Using a set of oral testimonies, together with military, intelligence, and administrative reports from the 1960s, this article re-examines the shifta conflict in Kenya. The article moves away from mono-causal, nationalistic interpretations of the event, to focus instead on the underlying socioeconomic dynamics and domestic implications of the conflict. It argues that the nationalist interpretation fails to capture the diversity of participation in shifta, which was not simply made up of militant Somali nationalists, and that it fails to acknowledge the significance of an internal Kenyan conflict between a newly independent state in the process of nation building, and a group of ‘dissident’ frontier communities that were seen to defy the new order. Examination of this conflict provides insights into the operation of the early postcolonial Kenyan state.

It has long been generally supposed that the kingdom of Kongo suffered a severe decline in population due to the civil wars of the seventeenth century and the slave trade. These figures are derived from literary estimates made by travellers and missionaries of the time. New estimates of population can be obtained by combining the statistics of baptisms left by the missionaries who lived in Kongo with a reconstruction of the age structure of the kingdom. Use of these estimates permits more exact calculations for the period 1650–1700, which suggest a much lower population level—about 500,000—than the commonly accepted figure of two million. This discovery suggests that the postulated population disaster did not occur; instead, it seems that levels of population remained relatively stable, growing slightly throughout the period in question. In addition to revising estimates of population, it has been possible to use the available statistics to throw light on the age structure and vital rates that prevailed in Kongo in the late seventeenth century, as well as to examine certain factors that have impinged on population.

The main interlacustrine kingdoms have been presented, on the evidence of their royal genealogies recalling up to thirty reigns, as stretching back to a ‘Chwezi’ period some five centuries ago. This view was promoted especially in the Kitara zone, comprising Bunyoro and regions to its south and, as a close linguistic grouping, extending to Nkore, Karagwe and Buhaya. Rwanda to the south-west and Buganda to the east, though each rather distinct, share some of the same cultural and traditional features. In the central Kitara zone it has been further argued that the ‘Chwezi’ period is represented by various impressive archaeological sites – hilltop shrines, notably at Mubende, with special and archaic objects; complex earthwork enclosures at Bigo and elsewhere; and the concentrated settlement nearby at Ntusi. Certain of these have been claimed as Chwezi royal capitals of ancient Kitara, and specific features have been compared with royal abodes of recent centuries. Such literal interpretation, let alone royalist manipulation, of oral traditions is now considered too simplistic; not only are the Chwezi generally regarded as gods or mythical heroes, but also the role of archaeology is now seen as something more positive than the mere verification of verbal evidence.

Renewed archaeological research indicates that Ntusi was occupied from about the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries a.d. and that the earthworks, including Bigo, and the settlement on Mubende hill fall into the latter half of that span. This cultural grouping thrived on a combination of cattle-keeping and grain cultivation, as is especially clear at Ntusi on fertile ground in the midst of the Bwera grasslands. It may have been the growing strains of a delicately balanced economy as competition increased for cattle and the pastures which led to its eventual breakdown. During the last half-millennium Bwera has been a peripheral and lightly populated district between Bunyoro, Nkore and Buganda. It is difficult to imagine these later kingdoms developing directly out of a supposed ‘Chwezi’ one based at Ntusi and the Bigo constructions.

Two periods of marked change are discernible therefore, one around the middle of this millennium, the other at its beginning. That earlier, mid-Iron Age, revolution witnessed the introduction of cattle on a large scale and the first intensive exploitation of the interlacustrine grasslands. Cattle becoming then an economic asset, it may be inferred that ownership of stock and defence of the pastures became sources of prestige and patronage, with obvious social, political and military implications. This situation opened opportunities for other specializations, including the production of salt for distant distribution. Traditions concerning gods and heroes, and the continuing popular chwezi cults, illustrate the changes and may also echo the cultural and economic importance of iron and its working among agricultural populations from before the pastoral revolution.

This article investigates the role of Sufi networks in keeping Durban's ‘Zanzibari’ community of African Muslims together and developing their response to social change and political developments from the 1950s to the post-apartheid period. It focuses on the importance of religion in giving meaning to notions of community, and discusses the importance of the Makua language in maintaining links with northern Mozambique and framing understandings of Islam. The transmission of ritual practices of the Rifaiyya, Qadiriyya, and Shadhiliyya Sufi brotherhoods is highlighted, as is the significance of Maputo as a node for such linkages. The article discusses change over time in notions of cosmopolitanism, diaspora, and belonging, and examines new types of interactions after 1994 between people identifying themselves as Amakhuwa in Durban and Mozambique.

This article explores the politics of race and education in early twentieth-century urban Senegal, focusing on the exclusion of African students from certain schools and on the political controversy that grew out of a 1909 education reform. Based on letters from officials, politicians, and African residents, along with minutes from the General Council, it suggests that changes in urban society and colonial policy encouraged people to view access to schooling in terms of race. This article argues that in debating segregation and education quality, residents contributed to a discourse on race that reflected an increasing racial consciousness in the society at large.

The absence of popular participation in the political process of post-independent Kenya should be seen as the outcome of a political tension, which has its roots in the colonial period. The growth of Nairobi, a colonial urban centre par excellence, provided unequal opportunities for its African population. The majority of the Nairobi Africans came to constitute the African crowd—domestic servants, the majority of workers in private and public employment, and petty traders. This group should be distinguished from the Nairobi African middle class which formed the ‘political élite’. The African middle class possessed a fairly high level of education and had remunerative positions with government or were wealthy traders. By the mid-'forties, this group had become well integrated within the colonial system.

The different, and often contradictory, interests of these two groups of people was strikingly manifested on the level of political action. The ‘popular movements’ of the African crowd were direct and often extra-constitutional. Their organizations, e.g. the 40 Group, were characteristically militant, and were often based on mass support. The ‘élite politics’ of the African middle class were strictly constitutional and moderate. Their goal—to consolidate their position within the colonial system—had obviously only limited appeal. The conflict between these two social groups was resolved by the elimination of the African crowd as a political force.

This essay explores conversion to the East African Revival as a way that Gikuyu women and men argued about moral and economic change. Rural capitalism in the 1930s and 1940s attacked the material basis of Gikuyu gender order by denying some men land. Familial stability was at stake in class formation: landless laborers could scarcely be respectable husbands. Rural elders and revivalists offered contending answers to the terrifying problem of gender trouble. Literate male elders at Tumutumu Presbyterian church used customary law and church bureaucracy to discipline young men and women. Revivalists, many of them women, talked: they confessed private sins vocally, cleansing themselves of sorcerous familial strife. Tumutumu’s debate over Revival played out as a contest between the oral politics of conversion and the bureaucratic power of church elders. Mau Mau continued the debate.

According to Egharevba, firearms arrived in the Benin Kingdom in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and they were first employed in Benin campaigns during the reign of Oba Esigie. Another writer states that ‘the Ekiti had encountered firearms as early as the sixteenth century, when Benin soldiers, armed with guns, supported the Ikerre in a war against the Ado’. The view that Benin military prowess in the sixteenth century derived from a monopoly in the use of firearms is current in several publications; however, the role of guns in sixteenth century Benin military history has been overestimated, for although some Portuguese arquebusiers accompanied Benin armies on expeditions and assisted the Benin rulers in their military affairs, the Benin troops did not possess the new weapons.

This was no picturesque semi-fairy story. The drunken gambling merry makers in Bethlehem, heedless of the awful wonder of that night, might easily have been figures in a Sophiatown street scene on Christmas eve…Later while Mary, Joseph and the Holy Child were still in the stable, two Roman soldiers descended upon them – a take off of African Police, complete with assegais and notebook, demanding to know their tribe, place of birth, and reason for being in Bethlehem…

This description of a nativity play, complete with a send-up of the South African police, is one snapshot from the life of the Western Areas of Johannesburg. Others could include a large demonstration to back the wage demands of teachers and a home-grown police force. Such idiosyncratic and divergent portraits of community are the backdrop to this study. This article contends that, in their commitment to religion, education and law and order, the people of the Western Areas were deeply attached to respectability. The Western Areas was a cluster of townships – including the famous Sophiatown – which formed one of the most significant black centres of population in South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. The removal of black people from the Western Areas between 1955 and 1962 constituted one of the most notorious acts of apartheid and ensured the district's place at the heart of protest against white domination. Consequently, to assert that respectability was essential to a working class district such as the Western Areas is to imply that it had a much wider significance.

It has become accepted by historians and social scientists alike that African workers in Rhodesia were slow to demonstrate resistance in the industrial setting of the economy. This tardiness is attributed to the dominance of the migrant labour system or the achievements of the settler administration. This view is challenged by a detailed study of African responses in the mining industry. Here geological factors led to profitability constraints which led to extensive exploitation of African labour. This in turn manifested itself in the appalling conditions in the mine compounds. In these circumstances, the choice of employer was of vital importance to Africans, and they developed a rapid and efficient system of market intelligence about employment prospects throughout southern Africa. African worker consciousness was evident in patterns of avoidance of, selective participation in, and desertion from, mines. In addition, worker consciousness and resistance manifested themselves in day-to-day work situations, and in strike action. All of these activities suggest a well-developed worker consciousness which pre-dates the more familiar organizations of the 1920s such as the Dance Societies, the Watch Tower Society and the I.C.U. These patterns further suggest that worker strategy in Rhodesia can best be understood within the context of the functioning of a regional economic system embracing all of southern Africa.

This article explores the relationship between understandings of youth sexuality and mobility, and racial nationalism in late colonial Tanganyika through a history of dansi: a dance mode first popularized by Tanganyikan youth in the 1930s. Dansi's heterosocial choreography and cosmopolitan connotations provoked widespread anxieties among rural elders and urban elites over the mobility, economic autonomy, and sexual agency of youth. In urban commercial dancehalls in the 1950s, dansi staged emerging cultural solidarities among migrant youth, while also making visible social divisions based on class and gender. At the same time, nationalist intellectuals attempted to reform dansi according to an emerging political rhetoric of racial respectability.

The French government, in the early part of this period, from 1854 to the turn of the century, did not have a consistent or systematic ‘Islamic policy’ for ts colonial possessions. There were, however, certain patterns of administration which, quite unintentionally, gave a new impetus to the spread of Islam in Vest Africa. The first section of the article deals with this period, when the basis for later policy was laid but when policy was not yet systematically articulated.

The creation of the Service des Affaires Musulmanes et Sahariennes in Paris in 1900, and of the Service des Affaires Musulmanes in Dakar in 1906, together with the works of scholar-administrators such as Le Chatelier, Arnaud and Marty, marks the definition of a general policy towards Islam in colonial territories. This policy was aimed, in particular, to secure the loyalty of the Muslim notables, and to use them as intermediaries and tools of administration.

In a final section, the article deals with the renewed fear of Islam which affected France, with the intensification of pan-Islamic propaganda from Turkey immediately before the First World War, and with the change in policy which resulted. The outbreak of war, which enabled the Muslim élite to demonstrate its real loyalty to France, provided, however, a final reassurance.

This article looks at different kinds of historical sources – colonial science and African rumours – and argues that both can be used to reconstruct the history of changing colonial policies, and African responses to them, for tsetse and game control in the Northern Province of Northern Rhodesia in the 1930s. These sources and the arguments I have developed from them can be read as separate and distinct historical narratives, but nevertheless each articulates a specific relationship between African farmers, shifting cultivation and wild animals. Each history discloses a vision of how best to control a dreaded disease, and each history describes a separate and distinct landscape in which Africans, insects and wild animals might best live together. Moreover, each source reveals the close links between African ideas about the forcible extraction of vital fluids and European ideas about sleeping sickness, insect vectors and deforestation.

This article examines the perceived interdependence of territorial rights and social identity in colonial Kenya. In the early 1960s, attempts to win full autonomy for a narrow strip of Indian Ocean coastline – the Protectorate of Kenya – encouraged an exclusivist discourse of autochthony. To establish their historical ownership of the coast, both political thinkers who supported and decried coastal separatism emphasized the correlation of race, ethnicity, religion, and physical space. Through competing claims to ‘the soil’, all parties articulated a dually integrative and divisive language of citizenship. As a result, autochthony discourse exacerbated tensions within coastal society, fortified divergent visions of the postcolonial nation, and highlighted reductive definitions of the coast as either maritime or continental in orientation.

There is a general consensus among West African historians that the Island of Gold, known to Arab geographers as Wangara and to European cartographers as Palolus, refers to the Bambuk/Bure goldfields. This article examines the evidence for an alternative identification of the Island of Gold with the Inland Niger Delta, where the place name Wangara would be derived from Soninke long-distance traders (Wangara). Many of the details on the Island of Gold provided in the original sources can be shown to apply more convincingly to the Inland Niger Delta than to Bambuk/Bure. Until now, this hypothesis has not received serious consideration, partly because of the belief that the Inland Delta and its most important entrepot, Jenne, did not play a significant role in long-distance trade networks until the fourteenth century. This is contradicted by archaeological evidence for a major urban centre at Jenne-jeno by 900 a.d.

The existence in the later first millennium a.d. of the Soninke town of Jenne-jeno, and the oral traditions which maintain that the western Inland Delta was the heartland of the Soninke trade diaspora, combine to indicate that commerce along the Middle Niger was substantial by the early second millennium. Indirect confirmation of this trading activity is found both in al-Bakri's discussion of riverine trade routes along the upper Niger Bend and in al-Idrisi's account of the Wangara along the Middle Niger. The continuing identification of the Inland Niger Delta region as the Island of Gold from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries implies that part of this trade involved gold. A possible early gold source in Lobi is suggested.

The Ashanti bureaucracy as we know it from the nineteenth century owed its structure and character to reforms in government initiated by Osei Kwadwo (1762–77) and pushed forward by his successors Osei Kwame (1777–ca. 1801) and Osei Bonsu (ca. 1801–1824). Many previously hereditary offices became appointive: biographical studies of leading officials in the early nineteenth century show that they were appointed, and promoted, by the king on merit, without regard to their origins. Freemen and slaves, Ashanti and non-Ashanti, were recruited into the bureaucracy. Administrative skills tended to be transmitted through patri-kin, and in the course of the nineteenth century powerful groups grew up which, generation after generation, provided the king with trained officials. An administrative class emerged, distinguished from other elements in society by its dependence upon the king for its very existence. Elaborate checks were instituted to prevent the bureaucracy transforming itself from a controlled to a ruling one.

Bureaucratization in Ashanti produced little quantitative change in the pattern of office growth. Its effects were upon the quality of government. A distinction began to take shape between the king acting in his private capacity through his palace functionaries, and in his public capacity through his bureaucratic officials. Government became increasingly efficient, and was extended over fields of activity previously untouched. The growth of the bureaucratic process was reflected in the increasingly absolutist nature of the Ashanti state.

The notion of capitalist relations in Ghanaian cocoa-farming is familiar, yet their development has been relatively little studied. In Amansie district, Asante, capitalist relations of production developed as a result rather than as a cause of the cocoa ‘take-off’, c. 1900–16. This paper examines their emergence, which occurred largely during the subsequent period of much slower growth and generally lower prices. The introduction and spread of regular wage-labour, the widening and deepening burden of rent on ‘stranger’ cocoa farms, the proliferation of ‘advances’, and the introduction of farm mortgaging are described, together with the accompanying decline of slavery, pawning, and other non-wage forms of labour. Colonial officials ineffectually deplored the growth of money-lending and, to a lesser extent, that of wage-labour. From the mid-1930s, however, the tendency towards greater separation of labour from control of the farm was partly reversed by a new insistence by northern labourers on the replacement of annual wage contracts by a managerial form of share-cropping. This demand was sustained against the opposition of farmowners and despite persistent unemployment, an achievement made possible by the migrants continued foothold in subsistence agriculture in their home areas. This case of migrant labourers successfully challenging the extension of wage relations raises questions concerning the relationships between commercial agriculture and ‘precapitalist’ social relations of production in Africa generally.

In contrast to the negative conclusions reached by Donal Cruise O'Brien, it is here argued that the French, in the last half of the nineteenth century, maintained an Islamic policy. They practised some of it all of the time and all of it when they had the human and financial resources. They consistently opposed the Islamic state where it conflicted with their own political and economic interests. They identified it with their old nemesis of Futa Toro and the Tokolor, and then with the Tijaniyya. This attitude can be contrasted with a much more tolerant disposition towards the established monarchies, with whom thay coexisted for a much longer time and upon whom they relied to supply the cadre of chiefs.

In the case of Umar, the French confronted a jihad that was launched before they began their own expansion in the upper valley, but they contained its influence. They quarantined the Wolof areas and pushed the Umarian state to the margins of their sphere of influence. By allowing much of the younger generation of Tokolor to depart, they turned the preaching of hijra to their own advantage. The French opposed the efforts of Ma Bâ to move into the heart of the peanut basin and the campaigns of the Madiyankobe to block the river trade or disrupt cultivation in Cayor. As soon as Mamadu Lamin mobilized for jihad they responded by driving him out of their gateway to expansion.

This article first explains the importance of the history of smoking pipes for other historical questions, especially in West Africa, where pipe styles are used to date archaeological levels. A survey of the major theories about African smoking and pipes is presented. This is followed by a review of the published archaeological literature pertaining to smoking pipes found at various sites from around the continent. The various controversies surrounding African smoking customs are then looked at in the light of the available evidence. The most likely hypothesis is that cannabis was smoked in water pipes in eastern and southern Africa before the introduction of tobacco. Further research is called for to prove or disprove this hypothesis. Tobacco is shown to have been introduced to West Africa from eastern North America, most likely by the French coming to Senegambia, though possibly by Moroccans coming to Timbuktu.

In 1916 the South African government received a request from the Imperial government for the provision of non-combatant African labour for work in France. Despite opposition from white opinion on both political and economic grounds, the South African Native Labour Contingent was formed and recruiting commenced. Although recruiting had the active support of African political leaders, it was not as successful as had been hoped. Distrust of the government's intentions was one important reason for this. The South African government had agreed to the Imperial government's request for labour only on the condition that S.A.N.L.C. units were to be kept segregated from both other military units and the French civil population, and numerous measures (particularly the construction of compounds) were devised to facilitate this. But in practice this proved impossible to implement properly, and South African officers did not have the degree of control over their units that had originally been envisaged. On the African side, there was a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with conditions, and in one incident thirteen Africans were shot dead by their own officers. When the South African government decided to bring the ‘experiment’ to an end early in 1918, many Africans suspected that the reasons for this were not purely military as was claimed. Service in the S.A.N.L.C. was of importance both in terms of the individual experiences of those Africans directly involved, but it acquired also a wider political and symbolic importance, attached particularly to the sinking of the transport, S.S. Mendi, in February 1917 with the loss of over 600 African members of the S.A.N.L.C.