themselves with local leaders. Muslim penetration of the region is examined, and the infiltration of the zariba system of the southwestern Sudan into Ubangi-Shari (in what is now the Central African Empire) is outlined. The second half of the article deals specifically with Dar al-Kuti. Oral testimony and written evidence are combined to present a picture of blood partnership among the Banda, the most important non-Muslim people included in the state. The analysis is then extended to show how Muslims in the region, mainly the Runga from the Chad basin, led by Kobur and then by al-Sanusi, used blood pacts to foster their political and economic ambitions among non-Muslim peoples south of the Islamic frontier.

There was a basic similarity between the way in which Rhodesian colonial historians looked at the central Shona chimurenga (rising) of 1896 and T. O. Ranger's seminal Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896–7: both thought in terms of a pre-planned conspiracy led by religious authorities and a simultaneous outbreak on a given signal. Ranger' reconstruction of the organization of the chimurenga, however, depended partly upon the misreading and misquotation of the sources. In fact, the rising was neither pre-planned nor simultaneous. In the second quarter of 1896 limited resistance to European rule was being carried on in separate, unconnected outbreaks and some communities were thinking of starting a full-scale hondo (war); the threat of famine caused by locusts led certain central Shona leaders to contact the religious leader Mkwati in the Ndebele area, then in revolt against the Europeans, in search of locust medicine. News of European defeats transmitted by these contacts led to a full hondo in the Umfuli valley, which triggered a ‘ripple effect’ in which Shona communities resisted or collaborated as the news reached them. The element of religious leadership was limited and the element of central pre-planning non-existent. This makes the success and commitment of the local Shona communities all the more impressive, even though it was a traditionalist rather than a proto-nationalist rising.

Britain maintained small colonial armed forces in the African territories for internal security and local defence. In four periods of international crisis, when the British Empire was faced with a shortage of military manpower, it was proposed that African troops be used in imperial roles outside Africa. These proposals were closely related to the increasing opposition by India to the Indian Army being used for imperial defence in Asia and the Middle East. During 1916–18 a parliamentary and press lobby in Britain clamoured for a ‘million black army’. In the years 1919–21 the War Office attempted to raise an African army for use in the Middle East. On both occasions the Colonial Office vigorously opposed these schemes and the crises were resolved without using African troops. The emergencies of 1939–42 changed Colonial Office policy. African troops were used in the East African campaign against the Italians, as labour units in the Middle East, and then, after 1943, as combatants in Asia where they fought as complete formations within the Commonwealth forces. At the end of the Second World War the Colonial Office wished to maintain a sizeable African army at Imperial expense. However, post-war defence cuts reduced the African armed forces although a small parliamentary and service lobby unsuccessfully urged that an African Army be created as an imperial instrument, and to take the place of the Indian Army.

From the 1920s the British government sought to manipulate the powerful new propaganda weapon of the cinema to the advantage of the Empire. Unsuccessful attempts were made to break the American stranglehold on the colonial cinema circuit which was thought to pose a threat to British commercial and political interests. Attempts to control what were seen as the harmful effects of the commercial cinema were made through strict censorship. The Colonial Office provided guidelines for policy and organization. South Africa set precedents for racial discrimination in censorship and segregation in viewing which were adopted in much of East and Central Africa. The Colonial Office and the British Film Institute were both anxious to see an experiment using the film in adult education. Progress was held back through lack of money until 1935 when the Carnegie Corporation decided to finance the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment, a project of the International Missionary Council. The B.E.K.E., an experiment in the production of films for the educational and cultural adjustment of Africans to western society, was conducted in East and Central Africa between 1935 and 1937, with the Colonial Office playing an advisory role. No permanent organization developed out of the B.E.K.E. due to lack of finance and lack of interest among the East African governments. When the British government created the Colonial Film Unit in 1939, its purpose was to make war propaganda films for the colonies. Later in the war, the work of the C.F.U. was extended to the making of instructional films, which became its main function once the war had ended.