In Dahomey (Benin) during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence, the reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate. Members of a new group of politicians used it to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of tax resistance they had practiced under colonial rule. This article follows the different relationships with the colonial past, through the regions of Abomey and Porto-Novo, and shows how these experiences were viewed by local residents and by nationalist leaders, such as Justin Ahomadegbé. It also serves as an example and an injunction to make use of the administrative postcolonial archive.

Recent research points to a renewed scholarly interest in the West African Middle Ages and the Sahelian imperial tradition. However, in these works only tangential attention is paid to the role of Muslims, and especially to clerical communities. This essay tackles theoretical and historiographical insights on the role of African Muslims in the era of the medieval empires and argues that the study of Islam in this region during the Middle Ages still suffers from undertheorizing. On the contrary, by using a ‘discursive approach’ scholars can unravel access to fascinating aspects of the history of West African Muslims and in particular to the crucial role played by clerical communities, who represented one node of the web of diffused authority which is characteristic of precolonial West African social and political structures.

Any survey of the effects of the possession and use of firearms among the Tswana and, to the north of them, the Ndebele and Shona peoples, must start with a brief investigation of firearms among the Khoikhoi and the mixed Khoikhoi-white groups. The latter were in some respects the vanguard of the expansions of the white frontier in southern Africa. They originated in unions between Khoikhoi and white hunters, traders and farmers, and probably never existed without firearms; from an early date they also acquired horses. In the middle years of the eighteenth century the Khoikhoi-whites and the Khoikhoi peoples, whose economic basis and political structure had been broken by various aspects of white settlement amongst them, were being armed by the whites to take part in commando expeditions against the San. There is evidence that some Khoikhoi trekked from the colony to avoid this service.

Following the establishment of the city-state of Abeokuta, the Egba and Owu returned to the forms of government known and respected before the retreat from the north, each township running its own affairs and reclaiming old prerogatives. This urban parochialism proved increasingly cumbersome after the death of Sodeke, when, without effective central leadership, the Ogboni and Ologun manœuvred for political predominance.

These difficulties were compounded after mid-century as the tempo of economic and cultural change quickened in southern Yorubaland. The Egba were intent on establishing themselves as commercial middlemen between the coast and interior. On the one hand, they were thus drawn into the ever-widening focus of European economic and political influence and demands radiating from Lagos. On the other, seeds of change were planted at Abeokuta itself: European merchants, missionaries, and Saros, who were soon promoting new economic forms and demanding political expression.

The formal appearance of the Saros as political contenders in 1860 coincided with the breakdown of the uneasy Yoruba peace. Their first bid for power was consequently unsuccessful, and, as the war progressed, the military became the controlling political force. In fact civil government came close to vanishing completely during the next five years, a point of near-anarchy being reached, and with deteriorating relations with Lagos.

In his recent book on the Royal African Company, K. G. Davies remarked that he had found himself obliged to conduct his research as though he were working on Ancient History. I have since experienced the same feeling when dealing with a more varied range of material, and this article is a plea for subjecting the sources for African history to that kind of critical appraisal which has customarily been applied to Greek and Roman authors. In my case I was concerned only with the old European forts in West Africa, and from an antiquarian viewpoint, but the same considerations must apply more generally, and the examples that follow will, I trust, stimulate investigation of the writers where they deal with other topics.

Between 1917 and 1921 Robert Williams and Company recruited labour from the Moxico Province of Angola for work in the Katanga copper mines of the Union Minière. The episode is one of the better documented in a period in which comparable recruiting operations were the mainstay of the industry, and provides a case study that is also a vehicle for the analysis of the significance of recruitment both as an instrument of industrial strategy and a determinant of worker behaviour. It is argued that recruitment is characteristic of a phase in the development of the colonial political economy marked by the use of highly unskilled labour intensive techniques of production in the dominant industry. It is a mechanism designed specifically to service such techniques through the regulation of the induced supply of short-term, unskilled labour. It is further argued that it is such regulation—realized as coercion—that gives recruitment its particularity as a determinant of worker behaviour, and this paper seeks to identify from the Angolan case the precise implications which this had for the workers themselves.

The British surprisingly faced no military resistance when they captured Asante in 1896. Previous works have focused on the agency of actors like Prempe and Frederick Hodgson to explain why. This paper, in contrast, approaches this epoch in Asante history from the context of the sociopolitical power structure within which the precolonial Asante state operated. It asserts that Asante's independence was contingent on having a strong military. But since it had no standing army, the state used Asante's ‘social contract’ to coerce its subjects into ad hoc armies to meet military threats. Starting from the 1874 Sagrenti War, however, the state disregarded the social contract. This unleashed a series of events that undermined the state's power to coerce Asantes into military service. The article posits further that this erosion of the state's coercive power ultimately prevented it from countering the British with armed resistance in 1896 to maintain independence.

Between 1866 and 1886 Arabized traders from the Nile River trafficked in slaves and ivory in the Mangbetu region of what is today north-eastern Zaire. These Nile traders opened the first direct long-distance trading contacts in the area. European travellers present during the period wrote accounts giving the impression to some modern historians that the traders did extensive damage to several small, welldeveloped Mangbetu kingdoms. These accounts do not furnish an accurate picture of the trader impact on the Mangbetu. The Mangbetu system of rule was less developed than the travellers supposed. At that time Mangbetu rule was still based largely on personality and kinship and not on bureaucracy, tribute, commercial monopoly, divine kingship, or any other institution often associated with strong African kingdoms. Moreover, the trader influence was weaker than the travellers supposed because the intruders were newcomers, operating at a great distance from the Khartoum market, who remained only a short time. Only from 1881 to 1885 did the Egyptian government have some success in regularizing the trade and subduing rebellious rulers. In early 1886 all northerners withdrew from the Mangbetu area as a result of the Mahdist crisis in the Sudan. At that point the Mangbetu kingdoms, and kingdoms built on the Mangbetu model, re-emerged relatively unchanged by the trader experience.

The tradition of Ngalangi sets out to relate the beginning. It was Feti who began: whence he came is not known. Seeing that he had no companion, but only a dog, he was hunting, and he went to a certain lagoon of the Kunene River and there he caught his wives as they came up out of the reeds. His wives were Tembo and Cĩvi and Coya. Thus they say, Feti wa fetika Coya woyapo, i.e. ‘Feti began, Coya completed.’ Feti and his eldest son, Ngalangi, were hunters of elephants and roan antelopes, and they continued in that wandering life. The kingdom of Ngalangi was founded by Ndumba Visoso, probably a son of Ngalangi, who assaulted and took the town from the ‘va Ngangela’, renamed it Ngalangi and there established the new kingdom. Ngola Ciluanji, another son of Feti, went, it is said, first to Wambu and later to ‘Luanda’ (meaning probably Ngola or Ndongo), establishing in turn these two kingdoms. After Feti's death his wives married: Tembo in Humbi (or Cilengi), Coya in Ndulu and Civi in Ngalangi, thus becoming the mothers of many peoples.

This article attempts to correct the stereotype which portrays the Futanke who joined in the jihād of al-ḥājj Umar Tal in western Mali as militant Muslim warriors who were not responsive to opportunities in production and trade. It shows that Futanke officials and settlers in the area of Jomboxo (southwestern Karta) responded quickly to the possibility of producing grain, on the land and with the slaves acquired during the jihad, and marketing it at the nearby river factory of Medine, where French officials and merchants, resident African traders and nomadic gum caravan leaders converged in a brisk commerce for three decades in the late nineteenth century. The grain sales were a response to strong demand from the desert-side economy and gum trade as well as to French needs for provisions. These emerging economic interests brought the settlers into conflict with Umarian officials and a younger generation of Futanke, recruited in the 1870s and 1880s and eager to wage war to accumulate wealth and establish their position. This social and generational cleavage hindered the effort to mobilize resistance against French encroachment and conquest.

This article focuses on formerly enslaved children at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring their contributions to discourses about childhood, labor, and stigma in Senegal's colonial towns. Drawing on records for over 1,600 so-called ‘liberated minors’, children who entered state guardianship after official recognition of their liberation from slavery, and on a variety of other sources, the article investigates both broad trends and individual experiences of work, mistreatment, conflict, and — sometimes — defiance. I argue that while many liberated minors seemed to accept their circumstances, others complained, disobeyed, or ran away, thereby challenging lingering stigmas and highlighting ways the state fell short of the anti-slavery and humane ideals touted by some officials. Attentive, insofar as records allow, to the actions and perspectives of liberated minors, the article contributes to the growing literature on the history of children and youth in Africa and to scholarship on post-emancipation societies.

This article is concerned with the loss of their land to the whites by the September family and their struggle to regain it. Abraham (‘Holbors’) September, an exslave, was a member of the Baster community of the Gordonia settlement (1880–89) where he was the first person to lead water from the Orange River to irrigate land. The article traces the estabishment of the Gordonia settlement and the granting of land in it, and its government as part of British Bechuanaland (1889–95) and the Cape Colony (1895–). It discusses the historiography of the loss of land by Basters to whites, testing explanations of land loss by subsequent historians against written records and oral tradition, with attention to the role of ‘land lawyers’. Abraham September died in 1898. The remainder of the article focuses on the September family as a case-study of land loss. It deals with the administration of his estate – in the course of which his land was ‘sold’ to whites – from the different points of view of the official record and of oral tradition. It then outlines correspondence in the archives from 1920 through to the 1960s protesting against this land alienation as a failure to implement the will of Abraham September and his wife Elizabeth. It concludes with some comments on sources. Is the official record or oral tradition a more accurate reflection of what happened to the land of the September family?

The Kwahu, an Akan people living on the eastern border of Ashanti in Ghana, are well known for their business activities. An enquiry into the reasons for their predominance among the largest shopkeepers by turnover in Accra traced the history of Kwahu business activities back to the British—Ashanti War of 1874, when the Kwahu broke away from the Ashanti Confederacy. The Kwahu trade with the north in slaves was replaced by the rubber trade, which continued until 1914. Rubber was carried to the coast for sale, and fish, salt, and imported commodities, notably cloth, were sold on the return journey north. Other Kwahu activities at this time included trading in local products and African beads.

The development of cocoa in south-eastern Ghana provided opportunities for enterprising Kwahu traders to sell there the imported goods obtained at the coast. Previously itinerant traders, the Kwahu began to settle for short periods in market towns. In the 1920s, the construction of the railway from Accra to Kumasi, growing road transportation, and the establishment inland of branches of the European firms reduced the price differences which had made trading inland so profitable.

In the 1930S the spread of the cocoa disease, swollen shoot, in the hitherto prosperous south-east, finally turned Kwahu traders' attention to Accra.

Trading remained the most prestigious of Kwahu activities, and young men sought by whatever means they could to save the necessary capital to establish a shop. But Kwahu traders very rarely developed beyond one-man businesses. Profits were siphoned off into buildings and farms which would provide security for times of sickness and old age. (In this respect the Kwahu are typical of Ghanaian entrepreneurs, with some exceptions.)

There is little evidence that this enterprising group of people can provide the new entrepreneurial organization or capital required by a developing country.

When Britain withdrew recognition from Kabaka Mutesa II in 1953, considering him disloyal for failure to advocate for the new governor's progressive initiatives, Buganda's response was distinctive and successful: mourning. Ganda wept publicly, and portrayed themselves as wives forcibly divorced from their king/husband. With the removal of Mutesa, they argued, Britain even violated its own alliance, or marriage, with Buganda. Metaphors of marriage and declarations of loyal wives proved successful in destabilizing imperial efforts to reshape power in Buganda to fit into a unified Uganda. Drawing on specific associations of love and politics associated with Ganda marriage, Ganda fought, successfully, to achieve Mutesa II's return and to ensure Buganda's distinctive political identity. In the process, though, they declared and institutionalized an identity as subjects of the Kabaka, abandoning ideas of citizenship through Bataka (clans) voiced by earlier activists and enacting troublesome precedents for proponents of Ugandan nationalism.

Studies of the politics of urban African communities in South Africa have focused on the sporadic manifestations of mass protest, identifying formal labour and political organizations as the prime agents of mobilization. Whilst some recognition has been accorded to the role played by vigilance and civic associations in contributing to the growth of community politics, Advisory Boards and other government-created institutions have been portrayed as ‘collaborationist’ bodies, and those serving on such Boards dismissed as ‘stooges’. Looking beyond the political rhetoric that has surrounded the Advisory Boards, the historical reality has been more complex. Although Advisory Boards lacked legitimacy, and were often powerless in policy terms, even progressive political organisations were prepared to use these ‘institutions of the oppressor’ to further their aims in the 1940s and 1950s. This case study of the politics of the New Brighton Advisory Board demonstrates the way in which such institutions provided a platform (albeit a limited one) from which African communities might be mobilized around the everyday issues of urban life. In this way, the Advisory Board contributed to the formation of a strong political tradition in the Port Elizabeth township. This tradition was appropriated by different political groups and used to mobilize the African community around a variety of social, economic and political issues affecting the township.

Professors Curtin and Vansina in a recent issue of this journal (V (1964), 2, pp. 185–208) have put us in their debt by synthesizing the available information on the sources of the nineteenth-century Atlantic slave trade. For the Cameroons Highlands, a source well represented in Koelle's Polyglotta Africana, we have some corrections to make and comments to add.

LES Anyi-Ndényé se trouvent à la bordure occidentale du monde akan, dont ils font partie. La langue qu'ils parlent, l'anyi, est différent du twi (ashanti etc.) et fort proche de la langue du Sefwi (Sayie) et de 1'Aowin (ou Awowin), provinces limitrophes du Ghana occidental. Cependant leur langage tambouriné utilise le twi et la majeure partie du vocabulaire politique, définissant le pouvoir et ses détenteurs, provient directement du twi, langue qui n'est connue aujourd'hui que d'une minorité.

A recent generalization on cropping and cultivation in Africa reduces the variety of environmental types to two: ‘savannahs’ and ‘forest and woodland’. Another work simplifies West African anthropology by introducing two regions linguistic in origin: the West Sudan and the Guinea Coast. The latter, misleadingly shown as the western portion of a ‘yam belt’ or ‘corridor’, includes the ‘forest’ and a small southern portion of the ‘savannah’. Such regional generalizations invite critical assessment of the relationships displayed between crops, agriculture and the environments. It is proposed to take one of these last as termed above: the ‘forest and woodland’.

When I visited Mauritania in 1960 I expected to find similarities between the culture of the West Saharan societies and that indigenous to Southern Arabia. I was not disappointed. Amidst the distinctive regional culture of the Moors there are certain traits which are difficult to explain solely by an independent evolution in a remote, yet similar, environment. Professor R. B. Serjeant, himself a specialist in Southern Arabia, was also struck by the cultural similarities after he had seen our expedition film of life in the caravan towns of Chinguetti and Wadan. There appears to be a clear case for some cultural contact, but having postulated this it is extremely difficult to tabulate or classify it. This cultural contact does not concern Mauritania alone but includes those vast areas of the Sahara and the Sudan, to east and south, which lie astride the routes leading to the Arabian peninsula.