The Journal of African History articles

Recent articles from The Journal of African History

The settlers' cattle complex: the etiquette of culling cattle in colonial Zimbabwe, 1938 *.
July 1, 2002... HISTORIANS of Africa have long realized that the control of animals was just as much a part of colonial rule as was the control of people. In settler colonies, for example, state control and the limitation of Africans' cattle, dogs and even donkeys was part of policies designed to control...

Out of Africa.
July 1, 2002... 'THERE is always something new coming out of Africa', proclaims the narrator of the film, The Ancient Africans, a documentary aired in 1985. This sentence, varied one way or another, and in particular shortened to 'out of Africa', in fact occurs repeatedly in the titles of films, scholarly...

The white camel of the Makgabeng *.
July 1, 2002... ROCK art studies have, over the years, been the undoing of a succession of great archaeological minds. One thinks, for instance, of the famous French prehistorian, the Abbe Henri Breuil, who saw a white lady in the Bushman (1) rock art of the Brandberg, Namibia. (2) The 'white lady' had an...

'I was afraid of Samuel, therefore I came to Sekgoma': Herero refugees and patronage politics in Ngamiland, Bechuanaland protectorate, 1890-1914 *.
July 1, 2002... IN EARLY 1904, as Herero (1) refugees fled the carnage of war in German South-West Africa (GSWA), M. G. Williams, the resident magistrate in Tsau, Ngamiland, Bechuanaland protectorate, was 'amused' to note that their arrival was opposed by Herero already living in the territory. (2) In so...

Characteristics of captives leaving the Cameroons for the Americas, 1822-37 *.
July 1, 2002... COMPARED to the information now available on the shipping part of the slave trade, and, indeed, on the experiences of slaves after they arrived in the Americas, we still know little about the people who were forced on board slave vessels on the African coast and only slightly more on how...