The relationships of the peoples of southern Africa after the establishment and expansion of the white settlement in the mid-seventeenth century can be seen in terms of both conflict and interdependence, both resistance and collaboration. The conflict often split over into warfare, not only between black and white, but also within both groups. As time passed, firearms came to be used by ever-widening circles of the combatants, often as much the result of the increased collaboration and interdependence between peoples as of the increased conflict. As Inez Sutton has pointed out, ‘in contrast to most of the rest of [sub-Saharan] Africa, the presence of a settler population ensured that the supply of arms was the most modern rather than the most obsolete’, and on the whole non-whites were acutely aware of changes in the manufacture of firearms in the nineteenth century.

The Portuguese historian of Mozambique, Alexandre Lobato, has referred to the ‘arms and powder, which guaranteed an overwhelming military superiority’ in the Zambezi hinterland, but a rapid survey of the evidence most easily available would suggest that, until the introduction of the maxim gun, the use of firearms seldom, if ever, constituted a decisive military advantage in Central Africa. Guns might sometimes decide the fate of battles, but by themselves they were insufficient to win a campaign. Yet cannon and muskets were undoubtedly the most valuable, and probably the most envied, commodity possessed by the Portuguese on the Zambezi, and the political and commercial role of firearms may well have been quite considerable.

Before the difaqane, warfare among the Sotho was usually little more than cattle-raiding. Some attacks were combined operations executed by all the fighting men of a chiefdom, but most were the exploits of a few adventurous individuals. The raiders would each be armed with a bunch of long spears, a knobkerrie and a light oxhide shield, and they would usually approach the enemy's cattle along river beds and through mountain kloofs, relying partly on surprise to achieve their ends. Occasionally the men who were guarding the herds would have prior warning of the attack, in which case they would be specially reinforced and would offer a spirited resistance, but more often they would be taken unawares, and they would then beat a hasty retreat and sound the alarm in the village: all the able-bodied men would thereupon join together in pursuit of the attackers in the hope of recovering their stock as it was being driven away. When the warriors of two chiefdoms clashed, they generally conducted their fighting at a considerable distance from each other, for their spears were more suitable for throwing than for stabbing, and their small shields were not designed to be impenetrable barriers in close conflict but to deflect missiles. If the two groups did come to grips with each other, the spears' bamboo handles could be broken and they could then be used for stabbing, but the most favoured weapon in this situation was the knobkerrie. Desperate battles, however, were rare, and in most of the Sotho's skirmishes their casualties were light.

Any survey of the effects of the possession and use of firearms among the Tswana and, to the north of them, the Ndebele and Shona peoples, must start with a brief investigation of firearms among the Khoikhoi and the mixed Khoikhoi-white groups. The latter were in some respects the vanguard of the expansions of the white frontier in southern Africa. They originated in unions between Khoikhoi and white hunters, traders and farmers, and probably never existed without firearms; from an early date they also acquired horses. In the middle years of the eighteenth century the Khoikhoi-whites and the Khoikhoi peoples, whose economic basis and political structure had been broken by various aspects of white settlement amongst them, were being armed by the whites to take part in commando expeditions against the San. There is evidence that some Khoikhoi trekked from the colony to avoid this service.

The earliest substantial references we have to the reaction of Zulu to firearms date from the 1820s and they show that any previous contact with such weapons must have been slight. The diaries of the English traders who arrived in the kingdom in the latter part of the 1820s point to a widespread fear of firearms on the part of Shaka's subjects—a fear not necessarily related to the missiles the guns discharged, but to the noise and smoke they emitted when fired. Dingane, in a discussion on strategy with his councillors which Isaacs overheard in 1830, said that:

if the white people were to come here to fight us, they need not fire at us, as the report from their pieces would strike you with terror, and while you ran one way, the Malongoes (whites) would drive off your cattle the other.

These notes are merely intended to point out some of the factors governing official policy towards the arms traffic in southern Africa in the years before the Brussels Act of 1890 came into force. They are sadly incomplete, having been collected in the course of other research, but are nevertheless put forward in the hope that they may add an extra dimension to this series of articles on the impact of firearms on the history of southern Africa.

Jusqu'en 1965 l'on ne connaissait pratiquement rien de la préhistoire de République Centrafricaine, aucune recherche systématique n'y ayant jamais été effectuée. Deux notes parues en 1933 permettaient cependant de penser que ce pays possédait, comme ses voisins, un patrimoine préhistorique. La premiàre, de l'abbé Breuil, décrivait en deux pages unesérie de pierres taillées détenue par le Musée de l'Homme à Paris, recueillie sur le plateau de Mouka par une mission géologique dirigée par F. Delhaye; une autre collection de même provenance était déposée à la même époque au Musée de l'Afrique Centrale à Tervuren en Belgique, elle y demeurait malheureusement inédite jusqu'en 1969 où nous pouvions la voir et l'étudier. La seconde note due à la plume de Félix Eboué était consacrée à l'ethnographie mais le premier chapitre décrivait quelques objets en pierre trouvés dans le centre-est du pays au cours de travaux miniers ou de constructions de ponts.

Mary Douglas has distinguished two kinds of primitive currencies, general purpose currencies, and primitive rationing systems. She describes Bohannan's analysis of the Tiv copper rod currency as the best example of a primitive rationing system. According to Bohannan, there were three levels of exchange in the Tiv economic system: everyday consumer goods in the lowest level, rods and prestige goods in the middle level, and wives and women in the highest level. Because rods were not divisible they were too valuable to be used for lower order transactions, and so ordinary people could not accumulate rods to purchase prestige goods. Nor could rods be accumulated to buy wives, the most desired and status-conferring possession in the system. Thus the rod currency reinforced the status divisions in Tiv society, and to Douglas appeared to be coupons in a system which rationed status.

However, despite Bohannan's analysis, there is ample evidence to show that elsewhere in the Cross River rod currency area, rods were divisible into wires which were used as a medium of exchange for everyday consumer goods, and were clearly a general purpose currency. By accumulating wires, which could be exchanged for rods, prestige goods and offices could be bought.

Because it was a general purpose currency, the rod facilitated credit, and the accumulation of capital in the capitalistic commercial system. Yet capitalistic means of production in crafts or agriculture were not adopted until the late 1870s, with the attempt to develop cocoa as a cash crop, which failed due to the unsuitability of the area. Instead surplus capital was converted into slaves, because they were wealth in themselves, and enhanced their masters' security and status.

The role of law in British expansion in Africa has received insufficient attention from historians, yet there is nothing new in the use of law as an instrument of imperial or colonial expansion. Law occupied an important position in the organization of the Roman Empire. The Norman kings strengthened their hold on medieval England by centralizing the administration of justice through the establishment of royal courts whose varied jurisdictions eventually became predominant throughout the whole country.

This paper discusses the circumstances in which English law was introduced into Yorubaland early in this century largely through a series of judicial agreements signed with a number of indigenous rulers. The primary consideration behind the making of the agreements was the protection of British commercial interests, but the importance of the agreements really transcends this objective. They provided a firm basis for the establishment of British colonial rule in this part of Nigeria—by making provisions for the punishment of criminal offences, by introducing a machinery of justice which struck at the sovereignty of the Yoruba states, and by ensuring the supremacy of English law over the indigenous laws and customs. The agreements also marked the beginning of the introduction into Yorubaland of new legal ideas and principles, which were a potent factor of social change.

The Nyasaland rising of 1915 has been dealt with previously within the perspective of proto-nationalism, and a hiatus has been emphasized between prophetae like Kamwana and the Baptist orthodoxy of Chilembwe. An analysis of the beliefs of many of the lesser lights in the rising, however, shows that millennial expectations were rife at the outbreak of the rising. Kamwana's prophecies of the advent of the millennium in October 1914 were provided with support by the outbreak of the First World War. The rising is analysed within the context of millennial belief in an attempt to show how a development from passivism to activism from October 1914 to January 1915 was the proximate cause of open revolt. The failure of the rising is discussed in terms of the religious ideology used to legitimize it, and the role of Watchtower beliefs is clarified. Evidence of millennial hopes is taken from trial reports of rebels and from correspondence confiscated after the rising at Ncheu and Chiradzulu.