ABSTRACT
This chapter examines differences in the political systems within West Africa and aims to link such differences with their technological base. It explores the implications of certain broad differences in technology between Africa and Eurasia on the one hand and within Africa on the other. In pre-colonial times, over the long period when European activity was largely confined to the coast, there were to be found in West Africa most of the broad varieties of political organization that comparative sociologists have tried to distinguish in Africa, with the exception of the hunting hordes. Most of the technological differences between these political systems are of a relatively minor kind. In West Africa, as in medieval Europe and most other parts of the globe, horses were the possessions of a politically dominant estate that was usually of immigrant origin and had established its domination over a land of peasant farmers.
