Exposure to and invasion by parasitic organisms may play an important part among many other intrinsic factors that guide the evolution of animal forms. Trypanosomes, two species of which cause African sleeping sickness today, are blood parasites of great antiquity. Their presence in Africa at the time of the first stages of human evolution may have been of great consequence, at first acting as a discriminating agent between resistant and non-resistant types of hominids, and later also in shaping migration routes and settlement patterns. As a possible clue as to why man arose in Africa, the author postulates that trypanosomes may have precluded the development of certain ground-dwelling faunas, allowing certain more resistant primates to fill the empty ecological niches. Some of these primates, thus becoming ground-dwellers, became the precursors of the hominid branch. The evolution of T. gambiense and T. rhodestense, the two human parasites, and their development in the tsetse fly, are debated. The epidemiological aspects and patterns of the disease are examined under the changing climatic conditions of the Pleistocene and during later times, when Africa was opened up by Western exploration.

In terms of Marc Bloch's celebrated definition, the traditional interlacustrine Bantu kingdom of Bunyoro, in western Uganda, is ‘feudal’ in some respects but not in others. This is shown by a survey of Bunyoro's traditional political institutions, some of which tended to decentralize, others to centralize, political power and authority. Of the first, the most important were the considerable degree of independence enjoyed by the chiefs, and the largely self-sufficient community relationships of neighbourhood and kinship. Of the centripetal institutions, some linked the people to the kingship, others bound the chiefs to the king. Examples of both types are described. It is concluded that although traditional Bunyoro shared some features with European ‘feudal’ states, it also differed from them in important respects. Thus it would be misleading to refer to it, without a good deal of qualification, as a ‘feudality’.

In 1853, when the Cape Colony was granted representative institutions by the British Government, the franchise qualification allowed Coloured men to be placed on the voters' roll. To qualify for the franchise it was necessary to occupy, for twelve months, property valued at £25 or to earn a salary of £50, or a salary of £25 if board and lodging was provided. At the time, as in later years, there were many who regarded this qualification as low. Since the ultimate responsibility for the £25 franchise belonged to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, historians and others have come to see it as being the result of humanitarian influences. In fact the process that led to representative government, and with it the £25 franchise, was far more complex, involving as it did a series of interweaving class, national, colour and imperial considerations. Nevertheless, humanitarian influences need to be closely examined, for they reveal a relationship with the more significant structural factors and provide us with our most convenient starting-point.

Mwanga's persecution of the Christians in 1886 was an isolated event, but it set the seal of judgement on subsequent interpretations of his character, his policy and his reign. He was said to have an anti-Christian policy which could be variously ascribed to religious traditionalism, or the political danger of an organized Christian party, or external threats of European encroachment. But closer examination reveals two apparent anomalies. Most Christians were spared during the brief persecution, including many prominent leaders. And shortly afterwards these same Christians were given extraordinary powers which they exercised, with the Kabaka's warm approval, at the expense of the traditional chiefs. The conclusion reached is that while Mwanga had no very consistent policy, he did have a consistently strong motivation—the desire to achieve a secure position of authority independent of those powerful old chiefs who had placed him on the throne. In this he saw the ambitious young Christians as a useful ally. Thus, despite the persecution, during part of his reign Mwanga was, for his own purposes, not anti-Christian but pro-Christian.

Almost a century ago, Edward W. Blyden evolved a philosophy of Africanism which foreshadowed many concepts of today's African intellectual leaders. Basing his system of thought on the notion that racial qualities were exclusive and complementary, he urged the African to cultivate his own qualities and avoid bad imitations of the characteristics of other races. A deep religiousness and close communion with nature had developed in Africa a humanitarian regard for social responsibilities and personal relations conspicuously absent in materialistic Europe. The African needed only to follow his natural instinct and to reaffirm his own values in order to regain his ancient sense of dignity and once again make his unique contribution to world culture.

This paper examines the contention that between 1896 and 1898 the main object of Menelik's foreign policy was expansion westwards in collaboration with the French. It concludes, from both European and African evidence, that on the contrary Menelik subordinated his territorial aspirations in the Nile Valley to the promotion of good relations with the Khalifa; and that he frustrated rather than assisted the French missions to the Nile. The overriding anxiety of the Negus was that ‘Abdallāhi should not be distracted from his struggle with Kitchener by fears for security of his eastern frontier. Menelik saw in a Mahdist victory the best insurance against a renewal of European aggression in Ethiopia, fearing as he did that the subjugation of Ethiopia was the ultimate objective of British action in north-east Africa.

Roger Casement's role as Irish patriot has obscured his role as Congo reformer. Travelling in the interior of the Congo in 1903 as British consul, Casement gathered evidence that enabled the British government to attack the Congo State on grounds of maladministration. He did not however regard mere diplomatic action as sufficient to redress the wrongs of King Leopold's rubber trade. Convinced that only a humanitarian crusade could abolish the evils of the Leopoldian regime, Casement inspired E. D. Morel to found the Congo Reform Association. Through his dual capacity of civil servant and humanitarian, he attempted, in his own words, to choke off King Leopold ‘as a “helldog” is choked off’. His apocalyptic vision of evil in the Congo may have been exaggerated, but his influence was of the first magnitude in bringing about Belgium's annexation of the Congo in 1908.