Several significant trends are noted in the recent radiocarbon dates from North and West Africa. The early Khartoum Neolithic dates from Nabta Playa of the seventh millennium B.C. and the thermoluminescence dates from the Badarian of the sixth millennium, would appear to have redressed the balance for the time being in favour of the Nile Valley in the argument as to whether agriculture in the Nile Valley predates that in the Sahara. A more cautious approach might be to say that these dates emphasize the need for far more securely dated evidence before conclusions are drawn on this complicated, and often emotional, problem. The presence of sorghum in the first quarter of the first millennium A.D. at Jebel et Tomat provides the earliest direct evidence for this key African agricultural staple. Many interesting very late Stone Age dates have come from West Africa and indicate the contemporaneity of stone and iron using communities throughout the first millennium A.D. in certain remote areas. The dates of the Senegambia megaliths are clearly falling within the first millennium A.D. Dates for iron working in both Nigeria and Ghana are confirming that iron technology was well established by the first half of the first millennium A.D. The dates from Ife and elsewhere in Nigeria are clearly indicating that the ‘classic’ terracotta period, and also the pottery pavements, belong to the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. The state of research in North and West Africa reflects the well-known, but too often neglected, archaeological truism that researchers find what they are looking for and rarely more; the Iron Age emphasis in West Africa, and the Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic concentration in the francophone lands. Presumed general trends in these areas, particularly conclusions comparing development in North and West Africa, should be examined carefully for underlying sampling biases of an ideological as well as of a geographical nature.

The main historical problem to which Professor Curtin addressed himself in the Census relates to the total number of slaves imported from Africa into all the slave-importing Atlantic regions during the entire period of the Atlantic slave trade. The estimates of the Census put the total number at 9,566,000. It is conceded that the actual number may be either somewhat lower or higher. But Professor Curtin concludes that ‘it is extremely unlikely that the ultimate total will turn out to be less than 8,000,000 or more than 10,500,00’. After examining Professor Curtin's methods of computation and the quality of the data employed, these confident limits were found to be unwarranted and misleading. The evidence relating to the size of the slave populations of the importing regions and to the demographic processes among the slaves suggests very strongly a substantial upward revision of the import estimates of the Census, especially those for Spanish, Portuguese and French America. An estimate of British slave exports from 1750 to 1807, on the basis of hitherto unused records, points to the fact that unless complete shipping data are employed in the slave export estimates the numbers computed will continue to be far below the actual numbers.

After a considerable period of conflict with nineteenth-century traders, hunters and ‘explorers’, the Turkana of northwestern Kenya actively resisted the occupation of their country by the Imperial forces of British East Africa and Uganda during the second and third decades of the twentieth century. At first, this primary resistance was largely in the hands of war-leaders, notably Ebei, the most important military leader of the southern sections. Bitterness engendered by Hut Taxes and other unpopular British policies led to the brief ascendancy of Koletiang, an influential southern diviner, until he was imprisoned in 1911. Again the resistance leadership fell to the military until especially brutal ‘punitive actions’ in 1915 had the effect of consolidating resistance in the north. At this point, Lowalel, another powerful diviner, became the spiritual patron of the war-leaders and their followers, reaffirming the close co-operation which traditionally had existed between religious and military leaders in Turkana society. So charismatic and innovative was Lowalel's leadership that he amassed armies several thousand strong and was joined by other peoples including the Merille and Dongiro, as well as by the forces of the Ethiopian Empire, in resisting the extension of British colonial rule.

Some effects of the expansion in European commerce and of developments in colonial policy in Angola are explored through a study of the relationship of the black chief Kabuku Kambio with the Portuguese during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By the 1870s the growth of ‘legitimate’ trade along the rivers Lukala and Kwanza was attracting the settlement of an increasing number of European colonists and traders. in the concelho of Cambambe the feira of Dondo, situated on the right bank of the Kwanza, briefly became the most important commercial centre of the interior. In these years much of the trade flowing between Dondo and other points was regulated by Kabuku, ruler of the largest and most powerful chiefdom, or sobado, in the conceiho. Kabuku's aggressive attempts to extend his dynastic authority and to profit from the increasing volume of trade entering the concelho involved him in a series of violent conflicts with rival chiefs and with European settlers. At first the extension of his power was facilitated by the military and administrative weakness of the Portuguese. By the mid-i880s however a more vigorous colonial policy, supporting the expansion of Portuguese power and commercial interests in the interior of Angola caused Kabuku's power to wane. After 1890 he succumbed to the pressure of white political and economic dominance in the Kwanza region. Following Kabuku's death the sobado itself may have suffered extinction through an outbreak of sleeping sickness around 1900.

This article, which is in two parts, aims to establish expatriate business history as a necessary and important part of modern African history. Part I surveyed approximately fifty histories of European companies in West, Central and East Africa during the colonial period and drew attention to newly-discovered and little-known records. Part II begins by assessing the quality of the studies listed in Part I, and suggests ways in which the level of scholarship can be raised to meet standards set by professionally-written business history. The article then formulates and explores a number of propositions concerning the spatial distribution and changing size, structure, strategy and performance of expatriate business in Africa. It is argued that many of these propositions cut across established but inadequately supported views, and that the development of business history has wider implications for the study of the colonial history of Africa.

The post mortem examination of the French regime in North Africa has tried to establish what went wrong, and when. It has described in detail the adverse effects of the regime upon the indigène, especially in Algeria. Rather less attention has been paid to the minority of those who, under the circumstances, prospered in various ways. The fortunes of the 25,000 Muslim Algerian landowners, for example, each with anything from 50 to 500 or more hectares, deserve to be studied. They are relevant to the current concern with the origins and growth of nationalist movements for independence. Explanations of a conflict arising inevitably out of the inequality and incompatibility of the two communities have difficulty in explaining the connexion between the nationalist leaders and the population at large. A satisfactory account should be able to identify the support for these leaders and their activities at any given time. The problem has attracted most attention in Morocco, where the success of the monarchy at the expense of the Istiqlal has called for an explanation. The well-known connexion of the Istiqlal with the Fassi community has been the starting-point of attempts to describe a political society in relation to the social and economic background of the groups and interests which it comprises. The historical investigation of this background throughout the Maghrib should provide a firm context for descriptions of political activity before and after independence.