Social Systems of Africa

Africa ◽  
1929 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Thurnwald
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
North African ◽  
Cattle Breeding ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
The North ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
Cattle Breeders ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe camel-herding peoples described in our last article differ considerably from the cattle-breeding tribes now to be discussed. Not only do the pastoralists mentioned in Section V accord to the camel the leading position as their standard of value, the ass, sheep, and goat being only of secondary importance, but they are also different in race. Like all herdsmen they have a strong pride of ancestry, which has led to internal gradations of rank, crossed by considerations of wealth. The North African Berber tribes are, however, Mohammedans, and therefore the whole structure of their civilization is different from that of the mainly ‘heathen’ cattle-breeders to be considered below. Their great natural gifts and their connexion with Islam set them apart from most of the remaining inhabitants of Africa ; on the other hand conditions of existence in desert and steppe, combined with specialization in pastoral life, have prevented their uniting to form large states or similar organizations.

scholarly journals Ceramic finds from the Byzantine fort of Gradina on the island of Žirje

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Karađole ◽  
Igor Borzić
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
North African ◽  
The North ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Main Production ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean Area

Repeated excavations of the area of the early Byzantine fort on Žirje, an island in the Šibenik archipelago, resulted in recovery of a substantial amount of movable finds, predominantly pottery. Most finds date to the period of Justinian's reconquista in the mid-6th century when the fort was used, but there are also some artifacts of earlier or later dating (Iron Age, Hellenistic and early Imperial periods; medieval and postmedieval periods) whose presence is explained by continuous strategic importance of the fort position. Late antique material has been analyzed comprehensively in terms of typology. Dating and provenance contexts of the finds have also been determined. Presence of pottery from the main production centers that supplied the eastern Adriatic at the time has been attested. This refers in particular to the north African and Aegean-eastern Mediterranean area providing fine tableware and kitchen pottery, lamps and various forms of amphorae. On the other hand, participation of local workshops in supply of the Byzantine soldiers stationed in Gradina probably relates to prevailing forms of kitchenware.

scholarly journals Courage and Cowardice in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and Defeat in the Summer of 1942

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Fennell
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Dimension ◽  
North African ◽  
The North ◽  
High Level ◽  
Eighth Army

High rates of desertion and surrender during the battles in North Africa in the summer of 1942 were a major factor in Eighth Army’s poor combat performance. At the time, some suggested that these problems were symptomatic of a lack of courage or even of cowardice. There are two broad strands to the conceptualization of courage and cowardice. One focuses on the willingness of the person to fight; the other puts emphasis on how actions express an individual’s ability to cope with fear. Whichever conceptualization is used, high morale motivates the soldier to fight and shields the ordinary recruit from his fear, preventing it from overcoming him in battle. Where morale fails, the soldier is left demotivated and burdened with his terror and, therefore, and is therefore prone to desertion or surrender. Because it is extremely difficult to maintain morale at a continuously high level in an environment governed by chance and managed by humans, all soldiers can find themselves in situations where their actions may be judged as cowardly. Alternatively, if they are properly motivated to fight and prepared by the state and military to deal with the unavoidable fear of combat, all soldiers can be labelled courageous. Accordingly, emotive terms should be avoided when attempting to describe rationally explainable outcomes. The undoubtedly negative connotations attached to cowardice in battle and the positive ones attached to courage are, therefore, arguably unhelpful in understanding Eighth Army’s performance in the summer of 1942 and the human dimension in warfare more generally.

Attitudes to reform: political parties in Ulster and the Irish land bill of 1881

1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (95) ◽  
pp. 327-340
Author(s):  
Francis Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
The Other ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
History Of

The Irish land act of 1881, it is generally agreed, was a victory for the Land League and Parnell, and nationalist policy with regard to the act and the attitude of southern tenants towards it have been many times subjected to detailed examination by historians of this period. In these analyses of the events of 1880–81, however, little reference is normally made to the part played by the different parties and interests in the north of the country. It is often assumed, for example, that the Ulster tenants held aloof from the campaign for reform, lending no more than occasional vocal support to the agitational efforts of tenants in the south and west. Indeed, they were later excoriated by William O'Brien, Michael Davitt and others not only for giving no support to the land movement but also for sabotaging Parnell's policy of testing the 1881 act by precipitately rushing into the land courts to take advantage of the new legislation: ‘that hard-fisted body of men, having done nothing themselves to win the act, thought of nothing but turning it to their own immediate use, and repudiating any solidarity with the southern and western rebels to whom they really owed it’. If, however, northern tenants were harshly judged by nationalist politicians in the years after 1881, the part played by the northern political parties in the history of the land bill has been either ignored or misunderstood by historians since that time. The Ulster liberals, for example, are rarely mentioned, the implication being that they made no contribution to the act even though it implemented almost exactly the programme on which they had been campaigning for much of the previous decade. The northern conservatives, on the other hand, are commonly seen as leading opponents of the bill, more intransigent than their party colleagues in the south, ‘quick to denounce any weakening of the opposition’ to reform, and ‘determined to keep the tory party up to the mark in defending the landlord interest’

Early Bantu Ethnography from a Philological Point of View

Africa ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. J. v. Warmelo
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Compact Body ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphFew of the secrets that Africa still holds from us to-day have, I think, such an absorbing interest as the problem of Bantu in its relation to the neighbouring families and types of speech. Taking the continent of Africa as a whole, we find on the one hand the huge, yet marvellously homogeneous and compact body of the Bantu languages, clear-cut in structure, simple and transparent in phonology, and, at the back of much apparent diversity, exceptionally uniform in vocabulary. On the other hand there are in Africa numerous other languages of various type, which differ so much amongst each other that they have not yet been brought under any but the very broadest of classifications. The essential points of these are as follows.

The Political Function of the Poro. (Part II.)

Africa ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Little
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphIn the concluding paragraphs of Part I of this article it was pointed out that in addition to its judicial functions the Poro society possessed some important powers of administration. On the other hand, there was also evidence to suggest that the society carried on this wide range of activities, amounting almost to government of the country, as an instrument of the chiefs.

A Historical Whodunit: The So-Called “Kano Chronicle” and its Place in the Historiography of Kano

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hunwick
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The Other ◽  
The North ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

Murray Last obliquely suggests that [the “Kano Chronicle”] is best regarded as a rather free compilation of local legends and traditions drafted in the mid-seventeenth century by a humorous Muslim rationalist who almost seems to have studied under Levi-Strauss.The danger lies in being carried away by one's own ingenuity.The question of the authorship and date(s) of writing of the so-called “Kano Chronicle” (KC) and hence how historians should evaluate it as a source, have intrigued students of Kano (and wider Hausa) history since the work was first translated into English by H. R. Palmer in 1908. Palmer himself had the following to say:The manuscript is of no great age, and must on internal evidence have been written during the latter part of the decade 1883-1893; but it probably represents some earlier record which has now perished….The authorship is unknown, and it is very difficult to make a guess. On the one hand the general style of the composition is quite unlike the “note” struck by the sons of Dan Hodio [ʿUthmān b. Fūdī, Abdulahi and Muḥammad Bello, and imitated by other Fulani writers. There is almost complete absence of bias or partizanship…. On the other hand, the style of the Arabic is not at all like that usually found in the compositions of Hausa mallams of the present day; there are not nearly enough “classical tags” so to speak, in it…. That the author was thoroughly au fait with the Kano dialect of Hausa is evident from several phrases used in the book, for instance “ba râyi ba” used in a sense peculiar to Kano of “perforce.” The original may perhaps have been written by some stranger from the north who settled in Kano, and collected the stories of former kings handed down by oral tradition.

Milho Zaburro and Milho Maçaroca in Guinea and in the Islands of Cabo Verde

Africa ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Teixeira da Mota ◽  
António Carreira
Keyword(s):  
Zea Mays ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Variety ◽  
Cabo Verde ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphIt has been claimed that Zea mays existed in Africa before the discovery of America, but the plant is more generally considered to be a native of America, which could have spread through other continents only in post-Columbian times.This latter opinion has recently been challenged by several writers. Jeffreys, for instance, has since 1953 consistently maintained that on arrival in Guinea the Portuguese found Zea mays already well established there, as the cereal they called milho zaburro, previously introduced by the Arabs, who would have visited America long before Columbus. On the other hand, V. de Magalhães Godinho, pertinently refuting many of Jeffreys's reasonings and identifications, has put forward the view that, before the Portuguese voyages of discovery, there existed in Africa a variety of Zea mays, which was subsequently replaced by the American variety; the Portuguese would have become familiar with this variety in Morocco, and it would be this plant which they called milho zaburro, or milho maçaroca. To both these authors the designations milho maçaroca and Zea mays are indisputably synonymous.

CIETRZEW W POLSCE – MOŻLIWOŚCI ZACHOWANIA POPULACJI

2019 ◽  
Vol XII ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Robert Kamieniarz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Changes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Black Grouse ◽  
Protected Species ◽  
Mountain Areas ◽  
The North ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Regional Projects ◽  
North Eastern Part

In 1995 the black grouse was registered in the Polish list of protected species. The national black grouse protection plan has been prepared and a few regional projects of the conservation of grouse and its areas of occurrence have been implemented. Unfortunately, adverse trends have not been turned back in the majority of regions. On the other hand, the population occurrence area has even increased locally in the mountains. The registered changes in the area of black grouse occurrence indicate that this species has the greatest chance of survival in some mountain areas in the southern part of Poland and locally in lowlands in the north-eastern part of the country. However, it is necessary to stop and reverse the unfavourable environmental changes which have been registered in areas of black grouse occurrence.

Big Houses in Kano Emirate

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Hill
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Village ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Opening ParagraphIn 1971–2 I undertook research in part of the very densely populated farming zone around Kano city (often called the Kano close-settled zone) in order to compare it with a Hausa village, Batagarawa, some 100 miles further north in Katsina Emirate, where I had lived and worked in 1967. At Batagarawa farmland is not scarce and members of the community are free to establish farms on uncultivated (bush) land, some of which is no further than a mile or so from the village. For some 30 to 40 miles or more around Kano city, on the other hand, there is little or no uncultivated bush and farmers with insufficient land are obliged to buy or to ‘borrow’ (aro) farmland from others. My purpose was to compare and contrast the socio-economic organization and economic conditions of farmers in the two localities, with special reference, in so far as this variable could be isolated, to population density.

Briefly Noted

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 739-742
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cote D'ivoire ◽  
Press Release ◽  
The Other ◽  
North African ◽  
The North ◽  
European Court ◽  
Individual Assessment ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Grand Chamber

On February 13, 2020, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) announced its decision in N.D. and N.T. v. Spain. According to a press release from the Court, the case concerned two individuals (one from Mali and the other from Côte d'Ivoire) who were immediately returned to Morocco from Spain after unlawfully entering the autonomous Spanish city of Melilla on the North African coast. The individuals argued that their return to Morocco violated ECHR Articles 4 of Protocol 4 (prohibition of collective expulsion) and Article 13 (right to an affective remedy). The ECtHR disagreed, basing its decision on the fact that the two applicants unlawfully entered Melilla. The Court stated that because the two individuals had chosen not to make use of lawful channels for entry, their immediate return to Morocco without individual assessment of their cases for asylum "was thus a consequence of their own conduct" (para. 231). Because the Court found no violation of article 4, it could not make a finding with respect to article 13.

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