Throughout the subcontinent south of the Zambezi, population densities, political power and many social developments were largely determined by agricultural production. Other economic activities could add comfort, magnificence and even relative luxury to life in some places. The foundations, however, rested firmly on agriculture, and rainfall, more than any human factor, influenced this basic activity. On the fringes of the Kalahari and in other arid areas, hunting or a meagre herding remained the key to bare survival. Elsewhere, over much of the cultivable area, population growth was severely limited by uncertain rainfall, and man's conquest of the harsh environment was still precarious. Yet in the more favoured areas, on the eastern plateaux and the plains flanking the Indian Ocean, a mixed agricultural economy maintained relatively dense and active populations. Here economic specialization and political centralization had developed many varied and resilient cultures. Here were the real centres of power in southern Africa, and before the end of the eighteenth century new crops, principally maize, had begun to increase – perhaps dramatically – the agricultural potential of some of these more favoured areas.

For more than a millennium, the mining and working of gold, copper and iron had provided a subsidiary source of wealth. In a few areas other industrial skills – fine pottery and cloth-weaving – were well established. These indigenous goods, together with salt and agricultural products, formed the basis of the internal trading networks. The export of gold from north of the Limpopo had also long attracted a flow of exotic imports, while in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the products of the hunt – ivory, skins and furs – became an increasingly important export from south of the Limpopo.

EGYPT, THE FUNJ AND DARFUR

In spite of its proximity to our own times, the period of Egyptian history from the conquest by Sultan Selim to the occupation by Bonaparte is, comparatively speaking, a dark age. Historians have tended to concentrate either upon the Mamluk sultanate which preceded it, or the period of modernization which followed. The documentation, although abundant, has only very partially been exploited. This is particularly true of the vast corpus of archives preserved in the Basbakanlik Arsivi and Topkapi Sarayi Arsivi in Istanbul, and the important collections in the Egyptian state archives in Cairo. A valuable summary account with detailed bibliographical references is provided by Stanford J. Shaw, 'Turkish source-materials for Egyptian history', in P. M. Holt, ed. (1968), 28-48. Shaw's pioneer research into the archives has resulted in his detailed study, The financial and administrative organisation and development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-179S (1962), some of his findings in which are summarized in his article, 'Landholding and land-tax revenues in Ottoman Egypt', in Holt, ed. (1968), 91-103.

THE NORTHERN SAVANNA AND FOREST

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the northern fringes of Central Africa presented a totally different picture from that of West Africa. Here there were no great population clusters, no expansive cavalry empires, no walled cities and no markets thronged with caravans from the coast or the Maghrib. There were no kingdoms like Benin and Dahomey and no mines as in Bambuk and Asante. The area had no wealth or minerals sufficient to attract traders across the Sahara. Only in the nineteenth century was its border pierced by Khartoum ivory hunters and Fulani slave raiders. Until that time the occupants of the northern savanna were almost exclusively concerned with subsistence agriculture. Even peoples like the Azande, who expanded the scope of their territory, did not expand the scope of their social institutions. Instead each advance swarm of Zande colonial pioneers cut itself off from its parent society and began a new, independent, political existence. Not until the nineteenth century did the Bandia clan create the Bangassou ‘sultanate’ in order to resist the encroachments of slavers.

In the west, North-Central Africa had a small opening on to the maritime world of lower Guinea. This was through the Cameroun port of Duala. The small coastal kingdom of the Duala appears to have been founded by Bantu-speaking peoples from the surrounding forest in the early seventeenth century. They moved to the coast when the first Dutch sailors penetrated the Bight of Biafra seeking trade in exotic African curiosities. The Duala sold them local cloth, beads, and probably ivory, and furnished their ships with grain and goat's meat.