Le terme Gaoga, qui figure fréquemment au centre des cartes anciennes de l'Afrique, se retrouve dans un seul texte, la ‘description de l'Afrique’, du diplomate marocain, Léon l'Africain, publiée en italien en 1550 par Ramusio. Relevant de fréquentes confusions avec la ville de Gao sur le Niger, certains africanistes en tirent la conclusion hâtive que le voyage de Léon se serait limité aux pays du Niger. Selon eux, le reste des notes ne ferait que reproduire des récits de caravaniers, plus ou moms fantaisistes. Pierre Kalck, ancien administrateur français, auteur d'une thèse de doctorat ès lettres sur l'histoire des règions qu'il a administrées, estime au contraire que le voyage de Léon du Bornou en Egypte fut bien effectué et qu'il a existé un Etat du nom de Gaoga, semblable aux grandes entités politiques africaines de l'époque. Il fait d'abord le point sur les hypothèses formées par ceux qui refusent la thèse simpliste d'une confusion Gao-Gaoga. Pour Barth, Gaoga était le nom, non d'une contrée, mais déune dynastie boulala installée à Yao (Yaoga) sur le lac Fitri. Pour Carbou, le Gaoga n'était autre que le Kanem, séparé du Bornou—Modat rappelait cependant que, d'après les notes mêmes de Léon, il ne pouvait s'agir que d'une région montagneuse: le Dar Zagaoua au nord du Darfour. Palmer voyait dans le Gaoga un pays situé sur l'oued Batha et peuplé par des réfugiés nubiens. Kaick se réfère, non seulement au passage spécialement consacré au Gaoga par Léon, mais aux mentions éparses, et parfois déformées, dans le reste du texte publié par Ramusio. Il établit que Léon, après avoir quitté le Bornou, a gagné le Darfour par la piste dite du treizième parallèle, puis a rejoint Assiout en haute Egypte par l'antique route caravanière dite des quarante jours (Darb al Arbaïn) qui passe par l'oasis de Kharga. Scion lui, le Gaoga, fondé au quinzième siècle par des réfugiés nubiens, s'étendait, lors du passage de Léeon vers 1512–1514, sur une superficie qui comprenait l'est du Tchad (Ouadaï, Salamat, Rounga), l'ouest du Soudan (Darfour) et le nord-est de la République Centrafricaine (Fertit). Le Ouadaï est encore aujourd'hui appelé Kouka (corruption de Gaoga) par les Teda du nord et ce terme de Kouka est conservé par un groupe ethnique du Tchad. Citant la découverte par Arkell, à Aïn Fara et à Ouri dans le Darfour, de vestiges nubiens chrétiens, Kalck estime que céest dans cette région montagneuse qui constituait l'ancien Gaoga que se trouve la solution de bien des énigmes de l'histoire de l'Afrique Centrale. Le texte de Léon, aussi bref soit-il, apparaît comme un premier fil conducteur.

Articles by Vansina and Birmingham in the J.A.H. have explored the possibility of deriving the chronology of state-formation in central Africa from the date when warrior armies known as Imbangala (also, erroneously, as ‘Jaga’) appeared in Angola. This article, drawing on new traditions collected in Angola during 1969, shows that the figures described by the oral histories are permanent named titles in systems of positional succession and perpetual kinship; they therefore contain no implicit chronology based on assumed human life spans. The new evidence suggests that many years elapsed between the origin of one Imbangala title in the nascent Lunda empire and its successors' appearance on the coast. Although documents establish the Imbangala presence in Angola as early as 1563, this date reveals little about preceding events in Katanga, which may have taken place many decades, or even centuries, earlier. Finally, by extending the methodological techniques developed for the Imbangala traditions to published Lunda histories, it is suggested that the Luba and Lunda kingdoms may have passed through several periods before the stage previously assumed to have initiated the development of states in central Africa. The article concludes by suggesting that formation of (probably very small-scale) states began much earlier than previous analyses have demonstrated.

The kingdom of Luba Lomami was enlarged and strengthened by the conquest of Kalala Ilunga at an unknown date before the end of the sixteenth century. It became a large but not dominant state. The expansion of Luba Lomami is generally considered to have occurred in the early eighteenth century, as a delayed consequence of the Kalala Ilunga conquest. In this it is said to have been paralleled by the expansion of Lunda. Unlike Lunda, however, it is supposed to have suffered from severe structural deficiencies. These, it has been argued, inhibited its further expansion and, in the mid-nineteenth century, caused it to disintegrate.

It is suggested here, however, that the expansion of Luba Lomami did not occur until the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. This expansion coincided with the extension of the Bisa trading system into the chiefdoms south-east of Luba Lomami and was designed to capture this trade. Later conquests in the south may have been related to the development of Nyamwezi and Bihe trading systems. However, the principal motive for further expansion was the need to capture new sources of ivory and, to a lesser extent, slave-yielding lands. Luba Lomami's success can be attributed to its proximity to the Bisa trade route, its relatively centralized political structures, the availability of viable areas of expansion, and the existence of suitable mechanisms to incorporate the conquered chiefdoms. In the first half of the nineteenth century Luba Lomami subjected most of the area between the Lubilash and Lake Tanganyika and between the forest and the copper belt.

In about 1870 the terms of the long-distance trade turned against Luba Lomami. New traders arrived carrying guns. Luba Lomami could not match the new techniques for it no longer had the resources with which to purchase guns. Its own resources of ivory and slaves were exhausted. It could no longer obtain supplies by expansion, for the traders were carving out new states on its periphery, and it was itself becoming subject to slave raids and encroachment. This external pressure weakened the political structures. Rival brothers sought the aid of mercenary traders to promote their cause. The ideological basis of the state was undermined. In a desperate attempt to obtain guns the emperors began to raid for slaves amongst their own people. The empire disintegrated and, in about 1890, the rump of the state became tributary to the trader-state of Msiri.

The recent thesis propounded by Fisher and Rowland regarding the role of firearms in the Central Sudan requires considerable modification. While one must concede that the observable effects of firearms in the nineteenth century were not profound, this statement must be qualified to account for the incipient revolution in military technology, army organization, and political structure that occurred in many of the Central Sudanese states in the last quarter of the century. The relative ease with which European imperial powers conquered these states has tended to obscure from historians the dynamics of internal change that became manifest during the last decades of their independent existence.

It is clear from the evidence presented in this article that the increasing use of firearms intensified the tendencies toward bureaucratization and the centralization of power in the states of the Central Sudan. The creation of regular standing armies, the formation of slave musketeer units commanded by slave officers, and the progressive devaluation of feudal institutions in favour of bureaucratized political and military structures, were the distinguishing characteristics of this period. Although history is irreversible, it is interesting to ponder the possible alternative outcomes of this nascent revolution. Its directions were clear, its destination unknown. In this article we have argued that these developments in politico-military organization did in fact represent a new departure which, if permitted to run its course, would have radically affected the subsequent history of the Central Sudan. It is our contention that the Fisher-Rowland thesis underestimates and misinterprets the nature of these changes.

Several centuries after firearms had been introduced, they were still of little importance in Ethiopia, where cavalry continued to dominate warfare until the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, they were much sought after by local leaders ambitious to secure their autonomy or to grasp supreme authority. The first of these warlords to make himself emperor, Tēwodros (1855–68), owed nothing to firearms. However, his successors, Yohannis IV (1872–89) and Minīlik (d. 1913), did. Both excelled in their mastery of the new technology and acquired large quantities of quick-firing weapons. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, possession of firearms — principally the breech loading rifle — had become a precondition for successfully contending for national leadership. Yet the wider revolution associated (as in Egypt) with the establishment of a European-style army did not follow. Nor was rearmament restricted to the following of the emperor. Despite the revival of imperial authority effected by Yohannis and Minīlik, rifles and even machine-guns were widely enough spread at the turn of the century to reinforce the fragmentation of power long characteristic of the Ethiopian state. Into the early twentieth century, it remained uncertain if the peculiar advantages of the capital in the import of arms would be made to serve centralization.

At the opening of the nineteenth century, the colonial order in South Africa was most seriously challenged on the eastern frontier, dramatized in white rebellions and the successful Xhosa-Khoi war of 1799–1802. The colonial government of the Batavian Republic, administering the Cape between 1803 and 1806, was obliged to deal with this challenge. Despite formal liberal proclamations, the Batavians believed that it was necessary to expel the Xhosa east of the Fish river and subordinate the Khoi to the white farmers once again. Their rule continued to depend on local control by the white minority. During this period, the Xhosa remained in the territory claimed by the colony. The Batavians were unsuccessful in breaking or regulating the interrelationship of white and Xhosa which was the most significant factor in frontier dynamics. At the same time, due to divisions among the Xhosa, the weakness of the whites and the skill of Lodewijk Alberti, a frontier official, the colonial order was significantly re-stabilized.

This article, based on private papers as well as missionary and government records, examines the development of missionary contact with the Tswana peoples from the first settlement at Dithakong in 1816 to the establishment of a formal British Protectorate. The author seeks to analyse the nature of ‘missionary imperialism’ as a consequence not only of missionary motives and methods—still less as the accidental interest of individual missionaries—but also as the product of practical missionary experience and frustration in African circumstances.

The absence of European administration from Bechuanaland for much of the nineteenth century gives a rare opportunity to study the effects of missionary activity on African life and polity, less complicated than usual by secular pressures and influences. And the lack of economic attraction in Bechuanaland allows a close examination of the incentives to empire. But it is likely that the trend apparent in missionary attitudes and work in Bechuanaland will be repeated in other areas, as for example in Ndebeleland and Malawi.

The missionary role in Bechuanaland was largely determined by the organization and attitudes of Tswana society; missionary methods had to be adjusted accordingly, and eventually included an appeal to the British government to intervene and reduce resistant Tswana authority. This was in the logic of the missionaries' experience. In this light of missionary history, a new importance is found for the agitation on the British government from 1882 and the definition of the Convention of London in 1884.

The fortunes of Angoche revived with the growth of the slave trade, and during the 1840s it became the chief slaving port of the Moçambique coast. Numerous attacks were made on it by British and Portuguese expeditions, and the town was finally seized in 1861 by the Portuguese adventurer da Silva. The Muslims who fled from Portuguese occupation were led first by Mussa Quanto, and then, after his death in 1877, by Ussene and Farelay. They were able to confine the Portuguese to a few coastal garrisons, continue the slave trade until the end of the century, and gradually build up an anti-Portuguese ‘front’ amongst the Macua peoples of the hinterland. Farelay was not overthrown and the Macua country was not occupied by the Portuguese until 1910.

The article as a whole argues that the observations of Leo Frobenius in West Africa between 1907 and 1912, though they are commonly ignored by Anglo-American archaeologists and anthropologists, contain material which is of value to the historian of early twentieth-century West Africa. The author examines Frobenius's methods and observations in the light of his own statements (some of them in works which have not been translated into English or French) and suggests various outside sources which could be used to check the reliability of Frobenius's accounts.

The attitude of Anglo-American anthropologists is explained in terms of developments in anthropological theory since the First World War.

The article examines the defects of Frobenius's anthropological method, as exemplified by his work among the Kabré of North Togo shortly after their ‘pacification’ by the Germans; and suggests that the observations themselves may be more reliable than Frobenius's method would lead one to expect.

The article then considers Frobenius's archaeological method as exemplified by his work in Ife, argues that he was somewhat unscrupulous in forcing the sale of artefacts, and also, that by failing to keep adequate site records or even to supervise the digging himself, he destroyed a considerable amount of archaeological evidence at Ife. Historians should, however, study his work in Ife to note where such destruction has taken place, and what kind of evidence has been destroyed.

The article suggests outside sources, both oral and written, which might enable historians to check the veracity of Frobenius's account of his own method, and also the reliability of the observations themselves. Finally, it is suggested that an assessment of the reliability of his observations in Togo and Nigeria might be generally indicative of the reliability of his observation throughout West Africa in the period 1907–12.