* 1973 Presidential Address delivered before members of the African Studies Association on November 1 in Syracuse, New York.

1 I believe the phrase is that of Leopold-Sedar Senghor, but I cannot locate it. In any case, the sentiment is elaborated in the essay by Cheikh Hamidou Kane, “Comme si nous nous etions donne rendezvous,” Esprit, n.s., 29, No. 299 (Oct. 1961): 375-387.

2 Ajayi, J. F., “The Continuity of African Institutions under Colonialism.” in Ranger, T. O., ed.. Emerging Themes of African History (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968), pp. 189–200.Google Scholar

3 Ajayi, “Continuity,” p, 200.

4 T. O. Ranger. “Connexions between ‘Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa.” in Journal of African History, IX. 3:437-453: IX. 4:631-641.

5 Donald Denoon and Adam Kuper, “Nationalist Historians in Search of a Nation: The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar es Salaam.” African Affairs, 69, 277 (Oct. 1970):348 (hereafter cited as “Nationalist Historians“).

6 Bernard Magubane, “A Critical Look at Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in Colonial Africa.” Current Anthropology, XII. 4-5 (Oct.- Dec. 1971):419-431. It is followed by “Comments” (pp. 431-439) and a “Reply” (pp.439-445).

7 Magubane. “ A Critical Look,” pp. 430-442.

8 Magubane. “ A Critical Look,” p. 430.

9 Epstein, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 432.

10 Mitchell, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 436.

11 Kőbben. “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 433.

12 Saberwal, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 438.

13 Messing, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 434.

14 Van den Berghe, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’,” p. 438.

15 Mayer, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’,” p. 433.

16 Magubane, “Reply,” p. 439.

17 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians.” p. 347.

18 Terence Ranger, “The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar es Salaam: An Answer,” African Affairs, 70, 278. Jan. 1971, p. 55 (hereafter cited as “An Answer”).

19 Ranger, “An Answer,” p. 61.

20 Donald Denoon and Adam Kuper “The New Historiography’ in Dares Salaam: A Rejoinder,” African Affairs, 70, 280, July 1971, p. 288 (hereafter cited as “A Rejoinder”).

21 Tawney, R. H., “Postscript to the Rise of the Gentry,” in Wilson, E. N. Karus, ed., Essays in Economic History, Volume I (London: Edw. Arnold, 1954). p. 214.Google Scholar

22 Magubane. “A Critical Look.” p. 419.

23 Magubane, “A Critical Look.” p. 420.

24 Mitchell. “Comments on Magubane. A Critical Look,” p. 436.

25 Magubane, “Reply,” p. 441.

26 Magubane, “A Critical Look” p. 419.

27 When I say I “assimilate” one man's position to another, I do not mean that either endorses the arguments of the other in their respective articles but simply that in treating three debates successively, I see the same underlying issue recurring and wish to identify sides A and B in each.

28 Terence Ranger, “Introduction” to Ranger, ed., Emerging Themes of African History, p. xxi, and cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 331.

29 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians.” p. 331

30 Ranger. “An Answer.” p. 51.

31 Ranger. “An Answer,” p. 52.

32 Kimambo, I. N. and Temu, A. J., eds., A History of Tanzania (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1969)Google Scholar; Roberts, A. D. ed., Tanzania Before 1900 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968).Google Scholar

33 Cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 335.

34 Cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 335.

35 T. Ranger, The African Churches of Tanzania, Historical Association of Tanzania Paper No. 5 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, n.d.), p. 4. Cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 336.

36 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 336.

37 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 337. Ranger responded by talking of “Denoon and Kuper's fantasies about our lack of interest in mission sources and our contempt for anthropology…” “An Answer,” p. 54.

38 Denoon and Kuper, Nationalist Historians,” p. 341.

39 J. E. G. Sutton, “The Peopling of Tanzania,” in Kimambo and Temu, p. 1, cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 342.

40 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 342.

41 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 346.

42 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 347.

43 Ranger. “An Answer,” p. 59.

44 J. D. Fage, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in West African History,” Journal of African History, X, 3, (1969): 393-404 (hereafter cited as “Slavery”).

45 Curtin, Philip D., The Dimensions of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), cited in Fage, “Slavery,” p. 398.Google Scholar

46 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 403.

47 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 404.

48 “In default of evidence of the relation between the existence of an external demand for slaves and of slavery and an internal trade in slaves for the West African Sudan, we must turn to the Guinea area, where commonly the first truly external traders were the European seatraders, who first arrived on the coasts in the fifteenth century. The evidence for Upper Guinea, from the Gambia to modern Liberia, has been analysed by Dr. Walter Rodney.” Fage, “Slavery,” p. 395. Fage's footnote reference is to Walter Rodney, “African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave-Trade,” Journal of African History, VII, 3 (1966): 431-443. Since Fage's article appeared, Rodney's monograph has come out: Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970).

49 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 397.

50 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 397.

51 Fage, “Slavery,” pp. 400, 402.

52 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 403.

53 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 199.

54 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 199.

55 Walter Rodney, West Africa and the Atlantic Slave-Trade, Historical Association of Tanzania Paper No. 2 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967), p. 21.

56 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 118.

57 C. C. Wrigley, “Historicism in Africa: Slavery and State Formation,” African Affairs, 70, 279 (April 1971): 113 (hereafter cited as “Historicism”).

58 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 117.

59 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 116.

60 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 121.

61 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 124.

62 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle- L'Ouverture Publications, 1972), p. 80.

63 Ivan Hrbek, “Towards a Periodisation of African History,” in Ranger, ed.,Emerging Themes of African History, pp. 37-52 (hereafter cited as “Periodisation“).

64 See Hrbek, “Periodisation,” pp. 38-42.

65 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 45.

66 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 48.

67 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 49.

68 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 51.

69 See Smir Amin, “Sous-développement et dépendance en Afrique noire contemporaine,” Partisans, No. 64, (mars-avril 1972): 3-34.

70 All the statements in this paragraph are dealt with in great detail in my The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press. 1974).

71 I elaborate this argument in “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (forthcoming).

72 “Experience has proved it: of all forms of breeding, that of human cattle is one of the hardest. If slavery is to pay when applied to largescale enterprises, there must be plenty of cheap human flesh on the market. You can only get it by war or slave-raiding. So a society can hardly base much of its economy on domesticated human beings unless it has at hand feebler societies to defeat or raid.” Marc Bloch, “The Rise of Dependent Cultivation and Seignorial Institutions,” in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, I. M. M. Postan, ed., The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1966), p. 247.

73 See my The Modern World System, ch. VI.

74 See Rodney: “It is obvious that because of the Atlantic slave-trade people could not lead their ordinary lives. The majority of the population of West Africa lived by farming, and agriculture must have suffered during that period. In the first place, the loss of so many people represented a loss of labour in the fields. In the second place, those who were left behind had little reason to plant crops which they might never be around to reap. At the end of the eighteenth century, one of the arguments used by Europeans who wanted to abolish the Atlantic slave-trade was that abolition would allow the Africans to work and produce other commodities which Europeans could buy. They pointed out that as long as the Atlantic slave-trade continued people found it extremely difficult to carry on worthwhile activities.“ West Africa and the Atlantic Slave-Trade, p. 16.

75 Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os Descrubrimentos e a Economia Mundial, Volume 2 (Lisboa: Ed. Arcadia, 1965), esp. pp. 528, 532.

76 “The Venetian Cadamasto was told in 1455 that voyages to Guinea yielded a return of between six and ten times the outlay…Elsewhere [in West Africa] the Portuguese gathered less dazzling but still substantial riches,” A. F. C. Ryder, “Portuguese and Dutch in West Africa before 1800,” in J. F. Ade Ajayi and Ian Espie, eds., A Thousand Years of West African History (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1965), pp. 220, 222.

77 Christopher Fyfe, “West African Trade, A. D. 1000-1800,” in Ajayi and Espie, A Thousand Years of West African Trade, p. 248 (hereafter cited as “West African Trade“).

78 Fyfe, “West African Trade,” p. 249.

79 Fyfe, “West African Trade,” p. 249.

80 Fyfe, “West African Trade,” p. 252.

81 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, ch. VII.

82 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 172.

83 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 172.

84 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 172.

85 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 176.

86 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 177.

87 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 188-189.

88 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 192.

89 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 199.

90 See my “The Colonial Era in Africa: Changes in the Social Structure,” in Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, eds., Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960, Vol. II: The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914-1960 (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1970), pp. 399–421.Google Scholar

91 Samir Amin, “Transitional Phases in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Monthly Review, 25, 5 (Oct. 1973): 54-55 (hereafter cited as “Transitional Phases”).

92 See “The Range of Choice: Constraints on the Policies of Governments of Contemporary African Independent States” in Lofchie, Michael F., ed., The State of the Nations (University of California Press, 1971), pp. 19–33.Google Scholar

93 See “Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation Within the Capitalist World-Economy,” Journal of Development Studies (forthcoming).

94 Amin, “Transitional Phases,” p. 56.