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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
I rejoice with Messrs Gleave and Prothero in the opportunity for interdisciplinary discussion of a problem which is of interest to both historians and geographers. Before replying to their lengthy ‘Comment’ I feel that an explanatory note regarding the genesis of my article might remove any misapprehensions that it was done as a simple exercise in cavil.
1 Mason, M., ‘Population Density and “Slave Raiding”—The Case of the Middle Belt of Nigeria’, J. Afr. Hist. X (1969), 555–64.Google Scholar
2 Ibid. 551.
3 Harrison Church, R. J., West Africa (1961), 167–8.Google Scholar When discussing the Middle Belt in Nigeria, Harrison Church further clarifies the position, ‘The generally thinly peopled Middle Belt comprises two-fifths the area of Nigeria but has only one-fifth the population. This low density results from slave raiding from south and north, and from the consequentially greater infestation by tsetse and other pests. It is also a “shatter zone” or “no-man's land” between the contrasting northern and southern peoples, and has few large tribes. Physically many of its soils are poor, water is scarce and rainfall variable. Indeed, it seems to have the disadvantages of the south and the north, with none of their advantages.’ (ibid. 446).
4 Agboola, G. A., ‘Some Factors of Population Distribution in the Middle Belt of Nigeria: the Examples of Northern Ilorin and Kabba’, in Caldwell, J. C. and Okonjo, C. (eds.), The Population of Tropical Africa (Longmans, London, 1968).Google Scholar
5 Hance, W. A., African Economic Development (Pall Mall, London, 1967), 5.Google Scholar
6 Hance, W. A., Population, Migration and Urbanization in Africa (New York: Columbia U.P., 1970), 87.Google Scholar
7 Mason, , op. cit. 553.Google Scholar
8 Achazi, Hassan and Mallam, Shuaiba Na'ibi, A Chronicle of Abuja (translated and arranged by Frank, Heath) (Lagos, 1962).Google Scholar
9 See inter alia Morgan, W. B. and Pugh, J. C., West Africa (London: Methuen, 1969), 360–2, particularly Fig. 7.19.Google Scholar
10 For further details see Gleave, M. B., ‘Hill Settlements and their Abandonment in Western Yorubaland’, Africa XXXIII (1963), 343–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 For examples see White, S. ‘Agricultural Economy of the Hill Pagans of Dikwa Emirate, Carneroons’, Farm and Forest, V (1944), 130–4.Google ScholarGunn, H. D., ‘Peoples of the Plateau Area of Northern Nigeria’, Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Western Africa, Part VII (1953), 80.Google ScholarSuffil, T. L., ‘The Birons. A Pagan Tribe on the Plateau, Nigeria’, Farm and Forest, IV (1943), 179–82.Google ScholarGleave, M. B., ‘The Changing Frontiers of Settlement in the Uplands of Northern Nigeria’, Nigerian Geographical Journal, VIII (1965), 127–41.Google Scholar
12 Netting, R. M., ‘Household Organization and Intensive Agriculture: the Kofyar Case’, Africa xxxv (1965), 422–8,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hill Farmers of Nigeria: Cultural Ecology of the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau (Seattle and London: Washington U.P., 1968).Google Scholar
13 Prothero, R. M., Distribution of Population, Northern Nigeria 1952 1/1,000,000, Directorate of Overseas Surveys (London, 1960),Google Scholar and Density of Population, Northern Nigeria 1952 1/1,000,000, Directorate of Overseas Surveys (London, 1961).Google Scholar
14 Mason, , op. cit., 563.Google Scholar
15 Morgan, and Pugh, , op. cit. 280.Google Scholar
16 Pullan, R. A., ‘The Concept of the Middle Belt in Nigeria: an Attempt at a Climatic Definition’, Nigerian Geographical Journal, V (1962), 47.Google Scholar
17 Agboola, , op. cit. 295.Google Scholar
18 Gleave, M. B. and White, H. P., ‘The West African Middle Belt: Environmental Fact or Geographers' Fiction’, Geographical Review, LIX (1969), 523–39. This paper was read originally to the Institute of British Geographers in Sheffield in 1967.Google Scholar
