What was the indigénat? This article approaches this question via three arguments. First, a study of the indigénat (the regime of administrative sanctions applied to colonial subjects) challenges the idea that French West Africa formed part of an ‘empire of law’. Second, a dynamic spectrum of political statuses developed around the indigénat until its abolition in 1946. This spectrum is no less significant than one of its poles alone, that of colonial citizens. Third, the indigénat, its narrative of reform, and its relationship to law, bureaucracy, and authority illuminate the tensions between imperial rhetoric and colonial governance.

Cette contribution reconsidère le site de Garumele (Niger) à la lumière de récents travaux archéologiques. Garumele est dit dans les sources historiques avoir été la capitale de l'empire de Kanem-Borno peu avant la fondation de Birnin Gazargamo (deuxième moitié du quinzième siècle). Cet article reconcilie sources archéologiques et historiques pour évaluer la véracité de cette tradition – mais aussi pour considérer les facteurs méthodologiques et théoriques qui contribuent au mystère des origines du Kanem-Borno.

Efforts to institute a system for the control and prohibition of khat in Kenya are examined in this article. Prohibition was introduced in the 1940s after an advocacy campaign led by prominent colonial officials. The legislation imposed a racialized view of the effect of khat, seeking to protect an allegedly ‘vulnerable’ community in the north of the country while allowing khat to be consumed and traded in other areas, including Meru where ‘traditional’ production and consumption was permitted. Colonial policy took little account of African opinion, although African agency was evident in the failure and ultimate collapse of the prohibition in the face of widespread smuggling and general infringement. Trade in khat became ever more lucrative, and in the final years of colonial rule economic arguments overcame the prohibition lobby. The imposition of prohibition and control indicates the extent to which colonial attitudes towards and beliefs about cultural behaviour among Africans shaped policies, but the story also illustrates the fundamental weakness of the colonial state in its failure to uphold the legislation.

A major component of the South African War, the imperialist conflict that gave birth to modern South Africa, was the violence that occurred between white settlers and indigenous black populations. This article seeks to understand the particular nature of this violence in the northern districts of the Cape Colony. The war intruded into a region in which memories of conquest were alive, and where recently established settler authority was extremely fragile. Here, the war has to be seen as the final chapter in the closing of a nineteenth-century colonial frontier. The conflict was one between masters and servants in a region where capitalist relations of production had yet to take hold. Conflict continued in the years immediately after the war, and an essential task of the post-war state was to calm disgruntled black subjects.

This article focuses on the historical and political factors that shaped Khwe (San) and Mbukushu ethnic identities and their interrelationship between 1938 and 1989 in west Caprivi, Namibia. While acknowledging the multi-authored nature of identity-building, the article demonstrates that the colonial and apartheid states made significant contributions to the construction of ethnicity in west Caprivi through veterinary interventions in the 1930s and apartheid policies regarding ‘Bushmen’ in the 1950s, and by securing Khwe collaboration during Namibia's liberation struggle in the 1970s and 1980s. These state interventions, together with Khwe and Mbukushu responses to them, also shed light on why land and political authority became so central to struggles between the two groups.