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 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.

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.

Le trafic des esclaves en Libye au XVIIIe siècle représents une branche de commerce relativement importante dans un pays aux faibles ressources économiques.

Les esclaves provenaient du Soudan d'où ils étaient acheminés à travers le désert. La plupart rentraient en Libye par le Fezzan et, dans une bien moindre mesure, par Ghadamès. Le Fezzan jouait le rôle de plaque tournante. Une partie des caravanes était orientée vers la Cyrénaïque, puis l'Egypte, mais nous sommes fort peu renseignés sur leur importance. L'autre partie était acheminée à Tripoli. Les apports annuels d'esclaves dans cette ville, ont varié au cours du siècle. D'une moyenne de 500 à 600 au début, ils sont montés à 2,000 au milieu du siècle, pour redescendre à 1,000 et remonter à la fin à 1,500.

A Tripoli, un nombre réduit d'esclaves se trouvaient retenus sur place. La plupart étaient exportés au Levant, en particulier Constantinople, les régions en bordure de la mer Egée et la Crète. Les traitants tripolitains nolisaient à cet effet des navires européens, surtout français.

West Africa, prior to the twentieth century, has generally been considered a ‘white man's grave’. However, very few statistics have been published to support the generalization. New data on the problem of European mortality in West Africa are published here for the first time. The data, compiled from the records of the Netherlands Second West India Company, include population and death statistics for Europeans employed by the Company on the Gold Coast.

Between 1719 and 1760, the mortality rate was just under 20 per cent per year. This number is low in comparison with previously published estimates of mortality in West Africa. The data presented here may be the most extensive for the period of maritime contact which preceded the partition of Africa. The author suggests, on the basis of these statistics, that it may be necessary to consider revising European mortality estimates downward.

The unresolved debate on the mfecane in southern African history has been marked by general acceptance of the proposition that large-scale loss of life and disruption of settled society was experienced across the whole region. Attempts to quantify either the violence or mortality have been stymied by a lack of evidence. What apparently reliable evidence does exist describes small districts, most notably the Caledon Valley. In contrast to Julian Cobbing, who called the mfecane an alibi for colonial-sponsored violence, this article argues that much documentation of conflict in the Caledon region consisted of various ‘alibis’ for African land seizures and claims in the 1840s and 1850s.

The relationship between political power and religious authority has been a delicate one in Muslim societies. On the one hand, governments may attempt to silence religious authorities; on the other, they may themselves succumb to revolutions in the name of religion. More often governments have attempted to co-opt religious authorities as allies in exercising control or have worked directly in a power-sharing arrangement with them. In Songhay, as in several other states of pre-colonial Sudanic Africa, a more subtle balance was achieved between the ruling estate and the diverse body of scholars, mystics and holymen who made up the religious estate. The askiyas of sixteenth-century Songhay, while exercising full political power, saw it in their interest to maintain harmonious relations with these men of religion. Gifts in cash and kind, including slaves, grants of land and privilege, especially exemption from taxation, as well as recognition of rights of intercession and sanctuary, ensured their moral support and spiritual services and, importantly, protected rulers from their curse. Such a symbiosis was important for the stability of a large and ethnically diverse empire like Songhay, especially as regards its conquered western reaches, which were ethnically non-Songhay and had a strong Islamic cultural tradition. This delicate balance was upset by the Sacdian conquest of Songhay in 1591. Despite Moroccan assertions of Islamic legitimacy, religious authorities in Timbuktu were unsupportive, and harsh measures against them dealt a lasting blow to the equilibrium which had prevailed under the askiyas.

This article attempts to examine the reaction of the anti-colonial nationalists in British West Africa to the diplomacy of their ruling colonial power with regard to the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of 1935–6. This reaction was largely influenced by the nationalists' claim to special relationship with Britain and their firm belief not only in British power but also in the British ‘gospel of equity and fair-play’. Consequently, when Britain and France, because of their obsession with the need for security, failed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of the symbolic and sole surviving black empire of Ethiopia, these race- conscious nationalists rashly concluded that there was a concerted plot among the whites against the black race. This belief was reinforced first by the refusal of Britain and France to supply arms to Ethiopia during the conflict; secondly, by the infamous Hoare–Laval peace pact of December 1935, which would have compromised Ethiopia's independence had it been implemented; and thirdly, by British recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Disenchantment with the League of Nations, coupled with the disillusionment with the diplomacy of the colonial powers during the crisis, led the articulate nationalists to begin seriously to reconsider their relationship with Britain and the whole doctrine of the ‘civilising mission’. Their nationalism shifted from the idea of working within the trusteeship concept to a more militant anti-white pan-Africanism.

The view that Ibadan society in the nineteenth century did not discriminate against strangers, irrespective of their origins in Yorubaland, is now firmly entrenched in the literature. To be sure, Ibadan, a new nineteenth-century Yoruba city-state, founded as a consequence of the political crises of the early decades of the century, did maintain an ‘open door’ policy to strangers, many of whom went there as adventurers, craftsmen and traders, hoping to acquire wealth and fame. This article, however, controverts the view that Ibadan society gave the strangers and the indigenes equal opportunities to wealth and power. It argues that all the key political offices went only to the Oyo-Ibadan group which dominated the city-state. Strangers were also not allowed to participate fully in the leading heights of the economy, with the result that most of the wealthy citizens were also of Oyo-Yoruba origin.

In the 1890s discrimination against strangers was such that a number of moves were made to expel them. However, the British, who imposed colonial rule on Ibadan in 1893, were against the expulsion of strangers.

Charles Atangana (c. 1880–1943) is an African chief whose career defies easy categorization. He was one of several thousand Beti headman's sons in central Cameroon, and not in the line of succession to replace his father as lineage chief within this acephalous society. However, he became a houseboy to the Germans who moved to the Yaounde district in the 1880s, was sent to a mission school by them, and rose from being medical assistant, clerk and interpreter to Oberhäuptling, or Paramount Chief, of this group of perhaps 500,000 persons in 1914. No sooner had he achieved a position of power than he lost it with the coming of World War I. Atangana led the German exodus to Spanish Guinea, and then was sent to Spain by the Germans, who expected him to testify on their behalf at the Versailles peace talks, but he was never called on. After returning to Cameroon he was eventually returned to a position of power by the French, who never had the complete confidence in him the Germans had shown. The 1920s and 1930s brought increasing difficulties to Atangana and other appointed Beti chiefs. To begin with, chiefs were an alien institution imposed on the Beti; the French were not satisfied with them because few of them could deliver the tax revenues and workers for public-works projects in the desired quantities; the Beti became increasingly estranged from them because they did not care for the heavy demands they made. As a generation of school-educated Beti emerged in the 1930s, the chiefs' role was increasingly questioned. Atangana could never be considered a resistance figure; he believed it was useless for the Beti to fight the Europeans, and he accepted the religion and culture of the Europeans. At the same time he did much to advance African interests. He often interceded with the Europeans on behalf of individual Africans, and actively supported campaigns like the sleeping-sickness eradication effort of the French. Within the limited possibilities open to him, he steered a middle course, as he saw it.

This study of horses, mainly in the central Sudan, presents impressions rather than a complete survey of the evidence. At the time when written records for the Sudan region begin,c. A.D. 1000, horses were evidently well established there. Their coming preceded the arrival of Islam. The first introduction of horses is sometimes attributed to nomads, such as the Zaghawa round Lake Chad, who, so the argument runs, used them to found larger and more militant states. Some evidence, however, suggests, although tentatively, that such nomadic immigrants were chiefly camel people, who enlarged their use of horses because these were more suitable than camels in the Sudan region, and because the horse was already there. Careful reading of the Bayajidda legend raises doubts as to whether it has anything to do with the introduction of the horse into Hausa, or into the Sudan as a whole. All this lends support to the idea that horses became established in the Sudan at a far earlier date, perhaps through trans-Saharan links recorded in the horse-chariots of rock art. Occasional references to wild horses suggest that survival and reproduction were not dependent on imported stock. Numbers of peoples, from Kaniaga in the west to Dar Tama in the east, possessed their own horses; many of these peoples were isolated from any network of trans-Saharan communication, and many were uninterested in large-scale state formation. These horses, apparently always very small, may perhaps be nicknamed the southern Sudanic breed. Larger horses, presumably directly or indirectly descended from later imports, are particularly associated with certain areas, especially Bornu/Mandara. The trans-Saharan trade in horses, admittedly of considerable importance, may have been given undue prominence by scholars who have overlooked the possibility of east-west trade–of horses arriving in Hausa, for example, from no further afield than Bornu. Acute illness and mortality among imported stock must also have influenced trade, and reduced the contribution of such animals to local herds and stables.

The end of internal slavery in West Africa is generally associated with an increase in labour mobility. This article complicates this picture by showing that the effects of status – the rank effect – on people's ability to migrate often outlasted emancipation. In Sabi, a Soninke village in Upper River Gambia, economic migration intensified and globalised from the 1950s onwards. Although they have since been free to move, the descendants of slaves have migrated less than those of the freeborn. The article attributes this relative immobility to the enduring dynamics of socioeconomic marginalisation based on slave descent.

This article traces the origins of the familiar quotation, ‘there is always something new coming out of Africa’. It demonstrates that the phrase was a proverb that originated in Greece no later than the fourth century BC. It charts the transmission of the phrase from Aristotle to the twentieth century, noting that Erasmus is the most important link in the Renaissance and that he may be responsible for the current form in which the phrase is used.

The article also shows that the meaning of the phrase was very different in ancient times from what it is today. Whereas ‘something new’ to Aristotle meant strange hybrid animals, current writers use the phrase with a sense of admiration.

This article revisits the concept of islam noir (black Islam) crafted in the context of French rule of sub-Saharan Muslims. For the French colonial administration, islam noir connoted the idea of a degraded Islam tainted by animist practices and therefore different from the pure Islam practiced in Arab countries. This differentiation was a way to separate it from ‘Arab Islam’, which was considered a subversive model. This distinction was not entirely new for it had already a long history behind it. Arabic sources had often shown a high distrust of sub-Saharan Africans who converted to Islam; they never really enjoyed a status equal to that of Arab Muslims. After the end of colonial rule, the story still continues. The theme of a specific sub-Saharan Islam (African Islam) remained a convenient category that was used by scholars, regardless of old prejudices. In the latest period, some African intellectuals have also embraced this concept, conjoining it with the pride of blackness, as a kind of Islam de la négritude, while praising its orthodoxy. It is this long epistemological and taxonomical adventure of islam noir that is examined here.

Between 6.30 and 7.00 a.m. on Monday morning, 19 March 1945 the body of a young girl of ten was found on the beach a short distance from the town of Elmina at a popular bathing spot known as Akotobinsin. According to the coroner, she had been dead for between 24 and 48 hours. There was no water in her lungs or stomach which indicated that she had not died by drowning. Instead, her upper and lower lips, both cheeks, both eyes, her private parts and anus, and several elliptical pieces of skin from different parts of her body had been removed. Many of these wounds exposed large blood vessels and the coroner concluded that ‘death was due to shock and hemorrhage’. She was identified as Ama Krakraba who had been missing since the evening of Saturday, 17 March. Her frantic mother had immediately suspected foul play and had confronted Kweku Ewusie, the Regent of the Edina State, who was later accused of having ‘enticed’ the young girl to the third floor of Bridge House, where he lived, ‘by the ruse of sending her out on an errand to buy tobacco’. There she had been murdered so that her body parts could be used to make ‘medicine’ to help the Regent's faction win a court case that was critical for their political standing in Elmina. On the 24 March, after a preliminary investigation, the colony's attorney-general brought charges of murder against Kweku Ewusie and four others from Elmina: Joe Smith, Herbert Krakue, Nana Appram Esson, alias Joseph Bracton Johnson, and Akodei Mensah. They were tried at the Accra Criminal Assizes from 16 May to 2 June, found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to be hanged. The West African Court of Appeal turned down their appeal on 28 June 1945 as did the Privy Council on 14 January 1946. On 1 February 1946, Kweku Ewusie, Joe Smith and Herbert Krakue were hanged at James Fort in Accra, and on 2 February, J. B. Johnson and Akodei Mensah met the same fate.

The upper Senegal valley of West Africa, like other areas of Africa, experienced a period of acute environmental decline and intense ecological response by residents from the late nineteenth century until World War I. French colonial strategies caused considerable disruption and dislocation, benefitting in many ways the colonial agenda which sought to regulate labor flows. African responses to the widening crisis, including movement within the region, migration to the peanut basin and the coast, and enlistment in the war effort, often served colonial interests while sometimes directly exacerbating the environmental degradation, necessitating constant ecological adaptation. This study of an early period of intense and well-documented physical decline, and the various strategies developed by West Africans to survive and overcome obstacles, can shed light on current environmental policy debates and issues.

On admet en général que l'expansion de l'islam était une des principales préoccupations des géographes arabes quand ils décrivaient la situation dans les régions excentriques par rapport au monde musulman. En partant de ce présupposé on aurait pu s'attendre à trouver pour l'ètude de l'histoire d'une région précise, telle que le Kānem, des renseignements amples et explicites nous permettant de dessiner un tableau satisfaisant de la progression de l'islam, au moins dans ses grands traits. En fait, chemin faisant, on découvre que les renseignements qui nous ont été transmis dans ce type de sources, même sur un sujet aussi important, sont si lacunaires et contradictoires que presque rien ne peut être dit avec certitude du processus global dans lequel s’inscrit l'islamisation de la région. Or, dans le cas du Kānem une source interne, longtemps négligée, peut contrebalancer et corriger la vision non seulement lacunaire mais aussi déformant que les géographes arabes donnent du Kānem ancien, le Diwān salātin Bornū. Composée dans l'entourage du roi, cette source elle-même ne présente pas une vue neutre, et, surtout en ce qui concerne des questions touchant à l'islam, elle doit être maniée avec circonspection; mais contrairement aux aperçus aléatoires et sans rapport les uns avec les autres fournis par les géographes arabes, les chroniqueurs autochtones nous présentent une vision d'ensemble rigoureusement chronologique de l'histoire du Kānem dont la critique, à certains égards, est plus aisée.

The study of modern Algerian history has encountered many difficulties, and a number of myths and misunderstandings have persisted. However, it is now possible to discuss certain problems with a reasonable chance of success. This article examines three such problems and tries to disengage some of the main themes of modern Algerian history. First, it examines the state of the country, both politically and economically, at the time of the French expedition of 1830. Secondly, it analyses the principal characteristics of European settlement and the ways in which it developed. Thirdly, it considers the nature of opposition to French rule and the reasons why the differences between the Muslim and nonMuslim communities grew larger.