The effect of recent radiocarbon dates from North Africa has largely been to extend the principal phases of prehistory back in time. The Middle Palaeolithic now seems to be essentially beyond the range of the radiocarbon technique, at least in the Eastern part of North Africa, although it may persist later in the West, and, throughout North Africa (with the sole exception of Cyrenaican Libya), there remains a disturbing hiatus between the Middle Palaeolithic and the subsequent Late Palaeolithic bladelet industries. The latter now seem to appear at about 20,000 B.c. over most of non-Saharan, North Africa, and may eventually be found to be earlier. Some of the earliest such occurrences may well be associated with domestication of plants (in Egypt) and of animals (in Algeria). If so, this will necessitate serious reconsideration of our concepts of the ‘Neolithic’. In any case, a true Neolithic appears in parts of the Southern Sahara as early as the eighth millennium B.C., and is widespread in the area by the seventh millennium. Curiously, the beginnings of the Neolithic are much later in the neighbouring and more luxuriant areas (the Nile Valley, the Mediterranean littoral and the Maghreb) than they are in the desert. Less research has been done on the final prehistoric and early historic periods, but, in the North, the invention of the Libyan alphabet and, in the South, the later Iron Age of Chad both seem earlier than had been thought.

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.

Published European first-hand accounts of the coastlands from Senegal to Angola for the period c. 1445-c. 1700 are examined to see what light they throw on the extent to which institutions of servitude in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa were autonomous developments or a response to external demands for African slaves. It seems clear that when, in the early years of this period, European traders first approached societies along the western African coasts, they were commonly offered what they called ‘slaves’ in exchange for the goods they had brought. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that a slave class was necessarily a feature of western African coastal societies when these were first contacted by Europeans. It is clear, for instance, that the Europeans preferred to deal with societies which had developed monarchical governments, whose leaders had control of sufficient surpluses to make trade worthwhile. The evidence suggests that in these societies most individuals were dependants of a ruling and entrepreneurial elite, but that there was also social mobility. A category of dependants that particularly attracted the notice of the European observers was women, whom men of power and wealth tended to accumulate as wives (and hence as the potential mothers of still more dependants). The necessarily limited supply of women may have been a factor encouraging such men to seek to increase their followings, and thus their status, power and wealth, by recruiting other dependants by forcible, judicial and economic means. While many such dependants, or their offspring, would be assimilated into the social groups commanded by their masters, the latter were certainly willing to contemplate using recently acquired or refractory recruits in other ways, such as exchanging them for alternative forms of wealth.

In this paper we review radiocarbon dates which have become available over the past three years for the more recent archaeological sites south of the Cunene and Limpopo Rivers, assessing the determinations within the broader context of economy and society. For a framework, we make use of broad physiographic divisions of southern Africa, thus breaking from the artificial constraints of modern political divisions and allowing greater possibilities of synthesis

Within the set of new dates there are several fields in which recent radiocarbon determinations have been particularly important. The nature of hunting and gathering and herding communities in the arid western regions of the sub-continent is now more fully understood and more information is available about the succession of lithic industries in the south-western interior. In the south-eastern coastal areas the geographical extent of the earliest farming communities has been firmly dated. New determinations are beginning to provide a firmer chronology for the succession of ceramic industries in the east, and reassessment of the dating of the important sites of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe demands a revision of concepts of early state development and trading contact with the east coast.

Karamanli rule over Tripoli collapsed in 1835. But opposition to Yusef Pasha had been building up for over twenty years. Hassuna D'Ghies, the chief conspirator, visited England in the early 1820s and met the seventy-four year old Jeremy Bentham, then busily concerned in drawing up codes of law for Spain, Portugal, Greece and other newly independent states. He readily produced a code for Tripoli, to be introduced with the Pasha's consent or (should he refuse) by armed insurrection. Nothing came of their immediate project, but when D'Ghies returned to Tripoli he tried, during his brief period as Chief Minister, to govern according to Bentham's principles.

The ‘Windward Coast’ between Cape Mount and Assini (modern Liberia and Ivory Coast) is credited by Curtin with the export of very large numbers of slaves in the late seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth, but with hardly any in the nineteenth. It is suggested here that the actual figures for the earlier period are much lower, many of those slaves attributed to this stretch of coast in the English trade having come from the region Curtin calls ‘Sierra Leone’, while a large proportion of those carried in French ships came from the Gold Coast or beyond. In the nineteenth century, slave trading continued on the coast between Cape Mount and New Sestos until 1840. More work is needed on available sources. The figures are far too uncertain to be used for a chronological underpinning of oral traditions of peoples a great distance inland.

This examination of Maraka long-distance trade has underlined a commercial strategy involving both exchange and production. Most of the goods the Maraka traded were either locally produced or re-exports from the desert-side trade. Once the desert-side dimension of Maraka trade was interrupted, as it was following the Umarian conquest of 1861, the linkages holding together Sinsani's economy collapsed.

Maraka long-distance trade was characterized by small exclusively male caravans which maximized time constraints in bypassing numerous local markets along the route. The Maraka usually engaged in wholesale transactions, preferring smaller profit margins per unit and a rapid turnaround of goods. The Maraka traded in such a manner because involvement in commodity production at home absorbed much of their time. Profits from Maraka trade were invested in a plantation sector which fed cotton cloth and grain to the desert-side trade and to Maraka long-distance trade southward to the land of kola and down the Niger to Timbuktu.

Archaeological investigations in southern Mauretania have revealed a wealth of rather spectacular stone masonry villages which were occupied by prehistoric cultivators as early as 1000 B.C. It is argued that the inhabitants of these villages were Negro and very probably Soninke, and that the basic elements of their culture had developed without major influences from outside the area. The apparent sophistication and complexity of this cultural manifestation, combined with the close fit of developments in this area with Carneiro's theory of state formation, suggests that this prehistoric complex represented at least a powerful chiefdom which embodied many of the characteristics of subsequent West African states. The first demonstrable outside influences in the area began about 600 B.C. with the arrival of Libyco-Berbers from North Africa. Rather than causing still further cultural advances, the initial effect of this contact was the collapse of this sociopolitical organization. But with subsequent adjustment, plus the potential from trans-Saharan trade carried out by the North Africans, the basic, pre-existing pattern re-emerged, resulting eventually in a second and much more powerful African political organization in this area – the Ghana Empire.

Au cours du XIXe siècle le territoire de l'actuelle Guinée, peuplée d'un à deux millions d'habitants, est parcouru par de nombreuses routes de commerce le reliant au nord à l'empire de Ségou, au sud à la ville prospère de Freetown et au pays forestier. Un trafic varié, complexe, s'effectue dans toute cette zone.

The eighteenth-century French slave trade claimed the lives of at least 150,000 African captives and 20,000 French crewmembers. Traditionally, the ‘Middle Passage’ has been held responsible for these deaths, but detailed information from the port of Nantes shows that the time spent on the African coast could be just as deadly as the crossing, at least for the crew. During the century nearly 8 percent of the crews died along the coast, compared with 5 per cent at sea. The African death rate for the crew actually rose in the second half of the century because increased competition made for longer stays in Africa. At the same time, faster crossing times led to a decline in the death rate at sea and yielded a fairly constant overall rate for the century.

The situation was somewhat different for the captives. Although the data are less comprehensive, they indicate a generally declining mortality rate during the century. This was due ultimately to reduced sailing times from Africa to the West Indies. Like the crewmembers, the captives benefited from the quicker crossings of the post-1763 period. Unlike the crew, however, captives were less affected by the increased time in African waters. More familiar with the African environment, they did not suffer as much from the extended stay along the coast, and by the end of the century slave mortality was lower than crew mortality. Unfortunately, the data are lacking to relate mortality either to trading sites in Africa or to Caribbean destinations.

After the restoration of French rule in Senegal in 1817 the Congregation of the Holy Ghost undertook spiritual responsibility for the colony. But its members were unable to make any serious impact on a community that remained only nominally Christian. Their work was reinforced by the ‘Ploërmel Brothers’ who took over the schools in the 1840s, and by the ordination of three Senegalese priests, David Boillat, Arsène Fridoil and Pierra Moussa. Inevitably the three priests were drawn into acrimonious controversy. Under instructions from Governor Bouet, they opened a school in competition with the Ploërmel brothers, who became their implacable enemies. Eventually it had to close and the three priests were successively removed from the colony. Thus ended a brief experiment in educational assimilation.

The fundamental reasoning underlying this paper is that, in seeking to advance our understanding of the material basis of political power in pre-colonial African polities, particular attention must be paid to the detailed reconstruction over time of the triumviral relationship between office, land and subjects. Acknowledgement is freely made of the fact that, for many (if not most) areas of Africa, this type of reconstruction is either exceptionally difficult or frankly impossible. This paper is concerned with the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) – a case evincing considerable institutional continuity and structural vigour, and one, moreover, sufficiently richly documented to permit the type and level of reconstruction posited. Specifically, and taking into account the substantial body of research already carried out on the general political history of Asante, this paper deals with patterns of authority over land and subjects as evidenced by the offices contained within the Manwere – one of the ten administrative/military fekuo of Kumase. The Manwere was created by Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin (1834–67), and in seeking to account for the political imperatives underlying the foundation, the paper explores the context of the reign and the biography and career of the first Manwerehene, Kwasi Brantuo. Particular attention is paid throughout to the way in which the relationship between office, land and subjects within the Manwere was modified or otherwise altered by the nature of the political vicissitudes through which the Asante polity passed in the period between – broadly – the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Underlying the paper, and supplying context to its conclusions, is a general consideration of the philosophy of the Asante ethic concerning such matters as wealth and accumulation, the nature of authority, and the conceptualization of citizenship.

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.

The records of probably the biggest Birmingham gun-making firm specializing in the African trade and records of the Dutch West India Company are used in this article to throw more light on the quantities, types and quality of the guns imported into West Africa and on their effects in the eighteenth century. Inikori's estimate of 45 per cent as the proportion of English firearms in the total annual West African import of between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum is probably an underestimate because of the unknown quantities of English guns which were re-exported from Continental ports to West Africa. It is estimated tentatively that 180,000 guns per annum were being imported into the Gold and Slave Coasts by 1730, and that some of the most dramatic effects of the import of guns occurred between 1658 and 1730. A revolution in warfare began in the 1690s in the Senegambian coastal areas and along the Gold and Slave Coasts. The trebling of slave prices and the sharp reduction in gun prices between 1680 and 1720 enabled large militarized slave-exporting states to develop along the Gold and Slave Coasts. There was a strong demand for well-finished and well-proved guns as well as for the cheapest unproved guns, and the dangerous state of many of the guns imported into West Africa has been exaggerated. The reputations of European nations for the quality of their guns fluctuated. There was probably no steady deterioration in the quality of English guns imported between 1750 and 1807, but the quality of the cheapest guns deteriorated during periods of intense competition.

The absolute dependence upon human labour for the transport of goods and travellers in nineteenth-century Madagascar can only be understood in terms of the peculiar nature of the imperial Merina structure. A justifiable fear of European attack and takeover led the Merina regime to rely on ‘Generals “Hazo” and “Tazo”’ (forest and fever) and an underdeveloped road network to hinder and ultimately prevent any foreign military force reaching the central plateau. Simultaneously, however, the régime wished to expand both internal and external trade so as to be accepted as an independent member of the international trading community. It therefore needed an efficient transport and communications system. This was created through an imperial porterage organization of slave and forced (fanompoana) labour. This system held attractions for the Merina political élite, by being both servile and unpaid. Investment in alternative transport arrangements remained unattractive. The deterrents were natural conservatism, lack of capital, and the significant profits to be made from hiring out slave porters to carry trade commodities which increased in volume from the 1860s. Under these conditions an indigenous ‘proto-trade union’, based upon the growing organizational strength of the maromita (porter) movement emerged in the island. Its power however rested on the absence in the Merina economy of any alternative transport system. When the French colonial régime instituted a modern road and rail transport network from 1895, the imperial porterage system disintegrated.

This article suggests a new explanation for the Karonga War of 1887–9. It argues that the advent of different groups of people into northern Malawi in the 1870s and 1880s drastically altered the delicate balance of power in the region. Initially it had been advantageous to the Ngonde to welcome the Swahili both commercially and as a means of deterring further attacks. The settlement of the Henga-Kamanga in the area greatly increased the security of Ungonde and the Nyakyusa ceased to be a serious threat. This fairly comfortable situation in Ungonde was completely disrupted by the arrival of the Europeans. In the first place the African Lakes Company befriended the Nyakyusa and then the Ngonde, forming a trading post at Karonga which was used by all peoples. The Nyakyusa and the Ngonde thereafter had a common interest and were no longer enemies. In consequence the Henga-Kamanga ceased to have an important role in Ungonde. Secondly, the African Lakes Company seemed to offer better trading prospects. This, plus the fact that the Ngoni were no longer threatening the Ngonde, marked the decline in power of the Swahili. The newly formed alliance between the Ngonde, the Nyakyusa and the Europeans posed a threat to the future of the Henga-Kamanga and the Swahili in Ungonde. All this finally led to the Karonga War.

This paper examines the reasons why the small African state of Thaba Nchu was annexed by the Orange Free State after more than a decade of nominal independence within Free State borders. For some years before 1884 Thaba Nchu had existed in a situation not unlike that of a modern ‘Bantustan’; this was disrupted when a coup was staged against the ruler, Tshipinare, who had relied on Free State support. Fearing instability if the new ruler, Samuel Moroka, became firmly established, Free State forces invaded Thaba Nchu, captured Samuel Moroka, and incorporated the land in the Free State.

The article examines the ways in which European settler farmers successfully used wartime conditions to secure their economic recovery and lay a basis for future economic dominance in Kenya. In 1939–40 farmers attempted with only limited success to persuade the Imperial government to purchase high-priced agricultural products. London's acquiescence was given reluctantly to avoid the possibility of political difficulties. In Kenya, largely due to a shortage of manpower and wartime feelings of solidarity, settlers were drawn extensively into the government positions. After the call for increased production for the Middle East in November 1941 the Agricultural Production and Settlement Board was set up with a network of settler-controlled district committees to direct production and administer the distribution of a range of new subsidies. Various forms of indirect assistance and disguised aid were devised further to assist European producers. Minimum prices were fixed at differential levels for European and African maize growers. Both the War Office and the Colonial Office believed European maize to be overpriced whereas African payments were fixed at a level which depressed production and contributed to the famine of 1943. Cattle prices were also set at levels favouring European settlers. Forcible methods were extensively used in the reserves to collect cattle, some of which were sold to settlers at advantageous prices. Overall, the benefits enjoyed by the settlers during the war years can be sharply contrasted with the economic difficulties experienced by the African farmers. The benefits of increased African cash incomes were more than offset by rapid price rises in all imported goods and meat, forcible cattle purchases and severe food shortages in 1943 and 1944.

The Mīzāb is an Ibādī community consisting of seven cities clustered in an arid rocky region 350 miles south of Algiers. Having established these settlements nearly a millennium ago, the Mīzābīs, as the inhabitants came to be known, struggled against formidable environmental odds and managed not only to survive but to prosper. By the sixteenth century the Mīzāb had become an important northern Saharan market. During the following centuries, the Maghrib witnessed a remarkable movement of Mīzābī men to coastal cities where they attained prominence in a variety of professions while leaving their roots firmly implanted within their distant oasis community.

Following a brief historical background to settlement in the Mīzāb, this article sketches the ecological constraints of an urban community in a region virtually devoid of resources. It then traces the history of the commercial dispersion to the North during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and discusses the probable causes of emigration. The Mīzābīs were forced by environmental constraints to seek outside sources of support. Their rise to prominence in the Regency of Algiers may have been related to declining Saharan commerce and new commercial opportunities in the North. The organization and function of Mīzābī corporations in Algiers and other northern cities are described. Finally, this article relates an Ibāçī reform ethic to Mīzābī commercial success and concludes with some reflections on religious ideology and environmental demands as contributing factors to the long-term Mīzābī role in commerce.

One of the most puzzling and fascinating of all resistance movements is that known as the revolt of the menalamba. It occurred over a wide area of central Madagascar, mostly in the kingdom of Imerina, in the two years following the French invasion of Madagascar in 1895. The most mysterious aspect of the rising has always been the question of who, if anyone, was its leader. The official version, that reported by the French government in Madagascar, was that the movement was inspired or directed by a number of magnates at the old Merina court. The published evidence is so ambiguous as to have obliged every subsequent author to accept this version, although there was considerable doubt expressed as to its truth at that time. Recent research in previously unopened archives has thrown new light on the question.