A transient presence: black visitors and sojourners in Imperial Germany, 1884-1914

The onset of German colonial rule in Africa brought increasing numbers of Black men and women to Germany. Pre-1914 the vast majority of these Africans can best be described as visitors or sojourners and the Black population as a whole was a transient one. This makes recovering their presence in the archival record exceptionally difficult and it is not surprising that the existing historiography almost exclusively focuses on individual biographies of well documented lives. Through utilising a number of newly digitised archival materials, particularly the Hamburg Passenger Lists, this article draws upon a database with information on 1092 individuals from sub-Saharan Africa who spent time in Germany over the period 1884-1914 in order to add considerable bread and depth to our understanding of the Black presence as a whole. It provides increasing empirical detail about the make-up and character of this fluid population - where visitors came from, why they came to Germany, their age on arrival - as well as more accurate detail on the temporal and, to a lesser extent, spatial distribution of visitors

The 1999 Arizona Cotton Advisory Program

Arizona Cooperative Extension generates and distributes weather-based Planting Date and Cotton Development Advisories for 19 cotton production areas (Aguila, Buckeye, Cochise Co., Coolidge, Eloy, , Laveen, Litchfield Pk., Marana, Maricopa, Mohave Valley, Paloma, Parker, Pinal Co., Queen Creek, Roll, Safford and Yuma Valley). Planting Date Advisories are distributed from legal first planting date until the end of April and provide updates on heat-unit-based planting windows, recent and forecasted weather conditions, heat unit accumulations, variety selection, soil temperatures, recommended plant population, and early insect management and control. Cotton Development Advisories are distributed from early May through early September and provide updates on crop development, insects, weather and agronomy. The Cotton Advisory Program will continue in 1999, and growers may obtain advisories by mail/fax from local extension offices or by computer from the AZMET Internet Web Page (http://ag.arizona.edu/azmet). Major program changes planned for 1999 include 1) use of historical AZMET weather data for local normals and 2) elimination of the computer bulletin board as a computer-based means of retrieving the advisories