bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Journal of an African Slaver, 1789-1792, and the Gold Coast Slave Trade of William Collow
Authors: Behrendt Stephen D.
Published: May 2006

In 1929 the American Antiquarian Society published an eighty-three-page manuscript that describes commercial transactions for slaves, ivory, and gold on the Gold and Slave Coasts from 1789 to 1792. George Plimpton owned this manuscript. As it includes a slave-trading ledger of the schooner Swallow, Plimpton entitled the manuscript “The Journal of an African Slaver.” The “journal” is one of the few published documents in the English language that specifies financial transactions for slaves between European and African traders on the coast of Africa during the late eighteenth century.

In his four-page introduction to the journal Plimpton stated that:

The name of the ship engaged in the traffic was the schooner ‘Swallow,’ Capt. John Johnston, 1790-1792. There is a reference to a previous voyage when ‘Captain Peacock had her,’ also some abstracts of accounts kept by Capt. David McEleheran in 1789 of trade in gold, slaves and ivory on the Gold Coast. None of these names can be identified as to locality, and there is, of course, the possibility, especially taking into consideration the English nature of the cargo bartered, that the vessel was an English slaver.

The journal was included with some mid-nineteenth century South Carolina plantation accounts when it was purchased at an auction in New York, thus suggesting to Plimpton that the journal's author was perhaps a “South Carolinian who made this trip to Africa.”

In this research note I will identify the various vessels and traders mentioned in this manuscript by referring to the data-set I have assembled from other sources concerning the slave trade during this period. We will seethat Plimpton's “journal” is a set of account books owned by the Gold Coast agents of London and Havre merchant William Collow. I then will discuss the importance of Collow as a merchant and shipowner in the late eighteenth-century British slave trade.
Les Rois De Glidji: Une Chronologie Revisee
Authors: Gayibor N.L.
Published: May 2006

Etablir avec une certaine fiabilité la liste chronologique des souverains d'un royaume à partir des traditions orales se révèle un exercice périlleux, dans les dédales duquel peu d'historiens osent s'aventurer. Pour peu que les origines de cet Etat remontent à quelques siècles, le talon d'Achille des sources orales est, on le sait, la chronologic Il est pourtant urgent de s'y atteler, pour ce qui concerne les formations politiques précoloniales, car l'usure du temps et surtout la disparition des particularités culturelles sous les influences de la vie moderne effacent inexorablement de la mémoire collective, le souvenir de ceux qui ont façonné le destin de leur peuple.

Certains héritiers de ces Etats précoloniaux, dans le souci légitime de mieux faire connaître leur passé, ont tenté—avec plus ou moins de bonheur—de collecter et de mettre en forme les éléments épars fournis sur ce passé par les traditionnistes. C'est ce que fit le roi de Glidji Agbanon II en publiant en 1934, à la demande de l'administration française, unMémoire sur l'histoire de Petit-Popo et du royaume Guen. Dans cet ouvrage, l'auteur tente de reconstituer l'histoire du royaume de Glidji à partir d'une liste dynastique, avec les dates et les événements marquants du règne de chaque souverain et les événements survenus au cours de ces règnes. Or, cette liste ne résiste pas à la critique historique, essentiellement en ce qui concerne les XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Notre propos, à travers cette étude, est de tenter de reconstituer cette liste à partir de la critique des hypothèses d'Agbanon, à la lumière des documents d'archives et travaux divers relatifs à la période considérée.
“Portuguese” Architecture and Luso-African Identity in Senegambia and Guinea, 1730–1890
Authors: Mark Peter
Published: May 2006

Along the West African coast and in the immediate hinterland from the Gambia River to Sierra Leone in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, a region of extensive long-distance trade, the buildings people lived in, as well as the physical layout of their communities, served as important elements in the articulation of their cultural identity. At the same time, architecture reflected contact between the various populations of the region. These groups included a small number of Portuguese and a somewhat larger population of several thousand Luso-Africans, whose commercial role as traders, declining by the late eighteenth century, was limited essentially to the navigable lower reaches of coastal rivers and waterways.

These Luso-Africans, faced by Europeans who contested their efforts to define themselves as a group, were gradually marginalized and ultimately subsumed into the neighboring coastal populations, leaving only traces of their distinctive culture. Among the elements that comprised the Luso-African cultural legacy were houses built in “Portuguese” style: rectangular structures with whitewashed exteriors and a vestibule or a porch. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, these houses helped to define the Luso-African community.

The local African populations of West Atlantic-speakers (Floups, Bagnuns, Bijogos, and Papels) and, further down the coast, Susus, Temnes and Bulloms, were for the most part organized into small-scale, decentralized societies. Mande-speaking peoples inhabited the small states of the lower Gambia and the more important state of Kaabu in Guinea-Bissau; they, together with ‘juula’ merchants, comprised the western outriders of the Mande diaspora. Further east, in the newly-established Islamic state of Fuuta Jaloo (Futa Jalon), lived the Fulbe.
The University of Zambia's Institute for African Studies and Social Science Research in Central Africa, 1938-1988
Authors: Musambachime M. C.
Published: May 2006

G. K. Gwassa states that research institutes in Africa constitute one critical factor of development in that they have to undertake the twin problems of research which involve the search for and the discovery of the process of social development. They also undertake purposeful functional research by (especially) studying and analyzing internal economic and social conditions in order to determine the characteristics, variables, and criteria for rational economic and political actions within a given country. These have become the functions of many social science research institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. The pioneer in all this is the University of Zambia's Institute for African Studies, the oldest social science-oriented research center in black Africa.

The Institute was founded in 1938 as the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute for Social Research (RLISR). In its fifty years of existence the Institute has made contributions which have earned it an international reputation for its research work. The aim of this paper is to assess the contribution of the Institute to social science research in its first fifty years of existence. In undertaking this task, I propose to discuss the topic under three broad areas: foundation, aims, and objectives; publication and research; and problems encountered and their solution.
The Nigerian National Archives, Kaduna: An Introduction for Users and a Summary of Holdings
Authors: Heap Simon
Published: May 2006

The archives for Northern Nigeria, including not only the area north of the Niger and Benue rivers but also present-day Kwara, Kogi, and Benue states, is located at 29 Yakubu Gowon Way, Kaduna, in the heart of the busy central commercial and administrative district of the town. The Kaduna branch of the Nigerian National Archives has a large, comprehensive and unique collection of official papers of the British colonial and Nigerian independence periods; papers of native and local authorities; and newspapers, magazines, and other publications, as well as Arabic manuscripts. The archives is open on weekdays only. From Monday to Thursday its hours are 8:30 to 2:30, while on Friday there is a shortened day: 8:30 to 12:30.

No documents will be produced from the repository within one hour before closing time. In 1991 240 visitors made some 800 visits to the Kaduna archives. On each visit, the visitors' book must be signed; signing out at the end of the day is also obligatory. Use of the archives requires the purchase of a searcher's registration card costing 10 naira ($1.00 or 50 pence) for students, 25 naira for others. The card is valid for the other National Archives branches at Ibadan and Enugu and lasts for that calendar year. Renewals are carried out in subsequent years. Photocopying facilities are available, give excellent reproduction, and are cheap—50 kobo (5c/3p) per exposure for students, one naira for other researchers.
On Aro Colonial Primary Source Material: A Critique of the Historiography
Authors: Nwauwa A. O.
Published: May 2006

The successful implementation of the Lugardian system of indirect rule among the Igbo eluded British colonial officials. In Northern Nigeria the British had effectively used the Fulani aristocrats in implementing the system. The Fulani were believed to represent a superior caste of nomads who possessed superior ideas of centralization, organization, and administration. Since the Aro were able to organize their spectacular slave- trading network in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British assumed that, like the Fulani, they represented equally superior elements, and so could be used to implement the indirect rule policy in Igboland. Or, if they did not possess a centralized administration as the Fulani, which could be effectively utilized, one could be invented for the occasion.

As a result the Aro began to agitate British colonial officers and anthropologists, designing to show their “foreignness” to the Igbo. British officials quickly rejected that the Aro were Igbo. Because the Igbo were acephalous the British had regarded them as very “primitive,” thus incapable of any remarkable organization or innovation. Since colonialism justified itself by the contention that, left alone, Africans were incapable of any meaningful advance, it was only logical for the British to look outside Igboland and Africa for the origin of the Aro. Consequently, Aro colonial historiography became suspect.
The Reign of Kabaka Nakibinge: Myth or Watershed?
Authors: Reid Richard
Published: May 2006

Reliable data relating to Buganda's pre-1800 past has come to historians in the form of a thin trickle. Students of more ancient Ganda history have been compelled to rely on the accounts by literate Ganda composed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most notably the work of Apolo Kagwa. The effective usage of these accounts is fraught with difficulties, difficulties which are well-documented in the case of Buganda and which have been explored by, in particular, Wrigley, Kiwanuka, Rowe, and Henige. These writers have justifiably questioned the validity of such recorded political history. The idea that Buganda was governed by a Western-style royal dynasty, with a chronologically-structured succession list, was first put in writing by Speke, who provided the earliest such kinglist.

Over the ensuing forty years this kinglist was gradually lengthened and virtually set in stone, largely through the writings of Kagwa. The explanation of precolonial Ganda government in die terminology of Western constitutional monarchy doubtless served very well the purposes of the new colonial power, which was able to claim that it was merely backing up an extant political organization able to articulate the practices of ‘civilised’ governance. This arrangement also clearly suited the Ganda, as Wrigley and Twaddle have suggested. Both authors incisively argue that the Ganda kinglist was manipulated to meet the challenges of the colonial period.

There seems little reason to doubt, and every reason to believe, that the recording of Buganda's more ancient past (for which there is no corroborating written source) was indeed often carefully engineered to produce the desired results. The attempt to ‘clarify’ local power struggles, the legitimization of particular claims to authority, and die opportunity to provide the world with the definitive account of one's own ‘national history’ (an opportunity, surely, which few could resist) were all factors which have combined to demand skepticism among historians concerning the historicity of ‘traditional’ accounts.
The Elmina Dagregister of William Butler, 1721
Authors: Clement Jan J.
Published: May 2006

De Heeren Thienen, executives of the college of directors of the West-Indische Compagnie (W.I.C.) in Amsterdam, demanded that their directors-general in Elmina keep accurate journals or day books, copies of which had to be sent to Holland regularly and at short intervals (one to three months), to each of the five “Kamers” or Chambers: Amsterdam, Zeeland, Maas, Stad, and Lande en Noorderquartier. These journals were produced during most of the period of two and a half centuries that the Dutch resided at the Gold Coast. All of the still-existing journals are now stored at the Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA) in The Hague in Holland.

Unfortunately, many of the manuscripts dating from before 1700 have gone, lost either by deliberate destruction, by thoughtless bureaucrats, or by accidental fires. Of the manuscripts now in the ARA many are in poor condition and are not available for consultation; others are being microfilmed, which makes studying these valuable documents somewhat tiresome. Fortunately, when I transcribed the day book of 1721 on my laptop computer, I was lucky enough to be able to use the original manuscript; a few weeks after I had finished this job the manuscript was microfilmed and is now available only in that format. The only other existing transcription of a journal of Elmina was published in 1953 by Karel Ratelband, whose Vijf dagregisters van het kasteel Sao Jorge Da Mina, covers the years 1645 to 1647.

The journals of Elmina written or dictated by the directors-general were used by the Heeren Thienen in Amsterdam primarily as a tool to control their staff on the Gold Coast.
New Publication About the C.I.C.M. Archives
Authors: Vellut Jean-Luc
Published: May 2006

The Scheut Archive is housed in a remote Roman suburb. Intriguingly enough, it was not mentioned in Lajos Pàsztor's repertory of church archives in Italy, vol. 7 of the UNESCO series, Guide to the Sources of the History of Africa, published in 1983. One explanation for this neglect might be that the archive was not fully operational by then. These circumstances no doubt partly explain why, despite exemplary conservation and classification, this collection has up to now been insufficiently tapped by scholars. Contributing factors may have been the discredit unfortunately thrown on traditional written sources by a number of modern “Africanists,” as well as widespread ignorance among English-speaking scholars of the intricacies of Roman Catholic bureaucracies. In fact, whatever their cultural background, historians wanting to burrow their way into the massive collection of Scheut papers should brace themselves for a period of initiation in the intricacies of two overlapping multinational Church organizations.

On the one hand, the Scheut congregation, as a separate institution, was established in 1862. It had its headquarters at Scheut, on the outskirts of Brussels, with a superior general in charge. It also had representation in Rome, but its main activities were carried out in its territorial branches (“provinces”) established first in the Far East and later in the Congo, each under the authority of a provincial. This organization maintained a dense internal and external network of communication within the hierarchy itself, as well as with government administrations, other religious bodies, etc. Like any organization, it knew rules and procedures, but also conflicts among various power blocs.
Kemi Morgan and the Second Reconstruction of Ibadan History
Authors: Falola Toyin
Published: May 2006

I did not set out to write a new book, not even to write the

history of Ibadan. I intended to re-write the old man's book.

The concerns which dominated Yoruba historiography in the nineteenth century were similar to those of the first half of this century. Primary among these concerns were the patriotic desire to document Yoruba history, explain the turbulence of the nineteenth century, and inspire the new generation with a sense of history. Isaac Babalola Akinyele (1881–1964), the first to write a chronicle on Ibadan, expressed these concerns in the preface to the first edition of his book, Iwe I tan Ibadan, published in 1911. He explained that the origin of the book was the invitation extended to him in May 1911 by an Ibadan-based society, the Egbe Onife He Yoruba (“Lovers of the Yoruba”) to give a lecture on “Ancient and Modern Ibadan.” In the same month, he delivered a lecture which he later expanded and published into a book in order to preserve history at a time when the knowledge about the past was being forgotten and the elders were passing on. Chief Akinyele believed that it was urgent to document the oriki of Yoruba Obas, again being forgotten because only a few persons were interested in them. To him the oriki reveal much about Yoruba history. He also believed that the Yoruba language was undergoing a decline, and that there was a need for a rescue mission. He concluded his preface by appealing to his readers to accept his work and to ignore any derogatory remarks on people and ethnic groups in the oriki, which were composed by poets to eulogize the achievements of chiefs and warriors during a period of warfare. Finally, he enjoined all the Yoruba to unite, to learn from the British nation where everybody, irrespective of differences in language and culture, had united in order to build a strong and prosperous nation.
“Mande Kaba,” the Capital of Mali: A Recent Invention?
Authors: Green Kathryn L.
Published: May 2006

Historians who work in certain diaspora areas of the Mande people are frequently told by Mandekan speakers that their ancestors came from “Mande Kaba” (Kaaba). When reporting this, they usually then proceed to explain that Kaba is the Mande term for the French-named town of Kangaba, capital of the Mali empire. However, in my work on the precolonial state of Kong in northeastern Côte d'Ivoire, it became important to question exactly what this phrase means in the context of oral traditions and chronology.

The hypothesis equating Kaba, Kangaba, and the capital of the Mali empire dates back in print to the early French studies of ancient Mali, and particularly to Maurice Delafosse, that prolific writer on West African oral traditions, religion, and languages. In his 1912 magnum opus, Haut-Sénégal-Niger, Delafosse cited Kangaba, “sans doute” as the capital of the pre-Sunjata “royaume” of Mali. In his annotation of the French translation of the mid-seventeenth century compilation, Ta'rikh al-Fattash, Delafosse again presented this idea. The Ta'rikh stated that “[t]he town which served previously as the capital of the emperor of Mali was named Diêriba [jāriba]; following, there was another named Niani [Yan.”

In a note Delafosse explained that Diêriba “is also the name of the town called Kangaba on our [French] maps, which after having been the first capital of the manding empire, is still today the chief town of the province of Manding or Malli.” He was most likely relaying information from his interpretation of traditions as well as his own personal observations of early twentieth-century Kangaba. The Keita family, claiming descent from Sunjata Keita, the founder of the Mali empire, enjoyed political control of Kangaba, and were recognized as having held this position for some time.
Four Years in Asante: One Source or Several?
Authors: Jone Adam
Published: May 2006

Since its publication in 1874-1875 the account by the Basel missionaries Friedrich (‘Fritz’) August Ramseyer (1842-1902) and Johannes Kühne (1840-1915) of their captivity in Asante, Vier Jahre in Asante, has constituted one of the major written sources on the nature of precolonial society in what is now southern Ghana. Stationed at Anum, near the east bank of the lower Volta, Ramseyer and Kühne were captured together with Ramseyer's wife and infant son in June 1869 by an Asante force which had invaded Ewe territory. They were taken to Asante and eventually, after a seven-month stay in a hamlet which they christened Ebenezer, to Kumase, where they were held hostage from December 1870 until the approach of a British military expedition in January 1874. Apart from the independent French trader Joseph-Marie Bonnat, who was captured in the same month and shared many of their experiences, Ramseyer and Kühne spent longer in Asante than any other author before the twentieth century. Moreover, as prisoners they were able to observe African society from an unusual perspective: “these men saw all from below; the white man was the slave, the negro the master.”

While the importance of this source is generally recognized, it has escaped the notice of most commentators that what Ramseyer and Kühne left us was not one source but at least five—a manuscript, two German editions, and an English and a French translation, all written within a relatively short period of time as part of what has been called “the scramble for Gold Coast Africana.” In this paper I shall explore some of the relationships among these different sources.
The Devonshire Declaration: The Myth of Missionary Intervention
Authors: Maxon Robert M.
Published: May 2006

It has long been accepted that the Devonshire Declaration of 1923 represented a clever compromise by which the British government was able to extricate itself from a longstanding controversy surrounding Indian claims for equality with European settlers in Kenya through a statement that African interests were to be paramount in that colony. There can be no denying that the doctrine of African paramountcy proved an effective solution to the Colonial Office dilemma caused by attempting to balance the conflicting claims of the Kenya Indians and settlers. Yet another widely-stated view, that the doctrine of African paramountcy and other specific details included in the declaration were provided to the Colonial Office by British missionary and church officials, specifically J. H. Oldham and Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury is, quite simply, a myth. The Colonial Office had no need for Oldham and Davidson to devise a settlement for it; officials there had decided the main principles that they would use in making a policy statement long before Oldham entered the Indian question in May 1923. What the Colonial Office officials actually got from the missionary leader, in addition to useful phraseology, was the vital support they needed to sell the policy announced in the White Paper to influential public opinion in both Britain and India. This was a most significant achievement, and it is time to recognize Oldham's contribution for what it was rather than perpetuate an interpretation that has no basis in fact.
Oral Historical Traditions and Political Integration in Ijebu
Authors: Oduwobi Tunde
Published: May 2006

The Ijebu are a subgroup of the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria. In precolonial times they established a single kingdom under the Awujale (the titular head) whose seat of government was the town of Ijebu-Ode. Structurally, the kingdom was composed of geographical divisions, each of which was identified by a name. Some of them were characterized by close socioeconomic and political ties effected through the joint control of a political association, the Pampa society, which coordinated commercial, communal, and military activities in the area. Three such divisions form the focus of this paper: Ijebu-Igbo, Imusin, and Ago-Iwoye.

The British colonial administration engendered a process of political integration in these three areas as they were each brought under a single ruler; the purpose of this paper is to highlight how Ijebu oral historical traditions were employed to give support to this integrative process., but first, an identification of the areas concerned.

The Ijebu-Igbo area is composed principally of five distinct settlements or towns: Okesopin, Ojowo, Atikori, Oke-Agbo, and Japara. Okesopin is accorded primacy as the oldest of the settlements. The term Ijebu-Igbo (forest) is an allusion to the forested nature of this area of Ijebu.

The Imusin area, made up of about fifty very small settlements, is subdivided into two geographical groups: the northern group, called Ikatun, and the southern group or Ikasi. The term Imusin means the area of the akee apple (Imu: place or area; Isin: akee apple).
Historical Tales (Ibiteekerezo) and the History of Rwanda
Authors: Vansina Jan
Published: May 2006

Historical tales are the most abundant and the sources most used to reconstruct the history of the kingdoms of the area between the Great Lakes. This is especially true for the history of the Nyiginya kingdom in Rwanda, where such tales, preserved at the court as well as by local people on the hills, are even more abundant than anywhere else. It is not surprising then that they form the bedrock on which authors have built their reconstructions on the history of that kingdom. Yet little attention has been paid to a general critical examination of these tales. Here, and elsewhere in the region, their contents have generally been accepted as credible, after the arbitrary erasure of all references to passages judged to refer to miracles, after the arbitrary dismissal of the bits and the variants that do not conform to one's preferred version, and after either the exclusion of local “provincial” narratives, or as happened after 1960, the exclusion of all those that stemmed from the court. Such practices will simply not do.

Because these tales form the bedrock of the history of the kingdom the Institute for Scientific Research in Central Africa (IRSAC) under my direction instituted a large collection of such sources between 1958 and 1962, and made them available in the original and in translation first in depots at Butare and Tervuren and later in 1973 on microfilm. Surprisingly enough, this collection as well as even major editions of other sources, have been completely ignored by most scholars working after 1960.
References in the Humanities: Strategies of Being Open, Being Obscure and Being Misleading
Authors: Heintze Beatrix
Published: May 2006

It all seems so easy: our ideas of intellectual property, and the law of copyright and associated laws of protection bound up with them, demand references in adopting the writings, and even just the contents, of the works of others. In reality, it is obvious that the conditions and scientific rules of the game are less clear than is generally assumed. While usage regarding literal quotations is laid down precisely, ‘borrowings’ regarding contents leave considerable room for interpretation. This means that one can, with good reason, discern an author's ‘fingerprint’ or ‘visiting card’ in the manner he or she deals with references.

The obligation to give references is a relatively recent usage. For a long time, the use of whole passages from other authors in one's own works without mentioning the fact was usual and in no way disparaging. Only from the mid-eighteenth century “did some authors seek to discredit their rivals and predecessors through accusations of plagiarism.” Today such accusations, if they prove valid, can abruptly end a scientific career. However, the boundaries are fluid, and are becoming, if I am not deceived, more and more fluid at the present time, whether consciously or unconsciously. It may therefore be useful to pause for once and account for this technical aspect of our activities.

The following, admittedly emphatically phrased, impressions result from my more than thirty years of activity as an editor, reader, and author of historical and anthropological literature.
Attitudes to Africans in English Primary Sources on Guinea up to 1650
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

This essay investigates the attitudes to Black Africans, specifically those of Guinea, as evidenced in the pre-1650 primary sources on Anglo-African relations. Two 1980s studies by scholars working within the field of English literature have investigated English attitudes of the period to Africans in general and have expounded what are apparently popular as well as academically-received conclusions, as follows. Contact with Africans and with the existing Atlantic slave trade, building on older ideas of the meaning of “blackness” and the inferiority of non-Christians, led the pre-1650 English to create a stereotype of barbarous and bestial Blacks which served to justify the enslavement of Africans and English slave-trading. Both studies are based in the main on an analysis of English drama of the period, with passing reference, for instance, to the Othello controversy. Historians are bound to have reservations about the extent to which imaginative literature can inform on historical process and collective attitudes, perhaps not least in respect of the category of theatrical drama, especially when the drama is presented, as in this period, to a tiny segment of a national society. As it happens, these particular studies, while exemplary in their fashion, can be criticized for too limited a critical investigation of the primary non-imaginative sources, resulting in minor errors of fact and, more important, general statements about Anglo-African contacts less than wholly valid. They also treat their subject too narrowly, tearing out what they see as a “racist” stereotype from the context of English cultural relationships in the period, which, in the time-honored and universal way of cultural self-protection, inevitably tended to discriminate against all non-English ways and manners, overtly or covertly.
The Politics of Publishing Oral Sources from the Mara Region, Tanzania
Authors: Shetler Jan Bender
Published: May 2006

The intense scholarly debate concerning the shift from orality to literacy has not often directly concerned African historians in spite of the fact that many work closely with oral sources. In the process of publishing a series of locally-written histories, I discovered that transforming oral tradition into written form is ultimately political. It raised a number of important ethical dilemmas for me as a scholar and brought to my attention the power relations inherent in these transactions. Oral knowledge and its transformation is not neutral or entirely benevolent. I found out that the change from an oral to a written knowledge base takes power out of the hands of community elders and puts it into the public domain, where literate men have the advantage and where community security may be vulnerable. As scholars we need to face our own involvement in these political processes, even if we cannot ultimately control them.
On the Origins of the Amazons of Dahomey
Authors: Alpern Stanley B.
Published: May 2006

Among the most intriguing unresolved historical questions concerning the women soldiers of Dahomey are the journalist's basic when, how and why (the who and where are givens). We know the amazons' terminal date precisely: the fourth of November 1892, when they fought their last battle against the French at the gates of Cana. But assertions in the literature as to when they got started range all the way from the reign of Wegbaja (ca. 1640-ca. 1680-85) to that of Glele (1858-89).

Neither Wegbaja nor Glele can seriously be considered as the originator of the amazons, though the former has a far better claim than the latter. The Wegbaja thesis rests on a tradition that he created the well-known corps of elephant huntresses, the gbeto, and on speculation that they became the first amazon unit. The gbeto may even predate Wegbaja: Palau Marti cites a tradition that he organized pre-existing huntresses into a special corps. Lombard offers the plausible explanation that since women provisioned the royal palace, it was only natural that some of them furnish game for the king's table. Dunglas seems to have been the first to write down the tradition tracing the gbeto to Wegbaja; he was inclined to accept it. P.K. Glèlè says Wegbaja began employing women as personal guards. Cornevin states, without giving his source, that it was the gbeto themselves who doubled as the king's bodyguards. None of this can be proved, and in any case no one has suggested that Wegbaja ever used women as real soldiers.
Radama's Smile: Domestic Challenges to Royal Ideology in Early Nineteenth–Century Imerina
Authors: Berg Gerald M.
Published: May 2006

In the 1820s, when Imerina expanded to control most of Madagascar, remarkably few Merina rose in organized opposition to the king's extensive plans to change basic social and political relations. Tradition conferred sacred legitimacy on innovative royal interpretations of ideology and secured public consent with little resort to force. Potential conflicts between the king and Merina elites were muted by negotiations that proceeded within the premises of traditional ideology. As the king managed to monopolize organized force, occasional acts of violence assured that royal views of ideology dominated all others.

King Radama occupied the central position in the stream of blessing that ran from Imerina's collective ancestors downwards through him to all living Merina. As the ultimate living representative of all long-dead ancestors, he had the power to dispense their good will in the form of “superior”hasinain exchange for his subjects' offerings of “inferior”hasina. As mediator between heaven and earth, Radama alone determined how Imerina'shasinaideology would apply to the vicissitudes of everyday life. Merina, however, saw the reality that he created not merely as the product of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence as well. Since opposition to royal will implied the rejection of ancestral beneficence, attempts within Imerina to challenge the monarch's authority or the ideology on which it rested were rare indeed. Yet such cases of opposition did arise, and they reveal the nature of royal authority as seen from below.
A Comparison of Jacob Egharevba's Ekhere Vb Itan Edo and the Four Editions of Its English Translation, A Short History Of Benin
Authors: Usuanlele Uyilawa , Falola Toyin
Published: May 2006

One of the most popular and most widely cited books in the study of precolonial Africa, particularly of the forest region, is Jacob U. Egharevba's A Short History of Benin. It was first published in the Edo language as Ekhere vb Itan Edo in 1933, and due to its popularity and very high demand, it quickly sold out and was reprinted in 1934. It was then translated by the author and published in English as A Short History of Benin in 1936. This English-language edition has likewise been a bestseller with four editions—the first edition in 1936, the second in 1953, the third in 1960, and the fourth one in 1968, which in turn has had reprints in Ibadan (1991) and Benin City (1994).

In 1959 Leoham Adam, Curator of the Ethnographical Collection of Melbourne University in Australia, who claimed to have first read the book in the 1930s, commended Short History for its useful contributions to the study and understanding of African societies. The late R.E. Bradbury, in writing the first foreword to the book's third edition in 1960, claimed that it”…has become something of a classic, known and relied upon not only in Nigeria, but by scholars all over the world, [as]… a valuable, indeed an indispensable, pioneering work.” In a more recent critique, Adiele Afigbo asserted that the book and its thesis has “much support from many respected historians and ethnographers… and figure prominently not only in undergraduate essays but also in Masters and Doctoral dissertations.”
The African Clergy and Historical Reconstruction: The Very Reverend J.B. Olafimihan's Iwe Itan Ofa
Authors: Banwo Adeyinka O.
Published: May 2006

One of the foremost achievements of missionary enterprise in the African region was the training of individuals, particularly clergymen, who came to play pioneering roles in the documentation of the history of their peoples. One of the reasons usually advanced by such chroniclers for taking part in this tedious attempts at historical reconstruction, is basically, to safeguard the history of their people and most especially, the need to prevent their history from being distorted, forgotten or sent into some oblivion. Examples of clergymen or missionary influenced personalities who have performed such tasks in Nigeria include Reverend Samuel Johnson, on the history of the Yoruba, J.D. Egharevba on the history of Benin, and Reverend Samuel Ojo, on the history of Ilorin and Shaki.

These chronicles have their limitations. The writers often serve as public image launderers for the people they write about. As a result, a lot of bias and subjectivism is embellished in what they attempt to project. Historical facts are distorted in this process. The lack of the chroniclers' basic methods of historical research is also evident in their narrative method of historical writing. This approach does not provide any opportunity for proper historical analysis. In spite of the limitations of these chronicles, they have served as very useful sources of primary information for contemporary historians. More importantly, their writings have been able to create a sense of identity and cultural awareness among their intended audience. In other words
they have sometimes proved more relevant and acceptable to the intended audience even more than the works of contemporary historians.2 It is with this hindsight that we examine Iwe Itan Ofa by The
Very Reverend J.B. Olafimihan.
David Beach (1943–1999): A Comment on His Career and Work, His Contribution to the History of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and on the “Local” Production of Knowledge
Authors: Liesegang Gerhard
Published: May 2006

In the beginning of 1999 Professor David Beach died in Harare, only about three months after an unexpected illness which proved to be brain cancer had cut short his academic activities. His early death after more than thirty years of intensive research on the precolonial history of Zimbabwe and Mozambique motivated some of his friends and colleagues to plan a panel on his work in the 2000 CAAS conference in Edmonton, Canada. This paper was originally written for this Conference which I did not manage to attend. Not only his figure as historian and friend but also the context he was working in interested me, including the problem of local production of knowledge in Africa in the colonial and postcolonial environment. In this paper I shall present some biographical data on David Beach, outline the sequence of his research and writing, cover his concept and contribution to history, the reception of his work in Mozambique, ending with some comments regarding the problems of local production of scientific knowledge in African countries. The coverage is in places somewhat sketchy and some subjects like the reception of his studies in Zimbabwe have only been referenced briefly, and that in North America omitted.

The sections of the paper which deal with the sequence of his research, method, etc. and focus on sociological aspects of his production are based mainly on indications in Beach's own published work. Additional information came from his correspondence, hints he gave in casual conversation during my four visits to Harare in 1971 and 1982-1995, and during his six visits to Maputo in 1987, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994 and 1997, as well as some observations.
Casitas b-Lineage Lymphoma–Deficient Mice Are Protected Against High-Fat Diet–Induced Obesity and Insulin Resistance
Authors: Molero Juan C. , Waring Samuel G. , Cooper Adrian , Turner Nigel , Laybutt Ross , Cooney Gregory J. , James David E.
Published: May 2006

Casitas b-lineage lymphoma (c-Cbl) is a multiadaptor protein with E3-ubiquitin ligase activity involved in regulating the degradation of receptor tyrosine kinases. We have recently reported that c-Cbl−/− mice exhibit a lean phenotype and enhanced peripheral insulin action likely due to elevated energy expenditure. In the study reported here, we examined the effect of a high-fat diet on energy homeostasis and glucose metabolism in these animals. When c-Cbl−/− mice were fed a high-fat diet for 4 weeks, they maintained hyperphagia, higher whole-body oxygen consumption (27%), and greater activity (threefold) compared with wild-type animals fed the same diet. In addition, the activity of several enzymes involved in mitochondrial fat oxidation and the phosphorylation of acetyl CoA carboxylase was significantly increased in muscle of high-fat–fed c-Cbl–deficient mice, indicating a greater capacity for fat oxidation in these animals. As a result of these differences, fat-fed c-Cbl−/− mice were 30% leaner than wild-type animals and were protected against high-fat diet–induced insulin resistance. These studies are consistent with a role for c-Cbl in regulating nutrient partitioning in skeletal muscle and emphasize the potential of c-Cbl as a therapeutic target in the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Genetic Analysis of ADIPOR1 and ADIPOR2 Candidate Polymorphisms for Type 2 Diabetes in the Caucasian Population
Authors: Vaxillaire Martine , Dechaume Aurélie , Vasseur-Delannoy Valérie , Lahmidi Saida , Vatin Vincent , Leprêtre Frédéric , Boutin Philippe , Hercberg Serge , Charpentier Guillaume , Dina Christian , Froguel Philippe
Published: May 2006

Adiponectin is a metabolic link between adipose tissue and insulin action, mediating part of obesity-associated insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Two adiponectin receptors have been identified, and we investigated whether sequence variations in adiponectin receptor 1 (ADIPOR1) and adiponectin receptor 2 (ADIPOR2) genes could contribute to the genetic risk for type 2 diabetes in a case-control study of 1,498 Caucasian subjects. We sequenced the putative functional regions of the two genes in 48 subjects and selected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the public database. Five SNPs in ADIPOR1 and 12 in ADIPOR2 were tested for association with type 2 diabetes. No SNP of ADIPOR1 showed association in any of the samples from the French population. In contrast, three SNPs of ADIPOR2 showed nominal evidence for association with type 2 diabetes before correction for multiple testing (odds ratio [OR] 1.29–1.37, P = 0.034–0.014); only rs767870, located in intron 6, was replicated in an additional diabetes dataset (n = 636, OR 1.29, P = 0.020) with significant allelic association from the overall meta-analysis of 2,876 subjects (adjusted OR 1.25 [95% CI 1.07–1.45], P = 0.0051). In conclusion, our data suggest a modest contribution of ADIPOR2 variants in diabetes risk in the French population.
Retinal Hemodynamics in Early Diabetic Macular Edema
Authors: Guan Kit , Hudson Chris , Wong Tien , Kisilevsky Mila , Nrusimhadevara Ravi K. , Lam Wai Ching , Mandelcorn Mark , Devenyi Robert G. , Flanagan John G.
Published: May 2006

The objective of this study was to establish the baseline retinal hemodynamic characteristics of stratified groups of diabetic patients at increasing risk for the development of diabetic macular edema (DME). Group 1 had 50 control subjects, group 2 had 56 diabetic patients without clinically visible retinopathy, group 3 had 54 diabetic patients with microaneurysms and/or hard exudates within two disc diameters of the fovea in the absence of clinically manifest DME, and group 4 had 40 patients with clinically manifest DME. Retinal hemodynamics (diameter, velocity, maximum-to-minimum velocity ratio, and flow) were assessed. Intraocular pressure, blood pressure, and relevant systemic markers of diabetes control and complications were also undertaken. The maximum-to-minimum velocity ratio was elevated with increasing risk of clinically significant DME (P < 0.0001). No significant differences were found between the groups with respect to diameter, velocity, or flow. The maximum-to-minimum velocity ratio was correlated to age, duration of diabetes, blood pressure, pulse rate, intraocular pressure, and serum potassium levels. In conclusion, the maximum-to-minimum velocity ratio was significantly increased with increasing risk of development of DME. Retinal arteriolar hemodynamics were positively correlated to age, duration of diabetes, and blood pressure. These findings suggest a reduction in the compliance (i.e., an increase of vascular rigidity) of the arteriolar circulation with increasing risk of DME.
SLC12A3 (Solute Carrier Family 12 Member [Sodium/Chloride] 3) Polymorphisms Are Associated With End-Stage Renal Disease in Diabetic Nephropathy
Authors: Kim Jae Hyeon , Shin Hyoung Doo , Park Byung Lae , Moon Min Kyong , Cho Young Min , Hwang Young Hwan , Oh Kook Whan , Kim Seong Yeon , Lee Hong Kyu , Ahn Curie , Park Kyong Soo
Published: May 2006

Diabetic nephropathy is the most common cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Genetic susceptibility plays an important role in the development and progression of diabetic nephropathy. Previous studies have revealed that polymorphisms in the SLC12A3 (solute carrier family 12 member [sodium/chloride] 3) gene, which encodes solute carrier family 12 member 3, might contribute to genetic susceptibility to diabetic nephropathy and essential hypertension. In this study, we examined whether the SLC12A3 gene locus is associated with ESRD resulting from diabetic nephropathy. We genotyped 11 common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the SLC12A3 gene in 177 patients with ESRD due to type 2 diabetes and 184 patients with diabetic retinopathy but with no signs of renal involvement. Three SNPs (g.34372G>A [Arg913Gln], g.39143G>A, and g.41727C>T) were found to be associated with ESRD due to diabetic nephropathy. These three SNPs were in complete linkage disequilibrium. Haplotype 4 in block 2 (18806C, 21822C, 34372A, 39143A, 39240T, 39375C, and 41727T) showed a significant association with ESRD due to type 2 diabetes (P = 0.0028). These results suggest that the SLC12A3 gene locus is associated with ESRD due to diabetic nephropathy.
Susceptibility to Type 1 Diabetes Is Associated With ApoCIII Gene Haplotypes
Authors: Hokanson John E. , Kinney Gregory L. , Cheng Suzanne , Erlich Henry A. , Kretowski Adam , Rewers Marian
Published: May 2006

Type 1 diabetes is a disease of β-cell destruction leading to insulin deficiency. Genes for type 1 diabetes have been identified; however, much of the genetic risk remains unexplained. Genetic variation within the apolipoprotein CIII (apoCIII) gene alters apoCIII levels, which are increased in type 1 diabetes and induce β-cell apoptosis. We therefore hypothesize haplotypes within the apoCIII gene are associated with type 1 diabetes. DNA from 584 type 1 diabetic patients and 591 control subjects were genotyped for six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the apoCIII gene (C-641A, C-482T, T-455C, C1100T, C3175G, and T3206G). Two alleles of a haplotype block (promoter SNPs + C3175G) were associated with type 1 diabetes. The A-T-C-C allele frequency was higher in type 1 diabetes (0.19 vs. 0.16, P = 0.05), and the C-C-T-C allele was reduced in type 1 diabetes (0.60 vs. 0.65, P = 0.04). The odds ratio (OR) for A-T-C-C allele increased with 0, 1, and 2 copies (OR of 1.00, 1.24, and 1.60, respectively; P = 0.05) and decreased for the C-C-T-C allele (1.00, 0.97, and 0.73, respectively; P = 0.03). This haplotype block contains an insulin response element. Screening for this haplotype may identify at-risk individuals, and this pathway may offer a target for prevention of type 1 diabetes.