It has been argued that forced labour in British West Africa did not extend to recruitment for commercial companies. One case that appears to have been overlooked is that of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast where, at various times between 1906 and 1924, recruitment for the privately-owned gold mines of the Tarkwa-Prestea area was associated with government recruitment for public works—itself on the shadowy borderline between ‘communal’ and ‘forced’ labour.

Organized recruitment for the mines was adjudged necessary because of the reluctance of local labour to work underground. The independent attitudes of even recruited labour led the mines to associate their requests for organized recruitment with pressure for much tighter labour discipline, including bringing suits for breach of contract under criminal law and the introduction of a pass law and compound system. However, these schemes were rejected by the government.

The period of greatest government assistance to mine recruitment, 1920–4, ended when the high death rate among labourers at the mines was revealed and the government suspended recruitment. It is the contention of this paper that the high death rate was due not only to poor health conditions at the mines, but also to forced recruitment in a situation where there was considerable voluntary labour migration. Under these circumstances the chiefs were obliged to supply the weaker members of the community.

Bambuhu (called Bambouk by the French) was a principal source of the gold that made West Africa famous in the Muslim world north of the Sahara from the tenth century onward—and later among the Europeans. Much of the European activity on the Senegambian coast between the end of the fifteenth and the end of the nineteenth century was attracted by the promise of wealth from the ‘gold mines’ of Bambuhu. (Actually the gold came from alluvial ores near the surface rather than deep, hard-rock mines.) Yet today the Republic of Mali, which includes Bambuhu, neither mines nor exports significant quantities of gold. The gold deposits still exist; but the gold content of the ore is not uniform, and the quantity of ore at one place is not great enough to justify a large investment in extraction plants. The evidence available suggests that gold could formerly be mined by hand only because the opportunity cost of labour was formerly very low in the second half of the dry season. With the increased labour mobility of recent decades, the opportunity cost of mine labour in Bambuhu has risen to the point of making gold mining unprofitable.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss a number of aspects relating to the client and captive labour force in the Bida emirate in the immediate pre-colonial period. Using data collected in surveys of 1611 captive and client villages in the 1930s, it has been possible to estimate the origins of a large part of this force and to establish the different periods of its recruitment. Comments are made regarding the role of this labour force in the pre-colonial economy of Nupe, on the position of slaves and clients in the society of the emirate, and on the effects of the extensive population transfer on the ethnic demography of Nupeland. It is hoped that this essay will contribute to the contemporary discussion regarding indigenous slavery in Africa, and will lead to an accelerated abandonment of simplistic notions concerning the nature of African economy and society in the late nineteenth century.

From a close analysis of African activities and actions in the Kenyan town of Nakuru from the 19205 to the 1960s, it is argued that living in towns tended to consolidate the identities of tribal groups and to exacerbate their differences. Contrasts between the urban responses of the Kikuyu, on the one hand, and the Western Kenyan tribes, the Luo and the Abaluhya, on the other, are analysed, and are related to differences in the tribal structures and in the political, economic and social changes that were taking place in their rural areas. By the early 1960s, the stage was set for open political competition between tribal groups.

The origins of the Kambarin Beriberi and their conscious development of a corporate identity provides a valuable insight into the emergence of a Muslim mercantile class in the northern savanna region of Africa. Theoretical studies by Abner Cohen and others have drawn attention to the maintenance of economic and social diasporas which have permitted the creation of commercial monopolies, but the explanation that these diasporas have been ‘ethnic’ organizations has obscured a fundamental feature of their historical development. Not all Hausa have participated in the kola trade, nor have the majority of professional merchants resided along the commercial avenues outside of the Hausa homeland. As the case of the Kambarin Beriberi well documents, the origins of many traders who became identified as Hausa were as immigrants from other parts of Africa, and any understanding of the formation of commercial diasporas must consider the possible distinction between the various components of a trading system. Only then can a fuller understanding of the interaction between the different commercial segments be reached. The diasporas which Cohen has documented for the Hausa, and which others have analysed for the several Mande networks, represent but one level of commercial cooperation in the continental trade patterns of Africa. The fusion of such disparate groups as the Kambarin Beriberi and other Hausa merchants into a confederation of traders with common interests remains an important aspect of commercial development which has not been fully explored.

From the point of view of both practical administration and Indirect Rule theory, non-centralized peoples posed acute problems for British administrators in Africa. The Lango people of Uganda were an especially difficult case, since their social organization was highly fragmented and lacked even the cohesiveness of a segmentary lineage system. The first government chiefs, appointed from 1912 onwards, represented a measure of continuity with the pre-colonial order, since they were nearly all drawn from the ranks of the clan leaders. But a chief's territory seldom corresponded to any pre-colonial entity, while his wide-ranging executive and judicial powers were a complete novelty. During the period 1920–33 the majority of chiefs in all except the most senior county grade ceased even to be natives of their chiefdoms; this was due partly to the European preoccupation with bureaucratic standards, and partly to the success of the county chiefs in establishing patronage networks of their own placemen. As a result, abuse of chiefly power increased, while the ordinary population became more estranged from the colonial administrative structure. An exposé of maladministration in 2933 highlighted the contradictions of British policy in Lango, but it was not until the 1950s that radical reform along democratic lines was attempted.

In July 1924, the Liberian government suddenly banned the Universal Negro Improvement Association from Liberia, and this after over four years of apparent co-operation with the Association in its plans to settle New World Negroes in Liberia and generally to aid Liberia financially. Yet the ban could not have surprised anyone familiar with Liberian matters. The Liberian economy, which at the advent of the Association in 1920 was in a very bad state, was beginning to recover independently of the Association. Moreover, Britain and France, which had colonies nearby, abhorred the Association's anti-colonialism crusade, and Liberia feared to alienate these powers. But most importantly, the ruling Americo-Liberian class feared that the Association's immigrants might challenge its already entrenched, privileged position in Liberia, and probably end its exploitation and oppression of Liberia's indigenous African population, which provided labour and revenue for this class and for the Liberian government generally.

The absence of popular participation in the political process of post-independent Kenya should be seen as the outcome of a political tension, which has its roots in the colonial period. The growth of Nairobi, a colonial urban centre par excellence, provided unequal opportunities for its African population. The majority of the Nairobi Africans came to constitute the African crowd—domestic servants, the majority of workers in private and public employment, and petty traders. This group should be distinguished from the Nairobi African middle class which formed the ‘political élite’. The African middle class possessed a fairly high level of education and had remunerative positions with government or were wealthy traders. By the mid-'forties, this group had become well integrated within the colonial system.

The different, and often contradictory, interests of these two groups of people was strikingly manifested on the level of political action. The ‘popular movements’ of the African crowd were direct and often extra-constitutional. Their organizations, e.g. the 40 Group, were characteristically militant, and were often based on mass support. The ‘élite politics’ of the African middle class were strictly constitutional and moderate. Their goal—to consolidate their position within the colonial system—had obviously only limited appeal. The conflict between these two social groups was resolved by the elimination of the African crowd as a political force.

The ‘three-party system’ of Dahomey consists of a trio of regional fiefs, created by MM. Apithy, Maga, and Ahomadegbe in the early fifties. The development and persistence of regionalism can be attributed to a low level of economic change, an unusually high level of educational provision, a considerable diversity of ethnic groupings, and an exceptionally rapid process of enfranchisement.

Formal political organizations appeared in 1945 and 1946 in response to the constitutional innovations brought about by the Constituent Assemblies in Paris. Between 1946 and 1951 territorial politics were dominated by the Union Progressiste Dahoménne, a loosely structured body which, while claiming ‘mass’ membership, had many of the same leaders as pre-war élite associations and adopted a similar philosophy with regard to colonial reform. There was little attempt to ‘mobilize’ the hinterland or to get the support of the unenfranchised. The institutional arrangements of the period did not compel politicians to strive in either direction. They did encourage the consolidation of the personal authority of the deputy, over both his political associates and the voting public.

Regional parties were set up in and after 1951. Their creation was occasioned by a sudden, fivefold increase in the electorate, the granting of a second National Assembly seat to the territory, and a split within the U.P.D. leadership over the renomination of Apithy, deputy from 1946 to 1951.

Northern politicians, led by Hubert Maga, exploited the division within the U.P.D. and exploited also northern resentment over the party's indifference to the region. The northern component of the regional system came into existence (the G.E.N.D.—later M.D.D.), and was quickly followed by a south-eastern ‘bloc’, the undisputed property of Apithy. In the mid-fifties a third party, the U.D.D., appeared, to absorb the residual elements of regional (and urban) support left outside the Maga and Apithy fiefs.

The trading career of John Sarbah of Ghana is illustrative of the activities of a distinguished group of independent African coastal merchants in the late nineteenth century, and an analysis of his business methods helps to cast light on the general problems and operations of mercantile entrepreneurship in West Africa. The rise of the African merchants was the result of an interaction between indigenous and external factors. It would be a mistake to exaggerate the importance of the coastal trading sector in the development of the total economy of the country in the late nineteenth century; but it would appear that the major African merchants, led by John Sarbah, F. C. Grant, J. W. Sey and others, played a larger part in commercial development, 1865 to about 1895, than is commonly recognized in historical accounts. Sarbah's entrepreneurship was mainfested in his ability to manage with competence a network of stores and trading stations, to extend the market for manufactured merchandise, to open up new sources for cash export, and to assess risks and invest capital in his firm's expanision. Of particular importance were Sarbah's efforts to stimulate the collection and processing of palm kernels, to help lay a groundwork for the development of the rubber trade in Asin and Lower Denkyera in the early 1880s, and to extend the orbit of his trading operations to the southeastern Ivory Coast.

By the end of 1955, territorial politics in Dahomey were dominated by three parties, the P.R.D. of S. M. Apithy, the M.D.D. of Hubert Maga, and the U.D.D. of Justin Ahomadegbe and others. Each party relied upon electoral support in clearly defined regions: the P.R.D. depended on the south-east, the M.D.D. on the north, and the U.D.D. on the residual areas of central and south-western Dahomey. The U.D.D. claimed, however, to be a new kind of party, transcending the narrow regionalism of its rivals and commanding ‘mass’ support rather than the uncertain and conditional support provided by ‘vote contractors’.

The loi-cadre reforms of 1956—7 led to an intensification of party activity, since they provided for the creation of territorial executives founded on electoral majorities and at the same time introduced universal suffrage. The 1957 Territorial Assembly elections were therefore a testing-ground for the tactics and strength of the three parties. Under pressure from the P.R.D., the U.D.D. adopted selection procedures like those of its rival. Outside the main towns, its campaigning was similar, concentrating on local issues to the exclusion of the wider questions on which the U.D.D. had hoped to take its stand.

The colonial bequest in the history of land matters in Malawi began with the alienation of the best agricultural lands in the country to a few large estate owners. The promised security of tenure to the original inhabitants of the estates was never observed in full measure, and the colonial government itself attempted to remedy the original error by beginning to re-acquire land for African settlement as well as to attempt to offer some security of tenure to the African residents. These two efforts were accelerated and refined by the African government, and new related areas of relief were also introduced for the benefit of the African masses. The masses are, by nature, conservative, and the African government, forward-looking and attempting to redress the balance of unequal opportunities while at the same time formulating plans to get rid of the shackles of budgetary deficits, has to plan carefully and influence persuasively. Many of the changes introduced have yet to be tried over a number of years in different situations. For example, there is little public demand, as in Kenya, for individual title to land. ‘So although there is land pressure, the people do not want to split the family, and they do not yet appreciate the freedom of transfer provided by the Registered Land Act.’ There is, too, what is described as the disadvantages of the matrilineal system: ‘The men are a floating population and it is the women who are tied to the land. Family life is unstable and there is no solid ground on which to build a modern form of land tenure.’

This article concentrates on the events of 1958 in Niger. It tries to show that Djibo Bakary's power-base was a very weak one. This could be the reason why Djibo decided to opt for ‘No’ at the Referendum, namely that he needed command of the whole state machinery in order to crush his enemies, especially the chiefs. The French were bent on thwarting Djibo for geo-political reasons (e.g. the nearness of Algeria), but did so in a rather lighthanded way. In fact, Djibo brought about his own downfall through a number of miscalculations and blunders.