Fire-arms, &c, not to be sent to Slave Trade districts. Lists of destinations of fire-arms, &c, sold to be submitted to Governor every six mouths.,Penalties for certain offences.,Fire-arms may be issued to public forces.,Governor not to authorize withdrawal of arms of precision.,

Comparative Statement of Guns of all descriptions imported into the Colony of Sierra Leone and entered for duty in the years 1890 and 1891.,Description of Guns. Quantity. 1890. 1891. Flint-locks .. .. ,. .. Percussion .. .. .. .. Muzzle-loading rifles .. .. .. .. Breech-loading double- or single-barrelled guns Breech-loading rifles .. ., Total .. 1,931 346 '*97 207 1,133 619 34 82 2,543 2,581 4,411,Of the foregoing, only 25 flint-locks, 40 percussion guns, and 1 breech-loading double-barrelled gun in 1890, and 136 percussion guns in 1891, were imported and taken to Sherbro and the Sulymah district

Possession of guns, accompanied by a rapid adoption of new military as well as hunting tactics for their use, played a key role in the reformation of local polities during the midnineteenth century

Possession of guns, accompanied by a rapid adoption of new military as well as hunting tactics for their use, played a key role in the reformation of local polities during the midnineteenth century

Besides the company he kept, Sechele’s own investment in high calibre rifles and superior shot is understandable in the context of his then central role in the lucrative regional ivory trade, which provided him with a steady source of income for the purchase of munitions and other goods

There was also a constant supply of firearms to the 'resisters' through the desertion of Khoi servants and slaves, who frequently fled with their masters' weapons to join the Khoisan in the mountains

Later in the century the southern, and subsequently the northern, Tswana chiefdoms acquired firearms from Cape traders, and thus equipped were able to participate in the ivory trade and in the armed violence maintained (if not caused) by the migration of whites on to the highveld. Similarly the southern Sotho became armed with guns and, perhaps just as significantly, acquired horses

Although Africans sought to fit firearms into the traditional fighting methods, they also recognized the need for new tech niques to take advantage of the n

. Firearms in the eighteenth century were absolutely central to the trade of people for goods. Although they did not usually comprise the bulk of goods traded—muskets and gunpowder accounted for about 10 percent of the cargo offloaded on the Loango coast (present-day Angola) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, third behind textiles and liquor— trading would seldom take place unless powder and shot were included

ndispensable.26 The strong preference for guns of those supplying slave traders lends support to a theory widespread among earlier historians, the so-called gun-slave cycle, which ran something as follows: Europeans fostered the slave trade through their control of guns, which they would trade only for slaves, the guns in turn providing the means to acquire more slaves to buy more guns, and so ad infinitum. In this view, Africans conducted war to supply the slave trade, and sold slaves chiefly to obtain the weaponry that allowed them to seize more slav