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Zanzibar as the ivory market for East Africa, supplying 75 % of the world's tota

ephant ivory in this period is linked directlytotheeconomiesof thetextile-producingcities of theNetherlands,EnglandandnorthernFrance

sks and other products (honey, wax, skins of big cats, rhinoceros horns,

tusks and other products (honey, wax, skins of big cats, rhinoceros horns, and so on) with Swahili merchants for shells and items manufactured by Swahili artisans specifically for inland trade, including glass beads, metal knives, arrowheads, spears and jewellery

The last leg of ivory’s journey from Alexandria or the Maghrib to northern Europe, therefore, took place courtesy of Italian merchants, at first Genoese and then others. The elephant tusks were brought to Majorca, where they were loaded with a large volume of alum and a small quantity of other precious goods on ships destined for the textile centres of the north.

The increased supply of ivory in northern Europe echoes precisely the increasing frequency of these Mediterranean-Atlantic voyages: prior to the elephant ivory

ntil the early nineteenth century, ivory was obtained in sufficient quantity from the coast to meet demand, but, writing in the i84os, the missionary Krapf observed that, although the elephant was still found in some areas near the coast, ivory caravans were now making regular trips into Usagara, Masailand and the Kikuyu countries

Mediterranean Sea.

fierce storms

Portugal’s exploring aims were largely commercial. The Portuguese wanted to find a sea route around Africa to the riches of Asia. Like other European powers, they wanted to trade directly in valuable Asian spices. The older trade routes to Asia were becoming increasingly blocked to them.

The Portuguese wanted to end Muslim control over northern Africa. That desire was one of several reasons why Portugal explored the continent in the 15th century. Spreading Christianity in Africa was another motive for Portuguese exploration, along with scientific curiosity. They also sought great wealth.

The Portuguese also wanted to establish trade with western Africa. Gold, ivory, and African slaves had long been traded across the Sahara to Muslims in the north.

By the time Henry died in 1460, his navigators had explored the coast as far south as Sierra Leone. For a time the Portuguese were busy fighting the Moroccans, and few exploring expeditions were sent out. John II became king of Portugal in 1481. Under John, the Portuguese once again began exploring Africa regularly

stone pillar

For the next 15 years, Livingstone was constantly on the move in the African interior. First, he ventured north of Cape Town into the Kalahari, a vast dry plain. By 1842 he had already traveled farther north in the Kalahari than any other European. In 1844 he traveled to Mabotsa to establish a mission station. Along the way he was mauled by a lion, and his left arm was injured. The following year Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter Mary. She accompanied him on many of his travels.

Modern exploration of the Nile basin began when Egypt conquered Sudan starting in 1821. As a result, the Egyptians learned more about the courses of the Blue Nile and the White Nile. A Turkish officer, Selim Bimbashi, led three expeditions between 1839 and 1842. Two of them reached the point in what is now South Sudan where rapids make navigation of the Nile difficult.

in a few

to gav, they cannot go awar too fast; for, even here, my Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. * Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to mv Lruiy, under tiio worn-out heavens. On last .Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within tho walls, playing with

family; above all. of my Lady, whom the world jfdmires; hut if my lady would only ho “a little more tree,” not quite so cold and distant. Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be moro affable. “ Tis almost a pity.” Mrs. Rouncewell adds—only “almost," because it borders on impiety to suppose that anything could bo bettor than it is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedloek affairs ; “that my lady has no family. lishe had had a daughter now, a grown young lady, to interest her, I think sho would have had tho only kind of excellence she wants.” “ Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother ?” says Watt; who has been home and come back again, ho is such a good grandson. TO BE CONTINUED. MADAME ALBONI. Wo have already announced tho arrival in this country of Madame Alboni, tho famous European songstress, who is to fill a prominent place in musical comments and criticism, in America for tho next few months.— Our reader willho glad to learn who she is, what sho has done, and what are her pretensions ; and wo copy for their benefit tho following from tho .Vein York Times: Marietta Alboni was horn in Cesena, in 1820, of respectablo parentage. Her scholastic education was necessarily limited, as at tho age of eleven she was placed under the musical pupilage of the famous master Bagioli, one of the first musicians of tho day, from whom sho acquired tho rudiments of her art. For some timo sho enjoyed tho instruction of Rossini, at the Bologna Lycum, and eventually made her debut, about ton years sinco, at the great Theatre of La Seala, inMilan. Her success was brilliant, and was conformed by a run of four successive seasons. Following tho usual path of artistic merit, sho next commenced a series of engagements at Vienna, whence, after the most triumphant reception, she was carried off to >St. Petersburg by the# Czar.— 1ho famo of tho cantatrice, established at Vienna, was fully confirmed at the Russian capital, and given to Europe as a fixed fact. She turned her face Praiseward, giving concerts and entertainments of tho rarest excellence as sho pursued a circuitous journey through Germany, and was hailed at the centre of European taste with unqualified admiration. With tho exception of occasional engagements in London, and a recent journey to Brussels, sho has made her head-quarters at the French capital for tho past two years. One of tho scenes of her residence in Paris was a grand fete at Versailles, at which sho and the Prince President were the ruling spirits. Signorini Alboni is not a handsome woman: hut lias what is better—an untainted reputation, and a character for many virtues, among which liberality is not the least. She brings her train Signors Rove re and Sangoivanni, a tenor and baritone, accustomed to support her admirable voice. The voice of this celebrated cantatrice is, in musical parlance, contralto. Itisofwonderful compass, embracing, with perfect ease, the extreme upper and lower notes, and is managed with a skid and grace only surpassed by its rich melody and power. Though assigned to the contralto parts, at Her Majesty s Theatre, during tho great season of the World's Exhibition, she was the reigning attraction ot that aristocratic establishment. American Influence in Europe. —“ I onnnot help taking a very warm and eager interestin tho fortunes of yourpeople. There is nothing, and tltero never was anything so grand and so promising as the condition and prospects of your country; and nothing I conceive morecertain than that in severity years after this itscondition w illbe by furthe most important element in tho history of Europe. Itis very provoking that wo cannot live to seo it; hut it is very plain to me that the French revolution, or rather perhaps tho continued operation of tho causes which produced that revolution, has laid the foundations all over Europe, of an inextinguishable and fatal struggle between popular rights ami ancient establishments—between democracy and tyranny—between legitimacy and representative government, which may involve the world in sanguinary conflicts for fifty years, and may also end, after all, in the establishment of a brutal and military despotism fora hundred more, hutmust end. I think, in tho triumph of reason over prejudice and tho infinite amelioration of all politics, and the elevation of all national character. Now I cannot help thinking that the example of America, and tho influence and power which sho will every year be more and more able to exert, willhave a most potent and incalculably beneficial effect, both in shortening this conflict, in rendering it less sanguinary, and in insuring and accelerating its happy termination. Itake it for granted that America, either as ono or as many states, will always remain free, and consequently prosperous and powerful. She will naturally take the side of liberty, therefore. in the great European contest—and w hile her growing power and means of compulsion willintimidate i'.s opponents, the example not onlv of the practicability, but of the emin nt advantages, ofa system of perfect freedom, and a disdain and objuration of all prijudiees, cannot fail to incline the great body of all intelligent communities fur its voluntary adoption.’— Jahil J<j '»ry. It 5s surprising our statesmen »'o not s.*e. that is in tJw ir power to give mi ttlrnmt imineufeurabtu increase to the power *>t our nation in Eurep. by simply establishing Cheap f > o:(agc on the Ocean. — linh'fJt ndent. From the Iwlepeodent. I WISH 1 COLLD DU SOBETBIM. ** llare tou read Inclo Tom’s Cabin said a lady to her friend, a few days since. “Yes,” was the reply, “and O, how it makes me long to do something. Men ought to read it. AU mm ought to read it—they can do something.” Rut cannot woman do something? True she cannot nor does she wish to go to the ballot-box. but lies there not a power kick of this? Was not Hannibaleveran enemy to the Homan name?— When only nine years old, his father made hi m take a solemn oath never to he at peace with Rome. Isnot slavery afar greater foe toour country than was [hunt to the Carthaginian nation? And 0 mothers, as we wish our country free ofher greatest enemy, a« we wish bur children to enjoy the blessings of life, liberty, and happiness, temporal and eternal, let us follow the example of liainilcar, and early and parseveringly teach our Abucrtisemcnts. < ASH IVUD I7OR rags, canvas*, Kentucky bagging anil wood, delivered at the (iene»«e Paper Mills, Rochester, .\. V. October 30th, IB.il. PAPER HAMiIVG

Over the next century, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium all established (or tried to establish) colonies, trading outposts, or both in Africa. Although warfare between competing European powers rarely erupted, the natives often resisted European incursions. The African tribes, however, could neither coordinate their efforts nor overcome the technological advantage of European weapons. In every instance but one (Ethiopia, who defeated the Italians in 1896), they failed to resist the onslaught of European colonizers.

guns also accentuated the insecurities of settlement 502 Book Reviews Stickynote once they spread

political discourse in South Africa in the nineteenth century

Portuguese

Masudi, writing in the early 10th century says that elephants were extremely common in the land ofZinj, and that it was from this country that large elephant tusks were obtained:' Most of the ivory is carried to Oman whence it is sent to India and China'. Marco Polo refers to the East African coast and states: 'they have elephants in plenty and drive a brisk trade in tusks'. 2

In the sixteenth century 30,000 lb. of ivory passed through the port of Sofala yearly.

But it was in the nineteenth century that the great development of the East African ivory trade took place

The ivory trade was lucrative, and the Masai, despite their vaunted aloofness, were eager to share in it, and strove to drive the Waboni tribe from the southern bank of the Sabaki River, so that they could gain access to the port of Malindi with their ivory

But it was in the nineteenth century that the great development of the East African ivory trade took place. An increased demand for ivory in America and Europe coincided with the opening up of East Africa by Arab traders and European explorers, and this led to the intensive exploitation of the ivory resources of the interior. Throughout the nineteenth century, East Africa ranked as the foremost source of ivory in the world; ivory over-topped all rivals, even slaves, in export value, and it

ivory is white, opaque, and smooth, it is gently curved, and easily worked, and has what might be called 'spring'. Hard ivory, on the other hand, is translucent, glossy and of a heavier specific gravity than soft ivory; it is more subject to extremes of temperature and more difficult to carve.

The value of ivory was calculated in different ways. The African estimated its value by its size and quality. The Arab carried his steel-yard scales which were simple and practical, and, all things being equal, he purchased ivory by weight, the unit being the frasilah (34-3

ut it was from the end of the 18th century that the great development of the ivory trade took place in East and Central Africa. There was a marked increase in the demand for ivory in both Europe and the United States - the ivory being used for a wide variety of ornaments and household goods - piano and organ keys, snuff boxes, umbrella handles, chess sets and carved figures - "not to mention the ivory inlaid butts of six-shooters for the

The Ivory Trade 9 American west" (op. cit.288).

The Catholic mission movement in Africa which had started in the late fifteenth century and was given new direction by the foundation in 1622 in Rome of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide by Pope Gregory XV, nearly collapsed under the impact of the French revolution and Napoleonic wars in the late eighteenth century, when many religious houses and congregations in Europe were closed down. It recovered in the first decades of the nineteenth century and revived the work of evangelization in Africa.

The vast African continent was always present in Lavigerie’s thoughts. From 1867 until his death in November 1892 the immense African interior remained the principal object of Cardinal Lavigerie’s zeal and from the very beginning he planned an apostolate south of the Sahara. Cardinal Lavigerie, as Professor of Early Church History at the Sorbonne, knew well that Christianity had had a very long history in Africa due to the existence of the ancient Churches in Egypt, the Roman Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia.

The missionary movement which was far from successful during this early period as far as Christian conversion was concerned, met with huge success in another field. In most regions of sub-Saharan Africa outside the reach of Islam, Africans were introduced to written literature through Christian propaganda, the very first books in their own African language were produced to advance the Christian cause. Missions of all denominations disseminated education in their attempt to win converts and to train African catechists. ‘Transforming Africa by the Africans”, was the formula advocated by Cardinal Lavigerie in his instructions to the White Fathers. “The missionaries must therefore be mainly initiators, but the lasting work must be accomplished by the Africans themselves, once they have become Christians and apostles. And it must be clearly noted here that we say: become Christians and not become French or Europeans.”1 1 Missionaries were therefore asked to adapt themselves to the Africans, to strip themselves, as much as possible, of the cultural elements peculiar to them, of their language in the first place. It was believed that without effective and active communication it was impossible to pursue the conversion of the Africans.

This concern for African languages developed by both Catholic and Protestant missionaries laid the foundations for literature in African languages reduced into written form. Christianization went with reading and writing, with the rise of African literatures.

The schools they established were often boarding schools because missionaries believed that in an atmosphere of the boarding school far removed from the traditional cultural influences of their homes, new converts would more easily give up all or most of their traditions. The school system promoted Western values and desires. Missionary schoolmasters provided a total culture pattern, including church attendance, Christian morality, table manners, etc. All this led to the segregation and alienation of converts from their families and their societies.

brought the first ships around Cape Guardafui, and then southwards

demand

Firearms and gunpowder had originated in China and spread throughout Eurasia before reaching Africa.

firearms supplied by Portuguese and Arab-Swahili traffickers in exchange for slaves and ivory were central to the state of Lumpungu (in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo) in conquering surrounding chiefdoms and create a centralized state structure, in the third quarter of the 19th century. 32

Most weapons imported at that time were handguns, typically smoothbore, muzzleloading, flintlock muskets. 1

A few military historians have argued that the weapons imported during the slave trade were not suitable for military use, including slave raiding. 46 Rather, it has been argued that, the weapons were used for non-military means, such as guarding crops.

Firearms were well spread in East Africa in the second half of the 19th centu

According to primary data, Italy and France made very large profits from supplying weapons to different Ethiopian kingdoms through their protectorates

By the early 1880s, almost all soldiers in Ethiopia carried firearms. 75 The literature illustrates how large-scale small arms imports were made available through international trade and alliances between foreign representatives and national and regional rulers. Merchants and transit points were also evident phenomenon of small arms trade at the time.

Slavery was also a form of power relations, so slaves by and large did not have an equal voice in articulating a view of their condition. Their actions, however, spoke loudly of their innermost thoughts and represented their reflections on, and reactions to, the world in which they found themselves. Columbus thought the people he encountered in the Caribbean in 1492 might make good slaves, as he seemed to infer in his log of October 10, 1492, when he wrote: "They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think that they can easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases Our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highness when I depart, in order that they may learn our language" (Columbus, p. 77).

The transatlantic slave trade formally began in 1518, when King Charles I of Spain sanctioned the direct importation of Africans to his colonies in the Americas, finally acknowledging that the potential supply of indigenous slaves was inadequate to maintain the economic viability of his fledgling overseas colonies. Shortly thereafter, the Portuguese started to import Africans to Brazil to create a plantation society and establish an Atlantic bulwark against other Europeans intruding along the coast. As the demand for labor grew, the number of Africans imported as slaves increased, and manual labor throughout the Americas eventually became virtually synonymous with the enslavement of Africans. The transatlantic slave trade became a lucrative international enterprise, and by the time it ended, around 1870, more than ten million Africans had been forcibly transported and made slaves in the Americas. Many millions more died in Africa or at sea in transit to the Americas.

The slave trade responded to an interrelated series of factors operating across Africa, at the supply side, and also in the Americas, at the market level. The trade can be divided into four phases, strongly influenced by the development of colonialism throughout the hemisphere. In the first phase, lasting to about 1620, the Americas were the domain of the Spanish and the Portuguese. These Iberian powers introduced about 125,000 slaves to the Americas, with some 75,000 (or 27 percent of African slave exports of the period) to the Spanish colonies, and about 50,000 (18 percent of the trade) to Brazil. This was a relatively small flow of about 1,000 slaves per year, most of whom were supplied from Portuguese forts along the West African coast. But slavery in the towns, farms, and mines of the Americas then employed less African slaves (about 45 percent of the total Atlantic trade) than in the tropical African islands of Fernando Po and Sâo Tomé, Europe proper, or the islands of the Madeiras, Cape Verdes, and the Azores (about 55 percent of trade). Indeed, the small island of Sâo Tomé alone received more than 76,000 African slaves during the period, exceeding the entire American market.

The period between 1701 and 1810 represented the maturation of the slave system in the Americas. This third phase witnessed the apogee of both the transatlantic slave trade and the system of American slavery. Altogether, nearly six million Africans—amounting to nearly 60 percent of the entire transatlantic slave trade—arrived in American ports. Brazil continued to be the dominant recipient country, accounting for nearly two million Africans, or 31 percent, of the trade during this period. The British Caribbean plantations (mainly on Barbados and Jamaica) received almost a million and a half slaves, accounting for 23 percent of the trade. The French Antilles (mainly Saint-Domingue on western Hispaniola, Martinique, and Guadeloupe) imported almost as many, accounting for 22 percent of the trade. The Spanish Caribbean (mainly Cuba) imported more than 500,000 slaves, or 9.6 percent of the trade. The Dutch Caribbean accounted for nearly 8 percent of the trade, but most of those slaves were re-exported to other areas of the New World. The British North American colonies imported slightly more than 300,000, or slightly less than 6 percent of the trade, while the small Danish colonies of the Caribbean bought about 25,000 slaves, a rather minuscule proportion of the slaves sold in the Americas during this period.

The attack on the slave trade paralleled growing attacks on the system of slavery throughout the Americas. The selfdirected abolition from below that occurred in Saint-Domingue in 1793 was not repeated elsewhere, however. Instead, a combination of internal and external events eventually determined the course of abolition throughout the region. The issue of slavery became a part of the struggle for political independence for the mainland Spanish American colonies. Chile (1823), Mexico, and the new Central America States (1824), abolished slavery immediately after their wars of independence from Spain. The British government abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1834, effectively ending the institution in 1838. Uruguay legally emancipated its few remaining slaves in 1842. The French government ended slavery in the French Antilles in 1848. Colombia effectively abolished slavery in 1851, with Ecuador following in 1852, Argentina in 1853, and Peru and Venezuela in 1854. The United States of America abolished slavery after the U.S. Civil War in 1865. Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873 and in Cuba in 1886. Finally, Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.

Opposition to SlaveryThe eighteenth century formed the watershed in the system of American slavery. Although individuals, and even groups such as the Quakers, had always opposed slavery and the slave trade, general disapproval to the system gained strength during the later eighteenth century, primarily due to the growth of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on rationality, and British Evangelical Protestantism. Opposition to slavery became increasingly more coordinated in England, and it eventually had a profound impact, with the abolition of the English slave trade in 1807. Before that, prodded by Granville Sharp and other abolitionists, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield declared slavery illegal in Great Britain in 1772, giving enormous impetus to the British antislavery movement. The British legal ruling, in time, freed about 15,000 slaves who were then in Britain with their colonial masters, who estimated their "property loss" at approximately £700,000.

In 1776 the British philosopher and economist Adam Smith declared in his classic study The Wealth of Nations that the system of slavery represented an uneconomical use of land and resources, since slaves cost more to maintain than free workers. By the 1780s the British Parliament was considering a series of bills dealing with the legality of the slave trade, and several of the recently independent former North American colonies—then part of the United States of America—began to abolish slavery within their local jurisdictions. After 1808—when Great Britain and the United States legally abolished their component of the transatlantic slave trade—the English initiated a campaign to end all slave trading across the Atlantic, and to replace slave trading within Africa with other forms of legal trade. Through a series of outright bribes, diplomatic pressure, and naval blockades, the trade gradually came to an end around 1870.

Slavery Scholarship and the Place of the Slave in the WorldThe topic of slavery has attracted the attention of a very large number of writers. Before the 1950s, writers tended to view slavery as a monolithic institution. Then, as now, there was much discussion of slavery, and less of the slaves themselves. Standard influential American studies, such as U. B. Phillips's American Negro Slavery (1918) and Life and Labor in the Old South (1929), Kenneth M. Stampp's The Peculiar Institution (1956), and Stanley Elkins' Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), misleadingly described slaves as passive participants to their own cruel denigration and outrageous exploitation. In Phillips's world, everyone was sublimely happy. In the world of Stampp and Elkins, they were not happy—but neither could they help themselves. Apparently neither Stampp nor Elkins read much outside their narrow field—or if they did, they discounted it. Certainly the then available scholarship of Eric Williams, C. L. R. James, or Elsa V. Goveia is not evident in their works. Herbert Aptheker in American Negro Slave Revolts (1943), Gunnar Myrdal in An American Dilemma (1944), and Frank Tannenbaum in Slave and Citizen (1946) had tried, in those three intellectually stimulating works, to modify the overall picture, but without much success.

Then, in 1956, Goveia published an outstanding book, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century. As Francisco Scarano notes of Goveia's work: "Goveia's sensitive and profound study of slave society in the British Leewards … is doubtless one of the great works of Caribbean history in any language. The Guyanese historian revealed the ways in which, in a racialized slave society, the imperative of slave subordination permeated all contexts of social interaction, from legal system to education and from religion to leisure. Everything was predicated on the violence necessary to maintain slavocratic order" (Scarano, p. 260). Goveia's approach inculcated the slaves with agency, a fundamental quality of which earlier writers seemed incredibly unaware. Slaves continuously acted in, as well as reacted to, the world in which they existed.

But slavery was not only attacked from above. At the same time that European governments contemplated administrative measures against slavery and the slave trade, the implacable opposition of the enslaved in the overseas colonies increased the overall costs of maintaining the system of slavery. Slave revolts, conspiracies, and rumors of revolts engendered widespread fear among owners and administrators. Small bands of runaway slaves formed stable black communities, legally recognized by their imperial powers in difficult geographical locations such as Esmeraldas in Ecuador, the Colombian coastal areas, Palmares in Brazil, and in the impenetrable mountains of Jamaica. Then, in 1791, the slaves of Saint-Domingue/Haiti, taking their cue somewhat from the French Revolution, staged a successful revolt under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) and a number of other local leaders. The radical French commissioner in the colony, Léger Félicité Sonthonax (1763–1813) saw the futility of trying to defeat the local revolt and declared the emancipation of all slaves and their immediate admission to full citizenship (1793), a move ratified the following year by

French colonies. Napoleon Bonaparte revoked the decree of emancipation in 1802, but he failed to make it stick in Saint-Domingue, where the former slaves and their free colored allies declared the independence of Haiti—the second free state in the Americas—in 1804.The fourth and final phase of the transatlantic trade lasted from about 1810 to 1870. During that phase approximately two million Africans were sold as slaves in a greatly reduced area of the Americas. With its trade legal until 1850, Brazil imported some 1,145,400 Africans, or about 60 percent of all slaves sold in the Americas after 1810. The Spanish Antilles—mainly Cuba and Puerto Rico—imported more than 600,000 Africans (32 percent), the great majority of them illegally introduced to Cuba after an Anglo-Spanish treaty to abolish the Spanish

he revolutionary government in Paris, which extended the emancipation to all

this led to the intensive exploitation of the ivory resources of the interior. Thro

ntil the early nineteenth century, ivory was obtained in suf

Figures of ivory exports from East Africa during the early nineteenth century are not easy to obt

Various figures have been put forth to show the number of elephants killed to supply the above ivory exports. Baker's estimate that 3,000 elephants were killed annually, to supply the ivory transported down the Nile during the i86os, may not be far off the m