The purpose of this article is to promote the revival of African economic history. Poverty, the most pressing issue confronting the continent, has received world-wide publicity in recent years. Yet historians have continued to neglect the history of economic development, which is central to the study of poverty, in favour of themes that have their origins in the Western world rather than in Africa. However, there is now an exceptional opportunity to correct the balance. Unknown to most historians, economists have produced a new economic history of Africa in the course of the past decade. This article introduces and evaluates two of the most important contributions to the new literature: the thesis that Africa has suffered a ‘reversal of fortune’ during the last 500 years, and the proposition that ethnic fragmentation, which has deep historical roots, is a distinctive cause of Africa's economic backwardness. These arguments are criticized on both methodological and empirical grounds. But they are also welcomed for their boldness, their freshness and their potential for re-engaging historians in the study of Africa's economic past – not least because it is relevant to Africa's economic future.

Multiple, overlapping, and competing forms of authority contributed to the highly centralized Buganda kingdom. Their enduring salience, commonly considered characteristic of heterarchy, challenges our understanding of the early history of the kingdom. A map that specifies the location of 292 chiefs and authority figures in the capital reveals not only the critical importance of multiple forms of authority but also the development of those forms over several centuries. The allocation of space in the capital and other historical sources indicate that compromise and co-optation characterized the practice of power in the ancient kingdom: the king was surrounded, literally and figuratively, by others who curbed his authority.

This article examines the changing nature of patrilineality in east-central Uganda from the sixth century. While traditional anthropological models of lineality have been largely dismissed in recent scholarship, the problem remains that patrilineages and patriclans have played important roles in the lives of the Ganda, Gwere, Soga and their North Nyanza ancestors. By carefully examining changes and continuities in the form and content of patrilineality it becomes possible to understand it as historically contingent. In North Nyanza, patrilineal descent was the norm for inheritance and for household formation, but relationships formed through mothers were also crucial in the creation of new communities and in the legitimation of political power. This was not static: as communities negotiated their changing circumstances, so they adapted the form of their particular patrilineality to serve their needs.

Colonial forest reservation in the Benin Division of southern Nigeria was remarkably extensive, with reserves taking up almost 65 per cent of the Division by 1937. This paper explores both the various strategies employed by the colonial government in order to bring about large scale reservation and the role of reservation in changing land politics. In doing so, it provides nuanced insights into the interaction between the colonial government and local rulers under indirect rule. It shows that both Oba Eweka II (1914–33) and Oba Akenzua II (1933–79) supported reservation for strategic reasons, but also highlights the government's many underhand tactics in dealing with the Obas.

Historians have written extensively about agricultural extension services and the linkages between colonial administrations and rural communities in British Africa. Most studies argue that it is possible to identify a qualitative shift in strategies between the inter- and the post-war periods. The former is characterized by modest attempts at promoting soil conservation, while the latter is described as a period when colonial governments in British Africa – guided by scientific knowledge – tried to transform peasant agriculture to increase production. This article questions this division by using colonial Malawi as a case. It reveals that the strategies and intensity of agricultural extension services changed over time but that the aim of intervention, i.e. to combat soil erosion, remained the focal point throughout the colonial period. This shows that it is important to distinguish between strategies and scale of intervention on the one hand and their aims and contents on the other. Changes in the former took place within the conservation paradigm. Additionally, this article reveals that agricultural extension services were directed by colonial officials' perceptions about African farmers rather than detailed empirical knowledge about existing farming methods.

This article deals with the 1958 referendum that the French held in Niger to gain approval for the Fifth Republic and reorganization of their empire. It reassesses the French record in Niger, where more people voted ‘No’ – in favour of immediate independence – than in other territories, except Guinea. It does this on the basis of research on the history of the Sawaba movement, which led Niger's autonomous government until the plebisicite. It shows that the French forcibly intervened in the referendum to realize a ‘Yes’ vote and preserve Niger for their sphere of influence after independence in 1960. In detailing the violence and manipulation of the referendum and its aftermath, the article criticizes a revisionist viewpoint which disputed the significance of French intervention. The analysis draws on research on the Sawaba movement, benefiting from insights of social history into the grassroots forces in the nationalist movements of the 1950s. It discusses the historiography of Niger's referendum in relation to new archival sources and memoirs, drawing parallels with other territories, notably Guinea. It concludes that France's interventions in 1958 are crucial for understanding the long-term consequences of the transformations of the independence era.