Until the late 1970s the impact of the two world wars on Africa was a comparatively neglected area of its colonial history. In 1977 the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London drew attention to this neglect by organizing a symposium on the first of these two wars. A selection of the papers presented at that symposium was published in a special issue of this Journal in 1978. This proved to be a landmark in the study of the history of the First World War in Africa, which has since received much scholarly attention. By contrast, a survey written a few years ago of the Second World War in Africa could make relatively little use of original research. In 1983, however, the Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Brussels, published a large collection of papers on the Belgian Congo in the Second World War, and in 1984 Richard Rathbone and David Killingray organized a further conference at S.O.A.S. on the impact on Africa of the Second World War. This elicited over thirty papers by scholars from Africa, Europe and North America; they not only provided extensive geographical coverage but also represented a wide variety of interests: political, economic, social and cultural. The conference organizers have since edited a selection of these papers in book form: the topics range from the impact of the war on labour in Sierra Leone to relations between the colonial government and Christian missions in southern Cameroons.

By using new sources and a complementary historical and geo-analytical approach, this article illustrates that the Natives Land Act (no. 27 of 1913) failed to stop Africans from buying land. New evidence demonstrates that African land ownership outside the reserves in the Transvaal actually increased after 1913. This evidence leads to a deeper questioning of the extent to which the South African government was able to impose rural territorial segregation by 1936 and reveals the limits of white power in the early Union period.

This article analyzes the multiple and failed efforts to codify customary marriage law over the course of the twentieth century in colonial Gabon. It argues that these efforts illuminate the discursive arenas in which the colonial state, the church and African political leaders struggled to demarcate power and control over wealth-in-women. In a time of sociopolitical crisis and change state, chiefs and other elite African men all become involved in attempts to conceptualize, codify and administer customary marriage law. The contested process of codification reveals disjunctures in the articulation of male political authority in colonial Gabon.

This article examines a rehabilitation program for disabled Ghanaians developed by Kwame Nkrumah's government between 1961 and 1966. Arising at a time when Nkrumah was moving away from welfarism in favor of a ‘big push’ for industrialization, rehabilitation sought to integrate disabled citizens into the national economy as productive workers. Nkrumah's program was preceded by a colonial rehabilitation project during the 1940s for disabled African soldiers. The colonial initiative drew heavily on the British model of social orthopaedics, which equated citizenship with work. This philosophy resonated with Nkrumah's vision of national development based on full employment. Although its economic focus had troubling implications for citizenship and welfare, Nkrumah's rehabilitation program was unique among newly independent African states, and it arguably produced a positive legacy.

The examination of the growth of canoe transport in Buganda in the nineteenth century is an aspect of the kingdom's history that has received little serious consideration to date. This paper focuses on the ways in which the canoe fleet, especially from the 1840s, was systematically developed and utilized in the extension of Ganda power and influence in the Lake Victoria region. The need to protect and promote commerce was one of the driving forces behind Buganda's diplomatic, military and technological policies in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was consistent with objectives of the kingdom that had endured since around the middle of the sixteenth century, although the scale of these objectives had expanded along with the kingdom's horizons. Yet recognition of this basic continuity should not detract from our appreciation of the degree to which the Ganda innovated to meet the challenges of long-distance trade, as well as the challenges to their control of the external environment. The presence of Ganda at Tabora, on the southern shore of Lake Victoria, and even at Zanzibar itself is indicative of the alacrity with which Kabaka Suna (c. 1830–56) and Kabaka Mutesa (1856–84) seized their opportunities and attempted to secure conditions perceived to be favourable to the ‘national interest’ far beyond territorial borders. Yet Ganda also failed to realize the full military potential of their canoes. Despite their considerable efforts, the success of the naval endeavour was never without qualifications, and it is one of the primary aims of this paper to analyze these deficiencies.

Historians have recently come to appreciate the importance of studying the colonial legal system and the potential in mining court cases for historical data. This article is a preliminary effort to present a methodology for the study of the records of the entry level civil court, the tribunal de première instance, in Dakar, Senegal. The records are somewhat peculiar, because they are the consequence of the extension of the legal rights to the African originaires of the four communes of Senegal, which empowered them to bring civil cases before this court. However, these records share with records from other courts in colonial Africa problems of determining how the litigants' ‘testimony’ was shaped by the legal procedures of the court. This article, therefore, focusses on the context in which litigants' testimony was transformed into the texts we read as court records. In particular, it examines how the phases of litigation and how the court's bias towards written evidence shaped the court records. This research was stimulated in part by the need to locate new sources providing African ‘voices’ about the changes associated with the transition to colonialism. This article concludes with an appraisal of the historical potential of using court records for African social history.

The formative influence of colonial art education on modern art movements in Africa has not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Yet, European art teachers in the Gold Coast challenged colonial prejudice that Africans were incapable of mastering European aesthetic forms. This article analyses the art education provided at the Teacher Training College at Achimota School where pupils learned both to revalue African art forms and to draw and paint in European, representational art styles. Modern artists built on and reshaped what they had learned at Achimota in order to respond to changing social and political conditions. The last section of this article explores the impact of colonial art education on the work of two of the earliest modern artists in Ghana: Kofi Antubam and Vincent Kofi.

The original draft of this article started with a quotation from O. G. S. Crawford: ‘… Irrelevant theorizing has been the besetting sin of the local archaeologist from the earliest times, and it is time it stopped …’ and continued by giving a rather detailed description of some pottery and metal objects found during the 1957 excavations of the Iron Age cemetery discovered at Sanga on the northern shore of Lake Kisale (northern Katanga). Especially for an area like the (ex-Belgian) Congo, where very little work indeed has ever been done on the protohistoric pottery cultures, we thought it essential first of all to give objectively as close a description as possible of the material remains of these prehistoric communities.

The arrival of European concession-seekers in Barotseland coincided with a period of internal instability in that kingdom. King Lewanika, fearing both enemies within the ruling class as well as Ndebele raids, decided to follow the example of his friend Khama of the Ngwato in seeking British protection. With considerable difficulty he prevailed upon a local missionary, François Coillard, to write a letter on his behalf requesting such protection.

It had already become clear that an important faction of the Lozi ruling class opposed the king's decision. Some of its members feared that his ‘protectors’ would make his overthrow that much more difficult; others were concerned that he more powerful white men would undermine the authority of the nation's traditional rulers. These suspicions received apparent confirmation when the representative who appeared to negotiate the concession proved to be an agent, not of Her Majesty's Government, but of the British South African Company. Thanks, however, to the ignorance of the missionaries who were interpreting for the court, as well as to the duplicity of Rhodes's agent himself, this distinction was successfully blurred. Opposition remained, however, until, at a critical moment in the negotiations, Khama's envoy threatened the council with harsh retribution if it refused to sanction the proposed treaty. In the face of this united stand of those who represented the power of the British government and its white associates and black collaborators, the National Council of Barotseland finally agreed to the concession, and, for better or worse, the Lozi found themselves under white ‘protection’.

Sekonyela's downfall is commonly attributed to his personal defects—to the love of war by which he alienated his neighbours, and to the rough treatment by which he alienated his own people, Conversely, Moshweshwe's rise to power is commonly attributed to his love of peace and to his benevolence.

This article does not seek to refute the traditional assessments of the characters of the two chiefs, but to suggest that as explanations for their diifering fortunes they are inadequate. Basically Sekonyela failed because, after 1829, he was poorer than Moshweshwe. The Tlokwa had to kill and consume many of their cattle during the first two years of the difaqane, and it seems that they never fully recovered their former prosperity. Moreoverj they suffered further heavy losses in the war with the Korana and their allies in the early 1840s. Sekonyela, therefore, was not in a position to attract and bind thousands of followers to himself by sustaining them. Hence, to a large extent, his raids on his neighbours' herds, and his unpopularity among his own people.

Moshweshwe, however, retained most of his cattle during the difaqane, and in 1829 conducted two richly rewarding raids against the Thembu. Thereafter his wealth far surpassed Sekonyela's, and it was mainly because of this that he was able to attract and hold so many followers.

The territorial expansion of the Sotho naturally brought them into conflict with the Tlokwa, and in 1853, after the British had indicated that they were not prepared to interfere in this dispute, Sekonyela was overwhelmed by Moshweshwe's superior forces.

Since completing my Ph.D. under John Fage in 1979 I have been working on critical editions of German, Dutch and French sources for the seventeenth-century history of West Africa. Many of these have been used uncritically, especially in the last twenty years. In my view it is wrong to cite such sources at all until one has at least attempted to establish the relationship between them. If one compares the whole corpus, one discovers a host of plagiarisms and other forms of interborrowing. At least half the Europeans who wrote about West Africa between 1500 and 1750 are known to have read the works of other authors. Using two chronological lists of publications which described the Ivory and Gold Coasts in this period, I seek to show that only a few can be regarded as purely ‘primary’ sources – mostly the ones which are least often cited.

Despite the seeming abundance of writings on the topic, the depth and breadth of the British raw materials trade with Africa is yet to be fully appreciated. There are commodities, such as cassava starch, animal and dairy products and other less prominent crops, whose exploitation under colonial rule has not been studied; and, with regard to the organization of the export trade, the relationship between the colonial state and metropolitan (industrial and merchant) capital has not been adequately defined. This paper examines the organization of the production and export of hides and skins in colonial Northern Nigeria both to fill a gap in the literature on colonial economic history and to raise questions about the true position of the colonial state vis-à-vis metropolitan capital. Relying on primary source materials, it confirms the importance of hides and skins as a commodity of the pre-colonial caravan trade; and shows that, upon the establishment of British rule over Northern Nigeria, the volume of production and export increased, reaching new and unprecedented peaks during the world wars. Colonialism had a tremendous impact on the hides and skins industry of Northern Nigeria. The colonial state forced the producers to adopt new procedures in flaying, trimming and drying hides and skins, and extended rules of control of markets, minimum standards and compulsory inspection to the industry. In the enforcement of these rules, the state practised double standards, treating African producers and European merchant companies differently. Finally, on the strength of the evidence from the controversy over export duties and railway freight charges, the paper agrees that European merchants and industrialists had unlimited access to, and sometimes prevailed on, the colonial state; but argues that the latter had autonomy in the taking of crucial decisions affecting the economy and commerce of the colony.

By the end of 1955, territorial politics in Dahomey were dominated by three parties, the P.R.D. of S. M. Apithy, the M.D.D. of Hubert Maga, and the U.D.D. of Justin Ahomadegbe and others. Each party relied upon electoral support in clearly defined regions: the P.R.D. depended on the south-east, the M.D.D. on the north, and the U.D.D. on the residual areas of central and south-western Dahomey. The U.D.D. claimed, however, to be a new kind of party, transcending the narrow regionalism of its rivals and commanding ‘mass’ support rather than the uncertain and conditional support provided by ‘vote contractors’.

The loi-cadre reforms of 1956—7 led to an intensification of party activity, since they provided for the creation of territorial executives founded on electoral majorities and at the same time introduced universal suffrage. The 1957 Territorial Assembly elections were therefore a testing-ground for the tactics and strength of the three parties. Under pressure from the P.R.D., the U.D.D. adopted selection procedures like those of its rival. Outside the main towns, its campaigning was similar, concentrating on local issues to the exclusion of the wider questions on which the U.D.D. had hoped to take its stand.

This article explores colonial development policy on the margins of British East Africa. It argues that much like current development practice in the region, increased colonial interventionism in the years after 1940 was motivated by security interests as well as environmental and economic considerations. Rural interventions were used as a mechanism to ‘rein in’ what were perceived to be subversive populations, as well as contain potential security threats. The article therefore throws new light on the nature of colonial rural development, as well as the connections between past and present development practice.

In 1938 or 1939, an uninitiated and unwed girl named Nangombe living in the Uukwaluudhi district of Ovamboland, northern Namibia, became pregnant. If mission and colonial accounts are to be believed, it was not an unusual occurrence at this time, but it had profound consequences for Nangombe and those close to her. By the 1930s, the belief that pre-initiation pregnancies boded ill fortune for clan, chief and community was highly contested, but it was far from extinct. When the chief discovered the pregnancy, he expelled Nangombe. She took refuge in a neighboring society and bore a daughter. While such infants were often killed at birth, Nangombe's was not. Mother and daughter returned home within the year. The chief, enraged by their reappearance, then expelled the entire family.

The problems created by Nangombe's child caused tension in her household and the family was driven to begging for food. Nangombe's mother, seeing the catastrophes already caused by the presence of her illegitimate granddaughter and fearing that worse would come, urged her daughter to kill the child. Nangombe refused, while her mother continued to offer dire predictions that their lineage would be destroyed if the child were left alive. Finally, in July 1941, Nangombe gave into her mother's pressure and strangled her daughter. Her father and the local chief reported her act to colonial officials. The colonial government of South West Africa investigated and sent her to trial with her mother, who was charged as an accessory to murder.

The nature of the case changed abruptly in the colonial capital of Windhoek. Instead of trying Nangombe for murder, the Supreme Court convened to decide whether she was insane, despite testimony from her village asserting that she was sane and that the murder had been a rational act. Her mother was transformed from a co-defendant to a witness to her daughter's physical and mental health. Nangombe was diagnosed as epileptic and, on this basis, committed to a native asylum in Fort Beaufort, South Africa. She remained there until 1946, when she was released and returned home. She lived out the rest of her life in relative anonymity, little noticed in the communities where she lived and invisible to the colonial administration – a far cry from the scrutiny and public interventions which attended her young adulthood.

This paper traces the formation, growth, and contraction of the Bron Confederation, a group of small provinces which seceded from Asante in 1875 and remained independent until British and German acquisition in the mid-1890s. The Confederation was headed by the priest of a traditional religious shrine called Dente. The paper analyses how, operating initially from a solely religious base, the Dente priest achieved real political power over the Confederation. He became increasingly threatening to Asante and entwined in Asante politics, ultimately coming to the attention of European officials. His nemesis lay in the fact that neither Asante nor European strategists could afford to tolerate a successful Bron Confederation. Nevertheless the Confederation coalesced under his leadership and his ultimate authority was religious. A case study in the process of pre-colonial African religious/political synthesis, this paper specifically proposes that the sanctions resulting from religious oath-swearing and the wealth accruing from religious consultation were managed skilfully by the Dente priest and provided the basis for secular economic and political power.

The British reduction of Lagos in 1851, their establishment of a semi-protectorate under the consuls, and the annexation of 1861 were due to a complex of causes, partly British, partly African: the movement to suppress the slave trade and to prevent its revival under the guise of contract labour; the encouragement of legitimate trade; the need to protect British and immigrant interests; missionary ambition; French rivalry; the rift in and subsequent weakness of the monarchy; the disordered state of the interior; the Dahomean threat to Abeokuta. Benjamin Campbell, the first substantive consul, laid the foundations of British rule, while his short-lived successors Brand and Foote helped to persuade the British Government that it was desirable and feasible to effect the transition to a colony. The consular decade at Lagos was a time of change which foreshadowed many of the issues of the Partition and was the first step in the making of Nigeria.