Recent studies by the historians of pre-colonial Africa have tended to assume that external trade has always led to the formation or enlargement of states, and was crucial for the continued existence of these states. An example where an uncritical application of the above ‘trade-stimulus hypothesis’ has led to some distortion of reality has been in the study of the Rozvi empire in Southern Rhodesia in the eighteenth century. Previous students of the Rozvi empire have claimed that the latter was such a loosely connected tribal confederacy that its internal power bases—given as military and religious—were politically so slender that on their own they could not have sustained whatever power the Rozvi ruler wielded. Instead, it is said that the main source of the power exercised by the Rozvi Mambo came mainly from the latter's ability to redistribute the profits of external trade, especially that of the gold trade of which he is said to have had a strictly enforced monopoly.

Within twelve years of the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 the Transvaal was producing over one quarter of the world's annual output of gold. The Transvaal's emergence as a major gold producer took place at a time when global monetary relations were dominated by the operations of the gold standard. This article illustrates the impact of the Witwatersrand discoveries on the working of the international gold standard to 1914 and suggests that newly mined gold from South Africa eased international liquidity problems by facilitating an expansion of the gold base and money supplies without the dangers of inflation. Transvaal gold was shipped to London and sold in the City's bullion market. The establishment by South African mining companies of a complex London network of brokerage, insurance, refining and marketing facilities of gold is considered in detail. It is demonstrated that, when faced with a fixed price of gold and rising working costs on the Rand, the mining industry actively sought to minimize the marketing costs of gold in London to offset general cost inflation and to increase revenue. Finally, at the turn of the century, the Bank of England still occupied a hegemonic position in the international financial system, although, as this article shows, this hegemony was subject to periodic financial crises such as the collapse of Barings in 1890. The Bank‘s problems were thought to stem from a severe shortage of gold reserves. Recently, it has been argued that by the late 1890s British politicians and financiers encouraged the overthrow of the Kruger regime in the Transvaal in order to gain physical control over the Rand mines and thereby ease the Bank's shortages of gold. However, there are problems with this formulation and the article concludes with an alternative consideration of the complex relationship between the supplies of newly mined Transvaal gold, the international gold standard and the Bank of England's financial crises.

This article studies the expansion of tsetse fly in one part of Kenya Maasailand between 1900 and 1950. It follows the lines of investigation first suggested by Ford's work and examines in detail the interaction between changes in four elements in the Mara ecosystem: climate, vegetation, land use and tsetse. Tsetse was able to expand because its habitat expanded and the spread of bush and fly into the grasslands both caused, and was facilitated by, shifts in patterns of Maasai grazing and occupation in the area. Up to the 1890s, the Mara Plains were regularly grazed by Maasai herds; but the general depopulation of Maasailand in the aftermath of the rinderpest pandemic and civil war left the region vacant until after 1900 and allowed the spread of bush cover which was then colonised by tsetse. When Maasai returned, they altered their grazing patterns to avoid such areas. However, the progressive encroachment of tsetse-infested bush continued and was not halted until bush-clearing schemes and closer grazing forced the fly to retreat by destroying its habitat. The study is set within the wider context of ecological change and capitalist development in East Africa and suggests that the common assumption that colonial capitalism was responsible for the disruption of the ecosystem and, therefore, for the spread of disease and environmmental degradation needs careful re-examination in the light of a more sophisticated understanding of the processes of ecological change.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, Nyamwezi long-distance trading caravans dominated the central routes through Tanzania, stretching from Mrima coast ports such as Bagamoyo and Saadani to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. Despite the inroads of Omani Arab and Swahili trading enterprises from the middle of the century, the Nyamwezi maintained a position of strength. In the second half of the nineteenth century, market relations emerged as the dominant form of economic organization along the central routes, although the market for many commodities was clearly fractured by transport difficulties, and non-market relations frequently substituted for weakly developed commercial institutions and tools. Most caravan porters in nineteenth-century Tanzania were free wage workers, and nearly all were clearly migrant or itinerant labourers. The development of a labour market for caravan porters was an early and significant stage in the transition to capitalism, which began in a period of violence and political upheaval. Clearly, this has implications for how scholars should view broader processes of economic transformation prior to the imposition of colonial rule, which cut short a series of significant indigenous innovations.

The argument that porters were mostly wage labourers rests on evidence that their labour was bought and sold according to fluctuating labour market conditions. Market conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century shows a broadly rising demand for porters, a demand that could only be met if caravan operators offered adequate wages and observed the customs established within porter work culture. Thus, market conditions along the central routes contributed to the development of a free wage labour, characterized by a unique labour culture.

The Chadian Muslim states of Kanem, and later Bornu, have been linked throughout their history to North Africa by an important trade-route across the Sahara, from the Libyan coast to Lake Chad. The popularity and permanence of this route throughout the centuries have been detennined by the economic needs and specialities of the N. African littoral, as well as of the Western Sudan. This route, first controlled by Ibāḍī Muslim Berbers from Zawīla from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, then briefly by the Ayyubids of Cairo, came under the control of Kanem, which was expanding northwards in the thirteenth century. The Fazzān (and Zawīla) then came under the control of Kanem, which seems to have maintained friendly relations with the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis. After the thirteenth century, independent states arose in the Fazzān. Then, after the establishment of an Ottoman Turkish province in Libya, the Turks and the Mais of Bornu were soon in contact, probably from about 1555, and certainly in the time of Mai Idrīs of Bomu (on the throne in 1557–8), as some newly found correspondence from the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul makes clear. There was certainly a friendly association between Bornu and the Turks at this period, if not an actual alliance, as Mai Idrīs hoped to obtain arms and perhaps Turkish troops as well to use against his enemies of the W. Sudan, principally the Hausa state of Kebbi. However, Idris's hopes were deceived, and the Ottoman Sultan Murād III did not provide what was wanted, causing Idrīs to turn to the Sa'dī Sharifian ruler of Fās, Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Dhahābī, with a similar request.

Our study of caudatum sorghums in Africa and the ethnography, history, and archaeology of regions where caudatum sorghums are grown has led us to the following conclusions.

The distributions of caudatum sorghums and Chari-Nile-speaking peoples coincide so closely that a causal relationship seems probable.

Caudatum sorghums appear to be a product of selection by Chari-Nile-speaking peoples for a hardy crop which will produce a large amount of grain under adverse conditions with a minimum amount of care. Caudatums can produce grain in spite of either droughts or heavy rains during the growing season and can produce grain in places where no other indigenous African crop can grow.

Caudatum may be a relatively new race of sorghum. Available evidence indicates it was developed some time after about 350 A.D. and before about 900 A.D., the date for caudatum found at Daima mound, south of Lake Chad.

By about 1000 A.D. caudatum was probably being grown in many parts of the savanna belt stretching from the eastern shores of Lake Chad to southwestern Ethiopia. This is assuming that the evidence of caudatum culture at Daima is indicative of a general phenomenon occurring in a region with close intercultural contacts.

The large number of varieties of caudatum in the Republic of the Sudan suggests that caudatum sorghums have been grown in the Sudan for a relatively long time and may have been developed there.

A caudatum and cattle-based economy has probably been an important factor in making possible the present level of occupation of regions now inhabited by Chari-Nile-speaking peoples.

On the basis of oral histories and archaeological remains of people in northern East Africa, we have concluded that caudatum-based agriculture was probably introduced to Uganda and Kenya no later than the period from 1500–1800 A.D., when the Luo occupied the areas in which they live at the present. However, it is not unlikely that caudatums were introduced more than once as various Chari-Nile-speaking groups made their way into East Africa.

In 1903 the South African mining industry began recruiting African labor from Central Africa in order to shore up their labor supplies. From the outset, Central African recruitment was problematic, for Central African mine workers died at very high rates. The primary source of Central African mortality was pneumonia. In response to this high mortality the Union government threatened to close down Central African recruitment, a threat which they carried out in 1913. From 1911 to 1933, the mining industry fought to maintain, and then after 1913 to regain access to Central African labor. Of central importance in this struggle were efforts to develop a vaccine against pneumonia. While the mine medical community failed to produce an effective vaccine against pneumonia, the Chamber of Mines successfully employed the promise of a vaccine eventually to regain access to Central African Labor in 1934. The mines achieved this goal by controlling the terrain of discourse on the health of Central African workers, directing attention away from the unhealthy conditions of mine labor and toward the imagined cultural and biological peculiarities of these workers. In doing so the mines constructed a new social category, ‘tropical workers’ or ‘tropicals’. The paper explores the political, economic and intellectual environment within which this cultural construction was created and employed.

This article has argued that under António Salazar Portuguese colonial policy was altered from one which envisaged the ultimate growth and development of the African colonies to one which emphasized colonial stability. Between 1928 and 1930 he took steps to diminish the role of foreign capital in the colonies, weaken the influence of special interest groups, restrict Portuguese emigration to the colonies, and bring colonial autonomy to an end. As a result of these measures, Salazar ensured that metropolitan Portugal would be the chief beneficiary of the exploitation of the Portuguese colonies.

This essay considers how historians of Africa can draw from and critically contribute to biomedical debates. Recent virological research has established that the HIV/AIDS pandemic began with the passage of simian immunodeficiency viruses into human populations in the first half of the twentieth century. Current debates on the emergence of HIV are an opportunity for historians to engage with biomedical research to rethink social, political, and environmental histories of Africa. While biomedical writings focus on HIV ‘origins’, we propose a broader look at the historical changes associated with the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, there have been several changes in the paradigms of ethnic identity in the area around the modern town of Muheza in north-eastern Tanzania. Such differing tribal schemas have been correlated with differing presentations of history, and today several varying ideas of identity and history coexist. This correlation, and coexistence, suggest that all discussions of history and identity are negotiations, in which individuals attempt to present ethnicity and history in ways which they perceive as consonant with their own interests: the creation of identity, and of history, is thus a process in which all are involved. In such discussions, both immediate situation and wider social context influence how people talk about their ethnic identity and their history, so that political and economic changes have had considerable effect in reshaping identity, and thus history, in the area. The relationship between identity and interest is, however, a two-way process. Peoples' own previous understanding of identity and history may in turn affect their perception of their interests, so that the process is recursive, reacting back on itself: people are able to redefine themselves according to their interests, but this redefinition builds on previous constructs of history and identity.

This review provides a new interpretative framework for the ‘Neolithic’ in East Africa. A seriation of pottery assemblages is used to delineate several archaeological traditions, the implications of which include rejection of the use of the terms ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Pastoral Neolithic’, and the demise of previous attempts at archaeological—linguistic correlations. Evaluation of the dating evidence brings into question the validity of early dates for domestic stock and cultivated crops in the region. A new model for the development of specialized herd management strategies in the Central Rift Valley is outlined. This model rests upon the definition of pastoralism as an ideological system rather than as a subsistence strategy. Finally, the archaeological evidence for the antecedents of the early pastoral communities of East Africa is examined and the ascription of some of these assemblages to the ‘aquatic civilization of Middle Africa’ is questioned.

This paper – which builds upon the author's previously published work on the forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) – deals with the role of Komfo Anokye in Asante thought and history. The source materials and historiography pertaining to Komfo Anokye are critically reviewed, but the principal focus of the paper is on issues of cognition, belief and philosophy. Komfo Anokye's ‘place’ in Asante thought is analysed, and his meaning(s) identified with reference to Asante concerns about the nature of history, society and the human. The paper tries to go beyond epistemology and a ‘traditional’ reading of Asante religion and its practices to a hermeneutical interpretation of Komfo Anokye and the sense-meaning of Asante history. Philosophical and psychological issues are addressed in a historical context. The larger object of the paper is, by the example of Komfo Anokye and Asante history, to attempt to indicate a way forward for the Africanist historical enterprise in the understanding of meaning.

Nzinga of Matamba, the seventeenth-century African monarch known primarily for her enmity to the Portuguese in Angola, also faced hostility from her own Mbundu people and the opposition of neighbouring African rulers throughout her long career. Her sex disqualified her from many Mbundu political offices reserved for males, and her origins in the lineageless community at the Mbundu king's royal court made her an outsider in terms of the lineage politics of most Mbundu states. But she overcame these disadvantages by skilful manipulation of the aliens present on the Mbundu borders, Imbangala warrior bands, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, and dominated Mbundu politics and diplomacy until her death in 1663. The domestic forces arrayed against Nzinga triumphed after her death, expelling her chosen successors from the Matamba royal title and omitting her name from the oral traditions of the state. These hypotheses, while not susceptible to direct proof, seem probable on the basis of a re-reading of documentary sources in the light of ethnographic and oral historical evidence collected in 1969–1970.

A large proportion of the slaves captured at sea by the British Royal Navy during the early nineteenth century were landed at Sierra Leone. Statistical data on the make-up of the Sierra Leonean population at this period is available from several sources, and it provides some interesting clues to the scope and size of the slave trade from different parts of Africa.

This article uses the extensive documentation of Africans liberated from slave vessels to explore issues of identity and freedom in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. It tracks the size, origin, and movement of the Liberated African diaspora, offers a preliminary analysis of the ‘disposal’ of African recaptives in societies on both sides of the Atlantic, and assesses the opportunities Liberated Africans had in shaping their post-disembarkation experiences. While nearly all Liberated Africans were pulled at least partly into the Atlantic wage economy, the article concludes that recaptive communities in Freetown and its hinterland most closely met the aspirations of the Liberated Africans themselves while the fate of recaptives settled in the Americas paralleled those who were enslaved.

Much speculation has been devoted to the possible connexions between the different clusters of kingdoms in Africa. Scholars have been puzzled for over half a century by the similarities in organization and ideology between different African states. They have tried to explain them either as the product of the diffusion of a common pattern, the ‘Sudanic State’ or the ‘Sacral Kingship’, or by maintaining that similar functional needs led to parallel independent inventions in many different areas. In Central Africa the specific positions taken have been that the Katanga states diffused their model of government to the Lower Congo cluster, or, as I myself have claimed, that these were independent. Dittmer links the Lower Congo with Katanga, and derives the latter cluster itself from the interlacustrine and Ethiopian clusters

The paper seeks to present new information concerning the activities of the West African branches of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The author has included biographical profiles of the British West African Garveyites to integrate the Garvey movement into the history of West African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

It is argued that Garveyism was welcomed in British West Africa by the older cultural nationalists who saw Garveyism as an extension of Blyden's ideas. Pan-African sentiments of racial unity and solidarity of African and American blacks, pride in the history of the race, and self-help projects had wide circulation in West Africa from the latter part of the nineteenth century, as a result of Blyden's influence. Joining the branches of the U.N.I.A. was a practical demonstration of a long-standing commitment to cultural and racial nationalism among the West African elite.

The Garvey movement also marked the beginning of a new era in West African nationalism. Garvey's radical pronouncements on freeing Africa from colonial rule were unacceptable to the older cultural nationalists who dominated the Garvey groups. They disavowed any interest in organizing a central nation for the race. However, Garvey's ideas may have had long-term effects. By the 1930s the idea of independence from colonial rule seemed more attractive to the West African nationalists. Garvey was one of the first to speak out boldly for freedom from colonialism.

The concrete achievements of the West African branches of the U.N.I.A. were small indeed. Nigeria had the most Garveyite activity in British West Africa. There was an agent for the Black Star Line in Lagos and a branch of the U.N.I.A. and A.C.L. The Gold Coast had the least Garveyite activity, probably because of their involvement in the National Congress of British West Africa and also because of their more critical attitude towards co-operation with American blacks. They believed that Africans were best qualified to lead any joint efforts for intra-racial co-operation.

The perspectives of African informants and researchers profoundly shaped the writings of government ethnologist Dr. Nicholas Jacobus van Warmelo who not only collected information from local African informants but also relied on African researchers who wrote manuscripts in the vernacular that would constitute part of his archive. This study explores the process of producing knowledge on the ‘Transvaal Ndebele’, and provides an analysis of Van Warmelo's texts and of his researchers' manuscripts. By looking at the role of local interlocutors, I make a case for African agency in shaping the ‘colonial’ expert's conceptions of Ndebele identity. This article provides an account of the co-production of cultural knowledge. Van Warmelo was employed by the South African Native Affairs Department to identify and fix ‘tribes’, a highly political enterprise, and in the process generated an archive. His work was as much appropriated by the apartheid state for social engineering as by Ndebele interlocutors involved in contemporary struggles over chieftainship.

Tanzania's Ujamaa villagization campaign of 1973–6 was one of the greatest social experiments in postcolonial Africa. Occurring during a time of continuing hope for a better future for the nation, the experiment aimed to improve the lives of the majority of rural Tanzanians. Despite this noble intention, the attempt at rural modernization failed miserably in many respects. Discussions of these failures have tended to give prominence to tangible explanations, ignoring more nuanced and qualitative issues, including environmental concerns based on local cosmologies. In an attempt to fill this gap, the present article uses a case study of eastern Iraqwland in northern Tanzania to explore local articulations of the compulsory villagization campaign and to interpret them in light of ecological perspectives that were prevalent at the time in Iraqw village communities.