French military officers and the mapping of West Africa: the case of Captain Brosselard-Faidherbe

Through the study of projects conceived to shape colonial space, this article aims to reconsider the motives and means of French colonial expansion in West Africa in the 1880s and 1890s. The Plan Faidherbe, designed by the Governor of Senegal in the 1860s, outlined a plan for eastward development, including a road and rail link between the Senegal and the Niger Rivers (and beyond, between Algeria and Sudan). The implementation of these routes of penetration called for a number of military-led topographic missions. The study of these missions and of the maps that were produced at the time reveal how such projects and their implementation were mediated by both cartographic and field practices. The case of Captain Henry Brosselard (1855-93), General Faidherbe’s son-in-law, is an interesting example because of the diversity of the missions he led and the extent of territory which he traversed and mapped. This case also shows how, in the course of a career, an officer could assume several different functions and come to conceive the process of building colonial territory from different perspectives. This paper questions a common view of the military as having a purely strategic vision of space as a field of conquest, a view which reserves a more development-oriented outlook for civil administrators and the business community. Indeed, Brosselard’s varied career somewhat blurs the conventional divide between civilians and soldiers, requiring us to reconsider accepted ways of categorising colonial actors.     

Combating light weapons proliferation in West Africa

Light weapons proliferation is a serious problem in West Africa. A regional moratorium on imports of small arms and light weapons has not worked and UN arms embargoes on Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire have had limited impact. The Economic Community of West African States is currently drafting a new binding legal instrument aimed at controlling flows in West Africa but this will only succeed if the heads of state and government seriously adopt it. This needs to include greater compliance of UN sanctions, international reform of the End User Certificate system, mapping the spread of artisan production and an examination of ammunition imports to West Africa. Better control of ammunition imports in particular may assist the combat of light weapons proliferation as well as the comprehensive destruction of weapons from disarmament efforts. The illicit weapons trade in West Africa is increasingly transnational and it requires regional and international cooperation and support to combat it.     

The economic development of West Africa

Almost all documented landslides in Scotland belong to one of four categories: non‐rotational rock slope failures (major rockfalls, translational slides, topples or sags, often in some combination); rotational rock slope failures; debris flows; and translational slides in drift or regolith. Non‐rotational rock slope failures are particularly common on Highland metamorphic rocks, especially schists, and on igneous scarps in the Hebrides and Midland Valley; rotational rock slope failures almost invariably occur in weak sedimentary rocks overlain by resistant igneous rocks; and debris flows are most common on sandy drift or regolith. Former glacial activity has also been of importance in determining landslide distribution. The great majority of rock slope failures are ancient features, but debris flows and small translational slides in drift (both triggered mainly by intensive rainstorms) are much more frequent at present and cause much greater damage, particularly to communications.     

From stone to metal: New perspectives on the later prehistory of West Africa

Earlier views saw West Africa as culturally stagnant through much of the Holocene until stimulus or intervention from north of the Sahara transformed Iron Age societies. Evidence accumulating over the past 15 years suggests that stone-using societies from 10,000 to 3000 B.P. were far more diverse than previously thought. Against an increasingly detailed record of Holocene climate change, the complexity of local adaptation and change is becoming better understood. Although a strong case currently exists for the introduction of copper and iron to West Africa from the north in the mid-first millennium B.C., the subsequent development of metallurgy was strongly innovative in different parts of the subcontinent. Soon after the advent of metals, a dramatic increase in archaeological evidence for social stratification and hierarchical political structures indicates the emergence of societies markedly more complex than anything currently documented in the Late Stone Age. The best-documented examples come from the Middle Niger region and the Nigerian forest. In these areas, earlier diffusionist models in which complexity originated outside West Africa have yielded to evidence that indigenous processes were instrumental in this transformation. Trade, ideology, climate shifts, and indirect influences from North Africa, including the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Sahelian grasslands, are identified as factors essential to an understanding of these processes.     

南非西海岸的春天 姹紫嫣红

<正>南半球的季节与我们北半球正好相反。8月底至9月,正是南非的初春。离开开普敦,沿着开普敦-纳米比亚景观大道一路向北,前往我们此行的重要目的地之一——南非西海岸国家公园。西海岸国家公园是一片面积很大的自然保护区,这里有着丰富的自然资源,包括植被、海滩、礁石、湿地等。每年的冬末春初,南非干旱的大地迎来勃勃生机,植物们趁短暂的雨季蓬勃绽放,成为南非著名的春季花海。     

Migration in West Africa: a savanna village perspective

The author describes the determinants and impact of temporary labor migration from northern Ghana, an area dependent on subsistence agriculture, to the south, where employment opportunities in mining, commercial agriculture, and the public sector are relatively abundant and higher-paying. The effects on social organization, agriculture, and population dynamics are discussed. (SUMMARY IN FRE)     

New approaches in French feminist history

Melzer, S.E. and Rabine, L.W., cds, Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1992) 296pp., £27.50, ISBN 0 19 506886 6

Grogan, S.K., French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New Society, 1803–44 (Macmillan, 1992), 249pp., £45.00, ISBN 0 333 52530 2     

The early city in West Africa: towards an understanding

The dominating paradigm of urbanism in West Africa is steadily shifting from the city-centric to the dynamic consideration of the city's function within a wider settlement hierarchy. The authors appraise these theoretical positions and discuss the methodologies appropriate to each. Following the thematic framework developed in the theory and method sections, we then consider what research at the major early town sites has to date revealed about the chronology, course, and circumstances of urbanism in West Africa. Data available from the several sites considered is highly uneven. Analysis, even when quality data are available, has in some cases been hindered by a limiting theoretical approach. Although urban investigations in West Africa are only in their infancy, it is clear that cities are but one of several institutions indicating the early, indigenous emergence of hierarchically-ordered societies. With the recent demonstration that at least some West African towns represent indigenous processes of urbanization, the comparative study of factors contributing to urban growth and alternative urban paths becomes imperative.

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Résumé Le paradigme dominant de l'urbanisme en Afrique de l'ouest change progressivement de l'aspect cité-centrique à la considération dynamique de la ville au sein d'une hiérarchie d'établissement plus vaste. Les auteurs évaluent ces positions théoriques et discutent des méthodologies appropriées à chacune. Suivant le cadre thématique élaboré dans les sections sur la théorie et la méthode, ils considèrent ensuite ce que la recherche dans les sites urbains primitifs principaux a révélé jusqu'à présent quant à la chronologie, le développement et les circonstances de l'urbanisme dans l'Afrique de l'ouest. Les données provenant des nombreux sites considérés sont très inégales. Même lorsque des données de qualité furent disponibles, l'analyse fut dans certains cas entravée par les limites imposées par l'approche théorique. Bien que les investigations urbaines en Afrique de l'ouest n'en sont qu'à leurs débuts, il est évident que les villes ne sont que l'une des nombreuses institutions signalant l'apparition indigène précoce de sociétés à ordre hiérarchique. Sachant maintenant qu'au moins certaines villes de l'Afrique de l'ouest représentent des processus indigènes d'urbanisation, il est maintenant impératif que soit effectuée l'étude comparative des facteurs contribuant à la croissance urbaine et aux diverses voies conduisant à l'urbanisation.