Depuis la synthèse précédente, les recherches archéologiques se sont développées et diversifiées en Afrique Centrale.

Pour la préhistoire, des recherches prometteuses sont effectuées sur les processus géomorphoiogiques au Congo, ce qui permettra de mieux comprendre les problèmes posés par l'interpretation des vestiges découverts dans les formations sableuses.

Du Gabon à l'Angola, on assiste à un intérêt croissant pour les vestiges des populations qui exploitent la zone littorale depuis l'âge de la pierre récent et qui sont responsable de nombreux amas coquilliers.

A l'intérieur du continent, au Congo et au Rwanda, une série de nouvelles dates se rapportent à l'âge de la pierre récent, sans qu'il soit possible de préciser les limites temporelles de ces industries.

Dans la moitié sud du Cameroun et à l'est de la Centrafrique, divers témoignages indiquent que depuis au moins le dernier millénaire avant notre ère cette partie de la forêt etait occupee par des populations sedentaires, utilisant de la ceramique, des haches polies et pratiquant sans doute une forme d'agriculture.

La fonte du fer semble débuter dans la région de Yaoundé vers le quatrième siècle avant notre ère. A l'est, au Rwanda et au Burundi, la métallurgie du fer paraît au moins aussi ancienne et l'on ne peut tout à fait exclure qu'elle soit même beaucoup plus ancienne, mais cela reste controversé. Au Congo, un fourneau pour fondre le fer a pu être daté du cinquième siècle de notre ère, tandis qu'un fourneau pour fondre le cuivre était daté du treizi`eme siècle de notre ère. Au Zaïre, dans la région du Shaba, la fonte de ces métaux remonte au quatrième siècle de notre ère.

Enfin, des séries systématiques de datations permettent d'esquisser durant l'âge des métaux les bases d'évolutions régionales au nord Cameroun, en Centrafrique, dans la cuvette centrale au Zaïre, et au Rwanda.

From the late seventeenth century until the 1870s gum arabic from the southwestern corner of the Sahara was the most important trade good exported to Europe from Mauritania and Senegal. This article discusses the dynamics of the gum trading system based in Saint Louis du Senegal, and details the commercial crisis in which the French colony was mired in the late 1830s and 1840s. Pressure from French capital and from Faidherbe's military forces secured the dominance of the import-export houses, as African river traders and desert gum merchants lost the advantages of their market positions. By the 1870s the importance of the gum trade had been eclipsed by the rapid expansion of peanut cultivation.

Although the importance of the African role in the South African War (1889-1902) is now recognized, this study of the Bakgatala ba ga Kgafela is the first to demonstrate an African perception of events and argue that the Kgatla initiated military action and pursued goals independent of a simple British vs. Boer formula. The war created major economic and political opportunities for the Kgatla, a people physically separated and colonially partitioned. Half the Kgatla lived in the Kgatla Reserve of the British-ruled Bechuanaland Protectorate, and the other half lived in the Saulspoort area of the western Transvaal under Boer rule. Their leader, Linchwe I (1874–1924), maintained his capital at Mochudi in the Protectorate and received only partial allegiance from the Saulspoort Kgatia. Soon after the war began, Linchwe involved his regiments actively in fighting alongside the British in the Protectorate and raiding on their own in the Transvaal in an effort to eliminate Boer settlement and political control in Saulspoort and other areas of the western Transvaal. Kgatia regiments also emptied Boer farms of cattle which, in addition to restoring the national herd decimated by the 1897 rinderpest, Linchwe used in establishing his political hold over the Saulspoort Kgatia. Protectorate officials were grateful for Kgatia support, but Linchwe disguised the extent and nature of Kgatia operations and concealed from the British his political objectives. Linchwe's campaign made possible in the years following the war the reunification of the Kgatia under his authority, the distribution of wealth among all his people and the reduction of colonial interference in the political lives of his people.

African chiefs under colonial rule are conventionally described as collaborators. Those who failed to co-operate with their colonial masters were deposed. Tshekedi Khama, Regent of the Bangwato for his nephew, Seretse, from 1926 to 1950, does not fit this description. During the first ten years of his regency, he was almost continuously locked in conflict with the British on a whole range of issues both large and small. His sustained opposition to the British is the more remarkable in that he became regent at the age of merely twenty without having been specifically prepared for the governance of the largest of the Tswana states under British rule.

This article explores the reasons for Tshekedi's opposition to the British and the way in which he conducted this opposition, and asks why the British did not depose him as they almost certainly would have deposed a chief who behaved remotely like him in one of their other African territories. It concludes that while Tshekedi basically accepted the colonial situation in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, he was determined that the British should make no inroads into the powers of the chiefs as determined at the end of the nineteenth century when his father Khama III had accepted British protection. He was also resolved to hand over the chieftaincy intact to his ward, Seretse. Furthermore Tshekedi, unlike most African chiefs of his day, was Western-educated, having attended Fort Hare, and believed that the function of the British Administration was to teach him ‘how to govern…not how to be governed’. He reacted strongly against measures that were imposed on him without consultation or explanation, especially, those which he suspected were designed to limit his power or might affect the welfare of his people. In opposing such measures, he employed both ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ resources and was as skilful as any African nationalist of the time in mobilising press, parliament and public opinion in Britain in his support.

While the British did consider deposing him, and in 1933 temporarily suspended him from office, they were confronted by the fact that there was no other leader in Gammangwato who would be accepted as a legitimate alternative by the Bangwato or who would be remotely as competent as he was. After ten years of wrangling with Tshekedi the British learnt that it was in their interests to collaborate with him. For the next decade Tshekedi and the Administration worked largely in harmony. It was only in the late 1940s that Tshekedi began to use his formidable intellectual powers and administrative experience to challenge the colonial system itself.

The Tea Industry in the Cholo and Mlanje districts of southern Nyasaland emerged during the 1930s under the shelter of the International Tea Regulation Scheme of 1933 which restricted exports by the world's leading producers. In contrast to its East African neighbours, Nyasaland's Tea Industry was well organized locally by the Nyasaland Tea Association and was effectively represented in Britain by its London Committee. Though having to accept restrictions on the planting of new tea, which occasioned some local controversy, the industry, in common with other tea-producing countries, benefited from the rising prices of the 1930s for which the Tea Regulations were largely responsible. By 1938 tea had become one of Nyasaland's few profitable industries. A seeming further advantage was the bulk buying scheme, at guaranteed prices, organized by the British Ministry of Food which lasted throughout the 1940s, but the industry's wartime performance was sluggish as a consequence of poor growing seasons combined with serious shortages of manpower and fertilizer. As a poor quality, low price producer facing chronic labour shortages, which prevented millions of pounds of tea from being picked, Nyasaland greeted with hostility Imperial decisions to withdraw eastern Africa from the International Tea Scheme in 1948, to end bulk buying in 1950, and generally to encourage the free expansion of production. Nyasaland's tea planters were told that henceforth they must face open competition.