Luso-African trade and settlement in the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau regions, 16th-19th centuries

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 24This paper examines the economic, social, and cultural influences of Luso-Africans living along the Gambia River and in the Guinea-Bissau region from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in terms of two general themes. The first is the significance of the sustained economic, social, and cultural ties between the Cape Verde Islands and the Guinea-Bissau region which began in the fifteenth century, and which continue to the present day. The second concerns how interrelationships between African societies, incoming Portuguese and Cape Verdean "strangers," and their Luso-African descendants changed over time

Western Africa To c/1860 A.D.: A Provisional Historical Schema Based On Climate Periods

Overview of climate changes and ecological zones and their relation to the history of West Africa

Kola trade and state-building: upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia, 15th - 17th centuries

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 38INTRODUCTION: From earliest recorded times to the present day, no African commodity has been more important in West African commerce than kola, a product of the coastal rainforest belt. Kola are highly esteemed as an indulgent and mild stimulant, are used for medical purposes, as valued presents between friends and first acquaintances, as symbols in social and religious ceremonies, as tokens of peace or war (depending on their white or red color) in diplomatic exchanges between states, and as the source of a distinctive yellow dye for decorating cloth. The beginnings of West African inter-regional commerce in kola cannot be dated. That the savannah populations had a longstanding commerce with the forest areas is attested by Arabic sources dating kola exports from the Western Sudan to North Africa from the thirteenth century. 2 In recent years scholars have contributed much information concerning overland routes connecting kola-producing areas of Guinea-Conakry, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana with interior markets, but there has been no comparable study of coastwise commerce along the upper Guinea Coast, and for good reason: the paucity of sources for the period prior to the seventeenth century.... [TRUNCATED

American legitimate trade with West Africa, 1789-1914

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University.The purpose of this study is to describe American legitimate (i.e., non-slave) commerce with West Africa for the period 1789-1914. Emphasis is placed on the influence of American commerce on historical events in West Africa. The sources include logbooks, merchants' paper and memoirs, colonial records, unpublished theses and published historical studies. Research was carried on in libraries and archives in the United States, Britain, France, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Dahomey and Nigeria. [TRUNCATED

Flight and Analytical Methods for Determining the Coupled Vibration Response of Tandem Helicopters

Chapter one presents a discussion of flight-test and analysis methods for some selected helicopter vibration studies. The use of a mechanical shaker in flight to determine the structural response is reported. A method for the analytical determination of the natural coupled frequencies and mode shapes of vibrations in the vertical plane of tandem helicopters is presented in Chapter two. The coupled mode shapes and frequencies are then used to calculate the response of the helicopter to applied oscillating forces