bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
When Did a Man in the Renaissance Grow Old?
Authors: Gilbert Creighton
Published: May 2006

The terms of this enquiry emerge from the text of a patent issued by the Duke of Parma on 30 January 1562. It appoints a new architect to act in association with Giacomo Vignola, the distinguished master who had long been in charge of his building activities. The new appointee is Giacinto Vignola, son of Giacomo and previously his father's assistant. One can think of several reasons why such a step might be taken, then or now, but in any case it indicates that the Duke wanted to keep Vignola, make him content, and continue the same style of work.
William Tyndale's Response to the Hebraic Tradition
Authors: Karpman Dahlia M.
Published: May 2006

Christians of the Middle Ages did not respond favorably to Jewish thought; what they did learn with the assistance of prominent Jews, they used to develop a Christian typology. Apart from Nicholas of Lyra and Andrew of St. Victor, by and large commentators ignored the rabbinical discussions of the Bible. Intensive Hebraic scholarship had to await Renaissance philological techniques, printing presses, and the Reformation, before it came to full flower. The philological study of Hebrew by a grammarian such as Politian and the study of the Christian Cabala undertaken by men like Pico gave interest to this little-known language. Type faces were set up for Hebrew grammars, lexicons, and Bibles during the early development of printing. But it was the Reformation, with its emphasis on the two founts of religion—sola fidei, sola scriptura—which brought about the great dissemination of Hebrew learning.
Edmund Bolton's The Cabanet Royal: A Belated Reply to Sidney's Apology for Poetry
Authors: Blackburn Thomas H.
Published: May 2006

Few documents relevant to the history of literary criticism during the early seventeenth century have escaped the searching eyes of scholars of the period. Edmund Bolton's The Cabanet Royal (British Museum MS. Royal 18A. LXXI.) is, however, one of those rarities. Written in 1627 as an attempt to interest King Charles I in the ‘Academ Roial’ which Bolton first proposed during the reign of James, the manuscript has previously been noted only by historians of England's learned societies. Yet it is less a prospectus for that academy than a discourse on the arts, including, most importantly, a substantial comparison of history and poetry clearly designed as a corrective to Sir Philip Sidney's harsh treatment of historians in his Apology for Poetry.
Salutati's Opinion of Non-Italian Latin Writers of the Middle Ages
Authors: Donovan Richard B.
Published: May 2006

Coluccio Salutati, along with Petrarch, is generally looked upon as one of the principal founders of Italian humanism and the Renaissance movement. Professor Berthold Ullman states in his excellent and latest work on Salutati that the renowned chancellor of Florence ‘was second to Petrarch in the humanistic movement, but not far behind'; he points out that Coluccio was the acknowledged leader of this movement for some thirty-two years, from the time of Petrarch's death in 1374 until the chancellor's own in 1406. Vergerio hails Salutati as the leading philosopher of the age; for Antonio Loschi he was the outstanding Latin writer of his time. His reputation as a Latin stylist and moralist, already in the fourteenth century, had spread far beyond the borders of Italy.
Early Rwanda History: The Contribution of Comparative Ethnography
Authors: Sigwalt Richard
Published: May 2006

The most important development in African historiography since 1970 is almost surely the growing awareness that oral tradition alone is insufficient as a source for reconstructing the past beyond about 1750. Henceforth historians will be increasingly obliged to turn to other bodies of data, at least if they wish to avoid writing history which, in Bradbury's words, is no more than “the rationalization of myth.” Despite pleas by, among others, Bradbury, Vansina, and Lewis as long ago as a decade or more, historians have thus far shown little sign of incorporating ethnographic data into then-catalog of sources, or comparative ethnography into their methodological tool-kit. One reason for this reluctance (at least among English language Africanists of our generation) may be a vague acquaintance with the serious abuses which European Africanists— especially those associated with the Vienna ‘culture-historical school’—committed by stretching ethnographic data to fit grand, but spurious, global schemes of human evolution. Clearly, though, earlier abuses in no way justify our refusing now to exploit a body of data we badly need, provided we examine it with appropriate care and modesty. We must admit at the outset that ethnographic comparisons for historical purposes on a continental scale will be impossible until a good many regional studies are available. In turn, such regional studies will normally be limited to selected aspects of related culture, and not to cultures as holistic units. This means that points of articulation between regional studies may well be difficult to identify.
Koli Tengela in Sonko Traditions of Origin: an Example of the Process of Change in Mandinka Oral Tradition
Authors: Wright Donald R.
Published: May 2006

Traditions of origin of most of the prominent Gambian Mandinka lineages tend to be bodies of myth containing small, but often recognizable, skeletons of historical truth. Members of these lineages typically think of one of several mythical, sometimes composite, figures as their ancestors. These figures are invariably great leaders, if not of western migrations with large followings, then of successful military expeditions in the west for the Mali empire. Usually, these traditions serve a particular purpose. The ancestral figures symbolize the lineages' ties, real or imagined, to the Mandinka homelands and the center of Mandinka culture on the upper Niger River. The stories of their ancestors' early arrival or successful conquests in the western Mandinka region justify historically the positions of political and social prominence these lineages held throughout the last four centuries or more of the pre-colonial period.

Two of the three traditionally dominant lineages in the region of the Gambia known as Niumi have traditions of origin that are no exceptions to this rule. Niumi was one of more than a dozen Mandinka states that existed along the banks of the navigable Gambia River from perhaps as early as the fourteenth century until colonial times. Occupying forty miles of the river's north bank at its estuary, Niumi was long a focal point for the exchange of slaves and other commodities among Africans and between Africans and Europeans. By what was likely the early sixteenth century, seven extended families of three larger lineages -- themselves segments of still larger, more widely dispersed groups of lineages having the same patronymics -- emerged to rotate political leadership in Niumi and to dominate social and economic aspects of life in the state.
The Foreign Researcher: Friend or Foe?
Authors: Kashoki Mubanga E.
Published: May 2006

In returning once again to an old theme and a familiar and much discussed topic one is keenly conscious of the danger of harping on, as one observer has labelled it, a “tired refrain.” The present revisit is predicated on the simple premise that, though no new ground is broken or fundamentally fresh issues raised, the problem is an intractable one, recurrent and pervasive, and consequently, if for no other reason, deserves one more round of attention. There is also the point, as Colson has aptly observed, that “the world is not an easy place” and abounds in social scientists and others who “share in the questioning of purposes and values.” Indeed, while what is raised in this paper might bear a distressing resemblance to arguments we have heard before, it is important to remember that to the communities who bear much of the brunt of the research conducted by foreign scholars, ethical, moral, and related issues surrounding foreigner-dominated research continue to constitute a critical area for concern and therefore a legitimate topic for sustained criticism and inquiry. Many African universities, for instance, have established ‘research affiliate schemes’ as an important, indeed integral, component of their academic functions, but in the course of operating these schemes philosophical and practical issues have arisen, many of which await satisfactory answers.

It would, however, be wrong to suggest that these concerns remain the preoccupation of academics alone, because in practical terms what a university does inevitably affects the wider public and in consequence arouses their interest and curiosity. A good example of this interest by the wider public in the affairs of the university, with specific reference to research and foreign scholars, is provided vividly and colorfully by an article written by Peter Mwaura which appeared in The Sunday Post, an East African newspaper.
Oral Traditions: Whose History
Authors: Spear Thomas
Published: May 2006

Historians rarely pause to reflect on the history and theory of our own discipline, but it is a salutary exercise, particularly when the discipline is as young as African history. Twenty years ago a majority of African peoples emerged from colonial domination and acquired their independence. In that same year their history was also symbolically liberated from domination by the activities of Europeans in Africa through the inauguration of the Journal of African History. And one year later the new African history was given what was to become one of its dominant methodologies with the publication of Jan Vansina's De la tradition Orale.

African history was to be the history of Africans, a history that had begun well before the European ‘discovery’ of Africa. The problem was sources. Western historiography was firmly based on written sources which could be arranged in sequence and analyzed to trace incremental changes and establish cause and effect relationships in evolutionary patterns of change. Unlike written documents which were recorded in the past and passed down unchanged into the present, oral traditions had to be remembered and retold through successive generations to reach the present. Their accuracy was thus subject to lapses in memory and falsification in the long chains of transmission from the initial report of the event in the past to the tradition told in the present. To overcome these problems Vansina established an elaborate and meticulous methodology by which traditions should be collected and transcribed, their chains of transmission traced and variants compared, and obvious biases and falsifications stripped off to produce primary documents suitable for writing history within the western genre.
Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation
Authors: Thornton John
Published: May 2006

One of the most durable myths of the history of central Africa is that of the early subversion and domination of the kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Its original statement was made by James Duffy in 1959 and was amplified by Basil Davidson two years later. According to this argument the Portuguese had found a well-developed kingdom of Kongo when they reached the mouth of the Zaire River in 1483, and had entered into an alliance with the ruler. The alliance, first made with king Nzinga a Nkuwu (baptized as João I in 1491) and strengthened and continued with his son Mvemba a Nzinga (better known under his baptized name of Afonso I, 1506-1543) involved a partnership in which Portuguese settled in Kongo and provided technological and military assistance to Kongo in exchange for trade, mostly in slaves. As a result of this exchange Kongo adopted Christianity, and for a time the two kings addressed each other as “Brother.” But the alliance, despite its good beginning, was rapidly upset by the greed of the Portuguese settlers, who saw the situation merely as an opening for quick riches through the slave trade. As a result the higher aims of the Portuguese court were subverted--first because the Portuguese, with a higher level of development, were able to benefit from their position more than Kongo; secondly because Lisbon was unable to control its settlers in Kongo or São Tomé. In the end there was a massive involvement of Portuguese in Kongolese affairs and a breakdown of authority in Kongo.
Collective Memory and the Stakes of Power. A Reading of Popular Zairian Historical Discourses
Authors: Jewsiewicki Bogumil
Published: May 2006

For me collective memory is neither a narrative nor collective knowledge of the past (a sort of historical consensus). Contrary to past accounts, be they public or private, memory does not have a narrative form and is thus not of the literary kind (oral or written). Collective memory is above all a semantic code of memorization and of rememorization; it is, as well, a hierarchy of values which structures a discourse in the past while rooting it in the present. Collective memory gives meaning to the past and bears in mind certain places, facts, dates, and persons around which the memory or memories which also legitimate power build themselves. The relationship between a particular remembrance and its basic facts finds its prime meaning here. In this sense collective memory supports and rationalizes collective identity and, contrary to social fiction, offers a “definitive” reading as it bears on real, even though elapsed, relationships. Collective memory thus rejoins and often reinforces fiction and supports role and behavioral stereotypes, etc.

“En ce temps là le roi regardant dans sa maison à Bruxelles il étudiait les nouvelles venant de l'Afrique et dans ses nouvelles plusieurs tribus ont montré que les vivres et les matériaux de travail (n'arrivaient) pas à temps après l'expédition de l'Europe et le Roi Léopold II jetta un coup d'oeil sur l'Atlas (carte géographique) du pays et il dit: on trouvera la route pour faire passer les matériaux de travail, un racourci pour faire le chemin de fer rapidement pour que je puisse envoyer plus rapidement les matériaux en Afrique ainsi on aura pas besoins de porteurs.
The “Elmina Note:” Myth and Reality in Asante-Dutch Relations
Authors: Yarak Larry W.
Published: May 2006

One of the more perplexing issues in the history of Asante's relations with the Europeans on the nineteenth-century Gold Coast has been that of the origin and significance of the so-called “Elmina Note,” the pay document which authorized the Asantehene to collect two ounces of gold (or its equivalent in trade goods) per month from the Dutch authorities at Elmina. Not only have modern historians of Ghana evidenced no small amount of confusion on this matter, but during 1870/71 the Asantehene, the British, and the Dutch also disagreed strongly over the political significance of the note, as the Dutch negotiated to cede their “possessions” on the Gold Coast to the British. Failure to resolve these disagreements contributed significantly to the Asante decision to invade the British “protected” territories in 1873. This action in turn led to the British invasion of Asante in 1874, which most historians agree constitutes a critical watershed in Asante history. Clearly, the matter of the “Elmina Note” (or kostbrief as it was known to the Dutch) is one of some historical and historiographical importance. An examination of the relevant Dutch, Danish, and British documentation now makes possible a resolution of the major questions concerning its origin and meaning.

The debates between the Asante, the British, and the Dutch show that in the later nineteenth century there was considerable agreement over certain issues: first, no one disputed that the Dutch had for some time past paid to the Asantehene (actually to an envoy dispatched by the king to Elmina) a stipend (or kostgeld, as the Dutch termed it) of two ounces of gold per month, or twentyfour ounces per year.
The Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library
Authors: Macomber William F.
Published: May 2006

The Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) is a joint project of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML) (formerly Monastic Manuscript Microfilm Library) of St. John's Abbey and University, Collegeville, Minnesota, U.S.A. Professor Walter Harrelson, former Dean of the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, is Chairman; Dr. Julian G. Plante, Director of HMML and Research Professor of Classics in St. John's University, is Vice-Chairman; and Dr. Sergew Hable Selassie, Professor of History in Addis Ababa University, is Project Director. Grateful acknowledgement for the funding of this project must be made to the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, D.C.

EMML was established at the urging of His Holiness Abuna Tewoflos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, who was much concerned about the dangers of irreparable damage and loss to the manuscript treasures of his Church. The purpose of the project is twofold: To preserve on microfilm the precious treasures of manuscripts and to make those source materials available for study by scholars both within and outside Ethiopia. Efforts are also being directed toward obtaining copies of Ethiopian manuscripts outside of Ethiopia.

Actual photographic operations are being carried out by an Ethiopian team in conjunction with Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A., where the film is processed. Positive and negative copies are sent to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has founded a center for the purpose at Addis Ababa, and positive copy is sent to HMML in Collegeville, where interested students and scholars may come for consultation and study. HMML is a research center with a focus on medieval and renaissance manuscripts on microfilm.
Traditional Myths and Linguistic Analysis: Singwaya Revisited
Authors: Spear Thomas T.
Published: May 2006

In a previous article in this journal I warned about the dangers of facile generalization and misinterpretation of traditional origin myths leading to the elaboration of historians' myths which bear little resemblance to the traditional, linguistic, cultural, or documentary data. I then proceeded to analyze the Singwaya (Shungwaya) myth pertaining to the origins of the peoples of the Kenya coast to show how earlier interpretations cannot be sustained by the evidence, before demonstrating that the myth is nevertheless valid for the Mijikenda, Pokomo, Swahili, Taita, and Segeju, where such evidence supports its basic veracity.

As chance would have it, while the above article was in press I delivered a related paper on the same panel as Thomas Hinnebusch who, on the basis of extensive linguistic fieldwork and analysis of the same area, had found a number of fallacies in the published linguistic data on which I had relied. While confirming the exclusion of the highlanders (Thagicũ-speakers) from the same language group as the coastal peoples and hence presumably from common origins with the others at Singwaya, Hinnebusch also excludes both the Taita and Segeju from that group while adding the Swahili to it, thus calling into doubt the integrity of the Singwaya group as I had reconstructed it. Hinnebusch's data and his analysis of it, then, obviously require a reexamination of the role of the Taita, Segeju, and Swahili peoples in the migration from Singwaya while, at the same time, casting doubt anew on the validity of origin myths or legends. But the linguistic data also extends our view enormously.
The Congo/Zaire Archives of the Northern (Flemish) Belgian Jesuit Province in Brussels, Belgium
Authors: De Craemer Willy
Published: May 2006

Historians and social scientists concerned with African societies and cultures are well aware that the archives of Protestant and Catholic missionary groups that have worked in Africa contain valuable primary and secondary materials. In the case of Catholic missions, however, scholars are perhaps more aware of collections of documents of various congregations and orders of sisters, brothers and priests, deposited in their central archives in Rome, than they are of more local collections. There are specific historical and sociology of religion factors that determine how a particular order or congregation is organized, and especially to what extent it is responsible to the Vatican and the Papacy, and to what degree it has national and regional autonomy. With respect to official and personal documents of relevance to Africanists, there is a greater “decentralization” and dispersion of available materials than might be supposed.
The tompon-tany and the tompon-drano in the History of Central and Western Madagascar
Authors: Fuglestad Finn
Published: May 2006

At some undefined time in the fairly recent past central and western Madagascar witnessed a conceptual 'revolution' which had far-reaching political consequences. The religious beliefs and symbols which constituted the main ingredients of this 'revolution'--and probably also the people who propagated them--were in some way connected with the Zafindraminia-Antanosy and the Anteimoro of the southeastern and eastern coast. It is quite clear that these and similar groups had been strongly influenced by Islam and that they practiced what could perhaps be described as a corrupt or diluted Islam or a syncretic 'pagan' Muslim religion. (It is significant that as their name indicates the Zafindraminia claim descent from Raminia who they hold to have been the mother of Muhammad.) One of the main ingredients of this religion was the cult of the ody or guardian amulets, objects usually made of wood which are strikingly reminiscent of the so-called “charms” or “gris-gris” sold by Muslim clerics over much of Africa. Another ingredient is represented by the institution of ombiasy. The ombiasy (the main manufacturers of ody) whom the Frenchman Etienne de Flacourt at Fort-Dauphin in the seventeenth century took to be Muslim clerics were originally the “priests” (or the “devins guérisseurs,” according to Hubert Deschamps) of the Anteimoro and the Zafindraminia-Antanosy. Subsequently this institution was disseminated throughout nearly the whole of Madagascar. Yet another ingredient was the system of divination known as sikidy, which also spread to other parts of Madagascar, including Imerina and the Sakalava country.

These beliefs, symbols, and institutions deeply influenced the people of the west coast (the present-day Sakalava country) and of central Madagascar (Imerina and Betsileo country).
How Truly Traditional Is Our Traditional History? The Case of Samuel Johnson and the Recording of Yoruba Oral Tradition
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

The precolonial history of Yorubaland, and especially of the most powerful Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, is still dominated by the influence of the Revd. Samuel Johnson, the Yoruba clergyman whose History of the Yorubas was published in 1921. Especially for the period before continuous written documentation of Yoruba affairs begins with the arrival of the first Christian missionaries in the area in the 1840s, Johnson's History remains a source of overwhelming importance, and the framework within which we study Yoruba history is still very much that established by Johnson. But despite its great importance and persisting influence, Johnson's work has still not been subjected to much critical evaluation. In particular it has commonly been assumed, implicitly rather than explicitly, that Johnson's History can be mined as a source of ‘oral tradition’ in the belief that what he wrote down is unproblematically identical with what he heard, and what he heard with what had been retained and transmitted orally down to the time that he made his enquiries.

Johnson's History is a somewhat complicated work to characterize, since it makes use of rather different sorts of sources for different periods of Yoruba history. The history of its publication was also complex. It was originally completed in 1897, the date of Samuel Johnson's “Preface,” but the manuscript was lost. Samuel Johnson having died in 1901, it was left to his brother Obadiah to reconstitute the work from Samuel's notes and drafts, a task which he apparently completed only in 1916.
James G. Frazer's Correspondence With John Roscoe, 1907-1924
Authors: Ray Benjamin
Published: May 2006

The Frazer collection at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, contains over 140 letters which Frazer wrote to the missionary anthropologist John Roscoe. Roscoe was with the CMS in Buganda from 1881 to 1909, and it was Frazer who first interested him in ethnographic work and guided his research. This led to the publication of The Baganda in 1911, the first, full-scale ethnography of an African society and an anthropological classic. Frazer's letters chronicle the close personal and professional relationship between the two men and shed considerable light on Roscoe's ethnographic work. It was Frazer who arranged for Roscoe to embark on the Mackie Expedition to Central Africa (Uganda) in 1919-1920, which resulted in the publication of The Soul of Africa (1922), The Bakitara or Banyoro (1923), The Banyankole (1923), and The Bageshu and Other Tribes of the Uganda Protectorate (1924). The collection also contains twelve letters from Roscoe. The correspondence indicates how highly Frazer valued Roscoe's ethnography and how important it was to Frazer's own work, especially to his theory of divine kingship as developed in The Golden Bough. Frazer corresponded with scholars, missionaries, colonial officials, and anthropologists around the world, and the collection may contain letters to other persons of interest to historians of Africa. The Frazer collection is open to scholarly researchers, and the Manuscript Cataloguer, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, CB21TQ, is most helpful in answering written inquiries.
Black African Slaves at Valencia, 1482-1516: An Onomastic Inquiry
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

In 1964 the Spanish archivist and scholar, D. Vicenta Cortés, published summaries of a large number of entries in the Crown records of Valencia relating to the arrival of slaves between 1479 and 1516. Although about two thirds of the entries relate to lighter-skinned slaves - Guanche from the Canary Islands, Muslims and Jews from North Africa and other parts of Iberia, “blancos” apparently from the eastern Mediterranean - about one-third relate to black slaves or “negros.” Cortés described the legal and administrative context of the records but did not attempt a systematic analysis of the entries. However, she later usefully examined those relating to “negros” and offered a preliminary identification of stated provenances. In the present paper I consider the data on some 3,000 negros of stated Black African provenance, paying special attention to some 260 individuals whose provenance was given in terms of an ethnonym or narrowly located toponym and some 150 whose personal name in an African language was recorded. I note many instances where the Valencian data provide the earliest recorded documentation of an African ethnonym, while the anthroponyms are tabulated for study by field linguists.

As summarized and published by Cortés, the entries refer to some 5,400 Black Africans - the total of negros, apart from a handful stated to be from India or Brazil. This figure gives only a rough indication of the extent of the trade in Black Africans at Valencia during the period to which these entries apply, 1482-1516. About one hundred of the Africans were obtained, not more or less directly from Black Africa and normally via Lisbon, but from localities in North Africa or Iberia where it is likely that they had spent the greater part, if not all, of their lives.
The Missing Link in Theal's Career: The Historian as Labour Agent in the Western Cape
Authors: Saunders Christopher
Published: May 2006

George McCall Theal, most prolific of South African historians, deserves a modern biography. In the few, very inadequate, accounts of his life that are available there is no mention of his work as a labour agent in the western Cape. Bosman mentioned that he visited Stellenbosch and Tulbagh in 1878, but did not say what he was doing there. Babrow admits that she did not know what his first formal civil service post was. Immelman misleadingly suggests that it was a post in the Colonial Treasurer's Department, when in fact he did not join that department until March 1879.

This ignorance is not altogether surprising for, while Theal himself in his later published work and in the evidence he gave to parliamentary select committees in 1895 and 1906 provided a fair amount of information about his career before May 1878 and after March 1879, he did not say what he had done between those dates, almost as if he did not wish to remember it. In his History of the Boers in South Africa, indeed, he wrote that “when the war was over [referring to the Cape-Xhosa war, which ended in May 1878] I asked for and obtained the charge of the Colonial Archives preserved in Cape Town,” which is totally inaccurate. In the relevant volume in his History of South Africa, he mentioned that he was asked to superintend Oba's Xhosa in the Victoria East district in December 1877, and later that he had served as special magistrate at Tamacha in the King William's Town district in 1881, but there are no other references to his own career.
Bantu in the Crystal Ball, II
Authors: Vansina Jan
Published: May 2006

Interest in the question of Bantu expansion rose dramatically in the 1950s as historians, archeologists, and anthropologists all joined in the fray. This reflected both the rise of Africa in world affairs and the expansion of research in general. The scholars involved were typically a new breed of professionals, and as such more dependent than their predecessors on universities or research institutions. The School of Oriental and African Studies in London achieved overwhelming dominance from about 1950 until the late 1960s, so that opinions held by its staff found the widest audience. The new scholars also were, for the most part, anti-racist, sympathetic to African nationalisms, and of liberal or socialist persuasion. They tended to reject the notion of “conquest,” believing in gradual change rather than abrupt cataclysmic mutation, perhaps because they were repelled by their recent experiences during the war. As had happened earlier, these extraneous circumstances left a deep imprint on the speculations that were now proposed. Early in this period a new paradigm almost achieved consensus, but after 1968 this fell apart and during the last decade two new trends have appeared: the single-minded quest for a new paradigm and the search for better understanding through the study of analogous processes, coupled with a more radical skepticism.

Murdock
The Paden Collection of Arabic Materials from Kano
Authors: Saad E.N.
Published: May 2006

The following is a brief description of a collection of Arabic materials deposited by John Paden at the Herskovits Africana Library, Northwestern University. The collection includes 424 numbered volumes of which about half enclose manuscript materials while the other half enclose published books and pamphlets, most of them privately printed in Kano, Zaria, or Cairo. The collection altogether (and especially so among the pamphlets) includes a substantial proportion of works of West African authorship. However, the classical Muslim/Arabic literature, and especially the basic jurisprudential treatises and the better known diwans of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, are well represented in the collection.

This summary is made up of three parts, beginning with a few words on the classical Muslim/Arabic works in the collection. The second part is concerned with the unusual manuscript materials and includes a listing and description of these materials. Finally, the third part will be concerned with individual West African authors whose works are well represented in the collection. In most cases, these authors are represented by privately printed materials or by manuscripts of which copies generally tend to be found elsewhere.

In the references to specific manuscripts below, no attempt will be made to describe the calligraphy, the size of pages, etc. The purpose is to call attention to the availability of the sources under consideration, especially since they are scheduled to be microfilmed by the Cooperative Africana Microform Project soon.

Though mostly represented by manuscript copies, the diwans of Arabic poetry present little interest since they tend to be recent copies of works long ago published in numerous printings and editions elsewhere.
Kings, Titles, and Quarters: A Conjectural History of Ilesha I: The Traditions Reviewed
Authors: Peel J.D.Y.
Published: May 2006

This is an essay in conjectural history. Its subject is Ilesha, the capital of Ijesha, one of the larger Yoruba kingdoms, founded probably in the early sixteenth century roughly midway between the larger regional centers of Oyo and Benin. Except for some cursory references to Ijesha rescued from slavery in Sierra Leone in the early nineteenth century, there is absolutely no positive contemporary evidence, whether documentary or archeological, until Europeans first visited the town in 1858. Thereafter, since Ilesha was the leading member of the Ekitiparapo alliance which fought Ibadan to a standstill in the 1880s, contemporary documentation becomes fairly abundant. But my concern here is with the evolution of Ilesha's socio-political structure, with what has since come to be considered its “traditional” constitution, over roughly three centuries up to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. For that, virtually all our evidence lies in what people have said and done since the 1880s.

African historians have perforce relied greatly on such evidence and since Vansina's Oral Tradition they have been able to use it both more confidently and more critically, especially in the area of Bantu Africa. My fellow sociologists, however, remain more radically sceptical. Despite their admission of the need for history, they have learned too well how dynastic tradition and legends of origin tend to serve as “characters” for contemporary arrangements and need primary interpretation in the light of this -- and have often concretely illustrated the point with devastating and, for those desirous of using oral traditions for historical ends, depressing effect.
An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940
Authors: Killingray David , Roberts Andrew
Published: May 2006

Photographs are attracting growing interest among Africanists. A bibliographical essay in theCambridge History of Africa, vol. 7, drew attention to the value and availability of photographs of colonial Africa. The critical use of such documents has been discussed in this journal by Christraud Geary, and historical photographs have been a prominent feature of several recent publications. In May 1988 an international workshop at SOAS considered the problems and possibilities of using photographs as sources for African history. It is hoped that a larger conference on photographs and Africa will be convened in the near future. Meanwhile, the papers for the SOAS meeting have been distributed to interested scholars, librarians, and archivists. A version of the present paper forms part of this collection; since there is as yet no recommendable history of photography in Africa, it seemed worthwhile to republish this modest sketch of the more important developments in the practice and uses of photography in Africa. We conclude with the Second World War, since to have pursued the subject further would have asked too much of the authors' knowledge and readers' patience.

It may be helpful to begin with a reminder of the major technical developments in photography during the nineteenth century. The daguerreotype, introduced in 1839, yielded only a single image, on a sensitized metal plate. The calotype, introduced two years later, yielded multiple paper positives from a paper negative, but like the daguerreotype required exposures of one to three minutes.
The Original Manuscript Version of William Snelgrave's New Account of Some Parts of Guinea
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

Captain William Snelgrave's A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade, first published in 1734, is a work well known to historians of West Africa. The largest and most valuable section of it comprises a detailed account of voyages by the author in 1727 and 1730 to the ports of Whydah and Jakin on the Slave Coast, then recently conquered by Dahomey, and offers the earliest extended account of the latter kingdom to be published. The information in Snelgrave's book can also be supplemented by records of testimony which he provided on two occasions, in 1726 and 1731, before the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in London.

Snelgrave was a slave-trading captain with, at the time of his book's publication, some thirty years' experience of the West African trade. The details of his career are documented principally from his book, which in addition to the voyages of 1727 and 1730 (which form its principal subject), also alludes to several earlier slave-trading voyages undertaken by him. Snelgrave's first voyage to Africa, in which he served as purser on a ship commanded by his father, was to Old Calabar in 1704; a second voyage to Old Calabar was undertaken in 1713, a voyage to Sierra Leone (on which Snelgrave was captured by pirates) in 1719, and a voyage to the Gold Coast in 1721-22. This is not, however, a comprehensive catalog of Snelgrave's voyages, since he also alludes to having visited Whydah on “several voyages” before 1727. Other evidence documents two such earlier voyages by Snelgrave to Whydah, in 1717 and 1725. He was apparently still alive in 1735, the year after the publication of his book, when he is mentioned among a group of people involved in legal proceedings to press claims on the estate of Patrick West, a recently deceased merchant of Antigua.
An 1804 Slaving Contract Signed in Arabic Script From the Upper Guinea Coast
Authors: Brooks George E. , Mouser Bruce L.
Published: May 2006

Few slaving agreements contracted between African sellers and American purchasers appear to have survived. They were rarely committed to paper, were destroyed after commitments were fulfilled, or were removed from business records kept by slave traders. The contract discussed here is of considerable interest as a document which, although brief, records important information and offers intriguing insights concerning African-European and African-African relationships in Guinea-Conakry at the turn of the nineteenth century.

The slaving contract is dated 15 November 1804, and apparently was negotiated aboard the merchant ship Charlotte of Bristol, Rhode Island, Jonathan Sabens, master, anchored at the Iles de Los archipelago.

Nov. th[ursday] 15-1804

Shipe Charlotte

fortay days after date I Promas to pay Jno. Sabens or orde[r] nin[e] hundard and ni[ne]ty five Bars to be Pade in Rice and Slave Say fore tun of Rice at nity Bars par tun the Remandr in Slaves at one hundard and Twenty Bars par Slave.

[signed in Arabic] Fadmod [Fendan Modu Dumbuya][signed in Arabic] Muhammad Sa'ab shokr Mohammed Sakib Fana/Ta/ Mohammed Shabaan(the month before Ramadan)

Respecting the American traders involved, the Charlotte was jointly owned by George D'Wolf and Jonathan Sabens of Bristol, Rhode Island. Captain Jonathan Sabens was an experienced mariner, involved in at least three previous slaving voyages, including one as master of the Charlotte. Members of the D'Wolf family were associated with numerous slaving voyages to west Africa and continued to invest in slaving ventures long after Rhode Island made the trade illegal in 1787.
Interesting Document, Dangerous Translation
Authors: Johnson Marion
Published: May 2006

Under the not very informative cover title of Munger Africana Library Notes 3, the library of that name published in 1971 a group of four French documents, collectively called The Choiseul papers, secret documents prepared for the peace negotiations to end the Seven Years' War in 1762/63. There is no indication as to the original authorship of these documents, except that the first, with a date of 6 January 1681, is noted as “sent on behalf of M. de Bussy.” The editor, Monique le Blanc, in her short introduction which places these documents in their historical setting, says that they were obtained from the family of the Duc de Nivernais, the French representative at the negotiations. The editor also notes that they were used in part by André Delcourt in his IFAN Memoire La France et les établissements français au Sénégal entre 1713 et 1763 (Dakar, 1952). The translator, James Greenlee, provides brief notes concerned mainly with the orthography of the copyists, who, he suggests, may in two cases have been Spanish. (Their French spelling is in some ways similar to that of Jean Barbot nearly a century earlier--were they, like him, from La Rochelle?)

The purpose of the present brief note is both to draw attention to these documents, which are reproduced in facsimile (slightly reduced in size), but also, regretably, to warn those who wish to use them to beware of the translation which accompanies them. The documents consist of four secret mémoires--one entitled “first secret mémoire on the Coast of Africa”, dated 1761 (translated as “last secret communication…”), a second entitled “First secret mémoire on Senegal and the Island of Gorée,” followed by a second secret mémoire on Senegal and Gorée and a third secret mémoire on the west coast of Africa, forwarded to the Duc de Nivernais by the Comte de Choiseul, then Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The Angolan Manuscript Collection of the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino; Lisbon: Toward a Working Guide
Authors: Curto Jose C.
Published: May 2006

Portugal has long been recognized by historians as a treasure house of manuscript collections. In Lisbon alone there are some twenty-five public archives, many of which hold rich collections of historical documents and rare printed works. Other urban centers like Coimbra, Porto, Évora, Braga, Guimarães, and Setúbal, not to mention smaller cities and towns, also have numerous archives, specialized libraries, museums, and ancient monasteries that house important manuscript and printed collections. The archaic Portuguese bureaucracy, however, has rarely been able to adequately assess the extensive contents of such a large number of depositories. Indeed, few of these institutions can boast of possessing catalogs for their holdings. When these do exist, they are more often than not either incomplete or almost totally out of date. As a result the lack of appropriate working tools turns archival research in Portugal into a rather painstaking and time-consuming affair. Instead of a dusty treasure house whose contents have been organized and assessed, what the researcher usually finds is a labyrinth of uncataloged, unknown, and uncared-for musty documents slowly deteriorating in the damp cellars of decrepit buildings.
Notes on Some Collections of Arabic Manuscripts in Nigeria
Authors: Hunwick J. O.
Published: May 2006

During the summer of 1987 I was able to visit manuscript collections in Ibadan, Kaduna, Zaria, Kano, and Sokoto to check and expand data for my projected contribution to the multi–volume Arabic Literature in Africa, edited by myself and R. S. O'Fahey. These notes are based on my experiences with the various collections at that time.
The Collector's Unconscious: Innocence and Culpability in Field Research
Authors: Hoffman Rachel
Published: May 2006

During February of 1987 the National Museum of Mali in Bamako and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA began a collaborative project to study and document social institutions that support weaving and associated technologies in Mali, and to collect examples of locally-produced textiles for each of the two museums. Claude Daniel Ardouin, Director of the National Museum of Mali until 1987, defined a textiles collection project as part of what he conceived to be the National Museum's mandate to protect Mali's cultural heritage, a heritage in which the production of textiles plays a significant role. Ardouin quite literally reinvented Mali's National Museum as an actively archival institution, believing it to be essential and instrumental in conserving the country's rich artistic traditions. Toward this end, in 1986 Ardouin and Philip L. Ravenhill, then Director of the West African Museums Project, began discussions with Doran H. Ross, Deputy Director of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, about collaborative, long-term research. Resources and expenses would be shared, resulting in a mutually enriching collaboration.

Early 1987 marked the first field season of the partnership that developed out of that early meeting. By 1991, under the joint auspices of Ross and Samuel Sidibe, present Director of the National Museum of Mali, the collaboration had completed the projected five field seasons of textiles documentation and collection covering five regions of Mali. This paper addresses some practical aspects of this extended, institutionally sponsored, collaborative fieldwork. It also discusses the collaborative project under the sometimes harsh light of postcolonial self-examination.
Was Columbus' First Very Long Voyage A Voyage from Guinea?
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

In 1492 Columbus made a non-stop voyage, on the high seas of the Atlantic, between the Canary Islands and an uncertain island off the coast of America, a distance of some 3,100 nautical miles. But there is a strong likelihood that he had earlier traveled on a voyage which may also have been non-stop on the Atlantic high seas and yet been even longer. According to casual references, made in notes apparently either written or authorized by Columbus himself, he had, at an unstated date, seen and perhaps been within the castle of São Jorge da Mina in Guinea. Assuming for the purposes of further discussion that this interpretation of the notes is correct, he had therefore sailed to Mina (Elmina in present-day Ghana), most probably, it is generally thought, between 1482 and 1484, not long after the Portuguese founded the fort. He must have sailed in some capacity aboard a Portuguese vessel, possibly as a trader, if not as a mariner.

Although not otherwise recorded, the voyage to Mina is plausible since it occurred during the period of nearly ten years in which Columbus was employed within the Portuguese sphere. Little is known of his activities in this period but it is evidenced that he worked at one stage as a trader and made voyages in the 1470s to the Madeira group, where he resided for a time. When he traveled to America his descriptions of features there were not infrequently in terms of comparisons with features of Guinea, indicating that he was to some extent informed about the latter region and suggesting, perhaps strongly, that he had visited certain parts, as I noted in an earlier paper.