Accounts by 179 Africans of how they came to be enslaved are analysed. The Africans were drawn from a wide range of tribes in Western tropical Africa: their accounts were recorded in Freetown around 1850, and appear in S. W. Koelle's Polyglotta Africana of 1854. The majority of the informants were men enslaved before they were aged thirty; who shortly after enslavement were taken to the coast and shipped, then recaptured, liberated, and brought to Freetown; and who had lived in Freetown for a decade before they were interviewed. One third of the informants had been enslaved after capture in war, another third had been kidnapped by other tribes or by fellow-tribesmen. The remainder had not been enslaved by direct violence, but had been sold by relatives or superiors, Sometimes to meet a debt, sometimes, after a judicial process, as criminals.

This article re-evaluates the jihād of Usuman dan Fodio. It first traces the history of the age-old Sudanic pattern of royal tolerance, and sometimes encouragement, of learned Muslims without the implementation of their demands for reform. Then it shows that Usuman and the sarki of Gobir at first interacted according to this pattern. But, finding this relationship unsatisfactory and unlikely to produce the reforms he desired, Usuman sought to remain on cordial terms with the court but intensified his appeal to the people of Hausaland and possibly his criticisms of the existing political and social orders. He attracted followers, not so much because they sympathized with his religious goals, as because in his person and in his criticisms their own discontent with Hausa government and society could find expression. Usuman's eventual conflict with the sarkuna did not arise because he actively sought or plotted it; it arose because the sarkuna felt compelled to abandon their hitherto concessive relations with Usuman in order to attempt to contain his appeal, to undermine his authority, and finally to threaten the existence of his community. An analysis of the conduct of the jihzād bears out an emphasis on Usuman's preference for peaceful pressure, on his lack of planning for a war, and on his many-sided relationship with his followers. The necessity of justifying a war he had not sought, together with the largely secular interests of his followers, gave a tone to the jihād not totally in keeping with its avowed aims. However, because Usuman's leadership was essential, he managed to overcome the many factors which militated against its unity.

In most of Ethiopia the Galla preserved, to a great extent, their ‘democratic’ traditional social and political institutions until the twentieth century. However, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, one hears of five Galla centralized despotic monarchies in southwestern Ethiopia. It seems that this was the culmination of a long process by which the authority of the traditional officeholders among the Macha Galla was gradually strengthened. As the Macha became more sedentary, they were greatly influenced by the Sidama among whom they lived and by Muslim merchants from north Ethiopia who settled in the area from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The most famous among the Macha monarchies were Limmu-Enarea and Jimma-Kakka. It is believed that Enarea was established by Bofo (Abba Gomol), the son of Boku, in the first or possibly in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Jimma-Kakka emerged in the 1830s, after a number of Jimma tribes were united by Abba Jifar-Sana.

One is led to believe that the monarchical system was adopted by the Macha tribes in order that they might be better able to take advantage of the revival of trade between southwestern Ethiopia and the coast. Enarea and Jimma clashed continuously, from the late 1830s, over the issue of the revenue from this trade. Finally, in the third quarter of the century Jimma emerged triumphant and Enarea sank again to obscurity.

It is intriguing to speculate on the possible crucial influence of commerce, aided by Sidama tradition and Islam, on the emergence of the Macha Galla monarchies.

One of the most fascinating, if misunderstood, fundamentalist sects operating in Central Africa is the body whose members term themselves Jehovah's Witnesses, the fellowship whose corporate identity is the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Incorporated, of Brooklyn, New York. Their British branch, the International Bible Students' Association, has struggled most with varieties of recalcitrant African material, and in this unrewarding enterprise operations have been directed into the Rhodesias and Nyasaland from South Africa.

During the first years of British rule at the Cape, a complacency, reinforced by a disregard for colonial conditions and by a disdain for day-to-day supervision, relegated land administration to a marginal function of the Cape Town and London governments. The first major change in the land code was made in 1812 by Governor Cradock, who wanted to obtain the loyalty of the Boer in order to ensure continued British overlordship of the colony, but from 1813 to 1828 and beyond, Government failed to develop an effective administrative system for processing the applications for land grants under the Cradock code. No check was made on the incompetent officials in Cape Town who were entrusted with transforming the decrees of government into a workable land alienation system. On occasion, London, which had but a fleeting interest in land policy in the period under review, imposed new restrictions on the administrative process in order to obtain some other goal. The persistent lack of constructive activity by the British suggests that they did much to prevent the Boer from identifying himself with the Cape Town government.

By Article 17 of the Treaty of Uccialli, the Italian Government did not intend to establish a protectorate over Ethiopia, but only to preponderate among all the other Nations by obliging Menelik to use the Italian channel as portalettere (postman); even so, Antonelli was authorized to modify or even to suppress this article. When Antonelli discussed the matter with Menelik, the latter refused to accept an obligation; both negotiators agreed that the text of the Article should reflect only an option. This agreement was correctly transcribed in the Amharic text, but not in the Italian one. Antonelli, giving more weight to oral than to written understandings, left unchanged the original wording of the draft he had brought from Rome, i.e. consente (Menelik binds himself to use Italy as postman).

Against the opinion of Antonelli, Crispi decided to take advantage of Article 17, using the opportunity created by the General Act of Berlin, 1885. In October 1889 he notified the Article to the signatories of the said Act, in spite of the fact that Ethiopia was not on the African coast and that Article 17 was not a formula on which a protectorate could be based. The acknowledgement of such a notification gave birth to the Italian protectorate. It was at this moment that the imbroglio was created, by Crispi and not by Antonelli.

The third list of radiocarbon dates for Sub-Saharan Africa later than 1000 b.c. is considerably longer than its predecessors. As new laboratories commence operations, so more and more dates become available. During the last eighteen months, many more dates from Rhodesian Iron Age sites have been processed, where the earliest Iron Age peoples are now dated to the fourth century a.d. if not earlier. The Kalomo culture in Zambia is now securely dated. Iron smelting furnaces were being operated on the Witwatersrand in South Africa by a.d. 1000, and it is now known that Iron Age peoples were living by the Kuene river in Angola by the eighth century. Recent dates from Katanga have shown that there was a flourishing copper trade there by the same period. An important series of dates have been processed from Saharan Neolithic sites, indicating that the Sahara was suitable for pastoral peoples in the fourth century b.c. Another date for the Nok culture in Nigeria places the later stages of the culture in the third century a.d.

By a resolution of the Cambridge Radiocarbon Conference, all dates are now calculated relative to a.d. 1950.

Professors Curtin and Vansina in a recent issue of this journal (V (1964), 2, pp. 185–208) have put us in their debt by synthesizing the available information on the sources of the nineteenth-century Atlantic slave trade. For the Cameroons Highlands, a source well represented in Koelle's Polyglotta Africana, we have some corrections to make and comments to add.

This article examines the various ways by which Edward Wilmot Blyden, the most outstanding Negro intellectual of the nineteenth century, worked for the creation of a West African community, and thereby demonstrates that the idea of a united West Africa is not of twentieth-century origin, as has generally been supposed.

The article discusses the contacts between the proto-nationalist Gold Coast Aborigines' Rights Protection Society and left-wing and Communist organizations in Europe and in Britain during the 1930s. The Society represented the interests of chiefs, merchants and barristers who found their political and economic positions threatened by the depression and by the tightening up of colonial rule. The Society reacted by petitioning the British Government for greater political representation and for redress of specific grievances. Left-wing groups in Europe at first regarded the Society as a popular nationalist body and offered it support. The Profintern attempted to influence it, while organizations such as the League Against Imperialism helped the Society in its petitions to the Colonial Office and to the House of Commons. But the narrow social base of the Society made it deaf to a radical socialist programme, and incapable of organizing a mass movement which could effectively pressure the British Government.