This article argues that emirs modernized and enhanced their authority through cooperation with Christian missions in the anti-leprosy campaign in colonial Hausaland in the 1930s. New documentary and oral sources detail how Native Administrations and Sudan Interior Mission workers together established leprosaria that were important beyond religious interaction. Emirs translated Islamic ideals of charity into governmental responsibility for medical welfare. The leprosy scheme brought together the elite and non-elite in ways that would previously have been unimaginable and took emirs' power to new reaches in an era of expanding native authority in Nigeria and throughout much of British Africa.

The decline of the Creole or Fernandino planters of Fernando Póo came later and was less severe than has sometimes been said, while the indigenous Bubi inhabitants played a far greater role in the development of the cocoa economy than has usually been acknowledged. Social discrimination against Creoles and Bubi was of little significance. The re-direction of Fernandian exports to Spain from the 1890s had no negative effect on African producers, and Creoles and Spaniards united to fight tariff policies detrimental to their interests. Bubi suffered severely from land alienation, but they kept sufficient land to be able to participate fully in the cocoa boom. Creoles lost land through debt, but so did Spaniards. The beneficiaries of land transfers were black as well as white, and a map from around 1913 shows a roughly even mix of Spanish and Creole landowners. Black and white planters were united in every aspect of labour which involved relations with the authorities. Attempts to force poor Bubi into plantation labour collapsed quickly, and wealthy Bubi cultivators had little difficulty in finding labour to employ. Access to credit was equal for all landowners, and the evidence for Africans being more spendthift than Europeans is of dubious validity. The thesis of African decline becomes more plausible from the mid-1920s, due to Spanish immigration, the formation of joint-stock companies, and accentuated social discrimination, but the extent of that decline remains to be determined. The roughly tripartite equilibrium between Bubi, Creole and European cocoa producers in the early 1910s contrasts with descriptions of other cocoa-growing areas in western Africa, suggesting the need for a re-examination of the evidence for the Creole role in cocoa cultivation and for Creole economic decline from the 1890s in West Africa.

Discussions of women’s power in Africa often focus on how much the role of senior women is symbolic and how much is real. Studying the Kingdom of Kongo reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women initially exercised power indirectly through influence on male relatives. However, following the beginning of the civil war after 1665 women began to exercise more open and overt power, taking effective control of some sections of the country and working less through male relatives. However, elite Kongo women never took formal control of the state as they did in Ndongo and Matamba.

Recent research on the territorial cults of Central Africa allows us to arrive at some tentative general patterns. The historical development of territorial cults has been worked out most fully for Malawi. Here it seems to be agreed that there was an essentially similar early cultic pattern among the proto-Chewa, the proto-Mang'anja and the proto-Tumbuka. Cults dedicated to the High God and tended by spirit wives were widely diffused. Much of the religious history of Malawi can be seen in terms of the differing relationships of these cults with incoming political authorities, producing a richly various situation.

It is not clear whether this sort of analysis can be applied to the wealth of material available on Shona territorial cults, even though the initial comparisons are suggestive. It is plain, however, that the most interesting recent work on these territorial cults suggests other dynamics of change. Shona cult history is not merely a matter of inter-relationships between cults and kings, but also very much a matter of the working out of built-in conflicts within cultic systems themselves. The much more dynamic view which it is now necessary to hold of the operations of Shona religion makes a great deal more sense of nineteenth and twentieth-century data than the previous centralized and hierarchical analysis.

Repatriated slaves and Christian missionaries introduced Christian marriage into colonial Lagos, and spread new values about polygyny and conjugal relationships and roles. Women among the educated elite strove to marry in church and conform to foreign marital norms, in part because Christianity, European education, and colonial legal and economic changes had altered their opportunities. When they embraced Christian marriage, elite women sacrificed the autonomy and economic independence of illiterate Yoruba women for the privileges associated with membership in the elite. As elite women experienced disappointment and vulnerability created by trying to conform to foreign ideals, some began rethinking aspects of Christian marriage, particularly the wife's economic dependence.

The demise of Spanish colonialism in Central Africa has to be understood as part of the general process of African decolonization. In accepting the methodological framework proposed by some historians for studying the collapse of European domination in the continent, we can explain the independence of Equatorial Guinea, in 1968, as a result of the interaction between three different factors: international, metropolitan and colonial. This article delineates the decolonization of the only Spanish colony south of the Sahara, its main argument being that, in the case of Equatorial Guinea, the international factor – specifically, the role of the United Nations – is fundamental to the understanding of the timing, the actors' strategies and the results.

Traditional sources tell us relatively little about how Africans perceived death in the past. In some societies, however, changing attitudes towards mortality can be identified from the names which were given to babies. In Bunyoro almost a third of the names that were given during the colonial period referred to death. The declining frequency of death-related names from the 1940s offers significant insights into the impact of Christianity, education and population growth on the Nyoro's worldview. That death-related names did not re-emerge in the era of AIDS is a significant indication of how the pandemic has been viewed in western Uganda.

In the present stage of research, it is easiest to discern the economic effects of war on the Iberian colonies. These were diverse in chronological, regional and sectoral terms, but the overall results were to tie the economies of the Portuguese and Spanish colonies more firmly to those of the metropoles. This did not exclude two processes pulling in other directions. Firstly, the foreign trade of the colonies persisted but was reoriented away from Europe and towards North America. Secondly, shortages and insecurity of transport led to a significant degree of import substitution and regional African trade in the colonies, in the fields of both industry and agriculture. The social impact of war resembled that in much of the rest of Africa, great hardships and labour pressures on the mass of the population, but windfall profits for a few, both black and white. The political consequences of the two conflicts remain most shadowy at present, but they appear to have heightened the covert struggle between pro-fascist and anti-fascist groups in a situation of strong repression, flaring up into open strife only in the Spanish territories in 1936.

African history and world history each became substantial fields of historical study in the aftermath of the Second World War. African history organized rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, an era dominated by modernization-thinking. World history developed slowly until the 1990s, then quickly expanded and generated institutional homes in a time of globalization-thinking. This piece considers issues of time, scale, and scholarly diversity within the two fields. The conclusion argues that world historians should pay more attention to Africa and that African historians should do more to set the African past in a global context.

For generations, healers sustained medical knowledge in African communities through oral communication. During the twentieth century, healers who learned to read and write used literacy as a vehicle for establishing medical authority. In particular, literate healers lobbied colonial and national governments for recognition, wrote medical guidebooks, advertised in African newspapers, and sent letters to other healers to organise their profession. This article examines the case of literate healers in colonial and postcolonial Ghana living near the twin port cities of Sekondi and Takoradi. There, an early organisation of ‘Scientific African Herbalists’ and later, the ‘Ghana Psychic and Traditional Healing Association,’ used literacy to reclaim the public's trust in their medical expertise. An examination of literacy shows historical avenues for professional formation and the continued quest for medical legitimacy and respectability.

GULAG is the Russian acronym for the Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps made famous and permanently inscribed into the English vocabulary through the genius of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his classic, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, published in 1974. The author used the testimony of 227 survivors as well as recollections of his own 11 years of labour camps and exiles. The Archipelago of Solzhenitsyn's work is that system of secret police installations, camp prisons, transit centers, communication facilities, transport systems and espionage organizations which, in his view, was a state within a state holding about 15 million people. The book shows how ordinary people, who are referred to by their own names, can be turned into planners and executives of oppression, brutality and torture.

The presence of the ‘Kisra legend’ in certain western Sudanic societies has long puzzled historians and anthropologists. Attempts by many to explain the phenomenon have been seen as unsatisfactory. In Section I of this study we noted the fact that the Arabic Kasra or Kesra, having been derived from the title of one or the other of two Persian kings of the sixth and seventh centuries, denotes, in von Grunebaum's phrase, ‘a truly royal style of life’. The profound influences of Perso-Arabic elements on many cultures of the southern and western Sudan, even before the spread of Islam in these areas, strongly suggests the possibility that, rather than by any specific migration, the idea of ‘Kisra’ was borne across the Sahara, to the areas where it took root in the form of the Kisra legends. When the geographical situation of those societies having fully-developed Kisra legends is considered, noting that the most detailed and strongly held legends obtain among societies who were constantly threatened by others who were recognized as technologically, and possibly felt as culturally, superior, and among whom the Kisra idea also existed, the origins and distribution of such legends becomes more plausibly explainable. It has been suggested that, through a selective altering of historical tradition, over time, societies who felt so threatened were able to (1) assert their equality to, if not superiority over, the threatening power; (2) justify their successful maintenance of independence in spite of this threat; and/or (3) thus re-establish a basis for societal unity.

Slavery in eighteenth-century North Africa, as described in the literature of that era, is the main theme of this paper. However, as the eighteenth century gives an arbitrary division to our topic, the scope of this study has been enlarged. The account of Morocco begins with the reign of Mulay Isma'il (1672–1727) and extends through that of Mulay Sliman (1792–1822). As conditions were much the same throughout both of these rulers' reigns, any division would be meaningless. The account of slavery in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli has been extended in the same manner. The period of the latter eighteenth century was one of decline for all three of these Muslim states. Conditions remained the same until the period of time around 1820. Then naval action by Lord Exmouth, and diplomatic pressure by the combined European powers practically put an end to the holding of Christian slaves.

This forum article explores the major intellectual trajectories in the historical archaeology of Eastern Africa over the last sixty years. Two primary perspectives are identified in historical archaeology: one that emphasizes precolonial history and oral traditions with associated archaeology, and another that focuses mostly on the era of European contact with Africa. The latter is followed by most North American practice, to the point of excluding approaches that privilege the internal dynamics of African societies. African practice today has many hybrids using both approaches. Increasingly, precolonial historical archaeology is waning in the face of a dominant focus on the modern era, much like the trend in African history. New approaches that incorporate community participation are gaining favor, with positive examples of collaboration between historical archaeologists and communities members desiring to preserve and revitalize local histories.

Songhay sources compiled in the seventeenth century portray the relationship between Gao, the political capital of the state, and Timbuktu, the religious and commercial centre, as abnormally important. The view is that Timbuktu was not only autonomous, but a source of important political influence over policy decisions at Gao. A consensus of contemporary scholars has embraced this depiction. In contrast, the present study argues that Timbuktu was not autonomous, but that Gao was sucessful in achieving its original objective in capturing the city: financial profit. In addition, the evidence is consistent in outlining the relatively negligible political influence of Timbuktu over Gao. The Timbuktu-centric chronicles are largely responsible for this distortion; it is therefore necessary to approach these sources with even greater caution. It is also desirable to re-examine the roles of other sahelian entrepots during the imperial Songhay period to determine more accurately their relative importance.

This paper describes the excavation of a cave used for funerary purposes in the Mtoroshanga district of Rhodesia. The cave was found to contain a large quantity of skeletal material and pottery, together with the personal ornaments of the persons interred there. The physical type represented is similar to that of the modern Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa. Bodies had been placed in the cave surrounded by pottery—although pottery, unlike the skeletal material, which was ubiquitous, was mainly placed towards the entrance of the cave. Quantities of palm-leaf and bark-cloth matting used for wrapping round the bodies of the persons interred were found. Conus shell end-whorls and glass beads indicate trade links with the outside world.

There are two superimposed funerary layers in the cave, both belonging to the same culture, but at different stages of its development. The earlier layer has been dated by radicarbon dating methods to approximately the late 13th or early 14th century A.D. Prior to its use for funerary purposes, the cave had been briefly occupied for other purposes by people of the same culture.

The ceramics of the site indicate that it belongs to a culture newly recognized in Rhodesia with a fairly wide distribution in the north-east of the country. Cultural affinities lie with Zambia and Malawi, rather than with the contemporary Zimbabwe culture, whose expansion, indeed, probably put an end to the occupation of the Mtoroshanga area by the people of the ossuary.

This article examines the historical origins of one of urban Africa’s most visible contemporary problems, using Tanzania as a case study. The middle decades of the twentieth century are identified as a time when a pivotal shift occurred as labour scarcity gave way to over-supply, resulting in the emergence of enduring ‘structural’ unemployment. This was influenced by a combination of phenomena arising from the deepening impact of colonialism: including demographic growth leading to an increasingly youthful population, commoditisation and heightened African expectations influenced by socio-cultural and ideological factors. These were compounded by a shift in late-colonial labour policy towards stabilisation, which had the unintended effect of stymieing job creation. The latter part of the article describes the panicked response of the incoming African regime, faced with what they initially interpreted as a potentially insurrectionary class of urban unemployed. Closing remarks speculate on whether, in the longue durée, one may interpret unemployment in a more positive light as part of an ongoing wider historical transformation.

The idea that mission Christianity played a pivotal role in the creation of modern African ethnic identities has become paradigmatic. Yet, the actual cultural and social processes that facilitated the widespread reception of specific ethnic identities have been under-researched. Suggesting that historians have overemphasised the role of Christian schooling and theology in ethnic identity formation, this article examines how the Anlo people of south-eastern Ghana came, over the twentieth century, to recognise themselves as part of the larger Ewe ethnic group. Although Christian missionaries were the first to conceive of ‘Ewe’ as a broad ethnic identity, a corpus of non-Christian ritual practices pioneered by inland Ewe slave women were crucial to many Anlos' embrace of Eweness.

This paper studies the effects of the coexistence of the manilla currency and British currency in south-eastern Nigeria, and the way in which this monetary situation created political tensions which eventually led to the redemption of the manilla. When British control of Southern Nigeria was formalized in 1900 and British currency introduced in the south-east in the following year, the inability of the colonial authorities to put into circulation adequate supplies of British coins, coupled with historically entrenched use of traditional currencies, compelled the colonial state to recognize the latter as legal tender. However, the continuing circulation of these currencies alongside British coins created financial and economic difficulties, causing the colonial state to adopt a number of legislative measures to eradicate them. While other traditional currencies capitulated to these measures, the manilla continued to be popular as a result of objective economic factors, and was strengthened by some of the very instruments designed to eliminate it.

Meanwhile, the constantly fluctuating exchange rate of the manilla was generating discontent. These fluctuations were caused primarily by the gyrations of the world market. Improved prices of palm products–the main sources of British currency in the economy of southeastern Nigeria–brought about the appreciation of the manilla. This caused hardship among wage-earners by reducing the exchange value and the purchasing power of their meagre and fixed income which had to be converted to manillas in order to buy food and other locally produced goods and services. Periods of depression, on the other hand, caused manilla depreciation as a result of a diminished inflow of British currency. This reduced the income of peasant producers, while increasing the purchasing power of workers. The ferments generated by fluctuating manilla values have remained, until now, unidentified causal links in the political movements in south-eastern Nigeria, including especially the women's movements of the 1920s.

The discontent intensified in the 1940s, when the influx of cash into the Nigerian economy caused by war-time military spending and the post-war commodity boom caused a continuous appreciation of the manilla. This development made life more difficult for workers, whose incomes were already being decimated by inflation. The resulting intensified political tension, as well as the existing obstacles to trade and smooth collection of taxes (also caused by unabating manilla fluctuations), made the demonetization of the manilla through redemption inevitable. With the elimination of the manilla, which had constituted a sub-system within the economic system of colonial Nigeria, the colonial state's economic control of Nigeria can be said to have been completed.