This is a synthesis of case studies and theory which takes issue with established African demographic theory, emphasising that demography is an historical process, a permanent and varied adaptation to social and economic change.

1. African Historical Demography: The Search for a Theoretical Framework PART I. PRELUDE TO COLONIALISM: SEQUELS OF SLAVERY 2. Local Versus Regional Impact of Slave Exports on Africa 3. The Demography of Slavery in Western Soudan: The Late Nineteenth Century 4. Population and Capitalist Development in Precolonial West Africa: Kasar Kano in the Nineteenth Century PART II. WEST AFRICA: THE DEMOGRAPHIC EFFECTS OF FRENCH COLONIAL POLICIES 5. L'évolution démographique régionale du Sénégal et du bassin arachidier (Sine-Saloum) au vingtième siecle, 1904-1976, 6. "Faire du nègre": Military Aspects of Population Planning in French West Africa, 1920-1940 7. Creating Hunger: Labor and Agricultural Policies in Southern Mosi, 1919-1940 8. Making Migrants: Zarma Peasants in Niger, 1900-1920 PART III. CENTRAL AFRICA: FORCED MIGRATION AND THE DEMOGRAPHIC REGIME 9. Extracting People from Precapitalist Production: French Equatorial Africa from the 1890s to 1930s 10. Les origines des migrations modernes dan l'ouest du Zaire PART IV. EAST AND NORTHEAST AFRICA: CONQUEST AND THE READJUSTMENT OF FERTILITY AND MORTALITY 11. Differential High Fertility and Demographic Transitions: Peripheral Capitalism in Sudan 12. Population Growth and the Deterioration of Health: Mainland Tanzania, 1920-1960 13. Health, Nutrition, and Population in Central Kenya, 1890-1945 PART V. SOUTHERN AFRICA: INTENSE PRESSURES ON DEMOGRAPHIC VIABILITY 14. Dimensions of Conflict: Emigrant Labor from Colonial Malawi and Zambia, 1900-1945 15. Demography, Production, and Labor: Central Angola, 1890-1950 16. Capital, State, and the African Population of Johannesburg, 1921-1980 PART VI. CONCLUSION 17. Toward a Historical Sociology of Population in Zaïre: Proposals for the Analysis of the Demographic Regime