For a variety of reasons the extent, number and severity of Ndebele raids upon the Shona-speaking peoples have been greatly exaggerated in the past. Moreover most studies of the Ndebele have failed to take into account the fact that the Ndebele conquered an already well-established Shona state with an economy linked with the Indian Ocean trade. This article seeks to show that the bulk of Ndebele raiding before 1873 was a response to both the political and military threat of the Changamire Rozvi dynasty and to the economic needs of the state that had been taken over. Even so, Ndebele raids were limited in extent and duration, and the two decades after 1873 saw a steady revival of Shona strength. In spite of Ndebele raids aimed at preventing this process, the independent Shona strengthened themselves by re-arming and ‘alliances’, and were able to take part in the eventual overthrow of the Ndebele kingdom.

This article is a condensed version of a paper presented at the History Workshop, Gaborone, September 1973.

Ras Alula played a significant role in the political history of northern Ethiopia during the period between the Egyptian invasion in 1875 and the Italian defeat at Adwa in 1896. Alula became well-known in Ethiopia and Europe for his role in shaping his country's relations with its African neighbours and with European powers. But his role in the internal history of Ethiopia was no less significant. This son of a peasant managed to avoid the restricted local agrarian social ladder by becoming the best general of the Tigrean emperor Yohannes IV (1872–89). As the ‘king's man’, Alula's power was based on his position in the court and on the province (Eritrea) over which he was appointed. But the leading Tigrean families rejected him. When Yohannes died and Eritrea was lost to the Italians, Alula became the most powerful champion of Tigrean independence from the new Shoan emperor, Menilek II. A Tigrean court seemed to be his only opportunity to maintain his position of a ‘king's man’, without which he would have to return to the local agrarian social ladder. After four years of resistance to the new Shoan hegemony, Alula submitted to Menilek and was rewarded with the long-desired position of ‘the king's man’. His recognition of Menilek may be regarded as a fatal blow to Tigrean independence.

The history of cocoa production in Western Nigeria is an example of a successful innovation in the Schumpeterian sense of the term—a new productive activity which, when adopted by a number of producers, leads to economic growth and structural change within a given institutional and social context. Cocoa growing spread in Western Nigeria through the efforts of migrant farmers, many of whom relied on traditional, non-economic institutions, such as the lineage or ethnic community, to mobilize the economic resources they needed to establish cocoa farms. From an examination of the activities of migrant farmers in three Yoruba states—Ibadan, Ife and Ondo—it is argued that the spread of cocoa farming probably strengthened these traditional institutions. At the same time, it has effected significant changes in the volume, organization and geographical distribution of rural economic activity in Western Nigeria.

Although the primary initiative in nineteenth-century Ethio-European relations came from Europe, the Ethiopian princes recurrently showed an active desire to exploit the European presence. In the first half of the century, the most active Ethiopian diplomat was Dajjāch Webē of Semēn and Tegrē (fl. 1830s–1855). Webē is taken as representative of such princes as Rās Ali and Negus Sāhla Sellāsē, who from 1827 to 1862 repeatedly launched initiatives and refined their objectives. The latter arose primarily from the desire for immediate aggrandizement and expressed themselves most commonly in the search for advanced weapons; but wider issues and the control of military technology were not ignored. The dramatic career of Emperor Tēwodros has obscured the extent to which his predecessors foreshadowed his own foreign policy. A closer look suggests that his predecessors were just as active as Tēwodros, and lacked only his breadth of understanding.

The strike at the Wankie Colliery in 1912 offers the labour historian of central Africa an opportunity to explore in some depth the economic and social context of an African response within a colonial industry. The system of cheap labour at Wankie periodically combined with severe production pressures to produce outbreaks of scurvy amongst the African miners. In normal years, workers alleviated the need for nutritious food by scouring the surrounding countryside but this was not possible in a drought year. Under drought conditions the outbreak of scurvy, limited access to alternative food resources and the maldistribution of rations within the compound all assumed increased importance. The policies and practices of the acting compound manager and his black compound staff served further to exacerbate tensions in the Wankie compound and precipitate a strike.

Although the strike at Wankie offers further evidence of worker consciousness in early Rhodesian industry the events in the compound should not be interpreted as a sign of real or potential African radicalism. Closer examination of the African responses at Wankie reveal the essentially conservative nature of many of the demands made by the workers. It seems possible that in Rhodesia the power of the state over a colonial political economy and the repressive nature of the compound system combined to inhibit more radical responses. At Wankie, workers questioned the functioning of a repressive system, not the system itself. In many respects events at Wankie were typical of the Rhodesian mining industry and as such the strike serves to illustrate the vulnerable class position of African workers in a colonial economy.

In 1923–30 the League of Nations investigated the shipment of migrant labour between Liberia and the Spanish island colony of Fernando Po. Although the League concentrated its attention on Liberia, a closer examination reveals labour abuse as very much the product of conditions on Fernando Po itself. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, black planters on the island shifted from palm oil trading to cocoa cultivation. Dependence on migrant labour and increasing competition from Europeans resulted in economic crisis in the first years of the twentieth century, with detention of labour and the nonpayment of contracts as the outcome. The eventual investigation of the trade was the product of a desire to conserve Liberian labour for use on the African mainland, rather than an attempt to relieve its abuse.

This article has argued that under António Salazar Portuguese colonial policy was altered from one which envisaged the ultimate growth and development of the African colonies to one which emphasized colonial stability. Between 1928 and 1930 he took steps to diminish the role of foreign capital in the colonies, weaken the influence of special interest groups, restrict Portuguese emigration to the colonies, and bring colonial autonomy to an end. As a result of these measures, Salazar ensured that metropolitan Portugal would be the chief beneficiary of the exploitation of the Portuguese colonies.

For over nine hundred years the African inhabitants of South Central Africa engaged in the production and trading of gold. The attention of archaeologists and historians, however, has focused mainly on gold reef mining. By comparison, alluvial goldwashing has been neglected, although it was practised by Africans both before and after the period during which they exploited gold reef mines. Probably at its greatest volume between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, the gold trade thereafter declined, but the mining and trading of alluvial gold continued to be relatively important in the nineteenth century in what is now north-eastern Rhodesia. Largely a seasonal activity, goldwashing was normally washing was increasingly subject to interference and attempted suppression as settlers sought t o exploit alluvial areas themselves and force Africans into wage labour. This attempted suppression did not always have the intended results but may be seen generally as part of the wider structural underdevelopment of the African peasantry and precolonial industries in Southern Rhodesia.

Colonial rule embodied as a concomitant aspect ideological justifications based on racial and cultural differences, acceptance of which by the governed led to the development of a symbiotic relationship between the cultures of paternalism and subservience, a symbiosis often involving numerous ‘working misunderstandings’ arising from the application of conceptual models which had proven meaningful under quite different circumstances. This article examines the conceptual models which influenced European perceptions of Tiv society, the consequent ‘working misunderstandings’ which underlay the symbiotic relationship between government and a society subject to its jurisdiction but which had its own particular traditions, and the changes which appear to have occurred in Tiv value systems, institutions, and traditions in response to new situations. It is hoped that it will be of general interest to social and political historians, as well as those concerned with methodological problems relating to the use of ethnographic data.

F. S. Malan's role, and the influence of the Cape ‘liberal’ tradition in the post-Union era, have been seriously under-estimated. As Minister of Mines and Industries and effective Minister of Native Affairs, Malan was responsible for the passage of a comprehensive system of labour legislation between 1913 and 1924, linked to a new initiative in ‘native policy’ in urban areas. The limitations of such an initiative must, however, not be lost sight of, for in the last analysis few of the Cape ‘liberals’ would have been prepared to face the full social and economic, let alone the political implications of a multi-racial society, and Malan was no exception. His initiative can best be seen as differing in tone rather than in substance from the politics of his colleagues. In his defence of the Cape franchise, Malan sought to defend African citizenship rights within a limited ‘political’ context. It was only during the brief period after 1918 that he attempted a settlement of race and industrial problems, but even then, as a Cape ‘liberal’, he never challenged the basis of the status quo in South Africa. Yet it is still true to say that he was ousted from party politics in the Union after 1924 largely because he persistently adhered to a different political tradition to that held by those who led both the SAP and the National Party.

This article attempts to examine the reaction of the anti-colonial nationalists in British West Africa to the diplomacy of their ruling colonial power with regard to the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of 1935–6. This reaction was largely influenced by the nationalists' claim to special relationship with Britain and their firm belief not only in British power but also in the British ‘gospel of equity and fair-play’. Consequently, when Britain and France, because of their obsession with the need for security, failed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of the symbolic and sole surviving black empire of Ethiopia, these race- conscious nationalists rashly concluded that there was a concerted plot among the whites against the black race. This belief was reinforced first by the refusal of Britain and France to supply arms to Ethiopia during the conflict; secondly, by the infamous Hoare–Laval peace pact of December 1935, which would have compromised Ethiopia's independence had it been implemented; and thirdly, by British recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Disenchantment with the League of Nations, coupled with the disillusionment with the diplomacy of the colonial powers during the crisis, led the articulate nationalists to begin seriously to reconsider their relationship with Britain and the whole doctrine of the ‘civilising mission’. Their nationalism shifted from the idea of working within the trusteeship concept to a more militant anti-white pan-Africanism.

The outbreak of World War II is generally regarded as having had profound consequences for the future of the colonial world. These consequences are usually linked to such largely external factors as the signing of the Atlantic Charter, the participation of colonial subjects in Allied armies, and the demands made for political reforms by colonial officials and metropolitan political groups. Of equal importance for the rapid pace of political change ushered in by the war, however, were developments within the colonial territories themselves. For one thing, the world depression of 1929 lasted right up to the war in many African countries. A connexion can often be drawn between the ‘unfavourable terms of trade, the declining revenues … the pessimism of the period 1930–45’ and the emerging anti-colonial movement. In the case of certain countries, however, this general economic explanation must be broadened to take other factors into account. For example, in the Ivory Coast, the contradiction between African cash-crop agriculture on the one hand and, on the other, such colonial policies as forced labour and the indigénat which favoured European agriculture was also at the root of the discontent. In the Congo, the excessive demands made on the rural population to produce for the ‘war effort’—following upon similar exactions during the depression years—reinforced the oppressive apparatus of the colonial state and, in turn, heightened the discontent.

This article surveys a number of recent attempts to explain Ganda receptivity to change during the last hundred years, and suggests that the supposed Ganda ‘urge to excel’ was as much a result of modernization as its principal cause. The article also stresses that modernization in Buganda has proved an extremely patchy business, but that before any serious attempt can be made to relate the patches to more general theories it is necessary to tackle a variety of prior problems. Among those requiring especial attention in Buganda are political ideologies articulated by particular interest groups, the economic fortunes and misfortunes of political agitators, and certain unintended consequences of particular shifts in British colonial policy.