Students of the history of North Africa in general, and of the history of the Jews there in particular, commonly think that a considerable proportion—one half or more—of the Jews who live, or until recently lived, in North Africa are descended from the Berbers, who prior to the Arab conquest formed the overwhelming majority of the population. In their opinion, these Jews were the offspring of tribes among which Jewish beliefs spread in the pre-Arab era and part of which actually embraced Judaism. This assumption, which seemingly answers the question as to the origin of the Jews who inhabited the North African hinterland, and especially the districts bordering on the Sahara, has gained such wide currency that the term ‘Berber Jew’ has been coined, i.e. Jew descended from Judaized Berbers. The proponents of this assumption apparently suppose that the stories of Jews, or Judaized people, living among Berber tribes, though describing events of the late Middle Ages or of modern times, reflect conditions precedent to the Muslim conquest of North Africa. In other words, the supporters of the theory of the Judaized Berbers think that this phenomenon cannot have originated in Muslim times since the new religion precluded every chance of Jewish proselytizing. If, therefore, Judaized people are found in Africa, even in recent times, they must be remnants of a religious movement going back to the period before the Arab conquest. In the view of the adherents of this theory, Judaism spread among the Berbers during the first centuries of the Christian era.

The absolute dependence upon human labour for the transport of goods and travellers in nineteenth-century Madagascar can only be understood in terms of the peculiar nature of the imperial Merina structure. A justifiable fear of European attack and takeover led the Merina regime to rely on ‘Generals “Hazo” and “Tazo”’ (forest and fever) and an underdeveloped road network to hinder and ultimately prevent any foreign military force reaching the central plateau. Simultaneously, however, the régime wished to expand both internal and external trade so as to be accepted as an independent member of the international trading community. It therefore needed an efficient transport and communications system. This was created through an imperial porterage organization of slave and forced (fanompoana) labour. This system held attractions for the Merina political élite, by being both servile and unpaid. Investment in alternative transport arrangements remained unattractive. The deterrents were natural conservatism, lack of capital, and the significant profits to be made from hiring out slave porters to carry trade commodities which increased in volume from the 1860s. Under these conditions an indigenous ‘proto-trade union’, based upon the growing organizational strength of the maromita (porter) movement emerged in the island. Its power however rested on the absence in the Merina economy of any alternative transport system. When the French colonial régime instituted a modern road and rail transport network from 1895, the imperial porterage system disintegrated.

The last twenty years have seen a series of studies dealing, at least in part, with the nineteenth-century history of slavery at the East African coast. Each has, in its own way, focused on transformations associated with changing patterns of accumulation in the nineteenth century. If there has been a general theme it is of the increasing constraints placed upon slaves and the increasing demands made on them, as owners sought to reorganize labour time and processes to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the rapid expansion of commerce from the 1830s. While Morton has attacked Cooper's ‘hegemonic’ perspective and accused him of presenting slavery as benign and static, both are agreed on a basic trend: the increasingly commercial orientation of slave-based agriculture considerably diminished slave autonomy between 1820 and 1890. Recently, Glassman has offered a study which is decidedly non-hegemonic in perspective, and has revealed the ways in which marginal members of society appropriated and sought to reinterpret the ideology through which they were subordinated. Yet he too describes the increasing circumscription of slave autonomy in response to the demands of new kinds of production – in his case, the sugar plantations of the Pangani valley.

The paper reviews the history of the concepts used to depict poverty in Africa. “Pauperism” is a legal concept, deriving from early modern law in Britain, which frames individual situations, places the paupers under specific rights and duties, and was applied in early colonial situations. Percentile is a economic-demographic concept, implying class difference, indexed to measurable or imputed monetary income, which became an instrument of government in the colonial world mainly after 1945, moving into the international comparative world after the era of independence. In the neoliberal era after 1989, the concept of precarity, and a focus on realizable assets rather than income, has taken higher profile than an emergent replacement for the comparative-percentile approach, sometimes now depicted as “living on $2 a day”. The paper indicates the conceptual and political implications and challenges of each of these depictions.

This article describes the independent contribution of pacific clerics to Islamic diffusion in West Africa. The particular role of Serakhullé (or Soninké) clerics, better known as Jakhanké, is examined in detail. The Jakhanké became a distinct clerical caste among the Serakhullé, initially through the work of al-Ḥājj Salim Suwaré who led them first at Diakha-Masina and eventually at Diakha-Bambukhu, where they lost a good deal of their Serakhullé cultural traits. Henceforth they acquired a self-consciously Islamic image alongside an increasing identification with the Manding culture. Al-Ḥājj Salim (floruit twelfth–thirteenth century) founded the clerical vocation on a principled disavowal of jihād and withdrawal from political/secular centres. He also established travel as essential to the clerical life. Since his time the Jakhanké have been characterized by dispersion, although the dispersion trail has also connected numerous centres into an effective network of clerical expansion. The career of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jakhité, a member of the Jakhanké community, illustrates the range of clerical outreach. He and his community eventually settled in Kano in the reign of Muḥammad Rimfa (1463–99) and helped consolidate Islam in Hausaland. On this kind of evidence, it is suggested that the pattern of Islamic clerical diffusion can be discerned at an early stage, although historical sources have tended to fuse the themes of Islamic expansion, commercial activity and a resident foreign Muslim community. However, the Jakhanké clerical tradition is sufficiently secure for it to be studied independently, without assuming a corresponding degree of commercial or foreign Muslim influence. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for research into Islamic diffusion in West Africa are outlined.

The Ovambo and their Nkhumbi neighbours live in a flood plain, which is artificially divided by the present frontier between Angola and Namibia. From the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, they underwent a process of underdevelopment and class formation linked to the evolution of commercial relations with western societies. Between 1845 and 1885 the ivory trade temporarily enriched the Ovambo and widened the productive base of their economy through the introduction of fire-arms. At the same time, however, fire-arms became a necessity, and thus forged permanent links of dependence on western societies. Cattle replaced ivory as an export item after the elephants had been shot out, but pressure on the Ovambo's own cattle resources were largely avoided by systematic raiding in southern Angola. After the turn of the century natural disasters and effective Portuguese resistance to raiding made this solution inoperative, and led to a general impoverishment of Ovambo society. The social impact of this impoverishment was extremely uneven, for the kings and their followers passed it on to the more vulnerable members of society through a system of harsh and arbitrary taxation. A new stratum of men without cattle was thus forced to turn to migrant labour in Namibia and Angola. The colonial conquest of 1915 froze this situation into a permanent system of recurrent labour migration.

Par l'analyse comparée de l'évolution, depuis le début du siècle, des deux plus grandes firmes d'import-export de l'Afrique francophone, l'article teste une méthode d'analyse des bilans visant à préciser l'histoire des investissements privés dans l'Empire colonial français, en privilégiant tour à tour les analyses de conjoncture et le trend à long terme.

Les firmes ont trouvé dès le milieu des années 20 leur extension géographique définitive. La C.F.A.O., représentative du commerce colonial marseillais, a toujours été plus timorée, mais aussi plus rentable dans le cadre restreint de ‘l'économie de traite’ coloniale. La S.C.O.A., plus dynamique et liée aux milieux bancaires, s'est montrée plus sensible à la conjoncture (crise de 1921 et grande Dépression), mais s'est reconvertie plus tôt aux méthodes financières contemporaines.

Dans le long terme, ce qui ressort le plus nettement, c'est une croissance régulière des profits jusqu'au tournant de l'année-charnière 1952, qui marquait l'apogée de la hausse des cours des produits tropicaux. Au-delà, la détérioration accélérée des termes de l'échange et l'accroissement des charges sociales ébranlèrent les profits coloniaux ‘classiques’. C'est surtout depuis l'indépendance que les firmes ont modernisé leurs structures, caractérisées par l'ampleur nouvelle des investissements d'équipement, la diversification des activités et l'internationalisation des investissements.

Néanmoins, l'investissement global reste médiocre, et le renversement tardif de la tendance confirme l'hypothèse d'un impérialisme colonial français archaïque et malthusien.

Grâce aux recherches récentes, le nombre de dates C14 disponibles pour l'Afrique centrale s'est considérablement accru. Une synthèse critique de toutes les datations connues est présentée ici. Malgré une apparente bonne coïncidence entre les dates et les industries lithiques de la partie ouest, un examen minutieux montre la nécessité de redéfinir l'ensemble des industries lithiques généralement distinguées. Dans la partie est, le microlithique est daté d'avant 38.000 b.c., ce qui est plus ancien que ce que l'on supposait. L'existence de céramique associée à des haches polies, constituant peut-être un niveau néolithique, a pu être mis en évidence au Bas–Zaïre; il est daté des quatre derniers siècles avant notre ère. Au Zaïre, les données sur l'âge du fer ancien restent très fragmentaires; par contre au Rwanda, il est connu par une série de dates parmi les plus anciennes en Afrique de l'Est. Dans la partie ouest, à l'époque de l'âge du fer récent, quelques données permettent de suivre lea circuits commerciaux datés de l'époque du royaume de Kongo. La révision des dates du cimetière de Sanga aboutit à l'élaboration de la chronologie complète de l'âge du fer dans le dépression de l'Upemba au Shaba. Au Rwanda, la datation de sépultures royales a permis d'intéressantes confrontations avec les données de l'ethnohistoire. Ces nouveaux résultats, pour importants qu'ils soient, restent malheureusement fragmentaires et isolés.

Gold production in the Loby region to the west of the Black Volta in the precolonial period was exclusively in the hands of lineages grouped in largely autonomous little towns, 118 in the area under study, of which Jebugu was the largest. The various peoples were a mixture of Voltaïc language speakers, who formed the majority, with Mande speakers linked to the wider Mande world. Government was not centralized, but operated at three levels of lineage organization. At the first, Level I, sukula or units of residence for each self-governing kin group joined together as the wards of each town, under a resident chief. At Level II, each kin group in each sukula came under the authority of the head of its lineage, who lived in one of the larger, ‘chiefly’ towns perhaps several days' journey away. At Level III, this lineage organization for the Mande speakers was linked to the Mande-Jula capitals outside the Loby region, at Kong, Bonduku, Bobojulasso and Buna. So far as gold was concerned, this three-layered political system was a commercial organization which brought producers and distributors together in response to market demands. Voltaïc-speaking producers at Level I were linked through the lineages to Voltaïc and Mande-speaking distributors at Level II; while both producers and distributors on these levels were collectively linked to the Mande-speaking distributors on Level III, who connected the region with the outside world. The control of distributors over producers was indirect, and exercised solely through the market. This picture from the nineteenth century of fiercely independent gold miners, with traditional skills, beliefs and rights, operating only in the absence of central government, confirms accounts of gold production in the western Sudan dating from the Middle Ages, and offers a valuable case for study.

The picture is supplemented and enhanced by what happened after the arrival of the French in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the changes they introduced in the political organization of the Loby region in 1898. The evidence shows that, until the end of World War I, Loby gold production remained largely in the hands of traditional miners, who retained their links with the old commercial-political lineage system, which continued to market the bulk of the Loby gold. The influence of the colonial state, which for all practical purposes must have been perceived as none other than a fourth political level imposed above the existing three, was itself indirect, and of a familiar kind. In response to an increased demand for gold on the coast, Loby producers raised both their output and their sales, demonstrating the effectiveness of their traditional organization.

The history of the imperial/colonial elite's preoccupation with saving a handful of specific ‘game’ species in reserves has come to stand for the relationship of all classes with all wild animals in both South Africa and the wider world of the British empire. The result is a narrative of process and periodization flawed in general and false in the specific case of the Cape Colony/Province, where economics rather than ideology was both the primary motor of game conservation and the mediating factor in human relationships with wild animal species. Here the general trend across the century from 1850 to 1950 was, contra MacKenzian orthodoxy, towards private not public ownership of game propelled by a rural rather than an urban elite. Public ownership was instead restricted to ‘vermin’ species in which the state created a market in which it became the chief consumer. The Cape's great tradition was refracted through its customary permissive legislation to yield a myriad of small traditions at the regional or local level. Rather than an argument for Cape exceptionalism, its wild animal history is a caution against glib generalizations from the elite archive and an indication of the need to broaden prevailing ‘game reserve history’ to include the full range of human and animal inhabitants as agents rather than as residual analytical categories in any narrative.

This article raises the question of how scholars might make sense of well-known components of social organization in Africa in the absence of the increasingly criticized evolutionary and lineage models that once gave them meaning. In an effort to understand why our earliest glimpses into the distant Ganda past appear in the form of clan histories, the article examines the relationship between clanship, public healing and transformations in agricultural practices. Beginning around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Ganda expanded upon earlier knowledge of banana cultivation to develop a land-intensive banana farming system. This process coincided with the transformation of previously territorial spirits into portable spirits capable of ensuring the health of disconnected groups of people. At the heart of these undertakings stood the ideology and practices of clanship, which furnished the conceptual bridge connecting transformations in agriculture and public healing. The webs of shrines situated on discontiguous clan lands created therapeutic networks that drew together communities whose leaders possessed a variety of skills, thus forging a powerful connection between clanship, collective health and the composition of knowledge.

For a number of years the historiography of Southern Africa has been dominated by a materialist framework that has focused upon modes of production and forms of socio-political organization as the determining factors in historical change. Those historians concerned with the history of women in pre-colonial societies – even those who have privileged gender relations in their analyses – have largely been content to construct women's history by applying the insights of socio-economic and political analyses of the past to gender dynamics, and by projecting the insights of anthropological analyses of present gender relations into the past. Some of these historians have concluded that until the arrival of capitalism no substantial changes in the situations, power or status of women took place within Zulu society, even during the period of systemic transformation known as the mfecane in the early nineteenth century.

More recently, Zulu gender history has become part of a larger debate connected to the changing political and academic milieu in South Africa. Representatives of a revived Africanist tradition have criticized materialist historians for writing Zulu history from an outsider's perspective and of focusing overly on conflict and power imbalances within the nineteenth-century kingdom in an effort to discredit contemporary Zulu nationalism. To counter this, historian Simon Maphalala has stressed the harmony of nineteenth-century Zulu society, the power advisors exercised in state government, and the lack of internal conflict. Maphalala also claims that women's subordinate role in society ‘did not cause any dissatisfaction among them’, and argues that ‘[women] accepted their position and were contented’. In recent constitutional debates many South African intellectuals including members of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA), invoked this ‘benign patriarchy’ model of pre-colonial gender relations to oppose the adoption of gender-equality provisions in the new constitution. As Cherryl Walker has noted, the hegemonic definition of traditional gender relations to which such figures have made rhetorical appeals often masks not only the historicity of these relations but also hides dissenting opinions (often demarcated along gender lines) as to what those relations are and have been.

The colonial bequest in the history of land matters in Malawi began with the alienation of the best agricultural lands in the country to a few large estate owners. The promised security of tenure to the original inhabitants of the estates was never observed in full measure, and the colonial government itself attempted to remedy the original error by beginning to re-acquire land for African settlement as well as to attempt to offer some security of tenure to the African residents. These two efforts were accelerated and refined by the African government, and new related areas of relief were also introduced for the benefit of the African masses. The masses are, by nature, conservative, and the African government, forward-looking and attempting to redress the balance of unequal opportunities while at the same time formulating plans to get rid of the shackles of budgetary deficits, has to plan carefully and influence persuasively. Many of the changes introduced have yet to be tried over a number of years in different situations. For example, there is little public demand, as in Kenya, for individual title to land. ‘So although there is land pressure, the people do not want to split the family, and they do not yet appreciate the freedom of transfer provided by the Registered Land Act.’ There is, too, what is described as the disadvantages of the matrilineal system: ‘The men are a floating population and it is the women who are tied to the land. Family life is unstable and there is no solid ground on which to build a modern form of land tenure.’

International relations in pre-colonial West Africa were conducted in accordance with customary law, which exhibited broadly similar characteristics over a wide area. Trade and politics, linking the coast, the forest and the savannah, led to the development of diplomacy in the more centrally-organized states. Inter-African embassies enjoyed a degree of prestige and immunity comparable to that which protected European diplomacy, and a widely accepted protocol regulated negotiations. Treaties were concluded solemnly and sanctions were provided for their observance. Embassies were also sent to Europe and adjacent European possessions and settlements, North Africa and the Near East, and were generally received on a proper footing.

The indigenous system of international relations was affected by two major external influences. The first, that of Islam, notably contributed literacy, and led in the Islamized states and in Ashanti to the evolution of chanceries. It also introduced the distinction in international law and practice between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslim states exchanged embassies, Bornu, for example, maintaining intermittent relations with North Africa and Istanbul for three centuries. The second influence, that of Western Europe, spread the knowledge of European languages which, like Arabic, facilitated communication between West Africans themselves as well as with outsiders. The development of the resident embassy in sixteenth-century Europe was apparently not reflected in West Africa until the nineteenth century, but approximations to the system of continuous diplomacy did arise, probably independently. Diplomatic relations with both Muslims and Europeans tended to increase the influence in West African politics and society of the literate élite.

The indigenous system of international relations in West Africa was flexible and effective, and it seems that it was not so much diplomatic as military incapacity which allowed the Muslims to overthrow governments there and the Europeans to partition the region.

The earliest documents available on the Ethiopian region, in the form of Greek and Ge'ez inscriptions, give a general picture of considerable ethnic and linguistic diversity in a relatively small area of northern Ethiopia. One of the ethnic groups referred to then and subsequently, with remarkable continuity from pre-Aksumite times until the present day, is the Agaw. Different sections of the Agaw seem to have constituted an important part of the population occupying the highland interior of northern Ethiopia from ancient times. In the early days of the gradual formation and consolidation of the Aksumite state, they seem at first to have been peripheral to the process, which was clearly dominated by the Semitic-speaking inhabitants of the area. Later, however, they assumed an increasing importance, so much so that they eventually took over political leadership, establishing the great Zagwe dynasty. The dynasty lasted for about two hundred years, and transmitted the institutions as well as the cultural and historical traditions of Aksum, almost intact, to later generations.

The exact processes of this development cannot be reconstructed for those early days. Instead, this article is a preliminary attempt to understand the integration of the Agaw into the state and society of the Ethiopian empire over hundreds, even thousands of years, by considering a relatively recent period in the history of the Agaw in the northern and north-western parts of Gojjam. The considerable sense of history which the people of this area possess, going back to the time of its conquest and conversion in the seventeenth century, together with the existence of written materials for the period, provide an opportunity to study a particular example of the entry of the Agaw into the civilization of Christian Ethiopia which may throw light upon the more distant past of their ancestors.

The caravan route linking Benghazi and Wadai was probably the most important avenue of long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and the eastern Sudan in the late nineteenth century. It remained economically viable well after 1900, after commerce on routes further west had declined.

Beginning with the Mejabra trader from Jālū who first found a direct route from Cyrenaica to Wadai in 1809 or 1810, this article traces the history of the route in the nineteenth century with special reference to the effects of Wadaian policies on trans-Saharan commerce. The important role of the Mejabra and Zūwāyā merchants from Libya is also considered.

Fluctuating fortunes characterized trading activity along the route between its opening and the years after 1850. Beginning in the 1860s, however, commercial prospects improved steadily. Evidence suggests that the Sanūsīya Muslim brotherhood (ṭarīqa) was largely responsible for increased trade and prosperity along the route at this time. Because the order spanned the route's entire length, it solved many of the problems connected with long-distance commerce. It assured regular communication, relatively rapid transport, the creation of bonds of trust, a system of adjudication and arbitration, and an all-embracing structure of authority to maintain order and respect for judicial rulings. It functioned as a trading diaspora, but its members were not all of the same ethnic group. Rather, adherence to a single ṭarāqa bound merchants together and fostered the security necessary for the trade. The article concludes that the relationship between the brotherhood and commerce was symbiotic. The Sanūsīya sheltered commerce; in turn, the caravan trade brought wealth to the order and united its far-flung domains.

In the summer of 1995, I was hiking in the Uluguru mountains above Morogoro in Tanzania when I met an old man on the path. He was carrying a load of wood poles on his head, and we stopped to talk. I was curious about the visible deforestation on the mountainside, and asked him about the changing forest cover. He told me the following story.

This article suggests ways in which a spatial perspective is relevant to questions of African economic history prior to formal colonization. Aspects of spatial analysis can help to identify and compare economically dynamic centres and subregions and to understand the qualities of regional and inter-regional systems. Spatial analysis can also illuminate various economic relationships between Africa and Europe; thus it is relevant to such issues as African adaptation to ‘legitimate’ trade and economic dependency. Among the main concepts discussed are central place theory, ‘growth centres’, port gateways, and dendritic marketing systems. The article focuses upon the Sierra Leone–Guinea plain and the larger Sierra Leone–Guinea inter-regional commercial system during the second half of the nineteenth century. Brief comparisons are made with other areas.

The character and quality of the available evidence on the pre-colonial history of the Interlacustrine region of East Africa limit the possibilities of applying any more than roughly estimated dates or eras to events and persons of the region's pre-colonial past. By pooling and comparing the available chronological evidence (genealogies and tie-ins) relating to the dynastic units of the region, one has the means to test the accuracy of the genealogical evidence as well as the evidence linking rulers in one dynasty with rulers in others. Such pooling permits a closer examination of the ‘average dynastic generation’ which is the most useful chronological measurement for the region's past and which is the basis for the existing chronological constructions. With the available eclipse and carbon dates, it is possible to build a reasonably estimated core chronology for the region on the basis of the average dynastic generation. This core chronology may be extended to include states and dynasties—such as those in Busoga—which are connected to the core through tie-ins but for which no eclipse or carbon dates are available. The ‘average dynastic generation’ is not a useful chronological measurement in those Soga states which are marked by extended fraternal and collateral succession. By working through the tie-ins which suggest contemporaneity between certain Soga rulers and rulers in the Interlacustrine core dynasties (particularly Buganda), it is possible to extend the central chronology, and therefore credibly estimated dates or eras, to events and persons throughout Busoga.