This article explores the alchemy whereby ritual and political worlds invisible to Europeans were rendered visible on European maps. It begins with a puzzle: representations of southwestern Africa's rivers on those maps bear little resemblance to physical reality as the cartographers would have understood it. Using GIS technology to georeference a series of maps and highlight the placement of rivers on them illustrates the convergence of cartographers’ representations and regional political cosmologies linking power to control over water. Travelers’ accounts and colonial archives illuminate how knowledge was produced and why African ideas about geography were inadvertently embedded in those maps well into the twentieth century. This method opens a window into otherwise-obscured African intellectual history and demonstrates that even something as apparently and unambiguously ‘European’ as modern mapping was the result of on-the-ground negotiations well into the colonial period.

Since 1899 the idea has been widely held that the South African War was no isolated episode but one illuminating the fundamental characteristics of British expansion, both in the nineteenth century and beyond. Cross-reference between the particulars of South African history and theories of imperialism has long been a fact of intellectual life. This process, however, often seems to reflect less the fruitful interplay of new knowledge and evolving hypotheses than the progressive entrenchment of separate schools of thought. The purpose of this article is to highlight the gulf between different approaches, with reference to recent work; and to suggest that, notwithstanding the work of the last decade, little headway has been made in linking the development of South Africa's economy and mineral resources to the War of 1899 in any but the most general and self-evident of ways. It argues that the case for interpreting the origins of the war in the main from a metropolitan and political perspective retains considerable persuasiveness and explanatory power. Finally it puts forward an alternative way of seeing in the struggle representative features of British expansion.

This article examines the complex and fluid relationship between Denkyira and Asante in the period c. 1660–1720 that saw the former supplanted by the latter as the leading power among the Twi-speaking Akan peoples of the central southern Gold Coast (Ghana). Dense oral traditions supplemented by a range of other materials are used to identify the site of the ancient Denkyira capital of Abankeseso, and to give an account of the settlements that served it and the gold resources that supported it. These same sources provide a detailed understanding of the reasons for defections from Denkyira to Asante, and how this process contributed to the first Asantehene Osei Tutu's epochal military victory over Denkyirahene Ntim Gyakari at Feyiase (1701). Asante policy towards defeated Denkyira is then discussed, and the legacy of the events described is considered. At a general level, this article makes a case for looking in detail and depth at the local conditions that gave rise to particular – and particularly complex – sociopolitical arrangements, and argues that studies of this kind can advance understanding of the formation and nature of polity and identity in precolonial Africa.

This paper analyses the demography of nineteenth-century Madagascar in the light of the debate generated by the demographic transition theory. Both supporters and critics of the theory hold to an intrinsic opposition between human and ‘natural’ factors, such as climate, famine and disease, influencing demography. They also suppose a sharp chronological divide between the pre-colonial and colonial eras, arguing that whereas ‘natural’ demographic influences were of greater importance in the former period, human factors predominated thereafter. This paper argues that in the case of nineteenth-century Madagascar the human factor, in the form of the Merina state, was the predominant demographic influence. However, the impact of the state was felt through natural forces, and it varied over time. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Merina state policies stimulated agricultural production, which helped to create a larger and healthier population and laid the foundation for Merina military and economic expansion within Madagascar. From the 1820, the cost of such expansionism led the state to increase its exploitation of forced labour at the expense of agricultural production and thus transformed it into a negative demographic force. Infertility and infant mortality, which were probably more significant influences on overall population levels than the adult mortality rate, increased from 1820 due to disease, malnutrition and stress, all of which stemmed from state forced labour policies. Available estimates indicate little if any population growth for Madagascar between 1820 and 1895. The demographic ‘crisis’ in Africa, ascribed by critics of the demographic transition theory to the colonial era, stemmed in Madagascar from the policies of the imperial Merina regime which in this sense formed a link to the French regime of the colonial era. In sum, this paper questions the underlying assumptions governing the debate about historical demography in Africa and suggests that the demographic impact of political forces be re-evaluated in terms of their changing interaction with ‘natural’ demographic influences.

Brunschwig and Crowder have argued that many West African states on the eve of European annexation were on their way towards independent modernization and westernization, and that modernization was frustrated rather than accelerated by European rule. The paper examines the applicability of this argument to the particular case of the Egba state of Abeokuta in Western Nigeria.

In Abeokuta, European religious and political ideas had gained an early foothold through the return of liberated Egba slaves from Sierra Leone and the arrival of Christian missionaries. The new, westernized élite of converts and repatriates developed ambitions for the transformation of Abeokuta into a ‘Christian, civilized’ state. Scope for the realization of these ambitions was found through co-operation with the traditional élite, particularly in the Egba United Board of Management of 1865–74 and the Egba United Government of 1898–1914. Both these organizations suffered from the incompatibility between the essentially conservative aims of the traditional élite and the modernizing ambitions of the new élite. The Egba United Board of Management was dependent for its success solely upon the support of the traditional élite, and therefore ceased to function when the chiefs lost interest in its cause. The Egba United Government succeeded in laying lasting foundations for a modern administration in Abeokuta, but in order to achieve this had to rely on British military support against internal opposition and on British financial backing for their more ambitious projects. Through its military and financial dependence on the British, Abeokuta gradually became politically dependent, so that its formal political independence was largely illusory for at least five or six years before the final British annexation in 1914.

The expansion of the Sokoto Caliphate into the lands of the diverse non-Muslim peoples of the Middle Belt area is a familiar theme in the nineteenth-century history of the Central Sudan. As the Middle Belt is known to have an overall lower population density than adjoining areas to the north and south, the explanation has been proposed that this was due to slave raiding by Muslim states. A study of the history of this area does not support this overall view, even though it might be accepted with reference to limited areas. areas. It can be shown, moreover that in certain localities populations were actually enhanced as a result of the consolidation of Muslim power, while others, currently of extremely low density, were completely unaffected. If the factors affecting population in this area are to be understood, reference to over-simplified causes such as slave raiding must be shunned. Geographical and biological factors influencing population growth may be more fertile areas of enquiry.

This article examines the transition from the slave trade to ‘legitimate commerce’ in Portuguese Guinea between 1840 and 1880. Peanuts became the principal export crop. They were cultivated on plantation-like establishments called feitorias located primarily along the banks of the Rio Grande and on Bolama Island. From the 1840s through the 1870s, Luso-African, other Euro-African and European traders built these feitorias. These traders depended upon both slave and contract labour to cultivate their export crop.

Although Portugal claimed Portuguese Guinea, French trading houses dominated ‘legitimate commerce’ in this West African enclave. The demand for increased peanut production came from the burgeoning French oil mills rather than from Portuguese industries. French merchants supplied the ships needed to transport the crop as well as many of the imported goods sold locally. By the 1870s the Portuguese realized they needed to break this French monopoly. By that time Europe was suffering from an economic recession, peanut prices were falling and cheaper oilseeds from India and America were entering the market. Portugal's attempts to establish commercial dominance met with little success.

The economic crisis of the 1870s not only created difficulties for feitoria owners and their workers, but also for Fulbe groups in the process of expansion. These Fulbe wanted to establish political control in order to reap the economic benefits the peanut trade offered — especially access to firearms and in turn, slaves. As peanut production fell from 1879 onward, Fulbe groups began fighting amongst themselves for control of shrinking resources. By 1887, the feitoria system and this phase of peanut production had ended. The Portuguese, like the Fulbe, had to look for new ways to survive economically.

The integration of gender as a vibrant stream within African historical writing suggests a remarkable success story with many prominent historians and fresh thematics involved. Alongside an interest in subjectivities has emerged vigorous attention to the affective, emotions, and the senses. Why affect has emerged now matters. At the same time, new kinds of intellectual histories are burgeoning in the African field, frequently forwarding an unacknowledged masculinity. With the affective and the intellectual seemingly at odds with each other, it is crucial to seek ways to cross and combine them, while remaining alert to methodological perils and innovative forms.

Radical historians criticizing leaders of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union have focused on their petty bourgeois origins. This article argues that although most organizers of the later 1920s did not derive from the working class, neither were they able to base themselves securely within the petty bourgeoisie. Instead, like lower-middle-class Africans in general, they were being forced ever further from the white bourgeoisie and ever closer to the black masses. This was apparent in all spheres of life – economic, political, cultural, social and ideological – and was also increasingly evident in protest. As racially oppressed men and women subject to proletarianization and engaged in struggle, ICU leaders do not fit neatly into schemas which stress the bourgeois nature of the petty bourgeoisie.

For the campaign in East Africa from 1914 to 1918, the British used over 50,000 African troops, and over one million African followers. In 1914 no carrier organization existed, so this had to be rapidly improvised. There were three main carrier forces, based on the East Africa Protectorate, on Uganda and on Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. German East Africa was overrun in 1916 and 1917, but the German forces were not defeated. These offensives necessitated huge numbers of followers. Despite much improved rations and medical services, deaths among followers averaged 10 per cent; over 100,000 must have died. Over 10,000 troops died of disease or were killed, a death rate of 20 per cent. Deaths were most numerous amongst those followers who served for long periods far from home; this applied particularly to those from the East African Protectorate. About half of the million followers were, however, on short contracts or were casual labour. Since they worked nearer home and for shorter periods, their death rate was much lower. During 1916 the carrier force from the East African Protectorate was reinforced from conquered parts of German East Africa, but diminished by 100,000 men through releases, desertions and deaths. Numbers reached a climax in 1917, with the mass levy. The possibility that men enlisted more than once is hard to prove, but long-service carriers on release were unlikely to be fit again for a long time. Many recruits were medically unfit for the mass levy of 1917. During the war very many of the able-bodied male populations of these territories must have served, probably over 80 per cent, but not all at any one time. As it was the main theatre of war, German East Africa probably suffered most, conscriptions being carried out by both Germans and British.

The three most important Arabic sources for the Empire of Mali at its height are Ibn Fadl-Allāh al-‘Umari, Ibn-Baṭṭüṭa, and Ibn-Khaldūn. These authors all had good opportunities to collect information on this remote empire. Al-‘Umarī, who wrote in 1342–9, reflects the impression that Mansä Müsā had left in Cairo during his pilgrimage. In all probability, he had not himself met Mansā Mūsā in person, but he had talked with people who had met the Sudanese emperor. One of his most important informants was ash-shaykh Abū-sa'īd ‘Uthmān ad-Dukkāli, who had lived in Mali for thirty-five years. Ibn-Baṭṭūṭa recorded his own tour through Mali from February 1352 to December 1353. This account by such an experienced traveller is a first-rate historical document. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa was travelling in a region that was well known to his own countrymen; indeed he met Moroccans all over the Sudan. He was, therefore, inhibited from exaggerating or introducing incredible stories of the sort that often occur in his accounts of remoter Countries.

This article examines Danhomè (Dahomey) myths of dynastic origin, offering at once a critique and counter-narrative to the official dynastic history. Critical to this counter-narrative are the early women of the state, most importantly the mothers and wives of the first rulers. The provocative stories of these women not only add an important human dimension to Danhomè history but also raise important methodological issues, for events associated with their lives contradict much of what has been previously written about the origins of this kingdom. In Danhomè, events associated with the beginning of the dynasty were mythologized into an elaborate fiction of leopard birth and incest. While scholars have long questioned this account's veracity, to date a coherent alternative has been lacking. Through an analysis of the stories of these royal women, the forging of a new history of the kingdom's origins is now possible.

Recent scholarship on ‘neo-traditionalism’ and colonial governance in Africa has challenged assumptions about the ‘invention of tradition’ and the ability of the colonial state to create wholly innovative kinds of local authority. This article explores one episode in the development of the authority of Ali el Tom, probably the most famous ‘traditional’ ruler in Condominium Sudan. It suggests that Ali el Tom's authority was a creole product, which drew on local moral codes and colonial forms of authority, but was not fully part of either. The willingness of his people to accept this sometimes abusive authority relied on a partly illusory sense that it was familiar; but this willingness was not unlimited, and on occasion actions from below set limits to the invention of authority and tradition.

Men and women, trained in the occupations of spinner, weaver, dyer, tailor and embroiderer, manufactured the renowned textile products of the Sokoto Caliphate, a nineteenth-century state in the central Sudan region of West Africa. The numerical distributions of men and women within these occupations were uneven, but not in accordance with the pattern described most frequently in the literature. Offered here is another, more detailed view of textile production. Women were not simply spinners but were also weavers and dyers. Uneven, too, were the geographical distributions of men and women workers. Men skilled in textile manufacturing were widely disseminated throughout the caliphate, as were women spinners; women skilled at weaving and dyeing, however, were concentrated mainly in the southern emirates of Nupe and Ilorin. Similarly, male entrepreneurs organized large-scale textile manufacturing enterprises in the north-central portion of the caliphate while enterprises created by women were located to the south.

New sources, the textile products of the caliphate, along with other contemporary evidence, reveal that women's work was more varied, more prominent, more highly skilled and more organized than previously thought. Comparative analyses along gender lines show that men's work and women's work were similar in the degree of training required and the levels of skill achieved. Labor, especially skilled labor, was critical to textile production if the caliphate was to maintain its external markets. But there were substantial differences in the degree to which men and women could mobilize and organize labor. A variety of social and political factors in caliphate society combined to assist men and hinder women in the organization and management of textile manufacturing.

One of the units in which prices and exchange-rates are expressed by nineteenth-century travellers is the gold mithqal. This paper is an attempt to discover, and if possible to make some sense of, the various values of the gold mithqal at different times and places in West and North Africa during the nineteenth century.

This article argues for the importance of including the construction of informal housing in histories of the African built environment. It examines the proliferation of illegally built masonry houses in the unplanned, predominately African neighborhoods of Lourenço Marques (today's Maputo) during the last years of Portuguese rule. Officials tolerated reed construction in these neighborhoods, but they saw unauthorized permanent construction there as an obstacle to the expansion of the formalized, predominately European city core. These ‘modern’ masonry houses, however, embodied some of the highest aspirations of their builders – aspirations that increasingly overlapped with those of lower-income whites that lived in such close proximity. Racial politics was manifested as material politics as clandestine construction challenged the divisions that had long defined the city. Informal housing thus helps to illuminate some of the peculiarities of race in urban lusophone Africa during the last years of colonial rule, a period usually understood in terms of wars for independence, but that in cities were also years of surging economies and the rising expectations of many African workers.

This article extends the history of freed slaves from the well-studied areas of West Africa to the frontier between Angola and Belgian Congo. Originally enslaved by Ovimbundu traders in what became south-eastern Belgian Congo, these enslaved people became Christians through contact with Euro-American missions while labouring in Angola. Following the abolition of slavery in the Portuguese Empire in the 1910s, they returned to their home areas as Christian evangelists. In Belgian Congo, they helped to spread Christianity but clashed with missionaries over authority and respectability. Some struggled with the trauma of enslavement while others sought alternative routes to status and authority through participating in Independent Christian movements or assuming positions of traditional leadership.

The Iron Age cultures of Northern Rhodesia have until fairly recently remained unknown, whilst work in Southern Rhodesia and in South Africa has revealed a long sequence in both those territories. Mr R. R. Inskeep undertook some excavations in 1958, and since 1959 Iron Age research has expanded considerably. Work has been concentrated in the Southern Province of the territory with the aid of a grant from the Nuffield Foundation, and a number of large scale excavations have been carried out. This paper gives an outline of our general conclusions as they appeared at the completion of the fieldwork.