The present paper is one in a series of essays on the political economy of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ashanti), now located in the Republic of Ghana. In general terms it surveys and explores aspects of the crucial issue of control over subjects and land within the Asante social formation. At the broadest level, it seeks to offer a description of fluctuations in the ability of central government in Kumase to mediate and to preside over the distribution of these resources between the foundation of the state in the early eighteenth century and the present day. It is argued that until approximately the middle of the nineteenth century the history of Asante is the history of the embedding, expansion and triumph of central government control. Thereafter, for a number of reasons that are discussed, matters changed. In terms of these changes the crucial decade was the 1880s, and the paper demonstrates how, in the closing stages and the immediate aftermath of the civil war (1883–8), a revolutionary reversal was effected in the general developmental thrust of Asante history. That is, at a meeting in Kumase in 1888, and at an oath-taking ceremony at Ahyiamu in the following year, the historic control of central government over subjects and land was challenged and substantially liquidated. That the implications of this revolutionary change were distorted in a number of ways was due to the imposition of British colonial rule at the close of the nineteenth century. The remainder of the paper attempts briefly to demonstrate how, in the twentieth century, and in the context of changing socio-political conditions, the battle over resources between central government in Kumase and its opponents remains a live and complex issue.

Historians have written extensively about agricultural extension services and the linkages between colonial administrations and rural communities in British Africa. Most studies argue that it is possible to identify a qualitative shift in strategies between the inter- and the post-war periods. The former is characterized by modest attempts at promoting soil conservation, while the latter is described as a period when colonial governments in British Africa – guided by scientific knowledge – tried to transform peasant agriculture to increase production. This article questions this division by using colonial Malawi as a case. It reveals that the strategies and intensity of agricultural extension services changed over time but that the aim of intervention, i.e. to combat soil erosion, remained the focal point throughout the colonial period. This shows that it is important to distinguish between strategies and scale of intervention on the one hand and their aims and contents on the other. Changes in the former took place within the conservation paradigm. Additionally, this article reveals that agricultural extension services were directed by colonial officials' perceptions about African farmers rather than detailed empirical knowledge about existing farming methods.

In 1918, Faith Tabernacle Congregation was established in southern colonial Ghana. This Philadelphia-based church flourished in the context of colonialism, cocoa, and witchcraft, spreading rapidly after the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. In this context, several healing cults also proliferated, but Faith Tabernacle was particularly successful because the church offered its members spiritual, social, and legal advantages. The church's leadership was typically comprised of young Christian capitalist men, whose literacy and letter writing enabled the establishment of an American church without any missionaries present. By 1926, when Faith Tabernacle began its decline, at least 177 branches had formed in southern Ghana, extending into Togo and Côte d'Ivoire, with over 4,400 members.

This article draws attention to the possible importance of coffee exports from Ethiopia before the mid-nineteenth century. They may well have been a factor in attempts by Ethiopian emperors in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to develop trade in Yaman, in India and with the Dutch in Java. By 1690, coffee was being exported from Zayla, and perhaps by other outlets. In 1705 and 1737 there were unsuccessful attempts by Europeans to obtain coffee direct from Ethiopia, though meanwhile the growth of plantations in European colonies had rendered such effort superfluous. Nonetheless, Ethiopia contributed to the Red Sea coffee trade during the eighteenth century, and it seems likely that coffee was exported from Enarya as well as from Harar. The kingdom of Shawa was well situated to exploit the development of coffee exports from the south-western highlands, and they would have assisted Shawa's efforts to distance itself from upheavals further north during the Zamana Masafent. The coffee trade may therefore have been more significant in the rise of Shawa in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries than historians have hitherto allowed.

Between 1935 and 1960 a peculiar patterning of forced labour developed on Mozambique's lower Zambezi. By the beginning of the Salazar era a particular style of history had been imprinted upon Mozambique. Large scale recruiting of labour for the mines and farms of southern Africa coupled with mass migrations of Mozambique's people to escape the oppressions of Portuguese administration resulted in a severe labour shortage which companies operating in the colony had to face. Exacerbating this problem was the Portuguese decision in the mid-1930s to compel the colonies to produce enough cotton for the demands of the empire. To protect its position vis-à-vis already scarce male labour, the Sena Sugar Estates Ltd., Mozambique's largest employer of labour, formulated a system by which only female labour would cultivate cotton, leaving the men free to work in the company's sugar fields. This system, which was adopted in the 1940s by other employers of labour, led to severe oppression of the local people, notably the women, who were caught between the conflicting demands of interests more powerful than themselves. Only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did the pressures of the forced cultivation system end.

The army of Samori Ture in 1887 was recruited from four sources: the regular army of sofa (infantrymen with firearms), the conscripted reserve of kurustigi, detachments sent by chiefs under Samori's protection, and a cavalry force consisting in part, perhaps, of volunteers. The emphasis on infantry rather than cavalry differentiated it from the armies of other nineteenth-century Islamic reformers.

Among the factors which influenced the structure and tactics of the army, as well as the diplomatic and military strategy of the Samorian state, were the supply of firearms and horses. Initially the Samorian army was armed with muskets from the coast, primarily Freetown, and horses from the north-western part of the Sudan. From mid-1891 to mid-1892 the muskets were replaced with breechloaders and repeaters obtained by direct negotiation between Samori and Freetown traders, and during this period or before it an indigenous firearms industry was established. After this, the French advance cut Samori off, partially at least, from his sources of supply; from 1893–98 the search for new supply areas was a major preoccupation of the Samorian regime. Arms came from the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, and horses from the Mossi states. Here, as formerly in the west, Samori was able to use existing trade routes.

Liberia was fundamentally a maritime state in the nineteenth century, dependent on seaborne trade for its prosperity. Immigrant merchants and their descendants developed an extensive coasting trade in which they attempted to wrest the function of the collection and distribution of commodities from foreign competitors, thereby entering a long-established commercial system which antedated the foundation of Liberia. Small vessels manned by individuals resident along the coast and familiar with local conditions were better suited for the collection and distribution of goods than large foreign-owned merchantmen. This commercial advantage, coupled with an increase in foreign demand for Liberian palm oil and camwood early in the century and restrictions placed on African and foreign traders by the Liberian government, allowed Liberians to acquire a merchant fleet which consisted of at least 234 vessels during the century. To protect their involvement in the coasting trade, Liberians declared independence in 1847. Post-independence prosperity is indicated by the fact that Liberians owned at least 139 vessels between 1847 and 1871. However, in the last three decades of the century the Liberian coasting trade was destroyed by the depletion of camwood resources, the development of aniline dyes, the introduction of petroleum products, the competition of foreign-owned steam packets, and falling demand as a result of the general commercial recession of the period.

Although the territory of the Kisama was involved in military conflicts with the Portuguese from the very beginning, because of its geographical situation it was not subjugated permanently until the twentieth century. A few chiefdoms, which are traceable through the centuries in the sources, played an important role (Ndemba, Kimone kia Songa, Kafushe Kambare, etc.). A number of different factors were favourable to the resistance of the Kisama. The Portuguese were never really interested in this province, apart from the safeguarding of shipping on the Kwanza. No mineral wealth tempted them there. Even the conquest of the salt mine of Ndemba was undertaken mainly to clear and secure the way to the hoped for silver mines of Cambambe. On the one hand, the great lack of water during the dry season made the provisioning of an army there difficult. On the other hand, at least in the Kwanza region, the dreaded tropical diseases were endemic. For the slave trade, the interior, especially Kasanje, was more profitable. Later, when the neighbouring Libolo increased in importance because of the new trade centres in the Ovimbundu territory (Bihe, Bailundu, etc.), Kisama remained off the beaten track. It is only now that the seclusion of this province, which has one of the game parks of Angola within its borders, will in all probability come to an end because of the discovery of a series of oil fields.

Early in the twentieth century, French and British colonial scholars developed rigid, descent-based models of African pastoral societies. These models emphasized stasis partly because the scholars relied on unrepresentative samples of the pastoralists' views of their own societies, and partly because the scholars simply misinterpreted data. By the 1970s anthropologists had radically revised these models, arguing that although pastoralists generally defined themselves in terms of descent, their societies were nevertheless quite dynamic. In their view, descent was an idiom of social discourse; while pastoral societies may have operated according to the idiom in the past, the economic changes brought about by colonialism had ruptured the connection between the ideology and social practice. More recently, historians have begun to argue that pastoral societies were also dynamic before colonialism, and that there was great flexibility in the ways pastoralists reckoned social identities.

This essay draws on evidence from the nineteenth-century western Sahara to argue that pastoral societies were dynamic long before the colonial period, and that many Saharans perceived their society in this way. This evidence was neglected by the early colonial scholars and many post-colonial anthropologists in favor of those descriptions that emphasized stasis. Saharan accounts that described social dynamism were often based on the explicitly Islamic model of the Prophet Muhammad and his diverse community of supporters. This model, then and throughout Islamic history, has offered the possibility of social improvement, and therein lies the explanation for why some Saharans interpreted society as static while others saw it as dynamic. Social models that fix groups into specific ranks according to descent serve the interests of those at the higher ranks, while dynamic models serve to legitimize social mobility.

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.

This article attributes early twentieth century Maasai conservatism to the Maasai social structure and in particular to the warrior (moran) age-grade. Modernizing changes meant different things to different groups. To some Maasai elders they meant increased political power and wealth. But to the warriors they constituted a threat to their already declining status and entailed new and onerous obligations like road work. Governmental efforts to transform and modernize the Maasai were met by small-scale warrior rebellions. There were three such uprisings–in 1918, 1922 and 1935. All three were carried out by the warriors in defiance of the wishes of the elders and occurred at times when the government was seeking to alter Maasai society. The 1918 rebellion was over the recruitment of children for school; that of 1922 over attempts to do away with essential features of the moran system; and that of 1935 in opposition to road work. The Maasai warriors were effective resisters of change because of their considerable autonomy within their society and their esprit de corps.

The Funj Sultanate was the most easterly of the chain of Muslim dynastic States which at one time stretched south of the Sahara through Bilād al-Sūdān. Founded early in the sixteenth Christian century (tenth Hijri¯; century) by a king traditionally called ‘Amāra Dūnqas, its centre was on the Blue Nile, around the town of Sennar (Sinnār).

Not long ago the present writer observed that the oldest original Nigerian chancery documents so far reported to survive go back to about the year 1820, and bear the seals of Muhammad Bello, Sultan of Sokoto, and of Muhammad al-Amīn, Sultan of Bornu. It is virtually certain that in time earlier specimens than these will come to light, and especially original examples of the letters issued by the founder of the Sokoto dynasty, Usuman dan Fodio himself. Concerning official letters and autographs of Dan Fodio, indeed, unconfirmed reports have come in on several occasions. Pending their documentation, it may be of interest to present here a more than usually authoritative transcript of a letter issued by the Shehu Dan Fodio, which has lately come into the custody of the Jos Museum, and which offers proof (were any needed) that chancery letters in the Arabic language played a part in Dan Fodio's system of government.

The Sixth List contains many dates from Eastern and Southern Africa. An important sequence of dates from Malawi is published, indicating that the Iron Age there had begun as early as the third century A.D. The beginnings of the Zambian Early Iron Age are well established by the fourth century, while important new dates for ‘Dimple-based’ wares in Rwanda and Kenya place that pottery type within the same time span.

The Palabora dates from the Transvaal indicate that the Limpopo valley was settled by Iron Age people by the eighth century, and numerous isolated samples are recorded. The five dates from Ife in Nigeria confirm that the terracotta sculpture there was being made before European contact, while numerous samples for earlier sites are published.

From the mid-seventeenth century until 1861, the Shilluk, notoriously successful raiders, dominated the White Nile. Their population was largely concentrated in the riverain strip which is Shilluk-land today, yet they had undisputed control of the river down to Eleis, and raided as far north as the confluence with the Blue Nile. This ascendancy was based upon the canoe: the characteristic Shilluk tactic was the surprise mass canoe-raid upon herds or villages within striking distance of the river bank. Before the advent of Turco-Egyptian sailing ships, Shilluk canoes were the only really navigable craft on the White Nile. Another important Shilluk asset was the manpower provided by their comparatively high numbers. Most raids were carried out independently of the Shilluk king. The raiding pattern was probably established before the development of the Shilluk ‘divine’ kingship.

From 1820 the Shilluk became more closely involved with the Muslim Sudan. It seems that the beginning of the ivory boom led Kordofan djellabas to open regular trade with the Shilluk. And in ever-increasing numbers, Muslim refugees from Turkish officialdom migrated into Shilluk territory. Trade between Shilluk and Muslim was largely confined to the settlement of Kaka. Its most profitable sector, the ivory trade, was governed by a strict royal monopoly, the maintenance of which gives some proof of the Shilluk king's authority. Wealth thus gained may have led to a short-lived increase in royal power. The mass of the Shilluk were unable to develop any economic alternative to the traditional raids, which continued unabated. In a new raiding pattern, Shilluk of the Kaka region joined Muslim immigrants in raids on the Dinka. Once Kaka had become a slave-market, slave raiding was probably the essential aim of these joint expeditions. Tensions between Shilluk and immigrant traders precipitated a crisis in 1860–1.

This article synthesizes metaphors and practices surrounding human and bovine milk and semen appearing in the James Stuart Archive of Zulu oral history. The King's control of the flow of milk in society was the source of his power and the mechanism by which he controlled the state. A fluent understanding of this Zulu political philosophy in the Stuart Archive opens up a rich and underutilized source of historical information for Zulu history that adds significantly to prior studies. Parallels to these images in the Great Lakes region suggest a ‘milk complex’ rather than the common perception of a ‘cattle complex’.

The Xhosa cattle-killing movement of 1856–7 cannot be explained as a superstitious ‘pagan reaction’to the intrusion of colonial rule and Christian civilization. It owes its peculiar form to the lungsickness epidemic of 1854, which carried off over 100,000 Xhosa cattle. The Xhosa theory of disease indicated that the sick cattle had been contaminated by the witchcraft practices of the people, and that these tainted cattle would have to be slaughtered lest they infect the pure new cattle which were about to rise.

The idea of the resurrection of the dead was partly due to the Xhosa belief that the dead do not really die or depart from the world of the living, and partly to the Xhosa myth of creation, which held that all life originated in a certain cavern in the ground which might yet again pour forth its blessings on the earth. Christian doctrines, transmitted through the prophets Nxele and Mhlakaza, supplemented and elaborated these indigenous Xhosa beliefs. The Xhosa and the Christian elements united together in the person of the expected redeemer Sifuba-sibanzi (the broad-chested one). The central beliefs of the Xhosa cattle-killing were neither irrational nor atavistic. Ironically, it was probably because they were so rational and so appropriate that they ultimately proved to be so deadly.

Oral tradition as a source for African history has been subject to a certain amount of controversy in recent decades. These discussions have clarified both the uses and the problems of oral data; they have.raised important methodological issues, but they have also beclouded others. At the higher theoretical levels, the debate has involved the philosophy of history and the nature of historical knowledge. These issues are both interesting and important, but the discussion is not very helpful to the working historian.

Specialists in the history of West Africa disagree about the relative importance of slaves and other commodities in African exports. Examination of the rough statistical evidence that is available indicates that slave exports earned less foreign exchange for Africa than did the single most important other export through four of the five centuries of contact between sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. There were large regional differences in the pattern of African exports, and it was the dominance of gold in total African export which helped make the Gold Coast the focus of European rivalries in West Africa.

Superficially, the nature of German rule in Togo differed from that of the other German colonies. For example, right from the start, it was administered by Imperial officials. It thereby escaped some of the worst abuses of Chartered Company rule. Again because of the peculiar nature fo the country—it was very small, not particularly suitable for European settlement and much of its agricultural land was already under peasant cultivation, to which it was best suited—Togo escaped the large-scale expropriation of the subject peoples' land that was characteristic of German rule elsewhere.