140 borders and frontiers: Africa desire to protect territory where natural resources were too scarce to be shared, to protect trade routes, or to protect a nation’s wealth and population from raiders AFRICA BY J USTIN CORFIELD The borders and frontiers of many of the civilizations in Africa were ill defined until the colonial period, and even then discrepancies between treaties often occurred In terms of North Africa, the Egyptians, the Numidians, the Carthaginians, and subsequently the Romans were able to establish frontiers to their lands largely with small garrisons in isolated oases astride trade routes Tariffs were generally collected on entry into a particular city rather than across any given frontier Some writers of the ancient world speak of a borderless world—“one world”—especially in relation to the period of Alexander the Great (336–323 b.c.e.) and again for the Roman Empire Until the emergence of larger kingdoms, most of society was organized into states centered on cities or towns, with their surrounding hinterland supplying produce to them Most of these larger settlements were located in rich, arable areas A few others appear to be located on land trade routes Certainly two of the routes across the Sahara appear to terminate in the ports of Lixus (modern-day Larache, Morocco) and Oea (modern-day Tripoli, Libya) The former is set in good agricultural land, but the latter had little arable hinterland, though even this might have been enough for Carthaginian farmers, using slave labor, to construct aqueducts During the ancient period the dual system of land tenure arose, which existed in much of North Africa until the establishment of the European colonial empires in the 19th century Essentially the boundaries of cities were clearly defi ned, often by walls or fortifications, and land within them was available for purchase or rent with a system of land tenure not too different from that operating in many of those countries today However, in the countryside, even though the land occupied by an individual farm might be defi ned, with no accurate cadastral service, that is, a register of ownership of land, the fullest extent of any kingdom or empire tended to be defi ned in terms of the presence of army garrisons placed in particular far-flung small settlements to ensure the easy collection of taxes and the maintenance of law and order As a result, the areas that paid taxes to a particular ruler were within his borders, often leaving the southern boundaries of Carthage, Numidia, and Roman North Africa ill defi ned Gradually, the Egyptian Empire and the empires of Carthage and subsequently Rome tended to fi x boundaries of provinces and install provincial governors who were in charge of dispensing justice as well as collecting taxes within their area of authority To achieve this objective, provinces, and hence borders, had to be more clearly defined than they had hitherto been Most literature exists for the Romans, who certainly built forts in the desert in Tripolitania (modernday western Libya) In addition, there also seem to have been large numbers of fortified farmhouses, probably occupied by limitanei (soldier-farmers) Although the Romans originally took over and absorbed the lands of the Carthaginians, maintaining Mauretania as a client state, in 42 c.e they annexed Mauretania, and within two years it was divided into the two provinces Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania Caesariensis During the first century there was significant Italian migration to Mauretania, leading to more lands being opened to agriculture and the borders of the existing chieftains being more closely delineated In the 210s, during the reign of Septimus Severus, the only African-born emperor of Rome, there was a reduction in trade throughout the whole Roman Empire and consequently an economic slump in North Africa, which saw the reduction of Roman influence over the more distant Saharan outposts However, during the later periods of the Roman Empire maps tended to show more details connected with the East African coast, including coverage as far south as Cape Delgado, south of Zanzibar, possibly on account of traders returning with new information The descriptions of the different tribes in North Africa noted by the fift h century b.c.e Greek historian Herodotus show that society was organized by clan groups following different customs but that there was clearly no physical barrier from one community to another Indeed, rather than groups being divided by rivers, many tribes were located astride them The problem was further exacerbated by the nomadic tribes that operated in the Sahara and in parts of central and southern Africa Because the area was very sparsely populated, for the most part the borders of one area were to remain undefined until recent times, when primarily European cartographers took an interest in Africa However, in some areas the frontiers of particular groups can be clearly ascertained Work by the anthropologist Patrick Munson in Sudan has shown that farmers in the Tichit-Walata part of the Sudan from 1000 b.c.e had tended to congregate in fortified cliff-top villages, clearly showing that protection from attack was more important than access to fertile arable land The settlement of Tin Hinan in the Hoggar, nearly 1,000 miles south of Algiers, excavated in 1926 and again seven years later, showed the importance of fortifications there to protect the local people from marauders during the first century b.c.e On the east coast of Africa, at Port Durnford (in modern-day South Africa), in 1912 a fortress was discovered that enclosed five acres, obviously showing the need of the people there to be able to withstand a substantial siege Inland, even before the massive stone buildings of Great Zimbabwe were constructed in the ninth century c.e., there were smaller efforts to centralize power These kingdoms were probably defi ned by the areas from where tax revenue, often the form of cattle, was raised and where men were available for conscription