This paper examines the final moments of the French libres engagés system of labor recruitment from Mozambique to La Réunion in the late 1880s. Rather than simply regarding this system as a form of disguised slave trade, it seeks to understand how these workers were actually recruited and the conditions of their employment on the French colonial island. It draws upon both French and Portuguese archival sources to place this brief chapter in the longer context of post-abolition labor recruitment in the southwest Indian Ocean.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of dispute mechanisms in the institutional and social dynamics of 18th century Old Calabar. In addition, this thesis considered the value of dispute records as historical sources in examining the sociopolitical and cultural transformation of Atlantic West African societies during the expansion of the slave trade. The thesis analyzed references to the legal and extralegal dispute strategies of Old Calabar's inhabitants in the diary of Antera Duke, an influential Efik trader. The analysis of the diary revealed the institutional role of the legal arenas and enforcement mechanisms of the Ekpe society in the management and settlement of disputes, as well as the existence of extralegal strategies used in place of, or concurrently with, legal mechanisms. The principal conclusion was that disputes served an important role in the transformation of Old Calabar's sociopolitical order during the late 18th century.

This dissertation examines the establishment and publication of various Kenyan newspapers between 1899 and 1990. It argues that most were established to enable the interests that controlled them to permeate the political field and other sectors of the economy that sometimes had little or nothing to do with newspapers or the media. That is, newspapers acted as bases from which to affect various centres of power. This meant that the enterprises behind these publications focused their efforts on lobbying the most powerful and influential political players towards positions that favoured the goals of their owners. At the same time, newspapers served as media for the production of conformity, steering public opinion towards those positions. The dissertation also includes a study of the government press during the period under examination as an entity that was also eager to `stake a claim' in the psyche of its targeted audiences. This enabled the governments concerned to encourage compliance with their policies in an attempt to ensure the continuation of the status quo or the enhancement of their power and influence.

This dissertation deals with the problem of human-wildlife conflicts in Kenya from 1850 to 2000 and seeks to contribute to the larger discourse on indigenous peoples' notions of the environment and its conservation. I examine alarming declines of wildlife populations of upwards of 60 percent by the 1990s that were attributed to persistent human-wildlife conflicts in and around the expansive Maasai group ranches/game sanctuaries bordering Amboseli National Park and Masai Mara Game Reserve, two of Kenya's foremost wildlife sanctuaries. I specifically focus on the Maasai, one of Kenya's best known ethnic communities who are often romanticized as paragons of ecological virtue, to question the potential of traditional environmental knowledge and perceptions to alleviate human-nature contestations. By focusing on the British-Maasai relationship during the colonial period the dissertation illuminates ambivalence reflected in how outsiders have often defined and reproduced certain Maasai identities as timeless. I examine the colonial administration's creation of the Masai Reserve in 1904 upon which it embarked on a failed quest to modernize the traditional Maasai animal husbandry. I also discuss how by the 1940s these endeavors coupled with the promotion of wildlife conservation in Maasailand profoundly impacted the transhumant nature of the Maasai pastoral economy and respectively led to increased Maasai antipathy towards wildlife and exacerbated progressive ecological degradation. The study also reviews the transformation of expansive Maasai Group Ranches (MGRs) from the early 1960s as livestock development schemes to prominent wildlife sanctuaries by the late 1990s. An assumed traditional Maasai "conservation ethic" that MGRs in their current capacity are predicated upon, however, clouds our understanding of the historical nature of human-wildlife contestations in Maasailand.

Beginning with Christian missionary efforts to create a standardized Yoruba print language in the mid-nineteenth century, the Yoruba-speaking region of southwestern Nigeria was rapidly integrated into a network of print production that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. The emergence of a local reading public engendered the desire of administrative and religious stakeholder agencies to dictate the development of a print culture in southwestern Nigeria. These agencies saw their work on the production and dissemination of literature as a political and moral investment in the region, one that would pay dividends with the development of a Yoruba reading public whose worldview aligned with their own. This dissertation examines the strategies used by missionaries, philanthropists and government administrators to control how and what Nigerians read, from the colonial period through independent rule and up to the economic collapse of the 1980s. It argues that independent Nigerian governments echoed the desires of earlier agencies that literature be used to teach moral lessons or practical skills, with the aim being the education of a nationalized citizenry. Utilizing missionary and government archives, along with publisher interviews and library records, I show the extensive human and monetary resources invested in influencing a Nigerian reading public under both colonial and independent rule. The dissertation concludes that the readers of English and Yoruba literature who composed this localized public accepted the instructional agenda being disseminated through print and ultimately embraced the utilitarian pleasures of their books.