Au premier millénaire avant notre ère, l'Ethiopie entre en contact avec la culture sémitique. Cette recontre donne lieu à l'élaboration assez rapide d'une synthèse où l'élément aborigène — les Proto-Ethiopiens — s'assimile une religion, des usages étrangers et se crée de nouveaux modes d'existence. Les plus anciens monuments archéologiques témoins de ce fait, trouvés sur les hauts plateaux du nord, datent des environs du cinquième siècle avant J.-C. Ce sont essentiellement des statues, un trône sculpté en pierre, des inscriptions ,des autels votifs. La culture éthiopienne de cette période dérive de la culture sudarabique, et s'en distingue. Un processus d'évolution est alors amorcé dont l'aboutissement sera l'instauration du pouvoir axoumite aux premiers siècles de l'ère, et la fondation d'Axoum comme capitale d'un royaume dont la durée s'étendra sur un millénaire.

On peut diviser en trois périodes le déroulement de l'antiquité éthiopienne: période sudarabisante, période intermédiaire, et période axoumite. Deux sites illustrent les étapes de cette évolution: Matara, surtout par sa stratification, et Axoum où récemment une mission de l'Institut Ethiopien d'Archéologie a mis au jour les vestiges importants d'une demeure seigneuriale (château) de la période axoumite.

Dans ce bilan de l'acquis nouveau en archéologie éthiopienne, nous donnons un bref aperçu des recherches en préhistoire et protohistoire. Les faits marquants sont principalement les résultats obtenus par une mission internationale dans la basse vallée de l'Omo (notamment, la découverte du Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus) et les travaux de J. Chavaillon sur le site de Melka-Kontouré oà se trouvent en stratification quasiment toute la série des industries de la préhistoire africaine depuis la Pebble Culture.

Oral tradition as a source for African history has been subject to a certain amount of controversy in recent decades. These discussions have clarified both the uses and the problems of oral data; they have.raised important methodological issues, but they have also beclouded others. At the higher theoretical levels, the debate has involved the philosophy of history and the nature of historical knowledge. These issues are both interesting and important, but the discussion is not very helpful to the working historian.

Consecutive articles in the pages of this Journal, based in part on a larger and forthcoming work, are intended to reopen the question of Afro-Malagasy connexions. Like its African counterpart, Malagasy history needs to be revised. New approaches to local history and the data assembled are meant to show in some detail that the cultural, linguistic and human presence of Africa in the Great Island can no longer be either denied or simply assumed without any supporting data. The initial article concerns the Bara of the southern Malagasy plateau. While their history has hardly been studied, the Bara merit the unique distinction of being often seen as ‘Africans’ of Madagascar who came to the island sometime in the eighteenth century. The arguments brought to bear on this verdict are utterly unacceptable to historians from the point of view of method and evidence. A reassessment of their past points to a Bara presence in Madagascar at least two centuries earlier. Bara history and available linguistic and ethnographic data suggest connexions with Rhodesia and western Moçambique without the slightest evidence for any wholesale migration.

The Hehe now live mainly in the Iringa and Mufundi districts of Tanzania. Little is known of their early history before the mid-nineteenth century, when chief Munyigumba of Ng'uluhe extended his rule over the other chiefdoms of the Usungwa highlands and central plateau of Uhehe. By his death in ca. 1878 he had also won important victories against the chiefs of Utemikwila, Usangu and Ungoni.

After Munyigumba/s death the Hehe suffered a temporary set-back when Mwambambe, who had been a subordinate ruler under Munyigumba, tried to usurp the chiefship, killed Munyigumba's younger brother and caused one of his sons, Mkwawa, to flee to Ugogo. However, eventually Mwambambe was killed in battle against Mkwawa, and his surviving followers, whom he had recruited from Kiwele, fled. By 1883, when Giraud visited Uhehe, Mkwawa was the unchallenged ruler of his father/s lands, and under him the Hehe, who had only recently acquired political unity, had extraordinary military success. Their most important raids were on the caravan route which ran from Bagamoyo on the coast to Lake Tanganyika. By 1890 these raids were a threat to German authority and a major obstacle in the way of colonization and the development of trade. In spite of the Germans' effort to make peace with them, the Hehe persisted in attacking caravans and the people who had submitted to the Germans so, in 1891, a German expedition was sent to Uhehe. This was ambushed and defeated by the Hehe, who then continued their raids, causing the Germans to return in 1894 with a larger expedition and destroy the Hehe fort. Chief Mkwawa may have attempted suicide in the fort, but he was persuaded to flee and then maintained his resistance to the Germans until 1898 when he shot himself to avoid capture. The Hehe then submitted to the Germans. Mkwawa's own determination not to surrender was a very important factor in the long struggle. During this war the Germans acquired a respect for the Hehe which has affected the way that the Hehe have been regarded and treated ever since.

A recent authoritative review of developments in African historiography pointed to one 'kind of synthesis which has always seemed worthwhile undertaking’, the attempt to trace ‘an historic connexion between the last-ditch resisters, the earliest organisers of armed risings, the messianic prophets and preachers, the first strike-leaders, the promoters of the first cautious and respectful associations of the intelligentsia, and the modern political parties which (initially at least) have been the inheritors of European power’.

For sixty-one years, from 1895 to 1955, the area known as the Transkeian Territories was the scene of an ‘experiment’ in local government based on district councils of elected members under the chairmanship of White magistrates. These councils were essentially advisory, and initiated proposals for expenditure on a range of parochial matters such as the building and maintenance of roads and bridges, water conservation, postal services and fencing. The twenty-six district councils were integrated into the United Transkeian General Council, or Bunga, which met annually in Umtata, and which was composed of delegates from the District Councils and the magisterial District Chairmen. The General Council operated engineering and agricultural departments, and spent considerable sums on soil and water conservation.

D.E.K. Amenumey dans son remarquable article sur l'extension de l'administration britannique aux Anlo (du Sud Est Ghana) 1850–90 illustre sa démonstration par une carte dont les limites de l'Eweland sont — en ce qui concerne la République du Togo — partiellement inexactes.