Matthew Hannaford

Climate Variability and Societal Dynamics in Pre-Colonial Southern African History (AD 900-1840): A Synthesis and Critique

The role of climate variability in pre-colonial southern African history is highly disputed. We here provide a synthesis and critique of climate-society discourses relating to two regionally-defining periods of state formation and disaggregation. The first period involves the eleventh-thirteenth century development of socio-political complexity and the rise of southern Africas first state, Mapungubwe, followed by its collapse and the shift in regional power to Great Zimbabwe. The later period encompasses the early-nineteenth century difaqane/mfecane mass migrations, violence and ensuing state-building activity. To further our assessment, we consider the wider contentious issues of climate causation and determinism in a regional context, but dispute suggestions of paradigm shift towards simplistic environmental collapse. Nevertheless, we specifically point to ambiguities in palaeoclimate records, a narrative tendency toward monocausal explanations and a lack of integration among the literature as reasons for a sustained divergence in interpretation regarding the significance of climate. We move on to discuss the potential of integrative approaches to illuminate understanding of the complex interactions between past climate variability and human activity. In order to do so, we highlight interlinked concepts such as vulnerability and resilience as key for bridging the gap between the natural and social sciences. To conclude, we point to future climate-society priorities and ways forward in the form of research areas, data prospects and questions.

Early-nineteenth-century southern African precipitation reconstructions from ships’ logbooks

Atmospheric circulation in the oceans surrounding southern Africa plays an important role in determining its precipitation. This study uses wind information recorded in ships’ logbooks in order to statistically reconstruct summer and winter season precipitation at four southern African weather stations from 1796 to 1854. The reconstruction was obtained by first relating gridded 8° × 8° NCEP-DOE reanalysis seasonal mean wind vectors in the adjacent oceans to station precipitation. Over a 30-year calibration period (1979–2008), significant correlations between wind and precipitation at Cape Town, Mthatha and Royal National Park showed particular correspondence with those areas with the greatest concentration of logbook observations. Principal component regression was used to assess the potential of the dominant patterns of variability in the wind vectors as predictors to reconstruct precipitation. Cross-validation in the calibration period gave confidence that precipitation could be reconstructed at several stations across South Africa, meaning the regression relationships derived in the calibration period could be applied to the gridded seasonal mean logbook data to produce reconstructions of precipitation from 1796 to 1854. The reconstructions show a degree of correspondence with other regional data sets. For instance, the decade beginning in 1810 was the wettest of the period at Mthatha and Royal National Park, while the 1820s were the driest. At Cape Town, the 1820s were the wettest decade, with drier conditions observed in the 1830s. An index of west–east circulation in the summer season revealed correspondence with two documentary reconstructions of El Niño events and increased westerliness, although this did not always result in drier conditions. Attention is also drawn to the remaining 3000 yet to be digitised English East India Company logbooks which would provide a high-resolution picture of atmospheric circulation back to 1700 in the region under consideration.

Climate, Causation and Society: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Past to the Future

Over the last two decades, the causal role of climate in African history has been the subject of renewed debate. In many cases, however, the limitations of extant methodological approaches have contributed to a tendency to view climate as a monocausal factor in past human events, leading to revived criticism of the concept of climatic causation. Similar claims have also surfaced regarding approaches to evaluating the potential impacts of future climate change, where it has been suggested that the predictive hegemony of modelling has left the future of humankind “reduced to climate”, thereby overlooking the human factors that determine the magnitude of its impacts. In the context of urgent present and future African environmental challenges, questions over the concept of causation underline the need for further interdisciplinary research at the climate-society interface. One approach that can contribute to this discourse is assembling well-founded historical perspectives on climate–society interactions through the analytical framework of climate history. Indeed, studying the past is the only way we can examine the effects of and responses to shifts in physical systems. The aim of this paper is to provide an up-to-date starting point for such analyses in an African context. Using selected southern African case studies, previous approaches relating to climate and societal dynamics are first evaluated. Climate history is subsequently posited as a paradigm which is well-placed to deepen knowledge on long-term climate-society interactions, fitting alongside and incorporating key established paradigms such as vulnerability and resilience. Three key areas are highlighted for this challenge: climate reconstruction; understanding past human–climate interaction and vulnerability, and examination of societal resilience to climate change impacts. New research areas are then presented where studying the past can inform consideration of important future challenges, and the paper concludes by calling for the development of African climate histories on various spatial and temporal scales.

Pre-Colonial South-East Africa: Sources and Prospects for Research in Economic and Social History

In recent years, historical research on the pre-colonial period in the area between the Zambezi and Limpopo has almost ground to a standstill. A number of seminal works on the economic and social history of the area appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, each of which were underpinned by the documentary legacy of the Portuguese presence in the region from the beginning of the 16th century. Since the 1990s, it has been archaeologists that have taken up the mantle of post-1500 history, but the corpora of documentary material available is now seldom used systematically or to any great length. This article revisits the use and availability of historical documents for the study of African society in this region prior to 1840, specifically by presenting a newly constructed database of c.1,140 published and unpublished documents of relevance to African society, economy and the environment. The need for this database is first set into context by a critical overview of two of the major historiographies in pre-colonial economic and social history in this region – those of the relationships between trade and politics and drought and food production – from which a series of common problems are identified. The database is then introduced, together with an analysis of its chronological and spatial coverage and a discussion of the availability and accessibility of the documents. The article concludes by pointing to some potential future directions for a revival of pre-colonial economic and social history in south-east Africa north of the Limpopo, to which renewed interrogation of the wider range of documentary material collated here can contribute.