For all approaches to the South African past the icon of Jan Van Riebeeck looms large. Perspectives supportive of the political project of white domination created and perpetuate the icon as the bearer of civilization to the sub-continent and its source of history. Opponents of racial oppression have portrayed Van Riebeeck as public (history) enemy number one of the South African national past. Van Riebeeck remains the figure around which South Africa's history is made and contested.

But this has not always been the case. Indeed up until the 1950s, Van Riebeeck appeared only in passing in school history texts, and the day of his landing at the Cape was barely commemorated. From the 1950s, however, Van Riebeeck acquired centre stage in South Africa's public history. This was not the result of an Afrikaner Nationalist conspiracy but arose out of an attempt to create a settler nationalist ideology. The means to achieve this was a massive celebration throughout the country of the 300th anniversary of Van Riebeeck's landing. Here was an attempt to display the growing power of the apartheid state and to assert its confidence.

A large festival fair and imaginative historical pageants were pivotal events in establishing the paradigm of a national history and constituting its key elements. The political project of the apartheid state was justified in the festival fair through the juxtaposition of ‘civilization’ and economic progress with ‘primitiveness’ and social ‘backwardness’. The historical pageant in the streets of Cape Town presented a version of South Africa's past that legitimated settler rule.

Just as the Van Riebeeck tercentenary afforded the white ruling bloc an opportunity to construct an ideological hegemony, it was grasped by the Non-European Unity Movement and the African National Congress to launch political campaigns. Through the public mediums of the resistance press and the mass meeting these organizations presented a counter-history of South Africa. These oppositional forms were an integral part of the making of the festival and the Van Riebeeck icon. In the conflict which played itself out in 1952 there was a remarkable consensus about the meaning of Van Riebeeck's landing in 1652. The narrative constructed, both by those seeking to establish apartheid and those who sought to challenge it, represented Van Riebeeck as the spirit of apartheid and the originator of white domination. The ideological frenzy in the centre of Cape Town in 1952 resurrected Van Riebeeck from obscurity and historical amnesia to become the lead actor on South Africa's public history stage.

Coins and weights provide evidence which can throw light on the origins of the trans-Saharan gold trade. Such a trade does not seem to have existed before the end of the third century a.d., but from 296 to 311 an irregular gold coinage was issued at Carthage, and by the end of the fourth century there were significant changes in the North African tax system to enable more gold to be collected. The solidus, a coin first issued in 312, provided the standard used for weighing gold-dust in the trans-Saharan trade, while copper, a major item of merchandise in that trade, was being imported to Jenne-Jeno by a.d. 400. This strongly suggests that the gold trade first assumed significance in the fourth century. The trade was evidently flourishing before the Arab conquest, for the Byzantine mint of Carthage produced a copious output of gold between 534 and 695. For weighing gold-dust, the standard based on the Roman ounce and the solidus was retained by the Arabs, and survived until the nineteenth century in the Western Sudan. It was also adopted by the Akan of Ghana and Ivory Coast, who made it the basis of their weight-system from about 1400 to 1900.

That many studies in African and imperial history neglect women and gender is a commonplace. Using a case-study – the British Cape Colony and its frontier zones – this article attempts to demonstrate some consequences of this neglect. It argues, firstly, that it generates empirical inaccuracies as a result of the insignificance accorded to gender differentiation and to women themselves. Secondly, representations of women as unimportant, and men as ungendered, result in flawed analysis of both men and the colonial encounter. This view is argued in detail for two events: an 1825 slave rebellion and an 1856–7 millenarian movement. The article concludes that if gender and half the adult populace are marginalized in this way, the price is frequently interpretations which have limited purchase on the past.

The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted.

Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-jeno have established that iron-using and manufacturing peoples were occupying the site in the third century B.C. The settlement proceeded to grow rapidly during the first millennium a.d., reaching its apogee between a.d. 750 and 1100, at which time the settlement exceeded 33 hectares (82 acres) in size. The archaeological data are supported by the results of site survey within a 1,100-square-kilometre region of Jenne's traditional hinterland. During the late first millennium a.d., several nearby settlements comparable in size to Jenne-jeno existed, and the density of rural settlements may have been as great as ten times the density of villages in the hinterland today.

Evidence from excavation and survey indicates that Jenne participated in inter-regional exchange relations far earlier than previously admitted. The stone and iron in the initial levels at Jenne-jeno were imported from outside the Inland Delta; levels dated to c.a.d. 400 yield copper, presumably from distant Saharan sources. The importance of the abundant staple products of Jenne's rural hinterland, including rice, fish and fish oil, is examined in a reassessment of the extent of inter-regional commerce and the emergence of urbanism during the first millennium a.d. Jenne-jeno may have been a principal participant in the founding of commercial centres on the Saharan contact zone of the Bend of the Niger, rather than a product of the luxury trade serviced by those centres.

The claims of no people…are respected by any nation until they are presented in a national capacity. (Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, Philadelphia, 1852, p. 210.)

…it is not so much Afro-Americans that we want as Africans. (Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound, London, 1911, p. 173.)

…on us too depends in a large degree the attitude of Europe towards the teeming millions of Asia and Africa. (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, ‘The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind’, African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Philadelphia, XVI, 1900, pp. 102–3.)

This paper seeks to trace the origins of offences by youths as a distinct social concern in Lagos and examines the categorization of a group, the ‘juvenile delinquent’, by colonial administrators and welfare officers. While organized pickpocketing and prostitution by young people emerged as an issue in Nigerian newspapers in the 1920s, it was largely ignored by local administrators until the appointment, in 1941, of the first Social Welfare Officer. This led to the implementation of new administrative and judiciary machinery which combined two processes: it legislated ‘juvenile delinquency’ into existence as a clearly identifiable social problem; and criminalized a large portion of urban youth, especially female hawkers. The combination of these processes constitutes what can be called the invention of juvenile delinquency in Nigeria.

‘That rebellious youth’ alarmed colonial authorities and elders alike is increasingly an issue for historians. This article surveys the issue as an introduction to the two studies that follow. It considers both the creation of images of youthful defiance as part of a debate about youth conducted largely by their seniors and the real predicaments faced by young people themselves. Concern revolved around the meanings of maturity in a changing world where models of responsible male and female adulthood, gendered expectations and future prospects were all in flux. Surviving the present and facing the future made elders anxious and divided as well as united the young. The article concludes by suggesting a number of areas, including leisure and politics, where the voice of youth might be more clearly heard, and proposes comparisons – with the past, between racial groups and between ‘town’ and ‘country’ – that link the varied experiences of the young.

This study is offered as a contribution to the literature on African protest movements during the era of colonial rule. Existing studies of migration emphasize the socio-economic aspects of motivation and have tended to gloss over or even omit migrations in which the dominant factor was disapproval of colonial policy. Existing studies of African protest movements focus on armed confrontations, perhaps because of their greater dramatic appeal.

The case of the Ivory Coast and Upper Volta illustrates a phenomenon found in various parts of French West Africa and, indeed, in other colonies, particularly the Belgian and Portuguese territories. The causes of protest migrations were usually related to the same resentments which provoked revolt in localities where armed confrontation was the only option. These compelling factors included forced labour, burdensome taxation, conscription, requisitions and an attack on indigenous political institutions, notably chieftaincy. The use of repressive police measures, as manifested in the Native Penal and Indigénat Codes, exacerbated African discontent. Judging from the French reaction to the exodus from the Ivory Coast and Upper Volta, it is clear that migrations, as protests, proved far less costly to Africans and had much the same effect on the colonial authorities as did other more militant forms of protest and rebellion.

The region south of the Vaal and Pongola rivers, being the southernmost on the continent to be settled by Bantu-speaking, Iron Age communities, is important in understanding the spread of these societies. Until recently, archaeological discussion has mostly been based on Schofield's work of the 1930s and 1940s, which is here shown to be substantially incorrect, and an outline of the new sequence is given.

New work on the Early Iron Age in Natal is sufficiently advanced to demonstrate a highly selective pattern of site location which, together with what we know of the economy, gives us some insight into the ecology of these communities. This enables us to estimate the limits of distribution in areas where there has been less archaeological exploration. It also indicates that ecological factors are significant in the rapid initial spread of the Early Iron Age.

The beginning of the Later Iron Age in this region is characterized not only by an abrupt change in ceramic styles but by other cultural and perhaps economic changes involving site location, architecture and aspects of technology. The most striking single factor is the expansion, beyond the coastal plain and wooded valleys of the Early Iron Age, into much of the interior grasslands. By at least the seventeenth century a dense population was established in many of these areas and their settlements can often be correlated with historically known groups on the basis of oral and ethnological links.

This article argues that on the borderland between eastern DRC and Rwanda, the past and its representations have been constantly manipulated. The cataclysmic events in both Rwanda and Congo since the 1990s have widened the gap between partial and politicized historical discourse and careful historical analysis. The failure to pay attention to the multiple layers in the production of historical narratives risks reproducing a politicized social present that ‘naturalizes’ differences and antagonisms between different groups by giving them more time-depth. This is a danger both for insiders and outsiders looking in. The answer is to focus on the historical trajectories that shape historical narratives, and to ‘bring history back in’.

The slave trade in Angola, specifically in the district of Ambaca, transformed the social organization of its inhabitants at the grass-roots level by introducing an ever increasing quantity of coveted commodities and by providing credit in counterpart for pawnship. The trade provoked both the emergence of a new structure, the corporate matrilineage and the apparition of a new elite, when colonial chiefs coopted their commercial rivals, including local leaders who had efficiently used the assets of their corporate matrilineages to further their individual ambitions.

Between 1964 and 1975, development politics in Tanzania came to be organized around a version of ujamaa that normalized distinct gender roles and celebrated a generic ideal of the nuclear family. Yet as ujamaa villagization unfolded on the ground in the south-eastern region of Mtwara, rural people's practices rarely conformed to the ideas about gender and family implicit in official discourse and policy. Just as the institution of the family on the ground proved to be a complicated and fractured one, the Tanzanian state's understanding of familyhood and the larger project of ujamaa were deeply riddled with internal tensions.

During the colonial period, the Maasai were conspicuous for their unwillingness to become involved in, or to co-operate with, colonial rule in Kenya. Between 1895 and 1904, however, the Maasai and the British had entered an informal alliance to further their mutual interests. The Maasai, badly hit by the human and animal plagues of the 1880s and early 1890s, needed time to recover their stock and to reorganize their society. The British, hampered by lack of money and troops, and in a weak position, could not afford to antagonize the Maasai who controlled their lines of communication. Co-operation proved fruitful for both sides. The Maasai were able to get stock by joining punitive expeditions, while the British relied on them to supply irregular troops. Olonana, the Maasai laibon, was able to enlist British influence in support of his claims to paramountcy against his brother, Senteu, who lived in German territory. The contrast between German and British policy towards the Maasai illustrates some of the advantages which the British and the Maasai gained from their alliance. After 1904, this alliance began to break down as their interests diverged. Olonana was left isolated as both sides began to work out a new understanding.

The French in West Africa remained deeply ambivalent in regard to applying naturalization policies to their African subjects. Applying a distinction between ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’, this article traces the history of French colonial policy from 1789 through decolonization in the 1950s. Apart from the originaires of the four communes of Senegal, who had ill-defined rights of French citizenship without ever being considered French nationals, naturalization policy in West Africa became so restrictive that no more than sixteen individuals were granted French citizenship each year between 1935 and 1949. This article uses dossiers of naturalization cases from French West Africa.

Since the commodity boom of the early 2000s, the visibility of ‘artisanal’ or ‘small-scale’ mining has grown in media coverage and development policies focused on Africa. This article argues that the regulatory category of ‘artisanal’ mining in Africa originated during the colonial period as ‘customary mining’. I build this case through a regional case study of mining policies in the colonial federation of French West Africa, where a single decree accorded African subjects ‘customary rights’ to seasonally mine gold and rock salt in restricted areas. By contrast, colonial citizens, mostly Europeans, accessed stable mining titles. Customary mining rights never codified actual African mining ‘customs’, as colonial officials argued. Rather, this law marked the boundary between the technological status of French subjects and citizens. Core elements of this colonial legal framework have been incorporated into postcolonial policies governing the rights of citizens to mineral resources in Africa.

This article examines the organization of the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905–7 in German East Africa, utilizing Professor T. O. Ranger's analyses of other rebellions in East and Central Africa. The rising began in the Rufiji Valley as a peasant protest against a scheme, imposed by the German authorities, for communal cotton growing. But like other African rebellions against early colonial rule, the movement acquired an ideological content from prophetic religious leaders. This ideology enabled the rising to spread far beyond the Rufiji Valley and gave a degree of unity to diverse peoples. Two religious systems were involved. In the Rufiji Valley, the first rebels received a water-medicine from the ministers of the spirit Kolelo. This maji became the symbol of unity and commitment. The expansion of the movement beyond the nuclear area probably followed a pattern of recurrent millenarian movements whose chief object was to eradicate sorcery. Such a movement implied a challenge to established tribal authorities, and was seen by them as such a threat. As the rising spread, it entered areas of stronger tribal organization and also lost something of its revolutionary character. In consequence, the later rebels utilized tribal organization. This development, it is argued, conflicted with the original purpose of overcoming past political and cultural divisions in order to achieve more effective resistance to European rule. Thus, it is suggested, the rebellion demonstrated a tension between ideology and political and cultural reality which is characteristic of mass movements, including later nationalist movements.

Early twentieth-century missionaries in South Africa invariably subscribed to an ideology of domesticity for African Christian women. Being a housewife and mother was seen as a full-time spiritual vocation. In Johannesburg, for example, women's domestic role within marriage gave point to the whole range of female mission activity. Housewifery was not only taught at special mission schools, but also in women's hostels, a girls' youth movement and a delinquents' institution. These agencies and the African women's prayer unions also sought to combat premarital pregnancy in adolescent girls, because Christian marriage was regarded as the only proper context for motherhood. Maternity was central as well to female medical mission efforts. But the ideology of domesticity was in practice fraught with contradictions in the South African setting. First, housework training inevitably had an ambiguous status since it often aimed at supplying domestic servants to white households. Secondly, full-time motherhood was impossible for urban African women compelled to supplement their husbands' low earnings. White liberals therefore favoured higher African wages partly to free black women financially to fulfil their ‘natural’ child-rearing role. African women themselves have campaigned for domesticity against the authorities' policies of labour control. Bloemfontein in 1913 and Crossroads squatter camp in the late 1970s provide striking examples of such struggles. The Western feminist may see both the family and the role of housewife as oppressive. For the black South African woman, by contrast, the ideology of domesticity infusing these institutions may represent something positive denied her by the state.

The work of historical and comparative linguists has long interested African historians. By classifying languages into families, linguists provide models of their historical development that may point to historical events and processes that occurred among peoples speaking those languages. Once classified, linguists can then reconstruct earlier forms of present languages, thus providing direct evidence of words, their meanings and historical influences in the past. Finally, linguists seek to explain innovations that are revealed in their reconstructions by pointing to a combination of internal linguistic developments and different forms of contact that occurred among speakers of different languages.

Simple classification, based largely on counting cognate words in related languages (a technique known as lexicostatistics), is still a very common activity, however, and thus the one most historians rely on, but lexicostatistics gives only a very limited, and often deceptive, view of language history. Historians should thus be aware of its limitations as well as the potential of a number of important techniques now employed by linguists, including the Comparative Method, reconstruction of ancestral languages, and contact models.

This essay rethinks the gender history and historiography of interwar sub-Saharan Africa by deploying the heuristic device of the ‘modern girl’ to consider how global circuits of representation and commerce informed this period of gender tumult. This device has been developed by a research group at the University of Washington to understand the global emergence during the 1920s and 1930s of female figures identified by their cosmopolitan look, their explicit eroticism and their use of specific commodities. Previous scholarship has suggested that a black modern girl imbricated in international circuits of images, ideologies and commodities only became visible in southern Africa in the post-Second World War period. Yet, analysis of the black newspaper Bantu World reveals the emergence of such a figure by the early 1930s. The modern girl heuristic helps to situate race as a key category of analysis in scholarship on women and gender in interwar Africa as contemporaries consistently debated her in racial terms. In South Africa, some social observers saw African young women’s school education, professional careers and cosmopolitan look as contributing to ‘racial uplift’. Others accused the African modern girl of ‘prostituting’ her sex and race by imitating white, coloured or Indian women, and by delaying or avoiding marriage, dressing provocatively and engaging in premarital and inter-racial sex. Cosmetics use was one of the most contentious issues surrounding the black modern girl because it drew attention to the phenotypic dimensions of racial distinctions. By analysing a beauty contest in Bantu World together with articles and letters on, and advertisements for, cosmetics, this essay demonstrates how, in white-dominated segregationist South Africa, the modern girl emerged through and posed challenges to categories of race and respectability.