trans-Saharan Slave Trade Research Articles

Slave Trading, State Building - Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. By Dennis D. Cordell. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Pp. 283. $35, £35.

Slave Trading, State Building - Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. By Dennis D. Cordell. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Pp. 283. $35, £35. - Volume 28 Issue 1

Démographie et écologie en Afrique orientale à la fin du XIXe siècle : une crise exceptionnelle ?

J.-P. Chretien— Demography and Ecology in East Africa at the End of the icth Century : An Exceptional Crisis? Recent publications on East Africa in the 19th century and surveys on the history of the plains bordering lake Tanganyika in Burundi permit to critieize the stereo-typed opinion opposing a 'traditional' demographie standstill to a progress due to colonization. A relative prosperity is, indeed, broken off by a both demographie and economie crisis which reaches its peak between 1890 and 1930: the insecurity created by the Arab slave trade and European expeditions combines with droughts, locust invasion, cattle-plague, smallpox and sleeping sickness. It might be that the population of some regions then decreased by at least fifty per cent. Other crises probably affected East Africa (in about 1830 and 1870-1880), but their importance and impact can only be assessed through a cautious interpretation of scattered and indirect sources (hydrographical data, oral traditions...) which should be system-atically put back in their geographical and ecological setting. The history of societies and that of landscapes are closely linked.

Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Book Reviews - Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, by Dennis D. Cordell. xvii + 283 pages, appendices, bibliography, index. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison1985. $35.00.

Book Reviews - Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, by Dennis D. Cordell. xvii + 283 pages, appendices, bibliography, index. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison1985. $35.00.

Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Dar al-Kuti and the last years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

Journal Article Dar al-Kuti and the last years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade Get access Dar al-Kuti and the last years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade by Dennis D. Cordell. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1985. xvii + 283 pp. maps and tables. $35, ISBN 0 299 095207. MARION JOHNSON MARION JOHNSON Centre for West African Studies, University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 85, Issue 340, July 1986, Page 470, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097807 Published: 01 July 1986

Black Africa and the Arabs

BLACK Africa and the Arab world have been linked by a fluc tuating pattern of economic and cultural connections for at least 12 centuries. In the secular field the Arabs have up to this time played two major roles in black Africa: first as accom plices in African enslavement, and then in the twentieth century as allies in African liberation. In the past several years they have built this alliance into a comprehensive political partnership, aimed at maintaining a solid front, particularly with regard to the Middle East and Southern Africa. The critical question for the future is whether the Arabs will also become partners in African development. The relationship between Arabs and black Africans has always been largely asymmetrical?with the Middle East usually the giver, and black Africa usually the receiver. Throughout the history of their involvement in black Africa the Arabs have been both conquer ors and liberators, both traders in slaves and purveyors of new ideas. Trade and Islam have been companions throughout, with the crescent following the commercial caravan, the muezzin calling believers to prayer from the marketplace. The Arab slave trade was a significant part of this commerce from the ninth through the nineteenth centuries. While the transatlantic slave trade on the West coast of Africa was certainly larger and more important, the activities of Arab slavers on the Eastern seaboard lasted a few decades longer?until they were officially outlawed in the late i8oos. Thus Islam may have been somewhat compromised in East Africa by the nature of its purveyors (who, in addition to slaving, also created Arab city-states along the East coast). European colonization did, at any rate, arrest the spread of the religion in East Africa more effectively than in the West. In the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Malawi, Islamization came to an almost abrupt halt in the face of the Euro-Christian challenge.1 In West Africa, on the other hand, Islam has continued to expand in spite of the impressive coun tervailing efforts of Christian missionaries and of the technological prestige of European civilization. A number of West African coun tries, including Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, and Niger are now predominantly Muslim, as is the northern part of Nigeria.

Negro influences on Indonesia

The Rev. A. M. Jones in a recent article* on the relationship between Indonesian and African music has called attention to a very interesting cultural feature, but his deductions that Negro African music is indebted to Indonesia is open to grave doubt. The similarities in music between Indonesia and Africa are due to the impress that African Negroes, imported into Melanesia by the Arab slave trade, exerted on the culture traits of Indonesia.

THE BOOK OF THE QUARTER: THE EXPLOITATION OF EAST AFRICA1

PROFESSOR COUPLAND undertook some years ago to write an account of Sir John Kirk's life and work in Africa. The first volume appeared in 1928 and was given to Kirk's experiences as a member of the Zambezi Expedition under David Livingstone's leadership. Based upon Kirk's own daily journal, it is of extraordinary interest. Before Dr. Coupland could write on the most important part of Kirk's career-his twenty years of official service at Zanzibar-he found it necessary to make a detailed study of the previous history of mid-East Africa, of which only the barest outline was known. The outcome of that prolonged research was the volume reviewed by Mrs. Elspeth Huxley in the July JOURNAL. Now the third volume of the series has appeared; and it is good to know that a fourth, dealing with Livingstone's Last Journey, is in preparation. Of Livingstone's white companions, Kirk was probably the only one who ever really understood him-and the only one who could manage him. To these two men-such is Dr. Coupland's judgment-history must award the honour for the final overthrow of the Arab Slave Trade: Livingstone who did most to inspire the attack, Kirk who did most to carry it through. A measure of credit is due also to Barghashbin-Said, the Sultan of Zanzibar. His motives were not Livingstone's or Kirk's. Left to himself he would never have abolished the Slave Trade; nor would he have had the power to abolish it. The account here given of how Kirk prevailed upon him to take action is of absorbing interest. Kirk's amazing tact, his persistence, his firmness, the personal ascendancy he had established over the Sultan through many