Hopkins, A. G.

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142 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORYnarrative and digressions on such topics as marriage patterns, economic activitiesand food and beer preparation. Conrad admits that the length of Tayiru's epic mayhave something to do with the mode of compensation: Conrad paid Tayiru foreach side of a cassette recorded (p. 9, n. i).Before I conducted fieldwork the first time, I was warned by my mentor not torely on data provided by jeliw, in part because they often ask for a great deal ofmoney and because, as the singers of praise, jeliw were very alert to providingfieldworkers with the answers they wanted to hear. Conrad, too, is keenly aware ofhow he influenced Tayiru's version. He describes the initial sequence of meetingswith Tayiru at which Tayiru gathered information and impressions about Conrad.When Tayiru agreed to record a narrative about Bamana Segu, Conrad stillwondered about 'the degree of effort he was willing to put into his performance ...The thrust of my interview questions was giving him an idea of the sort ofinformation I was after and helping him decide to what extent he was willing tocooperate with my inquiry. It was at this meeting that we negotiated a price forthe recording sessions, something else that was very likely to influence his attitudeto my work' (p. 9). Except for this brief comment on Conrad's influence onTayiru's narrative, the translation is only of Tayiru's words. The relationshipbetween the jeli and the one to whom he is singing praises is an organic one, shapedby the context of the performance and by the terms of their contract. In this book,however, all we have is the outcome. The outcome, however, is a richly narratedepic and a worthy companion to the existing corpus of Bamana Segu epics, whichwill be of considerable interest to students of African history, folklore andcomparative literature. Its tropes-jealousy, revenge, pride and intrigue - are thestuff of pre-modern epics not only in West Africa but throughout much of theworld.Conrad has provided us with much more than an interesting epic. Virtually eachpage is garnished richly with ethnographic and historical annotations. The textincludes several maps, a glossary of Bamana terms used and a short bibliography.Stanford University RICHARD ROBERTSQUANTIFICATIONFiguring African Trade. Edited by G. LIESEGANG, H. PASCH and A. JONES. Berlin:Dietrich Reimer, 1986. Pp. 685. No price given.This volume contains the proceedings of a 'Symposium on the Quantificationand Structure of the Import and Export Long Distance Trade in Africa,1800-1913', held in Germany in 1983. Although the book was published threeyears later, it has not been easy to obtain, and it is certainly not well known, evenamong specialists. The finished product will win no prizes as an example ofpublishing skills, but the unappealing presentation should not detract from thequality of the work of the editors and their contributors: this is an important andwell executed collection of essays which should be known to all historians whospecialize in African economic history in the nineteenth century.The 21 papers, in English and French, are prefaced by an Introduction byLiesegang and divided into six sections: techniques of data retrieval (Johnsonand Coquery-Vidrovitch); the late eighteenth century and early nineteenthcentury (Inikori, Johnson, Hogendorn and Johnson, Miller, Ross); oil and rubber(Latham, Goerg, Mark); imperialism and trade in West Africa (Almeida-Topor,Harding, Clarence-Smith); from slaves to railways in East Africa (Sheriff,Liesegang, Campbell, Menne, Janmohammed); and quantifying production anduse, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700031947Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 07:39:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms ofREVIEWS 143trade in the interior (Lovejoy, La Rue, Katzenellenbogen). Liesegang sets out thetwo principal themes of the Symposium: structural change and its measurement,and the individual authors follow with their particular topics, which cover most ofthe leading exports from tropical Africa. These are all valuable essays: some extendthe work for which their authors are already known; others break new ground —at least to the knowledge of this reviewer. Selected examples include: JosephMiller's study of imports into Luanda, 1785-1823, Peter Mark's quantification ofrubber and palm kernel exports from Senegambia, 1884-1914, LeonhardHarding's summary (in English) of some of his work on Hamburg's trade withWest Africa, Gerhard Liesegang's full (if, in his view, still preliminary) analysis ofMozambique's overseas trade, 1800—1914, and Janmohammed's account of the riseof Mombasa, 1895-1914. All the essays are accompanied by an appropriatelycomprehensive number of tables, figures and graphs.The result greatly advances our knowledge of the volume, rate of growth anddirection of Africa's ' legitimate' trade from outposts established by historians suchas Newbury, Manning and Alpers; and it also raises the whole question of the'nineteenth-century transition', which has been considered by a number ofscholars during the past thirty years. There is a great book to be written on thissubject (which was curiously neglected by Marxists and dependency theorists),and material is now available on East and Southern Africa as well as on the WestCoast. Perhaps Robin Law, who has written so perceptively in this area, willrespond to a public appeal to draw this material together. The contribution madeby Gerhard Liesegang and his colleagues in the volume under review will certainlymake the task much easier.Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva A. G. HOPKINSSHAPING SOUTH AFRICAThe Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840. Edited by RICHARD ELPHICKand HERMANN GILIOMEE. (Second edition). Cape Town: Maskew MillerLongman, 1989. Pp. xix + 623. Rand 39.95, paperback.The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape. Edited byWILMOT G. JAMES and MARY SIMONS. Cape Town and Johannesburg: DavidPhilip, 1989. Pp. xiv + 258. Rand 29.95, paperback.Though the first edition of The Shaping of South African Society escaped noticein this journal, it was well-received by students and scholars alike following itsoriginal publication in 1979. The second edition under review here deserves to beeven more widely read. Able to draw upon the extensive research of the late 1970sand through the 1980s, the editors and contributors have put together a completelynew edition which is not only extensively revised throughout but is expanded inscale to end in 1840 instead of the previous rather premature date of 1820.There is space here only to consider the main areas of new material. The first isin the chapter on slavery for which the original author, James Armstrong, has beenjoined by Nigel Worden. The chapter benefits from the recent work of both thesescholars. Armstrong's work on the Madagascar end of the trade in slaves has addeda new dimension to a previously little-considered aspect of Cape slavery, whileWorden's influence is clearly evident in the greatly strengthened final section of thechapter which, a la Genovese, considers 'the slave experience* and in doing sogoes way beyond the previous focus on resistance and escape. The authors arguethat the relationship between master and slave was far more complex and more6 AFH33use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700031947Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 07:39:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

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