Mitchell maintained that the relationship between the Protectorate Government of Uganda and the Native Government of Buganda was that of protected rule rather than of indirect rule. In order to implement his policy of protected rule, he planned a reorganization in Buganda, involving the substitution of a Resident for a Provincial Commissioner and the withdrawal of district officers to the centre, where the Resident and his staff would offer advice to the Kabaka. Mitchell did not envisage that the Protectorate Government's influence would thereby be weakened, since he assumed that the Kabaka would be obliged to follow advice which was given to him. Under the Agreement of 1900, however, the Kabaka was specifically required to act upon such advice only in the case of the implementation of Lukiiko resolutions. Relations between the Kabaka and both the Protectorate Government and his own Ministers steadily deteriorated during Mitchell's governorship, and the deposition of the Kabaka was even considered. For these reasons, Mitchell proceeded cautiously with his reorganization and it was left to his successor, Dundas, to complete it. Owing largely to the restricted power of the Governor under the Agreement to impose his wishes upon the Kabaka, the changes introduced resulted in a steady decline in the influence which the Protectorate Government could exert in Buganda.

The etymology of ‘Lucumí’ and ‘Terranova’, ethnonyms used to describe Yoruba-speaking people during the Atlantic slave trade, helps to reconceptualize the origins of a Yoruba nation. While there is general agreement that ‘Lucumí’ refers to the Yoruba in diaspora, the origin of the term remains unclear. We argue ‘Lucumí’ was first used in the Benin kingdom as early as the fifteenth century, as revealed through the presence of Olukumi communities involved in chalk production. The Benin and Portuguese slave trade extended the use of ‘Lucumí’ to the Americas. As this trade deteriorated by 1550, ‘Terranova’ referred to slaves captured west of Benin's area of influence, hence ‘new land’. By the eighteenth century, ‘Nagô’ had replaced ‘Lucumí’, while the ‘Slave Coast’ had substituted ‘Terranova’ as terms of reference. This etymology confirms the collective identification of ‘Yoruba’ and helps trace the evolution of a transnational identity.

This study analyzes the marriage patterns in accounts of ‘founder strangers’ and ‘first-comers’. By telling whether and when a child from a marriage between a Muslim and a warrior was successful or not, the accounts reveal the social code of the political elites in the Western Sudan in the period c. 1600–c. 1850. This social code expressed the elites’ concern with legitimizing their political autonomy as well as with reproducing their ruling position in a context of increasing warfare and growing reformist Islam. This social code structured accounts of both matrilineal warrior rulers and patrilineal Muslim rulers. Though methodologically rooted in classical approaches, historiographically this study contributes not only to recent research on state formation in Kaabu (present-day Guinea-Bissau) and Kankan (present-day Guinea), but also offers an approach to the Sunjata epic that hints at a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century origin of most of the epic as we know it. These fresh insights may shed new light on the history of the Mali Empire and its aftermath, and on processes of state formation in the Western Sudan in general.

In 1972 a British commission arrived in Rhodesia to test how acceptable the latest and most comprehensive proposals to end Rhodesia's rebellion were to its entire people. Africans rejected the proposals in overwhelming numbers. Such powerful opposition was attributed to the African National Council, said to be a new and spontaneous organization, but in fact the creation of the banned political parties. This article examines the political agitation during the Pearce Commission's visit to show how commonplace the layers of political affiliation, substitution, and deception were in the groups that both supported and opposed the proposals in 1970s Rhodesia.

The protracted subjugation by the Portuguese of Guinea-Bissau was made possible by Abdul Njai and his army of auxiliary troops. Njai became an ally of the Portuguese in the mid-1890s and continued his support for the Portuguese conquest until about 1915. He provided logistical support, and served both as a commander in the Portuguese army and as a recruiter of African troops. Oral as well as written sources indicate that Njai was directly responsible for the successful campaigns fought against the strongholds of resistance to Portuguese authority. As a reward for his services, the Portuguese granted Njai political authority over Oio province. Thus Njai became a kind of ‘warrant chief’ in an area where his only legitimacy was based on force rather than traditional affiliation. Portuguese control remained limited even after 1915 and Njai governed his region as he pleased. African communities in Oio and elsewhere in Guinea-Bissau feared and respected this warlord more than the Portuguese. He thus became a threat to Portuguese colonial officials in Guinea-Bissau as well as their French counterparts in neighbouring Senegal. The Portuguese therefore turned on their erstwhile ally and, after unsuccessful attempts to bring him to heel through negotiation, mounted an expedition which resulted in his capture and deportation in 1919.

During the first half of the twentieth century, deep structural changes occurred in the South African countryside. While farming became an important pillar of the national economy, more and more people left the land in search of better lives in towns and cities. This article examines agricultural education, an early avenue of state intervention in farming, to elucidate how officials and groups of farmers navigated the ‘agrarian question’ by trying to define the roles that men, women, blacks, and whites played in the sector's restructuring. I argue that agricultural planning was inextricable from ideologies and politics of segregation, a factor that historiography has not systematically taken into account. By comparing interventions in the Transkei and Ciskei with those in the Orange Free State, this article illuminates the interrelations between rural planning and segregation, as well as how they were complicated by delineations of class and gender.

The term ‘balkanization’, as applied to colonial policy in Africa, frequently suggests a European ‘divide and rule’ policy, intended to fragment pre-existing African unity. An examination of the policy of France towards the former federation of French West Africa indicates that the term is inaccurate to describe French policy.

The federation was created by the French for the French. It served to streamline French administration during the period of expansion, to help develop the component territories' economies, and to guarantee the security of French private investments. France conceived of the territories as the basic political units and hence modern political life was implanted there rather than in the federation. Post World War II French public investments flowed chiefly to the territories, common federal services were decentralized as territories acquired expertise and funds to run their own, and the quasi-federal Senate called the Grand Conseil was allowed to expire. Other aspects of French policy had unintended centrifugal effects, such as the metropolitan party structure and consequent dispersal of African representatives in Paris, and the influence of some French parties in Africa. Since 1956, France logically responded to African leaders' demands for more power and eventual autonomy in the territories, and left it to the Africans to decide whether or not to continue their federal relationship.

By 1956, the federation had outlived its usefulness to France. It is improbable that the metropole could have ‘saved’ it, because political territorial roots were too strong, the Africans were not agreed, and relations between France and Africa had already become mainly bilateral with the territories directly. Consequently it appears that the federation, a purely French creation, was simply permitted to fade away once its functions were no longer relevant to French needs. It is true that France preferred eight small, powerless states to a strong federation when national independence approached, but ‘powerless’ and ‘strong’ in this context are but relative terms. The story of the federation of French West Africa suggests that such political structures can survive the colonial period only if they are anchored in fundamental African needs; this was not the case with that federation.

John Iliffe has argued that the Yoruba, almost uniquely among African peoples not substantially affected by the world religions, had developed by the nineteenth century a syndrome of institutions – a culture of begging, the valorization of poverty, asceticism – more typical of literate, stratified societies with intensive agriculture.

It is agreed that the Yoruba towns of the nineteenth century knew poverty on a substantial scale, aggravated by the endemic warfare and social upheaval. However, the supposed ‘indigenous tradition of begging’ which Iliffe cites as evidence, is shown to rest on a cultural misreading of social practices reported by the missionaries, notably the offering of cowries to the devotees of gods, especially Esu. These acts were not almsgiving to beggars but sacrifices to deities, continuous with other forms of sacrifice. The ‘beggars’ were by no means always poor. Sociologically, offerings to the devotees of deities ranged from a ‘commercial’ mode, where material blessings were anticipated in return, to a ‘tributary’ mode (particularly common with devotees of Sango) where they were analogous to placatory sacrifices (etutu). So dominant was the notion of sacrifice that a concept of Islamic origin, saraa, originally meaning ‘alms’, came to take the meaning of ‘sacrifice’ in Yoruba (as in many other West African languages).

Other aspects of the alleged poverty/asceticism syndrome are shown to be equally invalid. The pronounced this-worldliness of Yoruba religious attitudes is incompatible with idea that the poor might enjoy special religious favour. Acts of self-mortification did not indicate an attitude of religious asceticism. There was no ideal that religious personnel should be poor. It is argued in conclusion that the changes which we can see in Yoruba religion arise from the active engagement of Yorubas with external influences, rather than purely from endogenous developments or purely reactive responses.

This essay examines issues of ageing and old age in Xhosa-speaking communities to c. 1860. Drawing primarily on records of the Wesleyan Methodist and London Missionary societies, the article examines the construction of Xhosa ageing, old age and death in missionary writings. The primary medium of missionary reflection was the figure of the ‘Abandoned Mother’, modelled on contemporary British metaphors, that represented yet another atrocity story for legitimating the mission enterprise and the emerging colonial regime. It also argues that there were fundamental contrasts in the images of ageing and dying between those of the Xhosa and those of the missionaries. Though older persons found certain themes in the Christian message attractive, they preferred the local cultural model of ageing, old age and death.

This article examines the history of efforts to create a standard written language in western Kenya. In the 1940s, the Luyia Language Committee worked to standardise one Luyia language out of a set of diverse, distinct, and yet mutually intelligible linguistic cultures. While missionaries worked to imbue translations with ideals of Christian discipline, domestic virtue, and civilisation, local cultural entrepreneurs took up linguistic work to debate morality, to further their political agendas, and to unite their constituents. Rather than subsume linguistic difference, these efforts at standardisation reveal the dynamism of oral communities, and how they encouraged a culture of competitive linguistic work. Examination of these efforts challenges previous historians' insistence on the role of linguistic consolidation in the making and unmaking of political communities in colonial Africa.

For sixty-one years, from 1895 to 1955, the area known as the Transkeian Territories was the scene of an ‘experiment’ in local government based on district councils of elected members under the chairmanship of White magistrates. These councils were essentially advisory, and initiated proposals for expenditure on a range of parochial matters such as the building and maintenance of roads and bridges, water conservation, postal services and fencing. The twenty-six district councils were integrated into the United Transkeian General Council, or Bunga, which met annually in Umtata, and which was composed of delegates from the District Councils and the magisterial District Chairmen. The General Council operated engineering and agricultural departments, and spent considerable sums on soil and water conservation.

The English-language literature on Algeria generated by the Algerian war of independence and continuing down to the present forms an intellectual as well as linguistic tradition apart from the much more voluminous literature in French. Despite the involvement of French and North African writers who have published in English, it is largely the creation of outsiders looking at the country from British and North American points of view, according to current fashions. The war of independence remains central to its concerns as the great transformer of a colonial into a national society, however that transformation is to be understood. The qualified approval of the nationalist cause by Alistair Horne contrasts sharply with Elie Kedourie's denunciation. Most judgements have been based on the outcome, the political, social and economic performance of the regime, considered as good or bad. Since the death of Boumedienne in 1978, they have tended to be unfavourable. Their largely secular analyses, however, have been called in question since 1988 by the rise of political Islam, which has called for a reappraisal of the whole subject of the war and its consequences. Such a reappraisal is still in the future. Meanwhile Ernest Gellner, in dispute with Edward Said over the question of Orientalism, has raised the matter of the role of Islam in the history of Algeria to a high level of generalization, at which the war itself may, paradoxically, return to the forefront of international scholarly concern.

From 1951, apartheid officials sought to implement soil rehabilitation programs in Nongoma, the home district of Zulu Paramount Chief Cyprian Bhekuzulu. This article argues that these programs brought to the surface fundamental questions about political authority in South Africa's hinterland during the first years of apartheid. These questions arose from ambiguities within native policy immediately after the passage of the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act: while the power of chiefs during the colonial and segregationist era in Zululand had been tied to their control of native reserve land, in Nongoma, these development interventions threatened that prerogative at the very moment apartheid policy sought to strengthen ‘tribal’ governance. In response, the Zulu royal family in Nongoma called on treaties with the British from the conquest era, colonial law, and the very language of apartheid to reassert chiefly control over land, and more importantly, to negotiate this new apartheid political order.