ABSTRACT
In the first part of this article a number of possible connexions between ‘the last-ditch resisters’ and the ‘earliest organizers of armed risings’, and later leaders of opposition to colonial rule in East and Central Africa, were explored. It was argued that African ‘primary’ resistance shaped the environment in which later politics developed; it was argued that resistance had profound effects upon white policies and attitudes; it was argued that there was a complicated interplay between manifestations of ‘primary’ and of ‘secondary’ opposition, which often overlapped with and were conscious of each other. Then the argument turned to a more ambitious proposition, namely that ‘during the course of the resistances, or some of them, types of political organization or inspiration emerged which looked in important ways to the future; which in some cases are directly and in others indirectly linked with later manifestations of African opposition’.
