The paper traces the beginnings of human culture in Africa, its evolution and spread, and shows the feedback relationship that exists between biological evolution and culture. It is demonstrated how environment is the most important factor in producing variability at the food-gathering level, and the present-day regional differences in culture are shown to have been in existence for some 40,000 years. The history of the introduction and spread of domestication is summarized, and evidence is adduced to indicate that the diffusion of Iron Age economy in southern Africa was due as much to adaptation as to immigration, thus demonstrating a real and traceable continuity up to the present day.

A large proportion of the slaves captured at sea by the British Royal Navy during the early nineteenth century were landed at Sierra Leone. Statistical data on the make-up of the Sierra Leonean population at this period is available from several sources, and it provides some interesting clues to the scope and size of the slave trade from different parts of Africa.

A study of the interaction between the aims of African rulers, the British and Gold Coast governments, and Wesleyan missionaries in Dahomey between 1843 and 1867 suggests that neither Africans nor Europeans made any consistent distinction, at this time, between the religious and secular aspects of British influence in Dahomey.

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.

The problems connected with Article XVII of the Wihalē (Uccialli) treaty of 1889 form one of the most important issues in the history of Ethiopian-Italian relations. The Italian government claimed that this Article made Ethiopia an Italian protectorate. There was, however, a significant discrepancy between the Amharic and Italian versions of the Article. Minīlik refused to accept the ‘protection’ of Italy; diplomacy failed to solve the conflict, and the battle of Adwa followed. The absolute independence of Ethiopia was then recognized. But the idea that Ethiopia was an Italian protectorate from 1889 to 1896 has nevertheless been maintained by Italian authors and generally accepted by most writers on Ethiopian history to this day.

A careful study of Italian-Ethiopian relations during the years preceding the Wihale treaty, as well as of the immediate circumstances under which it was signed, reveals that the Italian negotiator Antonelli, and not Minīlik or his interpreter Yosēf, was guilty of creating the imbroglio. Antonelli was not ignorant of the Amharic language, and he had personally worded the Italian draft, which changed an earlier offer by the Italian government to act as the Emperor's ‘postman’ into an obligation for him to conduct his foreign affairs through Italian channels. Since this change was not introduced in the Amharic version, which had equal authority, the conclusion must be that the ‘protectorate paragraph’ never had any validity whatsoever. The Italian protectorate was not terminated by the battle of Adwa. It had never existed.

The first white persons to settle permanently in Katanga, a highland plateau region geographically isolated from the low-lying Congo basin, were missionaries collectively styled Plymouth Brethren. They were preceded—along the geographical and commercial routes which linked Katanga to Bié and Benguela and to Mweru and Zanzibar—by David Livingstone, who visited the Upper Congo in 1871, and by Verney Lovett Cameron, who traversed the region three years later. Both British explorers reported that Katanga was a region rich in minerals, and therefore an area into which whites should advance. The Germans Paul Reichard and Richard Böhm, in 1884, and the Portuguese Hermenigildo Capelo and Roberto Ivens, in 1885, confirmed the earlier tales.