Cattle have been known in northern East Africa for a long time. A single people initiated the spread of cattle farther south through southern East Africa, and partly into southern Africa, at a time prior to the expansion of Bantu-speakers into these regions. This spread was not accompanied by knowledge of milking. The milking of cattle, although very likely practised by some northern East African peoples since a very early period, diffused to Bantu peoples after their advance into eastern and southern Africa was well under way. The practice was probably borrowed from Southern Cushites first by Bantu in northern Tanganyika and through them transmitted to the rest of the eastern and southern Bantu.

The article considers the origin and validity of statements made by Budge, MacMichael, Crawford and Arkell associating the establishment of Ottoman control over Lower Nubia and the Suakin-Massawa region with Sultan Selim I. These statements are derived from Na‘ūm Shuqayr's Ta'rīkh al-Sūdān, which has two principal relevant passages. In the first, Shuqayr combines, and dates with misleading precision, two traditional anecdotes concerning Nubia, one derived from Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia (1819), the other an aetiological legend of a frontier-fight. The second passage mentions a legendary invasion of Abyssinia by Selim, and relates to a Fūnj (or ‘Abdallābī) claim to Arab ancestry. The personal connexion of Selim I with these exploits is wholly mythical: it is excluded by the detailed account of his acts during 1517 given by the contemporary chronicler, Ibn Iyās. The establishment of Ottoman rule in these two regions was the achievement of Özdemir Pasha in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, about the middle of the sixteenth century. The legend of the frontier-fight may refer to an even later episode, in the last quarter of that century.

Historians have frequently included the Bantu-speaking peoples of the eastern Kenya Highlands—Kikuyu, Embu, Mbere, Kamba, Meru, etc.—in the general migrations of the North Eastern Bantu from Shungwaya. The most authoritative statement in support of this view is set out in H. E. Lambert's The Systems of Land Tenure in the Kikuyu Land Unit: Part 1, History of the Tribal Occupation of the Land. However, only the Meru have oral traditions pointing to a Shungwaya origin, and chronological and linguistic evidence which Lambert presents himself suggests that the Meru experience may not be typical of this group of peoples. As evidence is lacking in their own traditions, proof of the migrations of the Kikuyu–Embu–Kamba from Shungwaya can only come from archaeology.

The oral traditions of the acephalous pre-contact Embu are critically summarized. The Shungwaya hypothesis concerning the origin of the Kikuyu and related peoples is examined and rejected. The possibility of using the Embu oral tradition as a source of historical information is discounted and some opportunities for linguistics and archaeology suggested. The paper concludes with a survey of Embu contacts with the coastal traders and early European-led parties.

The data on early commercial European establishments in Senegal and the Gambia from 1488 to about 1800 are summarized, with particular attention focused on two of them: the French Fort St Joseph on the Senegal River, and the English factory at Yamyamacunda on the Gambia River. These data provide brief but useful histories of their construction and occupation, and each is evaluated for its archaeological potential. The excavation of these and other early settlements discussed should provide trade goods which will be useful in identifying and dating native villages which were contemporaneous with them, thus establishing firm chronological horizons and the identification of native cultural units. It would also provide the basis for permitting more accurate estimates of the rate and nature of the culture change in the historic tribal groups.

Between the years 1700 and 1820 the Ashantis of central Ghana fought a number of wars in nearly all the territories now comprising modern Ghana. Most interpretations of these wars have linked them with the European trade posts on the southern coast and the Muslim trade settlements in the north. The Ashanti wars were therefore either raids or attempts to open trade-routes to the trade-posts. These interpretations have been possible because writers have ignored the Ashanti expansionary movement before 1700, and have also been unable to interpret correctly the political significance of the institutions by which the Ashanti attempted to extend their rule into some of the conquered territories, and to integrate them into what the Ashanti conceived as ‘Greater Ashanti’—a political community incorporating the conquered Akan states under the rule of the Golden Stool, the supreme stool of Ashanti.

When, then, the pre-1700 Ashanti tradition and the introduction of Ashanti judicial, political and politico-religious institutions into some of the conquered territories are carefully considered, it becomes clear, in the writer's view, that the so-called Ashanti ‘empire’ should be divided into three categories of states: provinces, ‘protectorates’ and tributaries, on the basis of their political distance from Ashanti. The provinces—like the Ashantis mainly Akan-speaking peoples—were considered and treated as part of a Greater Ashanti ‘political structure’. The ‘protectorates’ were treated as allies or protected peoples according as economic or political circumstance dictated. The tributaries formed the economic and manpower base of the Ashanti expansion. But it must be noted that these relationships were fluid, and fluctuated with Ashanti military and political fortunes. Finally, the Ashanti political experiment was halted by the British and was therefore inconclusive. The student can, therefore, hardly reach rigid conclusions.

Lastly it appears that, pre-literate in areas where the history student is faced with an absence of the historian's usual materials, the analysis of institutions is probably one of the most fruitful approaches.

A study of the weapons used by the armies is relevant to different aspects of Yoruba history, mainly military and political but also economic and even cultural. The article concerns those weapons which were in use before, as well as after, the general introduction of firearms into Yorubaland (which took place only between about 1820 and 1850). Oral and written tradition provides the background for the surviving weapons. Many of these weapons, or their ceremonial or symbolic counterparts, are preserved for ritual reasons by chiefs and societies.

Two main types of sword were in use among the Yoruba: the two-edged ida, reminiscent (although often only distantly) of European late-medieval swords, and the curved single-edged agedengbe. Various kinds of knives were also carried by warriors. Staff weapons consisted of the spear or lance, used by infantry and cavalry, and the throwing spear or javelin. The most important missile weapon was the bow; an example of a crossbow has also been found. The iron heads and barbs of spears and arrows conform to the main types found elsewhere in West Africa. A variety of percussion weapons (clubs) can be distinguished, in both wood and iron. The war standard provided a rallying point in battle. The arms, accoutrement and dress of the warrior can be reconstructed in some detail.

The evolution of these weapons was affected by the strategy and tactics of Yoruba warfare, the nature of the countryside (savanna and forest), the materials available, and imported prototypes. Most military equipment was of local manufacture, though European, North African and northern Nigerian influence can be detected.

The accounts of the Difaqane written in all the major histories of South Africa are based on three books which were written over fifty years ago: G. W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa; D. F. Ellenberger and J. C. Macgregor, The History of the Bosuto; and especially the earliest, G. M. Theal, History of South Africa.

Certain contradictions exist between the story as told in these accounts and the evidence brought to light by the publication of the journals of Robert Moffat and David Livingstone. The object of this study is to reconstruct the events of the wars from the broadest possible evidence to give a more complete description, and thereby to test the revision implicit in the new information.

This revision is required properly to identify the participants in the battles which were observed by Europeans in the western Tswana lands, especially the battle at Dithakong. In the earlier histories all the battles were attributed to the ‘Mantatee’, a name properly applied to one group of Tlokwa ruled at the time by the regentess, MmaNthatisi. Now it is possible to show that these Tlokwa were never in the west, but restricted their migrations to the valley of the Caledon River. Nor can their enemies, the Hlubi of Mpangazita and the Ngwane of Matiwane, be blamed, for they too remained in the east. Rather, the victims of these three bands, the Sotho peoples of the Caledon valley, can be identified as the aggressors among the Tswana beyond the Vaal. Moffat identified the Phuting of Tshane and the Hlakwana of Nkgaraganye. Livingstone demonstrated the role played by Sebetwane and his Fokeng, and Thomas Hodgson implicated Moletsane, the Taung.

While many gaps in our information still exist, this reconstruction seems to justify the revision of the accepted account of the Difaqane.

In the nineteenth century the Portuguese government became engaged in a long struggle with the most powerful of the landowning families of the Zambezi—the famous prazo holders. Beginning as a domestic affair brought about by the weakness of the administration, the wars eventually developed into a struggle for the survival of even the vestiges of Portuguese rule on the Zambezi. The Portuguese government mounted nine expeditions before it was finally successful in 1888. The prazo holders, for their part, gathered round them the tribes and families broken up by the wars and by the raids of the Landim and Ngoni, and their resistance became, by the end, a general struggle of the African peoples of the lower Zambezi, not so much for independence, as against any alteration in the way of life of the ‘Rivers’—against westernization. Most of the fighting centred round the stronghold of Massangano at the junction of the Luenha and Zambezi rivers a few miles below Tete. The ‘aringa’ at Massangano was destroyed finally in 1888 but there are still extensive remains of it and of other sites connected with the Zambezi wars. The expedition reported in this paper made a plan of the ‘aringa’ of Massangano and was able to show the continuity in building tradition between the Portuguese ‘fairs’ built in Mashonaland in the seventeenth century, the Swahili east-coast sites and the nineteenth-century building in the Zambezi valley. The expedition was also intended to form some estimate of the potential of the virtually unworked fields of Moçambique archaeology and tradition, and by making two detailed studies to attract other workers to the same area.