The significance of Drought, Disease and Famine in the agriculturally marginal zones of West-Central Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8980913 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joseph C Miller (0000-0002-7168-0221) |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 17-61 |
| Publication date | 1982-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853700020235 |
| PMID | 11632226 |
| OpenAlex | W2154740601 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 67 |
| References cited | 39 |
Some 170 references to drought and disease along the south-western coast of Central Africa between 1550 and 1830 suggest that climatic and epidemiological factors motivated the farmers and herders of West-Central Africa in historically significant ways. Nearly all references come from documentary sources and so bear primarily on conditions in the drier and less fertile areas near Luanda and to the south, where African reactions would have been strongest. While minor shortages of rain occurred too frequently to receive much explicit attention in the documents, longer droughts spread more widely every decade or so and attracted notice. Major periods of dryness, extending for seven years or more and touching all parts of the region, occurred perhaps once each century and produced comments throughout the documentation. Localized minor droughts hardly disrupted the lives of Africans, who had presumably devised agricultural and pastoral strategies to take account of such ordinary climatic variation. Two-or three-year rainfall shortages produced banditry and warfare that often attracted Portuguese military retaliation. Major droughts disrupted polities and societies and hence coincided with major turning points in West-Central African history in the late sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries. In the earlier case, agricultural failures produced the famed ‘Jaga’ or Imbangala warriors, who elevated pillage to a way of life and who joined the Portuguese in establishing the Angolan slave trade. The later, protracted drought from 1784 to 1793 coincided with the historic peak of slave exports from West-Central Africa
Agriculture · Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic shortage · Famine · Geography · Government (linguistics · Portuguese · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History
E a natureza os entregou ao jogo dos tempos
Water and Development
The Colonial Era
Angola and Mozambique, 1870–1905
East Africa 1870–1905
French Congo and Gabon 1886–1905
Africa on the Eve of Partition
Western Africa, 1870–1886
Western Africa, 1886–1905
North Africa
Madagascar and France, 1870–1905
The European Partition of Africa
The European Scramble and Conquest in African History
King Leopold's Congo, 1886–1908
El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
The Numbers, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves in the Eighteenth-Century Angolan Slave Trade
The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867
The Cambridge History of Africa
L'Itinéraire d'un débat
Baskets, Stalls, and Shops
Uma história de Benguela na economia do Atlântico Sul
Your poor boy no father no mother
African children in the British slave trade during the late eighteenth century
A população do Reino de Angola durante a era do tráfico de escravos
When Hunger Goes Around the Land
Diets, Food Supplies and the African Slave Trade in Early Seventeenth-Century Spanish America
Strategies for coping with severe food deficits in rural Africa
Experiences of Enslaved Children in Luanda, 1850–1869
The development of the arid tropics
Climate, history, society over the last millennium in southeast Africa
Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries
A subnational social vulnerability index for use in drought decision support systems
Natural Disasters? Droughts and Epidemics in Pre-colonial Sudanic Africa
A Traditional History of the Konyan (15th-16th Century)
African Historical Demography in the Years since Edinburgh
Capitalist homoficience, the frontier and uneven development in Southern Africa
Climate and the slave trade
The Holocaust and New World Slavery
African Women in Ecclesiastical Documents, Benguela, 1760–1860
The Holocaust and New World slavery a comparative history
Akyekyema Bour and Apreku Rock Shelters
Cows and Kings
Struggles for Control
Gender, Foodstuff Production and Trade in Late-Eighteenth Century Luanda
Cassava, “the lazy man's food”? Indigenous agricultural innovation and dietary change in Northwestern Zambia (ca. 1650–1970)
The Prospects for African Economic History
Toward a global historical archaeology
The Numbers, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves in the Eighteenth-Century Angolan Slave Trade
A dinâmica demográfica de Luanda no contexto do tráfico de escravos do Atlântico Sul, 1781-1844
New Evidence on the Causes of Slave and Crew Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade
South Atlantic Exchanges
Tsetse fly in Western Narok, Kenya
Pawnship, Debt, and ‘Freedom’ in Atlantic Africa During the Era of the Slave Trade
Measuring the Immeasurable
The State and Pre-Colonial Demographic History
The Demography of Slavery in the Coffee Districts of Angola, c. 1800–70
Indigenous responses to drought in sub‐Saharan Africa
Survival strategies of a sahelian society
Conditions écologiques, crises de subsistance et histoire de la population à l'époque de la traite des esclaves en Sénégambie (17e-18e siècle)
O limite tênue entre liberdade e escravidão em Benguela durante a era do comércio transatlântico
Aguida Gonçalves da Silva, une dona à Benguela à la fin du xviiie siècle
Mortality and Voyage Length in the Middle Passage
Drought in Mozambique 1823-1831
Engenho sim, de açúcar não o engenho de farinha de Frans Post
A produção da liberdade no Brasil escravista (Século XIX)
Hunting for rents
African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade
The Roots of rural poverty in Central and Southern Africa
The Kaya complex, a history of the Mijikenda peoples of the Kenya coast to 1900
Extinction and survival in human populations
The Ideology of slavery in Africa
Kings and kinsmen
Slaves and society in Western Africa, c. 1445— c. 1700
The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 3, c. 1050-c. 1600
Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola, 1840-1926
The Population Factor in African Studies
Himba Epochs
Légal Portuguese Slaving from Angola. Some Preliminary Indications of Volume and Direction
Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola 1840-1926
The Jaga Reconsidered
Nzinga of Matamba in a new perspective
Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750
Famine and disease in the history of Angola c. 1830–1930
The Methodology of Historical Climate Reconstruction and its Application to Africa
The significance of rainmaking for the Mbukushu
Social Responses During Severe Food Shortages and Famine [and Comments and Reply]
The African Past Speaks
Social and Ecological Systems
Epidemiology and the Slave Trade
The Earth's Problem Climates
The Portuguese Slave Trade From Angola in the Eighteenth Century
The Earth's Problem Climates
The Population Factor in African Studies
Chronology, Migration and Drought in Interlacustrine Africa
Social Change in Angola
A Resurrection for the Jaga
"Requiem for the "Jaga
The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810
Capitalism and Colonialism in Mozambique
The Slave Trade in Eighteenth Century Angola
Social and Ecological Systems
The Slave Trade in Eighteenth Century Angola
| Unique citing works | 67 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 1984 - 2026 (43) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 66 |