bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Scholarship of Jacob Egharevba of Benin
Authors: Usuanlele Uyilawa , Falola Toyin
Published: May 2006

Uwadiae Jacob Egharevba was born in 1893 to a descendant of Ohenmwen, the Iyase of Benin Kingdom during the reign of Osemwende, ca. 1816 to ca. 1848, and Okunzuwa, a granddaughter of an Ibadan chief. Jacob's parents were long-distance traders, and he claimed to have traveled with them in the Benin and Yoruba regions until his father's death in 1902. The brief sojourn in the Yoruba country afforded him the opportunity of attending school for a year in 1899, at a time when there was no such facility in Benin because of the reluctance of the traditional elite to send their children to school. Jacob was impressed by the written word and became interested in education, although it was not until 1911 that he returned to school at Akure. He demonstrated brilliance, although his education here was terminated by relocation. On his return to Benin in 1914, he became a domestic help to Black Shaw, a senior European staff of the Public Works Department, while at the same time enrolling at St. Matthews C.M.S. school. In 1915 he converted to Christianity and, with the encouragement of Shaw and others, he was able to complete his primary education in 1916.

Between 1916 and 1921, he worked in lowly paid jobs in Warri, Port Harcourt, and Okigwe. His failure to secure any lucrative government position pushed him to trading. His writing career began in 1921 when he drafted his now famous classic, Ekhere Vb'Itan Edo. Ironically, it was this successful book that exposed his writing inadequacies. To improve his skills, he enrolled in 1926 in a five-year correspondence course with the Institute of Rationalistic Press in London. In 1933 the C.M.S. published the Ekhere Vb'Itan, which attained an instant success. It was reprinted the following year and translated as A Short History of Benin.
What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods
Authors: Alpern Stanley B.
Published: May 2006

A great deal has been written in recent decades about the Atlantic slave trade, including the mechanics and terms of purchase, but relatively little about what Africans received in return for the slaves and other exports such as gold and ivory. And yet, if one is trying to reconstruct the material culture of, say, the Guinea Coast of West Africa during the slave-trade period, the vast European input cannot be ignored.

The written evidence consists of many thousands of surviving bills of lading, cargo manifests, port records, logbooks, invoices, quittances, trading-post inventories, account books, shipping recommendations, and orders from African traders. English customs records of commerce with Africa during the eighteenth century, when the slave trade peaked, alone contain hundreds of thousands of facts. A thorough analysis of all available data would call for the services of a research team equipped with computers, and fill many volumes. Using a portable typewriter (now finally abandoned for WordPerfect) and a card file, and sifting hundreds of published sources, I have over the years compiled an annotated master list of European trade goods sold on a portion of the Guinea Coast from Portuguese times to the mid-nineteenth century. The geographic focus is the shoreline from Liberia to Nigeria; from it more slaves left for the New World than from any comparable stretch of the African coast. I call the area “Kwaland” for the Kwa language family to which nearly all the indigenous peoples belong.
Further Consideration of Two Photographs Ascribed to Christian Hornberger
Authors: Jenkins Paul , Theye Thomas
Published: May 2006

Two reactions to the essay on the earliest generation of missionary photographers in West Africa published earlier in HA set up trains of thought which deserve to be minuted here as a further contribution to our praxis with images of Africa in the nineteenth century. It was pointed out by two readers of the original article that a pair of the images which, it had been asserted (104), derive from the last phase of Hornberger's photographic work, were published very early on in a non-mission context: that of three women spinning and that of one man weaving (figures 1 and 2 below).

Both images exist as photographs, as stereographic vintage prints. Both were also published as wood engravings in mission periodicals (figures 3 and 4). Two readers of the original essay have pointed out that these images were conflated into a single engraving on page 211 of Richard Oberländer's Westafrika vom Senegal bis Benguela (Leipzig, 1874). In this image (figure 5), however, only two members of the group of spinning women are depicted, placed separately in the foreground, one on each side of the weaver. It is an ironic reflection on the quality of the documentation we have to fear in this field that Oberländer's caption—“Spinnende und webende Aschanti. (Nach einer Photographie)”—asserts specifically that the engraving was taken “from a photograph,” using the singular form.
Constructing Identity: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Architecture in the Gambia-Geba Region and the Articulation of Luso-African Ethnicity
Authors: Mark Peter
Published: May 2006

The precolonial architectural history of the northern Upper Guinea coast from the Gambia to the Geba rivers has yet to be studied in depth. Yet this region, the first to be visited and described by European travelers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, is among the best-documented parts of sub-Saharan Africa for the four centuries of precolonial African-European contact. The establishment of communities of Luso-African traders in the sixteenth and seventeenth century makes the Gambia-Casamance-Bissau area important to the study of early sustained cultural interaction between Europeans and West Africans.

One result of the establishment of Portuguese and Luso-African trading communities was the development of a distinctive style of architecture, suited to the climate and making use of locally-available building materials. The history of the trade itself has been extensively studied by George Brooks. His work, along with that of Jean Boulègue, provides a firm foundation for the study of local architecture and living space. It is not my intention to rewrite these excellent sources, although much of my material is drawn from the same primary documents they have used, and although, in presenting the historical context from which seventeenth-century coastal architecture developed, I necessarily cover some ground that Brooks has already trod.

In addition to the history of building styles, several related questions that are highly significant to the history of European-African cultural interaction need to be addressed. These questions include: what were the respective roles of Africans, Europeans, and Luso-Africans in the development of a distinctive architectural style? Is it possible to discern the influence of evolving Luso-African construction on local African architecture? And of local building styles on Afro-European construction? In other words, to what extent does architecture reflect mutual, two-way interaction between European and African society?
Historians, are Archeologists Your Siblings?
Authors: Vansina Jan
Published: May 2006

The historian of pre-nineteenth century Africa…cannot get far without the aid of archaeology.

Nevertheless, historians have good reason to be cautious about historical generalisations by archaeologists and about their own use of archaeological material…: it would be a rash historian who totally accepted the conclusions of Garlake and Huffman with the same simple-minded trust as I myself accepted the conclusions of Summers and Robinson.

In the beginning, historians of Africa put great store by archeology. Was its great time depth not one of the distinctive features of the history of Africa, a condition that cannot be put aside without seriously distorting the flavor of all its history? Did not the relative scarcity and the foreign authorship of most precolonial written records render archeological sources all the more precious? Did not history and archeology both deal with the reconstruction of human societies in the past? Was the difference between them not merely the result of a division of labor based on sources, so that historical reconstruction follows in time and flows from archeological reconstruction? Such considerations explain why theJournal of African Historyhas regularly published regional archeological surveys in order to keep historians up to date.
Christianisation et mentalites au Burundi: innovations et permanences des comportements socio-culturels en milieu rural
Authors: Feltz Gaëtan
Published: May 2006

Le décryptage des comportements socio-culturels dans une société où la notion de développement (amajambe) est le fruit d'une démarche de type moderniste, nous enjoint à établir une distinction entre les couches sociales “sensibles” à une telle évolution—celles en particulier qui vivent en milieu urbain—et les catégories sociales qui paraissent réfractaires—en particulier dans le milieu rural—qui compte plus de 90% de la population burundaise. Ce diptyque ville/campagne ne doit pas nécessairement être perçu comme une césure, car les attitudes diverses mettent en évidence des degrés d'interaction, entre un milieu urbain ouvert à la modernité et un monde rural attaché aux traditions, et vice-versa. Les paysans savent très bien s'adapter aux innovations technologiques apportées par les projets de développement, tels que l'électrification des campagnes, l'asphaltage des grands axes de communication, etc.… Un des résultats tangibles de ces réalisations est l'accroissement de la mobilité des biens et des individus, et donc la possible intégration des régions périphériques au centre politico-administratif.
Oral Traditions as Historical Sources in Ethiopia: The Case of the Beta Israel (Falasha)
Authors: Quirin James
Published: May 2006

It is axiomatic that historians should use all available sources. African historiography has been on the cutting edge of methodological innovation for the last three decades, utilizing written sources, oral traditions, archeology, linguistics, ethnography, musicology, botany, and other techniques to bring respect and maturity to the field.

But the use of such a diverse methodology has brought controversy as well, particularly regarding oral traditions. Substantial criticisms have been raised concerning the problems of chronology and limited time depth, variations in different versions of the same events, and the problem of feedback between oral and written sources. A “structuralist” critique deriving from Claude Levi-Strauss's study of Amerindian mythology has provided a useful corrective to an overly-literal acceptance of oral traditions, but often went too far in throwing out the historical baby with the mythological bathwater, leading some historians to reject totally the use of oral data. A more balanced view has shown that a modified structural approach can be a useful tool in historical analysis. In Ethiopian historiography some preliminary speculations were made along structuralist lines,5 although in another sense such an approach was always implicit since the analysis of Ethiopie written hagiographies and royal chronicles required an awareness of the mythological or folk elements they contain.

Two more difficult problems to overcome have been the Ethiopie written documents' centrist and elitist focus on the royal monarchy and Orthodox church. The old Western view that “history” required the existence of written documents and a state led to the paradigm of Ethiopia as an “outpost of Semitic civilization” and its historical and historiographical separation from the rest of Africa. The comparatively plentiful corpus of written documentation for Ethiopian history allowed such an approach, and the thousands of manuscripts made available to scholars on microfilm in the last fifteen years have demonstrated the wealth still to be found in written sources. However, such sources, although a starting point for research on Ethiopian history, no longer seem adequate in themselves because they focus primarily on political-military and religious events concerning the monarchy and church.
Understanding the Crisis in Modern Nigerian Historiography
Authors: Adeoye A. O.
Published: May 2006

The method of exposition adopted in this essay is one which divides the discussion into three concentric circles and proceeds accordingly. Firstly, we give a brief historical sketch of the antecedents. This sets the scene for the next stage, where we investigate the nature of the crisis and the reasons for it. Finally, attention is especially drawn to the materialist critique of orthodox historiography in order to bring into relief the ideological dimensions of the problem. On the whole, in this study we have drawn generously from ideas developed in works dealing generally with African historiography, even though this essay is specific to the Nigerian social formation.
The Development of African Historical Studies in East Germany; An Outline And Selected Bibliography
Authors: Büttner Thea
Published: May 2006

My main concern in this paper is to throw some light on the scope of the problem from the view of the development of African historical studies in East Germany after World War II. It is necessary first to discuss some negative and positive sides of German historical African studies before 1945. For several decades German research has demonstrated a startling lack of interest in the research problems of African history. In connection with the colonial conquests of the European powers, special institutes grew in social anthropology, colonial economics, and geography, although the historical development of the peoples of Africa was ignored. As an outward appearance of this development there grew in several German universities, departments for Oriental languages e.g., at the University of Berlin on the direct instruction of Bismarck, and in 1908 the Colonial Institute at Hamburg University.

Leading German historians and Africanists of the past demonstrated their theoretical ignorance in relation to African history. They proceeded from the definition of Leopold von Ranke, who classed the African peoples with the “non-history possessing” peoples who have made no contribution to world culture. G. W. F. Hegel uttered only fatalistic and stereotyped ideas—for him Africa was “no historical part of the World, it has no movement or development to exhibit.” These fundamental conceptions penetrated in one degree or another, the majority of publications on Africa up to 1945. Even Dietrich Westerman, one of the best known Africanists, who published one major book on African history in the German language,Geschichte Afrikas, in 1952 made his studies in the old tradition of seeing sub-Saharan Africa predominantly from the European point of view and continuing the image of an African peoples' history that was not accomplished by the world moulding civilized mankind and has not contributed its share to it. In short, the theoretical foundation of colonialism was rooted in German research in a deep racialist ideology. Only a few explorers and scientists swam against the tide.
A Supplement to A Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa: Corrigenda et Addenda
Authors: Fage J. D.
Published: May 2006

The database used for my A Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa published in European Languages (xxvi + 192pp., African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987) has been subject to continuing revision and updating. The total number of entries has grown from some 780 to close on 830, and in all I estimate that something like 400 changes have been made to the published form of the Guide. Some of these are essentially cosmetic—for example, rearrangements of an entry's layout intended to make its text easier to use and understand, or the correction of obvious misprints or infelicities. But, leaving these aside, there are now a sufficient number of substantive changes to suggest that-pending the appearance of a second edition—it might be sensible to seek to publish this list of significant corrections and additions separately.

Of those whose help I acknowledged in 1987, I can only express my continuing gratitude to P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law for the way in which they are still drawing my attention both to new sources and to my earlier errors. I have also gained useful bibliographical insights from holding in my hand many of the 3537 items listed in the great and glorious sale catalog recently put together by Paul Wilson, of Oriental and African Books, Shrewsbury, of “rare and scholarly” books published on West Africa and the western and central Sudan from the early seventeenth century onwards.
The Obatala Factor in Yoruba History
Authors: Lawuyi O. B.
Published: May 2006

History records it that Obatala was the ruler of the indigenous peoples of southwestern Nigeria when they were conquered by Oduduwa. The exact date of the encounter remains problematic, owing largely to the nature of the source of information, oral tradition. At one level of interpretation, therefore, Obatala myths represent the struggle for the domination of the autochthonous groups, but there is another dimension. Although Oduduwa's image and achievements came to overshadow and dwarf Obatala's role in history, the latter has persisted as a deity, appropriated into the Yoruba pantheon as a symbol of peace:

It is essentially difficult to describe a Yoruba religious festival. It is not what happens that really matters, nor indeed is it important what is done. What does matter is the intense spiritual experience that can be shared even by strangers. During these events sacrifices, prayers, drumming, singing, dancing all combine to create an atmosphere, an emotional situation which allows the worshippers to come near the god ….

The second day of the [Obatala] festival has a feature not unlike a Passion Play. There is no spoken dialogue but singing accompanies the performance and the entire action is danced. The story is of a fight between the Ajagemo [who is the personification of Obatala] and another priest bearing the title of Olunwi. Ajagemo is taken prisoner by Olunwi and carried off from the palace. The Oba [king], however, intervenes for his release. He pays ransom to Olunwi, and Ajagemo is liberated and allowed to return to the palace. The return gradually attains the qualities of a triumphal procession.
The National Archives—Kaduna (NAK), Nigeria
Authors: Adelberger Jörg
Published: May 2006

Although the archives of Nigeria have been utilized extensively, especially for historical studies, descriptive or introductory notes on them scarcely exist. With the following paper, based on a recent visit to the National Archives in Kaduna in October 1990, 1 want to contribute in filling this gap. The Nigerian Record Office (now National Archives of Nigeria) was established in 1954 on the recommendation and with the efforts of K. O. Dike, who had toured Nigeria and inspected the state of existing archives. Subsequently he became Government Supervisor of Public Records. Initially the archive was situated at the University of Ibadan, until in 1958 the first permanent block was erected.

The National Archives in Kaduna is one of the three National Archives in Nigeria, the other two being in Ibadan and Enugu. There is some division of competence between the three archives: Enugu is responsible for the southern parts of Nigeria, Ibadan for the western parts, and Kaduna for the states of Northern Nigeria. The present or former names of regions on which documents are to be found in Kaduna are as follows: Adamawa, Bassa, Bauchi, Benue, Borgu, Borno, Central Province, Gongola, Ilorin, Kabba, Kano, Katsina, Kontagora, Lokoja, Munshi, Muri, Nassarawa, Niger, Nupe, Plateau, Sokoto, Yola, and Zaria. In this listing there are of course regional overlappings; for in the course of history provinces have either been carved out or amalgamated into larger units. In some cases, moreover, more or less identical regions are itemized under different names.
The Benin Kinglist/s: Some Questions of Chronology
Authors: Eisenhofer Stefan
Published: May 2006

The chronology of the history of the Benin kingdom is seen by many historians as clarified in the main back to the thirteenth century and even earlier. Apart from the reports of European travelers and missionaries and some information given by merchants, this chronology is based mainly on the Benin kinglist for the periods before 1897. This list names 38 kings (obas) of Benin and covers past centuries with seemingly great accuracy (see table 1).

In spite of the many names of formerobasand the pretended accuracy of the list's time-frame, it would be problematic to take it as historically factual since it cannot be corroborated by any documentation before the mid-nineteenth century. The data concerning the period before this time are almost exclusively based on the writings of the Benin amateur historian Jacob Egharevba. In his work Egharevba reported on important events in the oral traditions of Benin and connected the reign of former kings with specific years. In doing so he forced his African oral material into a linear European time scheme and into the framework specified by European written sources.

Unfortunately, very few historians have as yet critically analyzed the chronological data for Benin. This is surprising, since the great Benin researcher Bradbury noted some time ago that Egharevba's “chronological conclusions have been accepted too uncritically, especially for the period up to the first European contact” (Bradbury 1959:285f) and have been seen as historical facts without any further consideration ever since. Neither the question of so-called “genealogical parasitism,” nor any of the other fundamental problems which arise when studying kinglists have been addressed.
Slender Evidence, Weighty Consequences: On One Word in the Periplus Maris Erythraei
Authors: Vansina Jan
Published: May 2006

From time to time one encounters a situation where a wisp of a source yields evidence of momentous consequence for the understanding of a whole society in the past. Such a situation raises the question of how much evidentiary weight a slender source can credibly bear, for when the evidence is so slender or tenuous, the slightest misunderstanding or misinterpretation can lead to hugely magnified errors in historical reconstruction. At the same time, the more slender the evidence, the more tempted researchers will be to interpret it according to their own a priori vision of the past in question. This is a genuine problem which can only be overcome by finding more relevant evidence.

Such situations naturally crop up wherever sources (written or otherwise) are very rare, so that every scrap of evidence must be scrutinized and exploited with the greatest care and to its fullest extent, a common circumstance in African history in relation to written documents before ca. A.D. 1450 and documents at all times about topics such as, for instance, women's history or specific techniques of agriculture that were normally not recorded. The situation then, while unusual, is frequent enough to warrant a more detailed discussion of one such instance to illustrate what the problem is and how it can be tackled. This illustration will be the case of oratoi, a single word in the Periplus Maris Erythraei.

The Periplus is justly famous in African historiography. Known from a single manuscript now in Heidelberg and held to date from the early tenth century and a much later copy from that now in the British Museum, written in a mixture of classical and vulgar Greek by either a Greek living in Egypt or an Egyptian, and firmly dated to between AD 40-55, the Periplus contains the first, albeit succinct, information about the inhabitants of the East African coast, more than half a millennium before other comparable written mentions occur.
Photographic Sources for the History of Portuguese-Speaking Africa, 1870-1914
Authors: Dias Jill R.
Published: May 2006

The wealth of the photographic record of Portuguese Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is only beginning to be appreciated. Until recently it was not only ignored but totally neglected. As a result much has been destroyed. The full extent of the surviving material is, as yet, unknown. Collections of photographs are dispersed in various archives, libraries, and private collections throughout Portugal. In most cases almost nothing is known of the photographers or of the circumstances in which then-work was produced. The photographs themselves have not been studied, so that the work of dating and evaluating their content has yet to be done.

In this paper then I can present only a very preliminary and incomplete survey and exploration of some of the very diverse categories of photographic sources available for the history of Portuguese-speaking Africa between the 1870s and early 1920s, concentrating particularly on Angola and Mozambique. Whenever possible I also try to draw attention to some of the practical and theoretical problems involved in their interpretation as a step towards assessing more accurately their historical and sociological value.
Hawkins' Hoax? A Sequel to “Drake's Fake”
Authors: Fage J. D.
Published: May 2006

English schoolchildren were once brought up on tales of the exploits of Drake and the two Hawkins, father and son, leaders of the English seafaring adventures who invaded the monopolies of Atlantic trade claimed by the Iberian monarchs, who signed Philip II's beard, and who eventually brought his great Armada to destruction. Strangely enough, some two centuries later the names Drake and Hawkins would seem to reappear in Atlantic history as those of two North American adventurers who sought to profit in the slave trade from West Africa.

Not so long ago my friend and colleague T. C. McCaskie presented in History in Africa grounds for believing to be spurious inventions those parts of the published reminiscences of Richard Drake which deal with Asante, the great kingdom behind the Gold Coast (on which he may well have traded), and which he claimed to have visited in 1839. Unlikely though it may seem, there would also appear to be substantial grounds for believing that Joseph Hawkins' account of a trip into the interior of West Africa, which he claimed to have made from the Rio Nunez in 1795, is also at least in some measure an invention.
The Quest for “Tarra”: Toponymy and Geography in Exploring History
Authors: McDougall E. Ann
Published: May 2006

Some years ago, Robin Winks edited a series of essays entitled The Historian as Detective, invoking the intellectual joys of an Agatha Christie mystery to explain the value of history to society. It drew no examples from Africa, perhaps reflecting the infancy of African historiography at the time. However, it is no exaggeration to say that in the intervening decades, the piecing together of African history has raised for historians challenges of method and complexities of interpretation fully worthy of Hercule Poirot.

Contributions to this recent genre of detective work have been especially notable on the part of those investigating Africa's precolonial past. The reasons for this are many: a paucity of reliable witnesses, extreme difficulty (not to mention expense) in tracking down those who do exist, a shortage of suitably trained and dedicated ‘gum-shoes,’ and an abundance of clues which frustratingly seem to lead at one and the same time ‘both everywhere and nowhere,’ as Poirot would probably put it. But where detectives like him achieved fame and fortune by finding conclusive answers, detectives of early African history have had to settle for the relative obscurity which accompanies the unsolved case. ‘Mysteries’ which leave the choice of solution to the reader are more characteristic of the field than those with definitive, final-page revelations. In this, the quest for “Tarra” proves itself no exception.
The Archives of Zambia's United National Independence Party
Authors: Musambachime M. C.
Published: May 2006

In an introduction to a University of Zambia publication entitled A Catalogue of Unpublished Materials in Zambia, published in 1978, J. K. Rennie observed that in Zambia there were “many depositories or collections of private and official papers, the extent of whose holdings are imperfectly known and the state of whose preservation was uncertain.” The Catalogue, which was supposed to be the first in a series and was intended to be a “guide to unpublished primary materials … and an aid to research in history and social sciences,” identified thirty government and non-government depositories located in various parts of Zambia. The wealth and diversity of materials held in these depositories were of immense value and benefit to researchers— academics and students interested in historical studies requiring archival research. Rennie, and others who assisted him in locating and documenting these depositories, made what they called a “humble minor beginning in a much larger enterprise. This paper is intended as a further contribution to this enterprise.

In Zambia, one depository that is little known by social science researchers is the archives held by the ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP), located in Freedom House, the party headquarters at the southern end of Cairo Road, which forms part of the Research Bureau of the party. This archives holds important files formerly held by the African National Congress (ANC) formed in 1948 and disbanded in 1973 after the Chôma declaration which ushered in the one-party state and of UNIP, formed in 1960, which today is the only political party in Zambia.
“A Smattering of Education” and Petitions as Sources: A Study of African Slaveholders' Responses to Abolition in the Gold Coast Colony, 1874–1875
Authors: Akurang-Parry K.O.
Published: May 2006

By the mid-nineteenth century African societies had begun to use petitions as an instrument of agitation for reforms in nascent colonial policies. This was especially true of those societies located in the coastal enclaves where precolonial European and diasporic African influences were markedly profound. Compared with other African responses to European colonial rule, anti-colonial petitions are less spectacular. This explains, perhaps-deservingly so, why petitions or memorials, which also took the form of deputations, as a historical genre have been marginalized in the polemical studies of African responses to colonial rule. Such studies have included militant responses in the form of war, riots, social banditry, millennarianism, arson, strikes, avoidance of conscription, desertion, and mass migration. Other forms of African response, devoid of militancy or overly tumultuous actions, have been aptly described by James C. Scott as theWeapons of the Weak. These have included foot-dragging, the use of songs, and the protest politics of the indigenous African press.

This study deals with how slaveholders in the Gold Coast responded to British abolition of slavery and pawnship in the Gold Coast in 1874-75. Specifically, I examine how the African intelligentsia in the Gold Coast Colony used quasi-legal means, essentially petitions, to oppose abolition and emancipation of slaves and pawns. This opposition was undertaken on behalf of slave/pawnholders, including the indigenous rulers of the coast, especially the Fante region. Additionally, the study draws attention to Africans' use of petitions as an important historical source that can benefit the study of various aspects of colonial rule and facets of African responses.
Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in “Portuguese” Accounts on “Guinea of Cape Verde” (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)
Authors: da Silva Horta José
Published: May 2006

Portugal and Western Africa have built a common history since the middle of the fifteenth century. In this century the Portuguese maritime expansion was a pioneer movement within the European expansion process. It established an uninterrupted connection between societies that had never met before. After a short period of Portuguese warlike activities (1436-48), the African resistance to enslavement, inter alia, forced a radical change of strategy. By 1460 the Portuguese had explored the western African coast as far as the present Sierra Leone, and had begun to establish with African societies a fairly peaceful relationship founded on mutual trade interests. Within this context, Christianity, although it might be faced in a different way by each culture, constituted a common “language,” a path to find approaching ground and fulfil reciprocal needs.

From the beginning, the Portuguese Crown attempted to establish a monopoly on the European coastal and riverine activities, an attempt that was progressively challenged, in loco, by the French, the English and the Dutch, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the State interests were also challenged by illegal private traders that came both from the Iberian Peninsula and Santiago Island and had their own agents in Guinea.

The geographical basis for trade activities (legal and illegal) were, at least until the 1560s, the Cape Verde islands, which were discovered ca. 1460-1462. Trade—together with the strategic value of the archipelago to the Atlantic navigation—was the reason why the colonization of the main island, Santiago, began very early, in 1462, followed, at the end of the century, by Fogo island.
History and Historiography in Precolonial Nigerian Societies: The Case of the Ekiti
Authors: Agboola C.O.O.
Published: May 2006

Today the Ekiti, a major dialectal segment of the Yoruba-speaking group, inhabit the Ekiti State and the Oke-Ero and Ekiti Local Government Areas of Kwara State in Nigeria. Otun Ekiti, or simply “Otun,” one of the Ekiti towns (spelt “Awtun” in many colonial records), is presently the headquarters of the Moba Local Government Area of Ekiti State. During British colonial rule in Nigeria, the people of Otun had cause to narrate to the authorities their oral traditions and history. In that process they claimed, like most Yoruba-speaking groups, that they and their oba originated from Ile-Ife, the traditional core of Yoruba dispersal. They also claimed that their oba, the Oore (also sometimes spelt “Ore” or “Owore”) was, and had always been, the preeminent oba among the Ekiti oba.

Based largely on those claims, the people of Otun undertook some major actions, especially their separatist activities in Ilorin Division from about 1900 to 1936. Similarly, due largely to those claims and the resultant reactions from the people, the colonial government took some major decisions and actions. The most important of such actions was the administrative excision of Otun District from Ilorin Division of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria and its merger with the Ekiti Division of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria in 1935/36.

There appeared, however, in 1947, a publication titled Itan Oore, Otun ati Moba, written by David Atolagbe, and a second edition came out in 1981. Of relevance to the thrust of this paper are the claims made by the author to the effect that the Oore and people of Otun originated, not from Ile-Ife as had earlier been claimed by some sources, but independently from the Creator of the universe, even though he still maintained the paramountcy of the Oore among the Ekiti oba.
“What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa?”: Thoughts on Boundaries—and Related Matters—in Precolonial Africa
Authors: Wright Donald R.
Published: May 2006

I made a mistake teaching my course on precolonial African history this past fall. I vowed (to myself) to be absolutely honest. I decided to admit to students how little historians know for certain about much of Africa's early history. I focused on the evidence, emphasizing how little there is for determining what occurred several centuries ago—let alone 2000 years ago—in sub-Saharan Africa. I gave one lecture—downright sterling, I thought—in which, in the first part, I taught about “Bantu Expansion” as I had done in my first year on the job, way back in 1976. I had read Roland Oliver's 1966 article in theJournal of African History, which had made everything clear to me once upon a time.

With that as a basis I laid out an entire scheme about how these humans, who spoke related languages, had populated nearly all of sub-equatorial Africa since the beginning of the modern era. I had maps on overhead projection (copies handed out) showing when the Bantu migrated where; I spoke of the evidence for it all, even reading from Ptolemy'sGeographyand thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea; and recalled how clear it all was to myself and the students, who wrote down nearly every word and made notations on the maps.

Then, in the second part of the lecture, I talked about how incorrect it all was (student pens here coming to rest)—how our reading of some of the linguistic evidence was faulty, how we read things into Ptolemy and thePeriplusbecause they fit the scheme, and how subsequent archeological evidence has simply proved most of the neat scheme wrong. I concluded with an honest, if pessimistic, note that, because of the paucity of evidence, there simply is a lot about early African history that we will not be able to know.
The Informant as Resolute Overseer
Authors: Kaufmann Jeffrey
Published: May 2006

In this paper I take into account informants who oversee fieldworkers in local arenas. My intention is not to question the importance of participant-observation as the hallmark of field research but to elevate the recognition of informants in fieldwork. The argument centers on local overseers who are integral to participant-observation by controlling more of what the researcher observes, and with whom one participates, than they are usually given credit for in the literature. I intentionally use “overseer” rather than the usual “gatekeeper” label to convey a strong sense of informant involvement in ethnographic research (cf. Ellen 1984 where “gatekeeper” is used to describe a range of actors who control access, channel activities, and so on). The case study is drawn from my experiences with a host family in southwest Madagascar with whom I lived for 10 months in 1997.

There are different ways of representing informants in the literature. One way is to draw a wide line between informant and participant-observer. Informants are defined as local people who willingly provide information to participant-observers. Participant-observers are non-locals involved in intense interaction with members of a community over a long period such as a year. The two are not to overlap. Evans-Pritchard found informants vital to his Azande research, participant-observation central to his Nuer fieldwork. “Azande would not allow me to live as one of themselves; Nuer would not allow me to live otherwise. Among Azande I was compelled to live outside the community; among Nuer I was compelled to be a member of it” (Evans-Pritchard 1940:15). This tradition, of treating each as a separate method, is widespread (see, for example, Bernard 1995:136-79; Casagrande 1960; Ellen 1984; Freilich 1970:541; Herskovits 1955:376; Jackson 1997:188; Malinowski 1961:1-25; Pelto and Pelto 1973:242-43; Spradley 1980:177).
The Emergence of Lake Rudolf as an Iconic Colonial Space
Authors: Mirzeler Mustafa Kemal
Published: May 2006

Lake Rudolf, which is also known as Lake Turkana, lies in the eastern arm of the great Rift Valley. It is primarily fed by the Omo River, which flows south from the Ethiopian highlands and sits in an inhospitable landscape of dormant volcanoes, wind-driven semidesert, and old lava flows. During the morning hours, strong gusts of wind usually blow from the east down the slopes of Mount Kulal and across the surface of the lake. This unrelenting wind creates large, white-capped waves on the lake's surface and makes navigation almost impossible. It also gives the lake a bluish color, reflecting the clear sky above. However, when the wind dies down in the afternoon, the lake takes on the color of green jade, due to algae that rise to the surface when the waters are calm. It is because of this afternoon and evening color that the lake has long been known as the Jade Sea (Imperato: 1998:3).
The Roots of the African Diaspora: Methodological Considerations in the Analysis of Names in the Liberated African Registers of Sierra Leone and Havana
Authors: Nwokeji G. Ugo , Eltis David
Published: May 2006

Europe and the Americas have long dominated studies of transatlantic exchanges and much more is known about European participation in the Atlantic world than of its African counterpart. Current knowledge of how those parts of Africa located a few miles away from the African littoral contributed to the early modern Atlantic World is particularly sparse. This is despite the fact that the slave trade was the largest branch of transatlantic migration between Columbian contact and 1870, and that it is becoming apparent that Africans and indigenous Americans helped shape the new political and economic power structures, as well as the post-Columbian worlds of culture and labor.

Assessments of the impact of any group on the global stage must begin with the nature of the group itself, and thus efforts to raise the African profile in Atlantic scholarship and to focus on the agency of Africans must quickly face the contentious issue of ethnicity. From the broadest perspective, it is odd that the way the ancestors of the Atlantic World defined themselves should have become so much more contentious among Africanists and Afro-Americanists than among those scholars who study Europe and Europeans overseas. At the outset of the repeopling of the Americas, the European state existed in nascent form in only Spain, Britain, and France. The predominance of the nation-state in the way the world is organized in the twenty-first century—rather than its status in 1492—has perhaps led scholars to stress the contrasts between Africa and Europe on issues of early modern nationhood, and, more generally, human identity.
Oral Tradition in Changing Political Contexts: The Kisra Legend in Northern Borgu
Authors: Akinwumi Olayemi
Published: May 2006

Until the mid-1950s all the received traditions in Nigerian Borgu were unanimous that Bussa was established by Woru, the eldest son of Kisra (alhough some versions claim that it was Kisra himself), while Shabi and Bio, his younger brothers, established Nikki and Illo respectively. These traditions were recorded in the early period of colonial rule by colonial anthropologists and most of these accounts are deposited at the National Archives in Kaduna.

From the 1950s new traditions began to emerge challenging certain aspects of these earlier versions. One such aspect that has attracted attention is the order of the establishment of the principal Borgawa states. The new traditions denied any link between Kisra and Bussa, and also condemned the prominent role assigned to the Emir of Bussa. The principal objective of the present paper is to explain the political situation that gave rise to the emergence of these new traditions, and to show how suspectible oral tradition, especially traditions of origin, is to political manipulation.

Edmund Leach and J.A. Atanda have demonstrated this in different works. In his work on highland Burma Leach shows how traditions of origins “change with clock-like regularity in response to shifts in the political constellation.” In his turn Atanda shows how oral tradition “undergoes revisions when regimes change, care being taken that materials ‘useless’ to the new regime are expunged and new ‘useful’ materials added to evolve to an acceptable ‘standard version’.”
Means and Meanings: Methodological Issues in Africanist Interdisciplinary Research
Authors: Quayson Ato
Published: May 2006

Interdisciplinarity has become a sort of buzzword in academic circles. It is quite common to hear graduate students respond, in answer to a question as to what they are doing, that their work is “sort of interdisciplinary.” This answer might be construed as concealing some measure of confusion as to what exactly is being researched. But, on the other hand, there is little doubt that the most adventurous students are increasingly defining their areas of concern at the boundaries between disciplines. The matter seems to take on a particularly acute inflection in relation to Africanist research. This may be traced partly to the fact that from the very beginning of interest in African matters, much scholarly work on Africa in Western universities has been done under the rubric of “African studies.” Anthropology and history, arguably the disciplines most active in popularizing knowledge about Africa, have themselves always shared a common concern on the ways in which knowledge about Africa can be constituted. The monumental work of Jan Vansina and others in the 1960s in focusing on oral traditions and making them a respectable source for the construction of historical knowledge about Africa was thoroughly interdisciplinary in its own way.

Despite the implicit interdisciplinarity of African Studies, the theoretical implications of interdisciplinary study and the issues that it generates for questions about different types of knowledge does not seem to have engaged the attention of scholars. It is in this direction that I propose to go. I propose to engage with issues concering interdisciplinarity from the perspective of my own research on Nigerian literature. The issues that concern me relate to the question: what do specific configurations of disciplines within the interdisciplinary model have for the nature of the knowledge that is produced? But a series of subsidiary questions might be asked in relation to this major one, such as: are we being interdisciplinary when we borrow metaphors from other fields? or concepts? or whole paradigms? Or is it when we join different methods of analysis from two or more disciplines such that what finally emerges cannot be limited to any one of them?
Twentieth-Century Transformations in Notions of Gender, Parenthood, and Marriage in Southern Ghana: A Critique of the Hypothesis of “Retrograde Steps” for Akan Women
Authors: Boni Stefano
Published: May 2006

In the course of the 1970s, one of the principal focuses of the emerging feminist anthropology was the reassessment of issues of gender inequality. Drawing their inspiration from Marxist theory going back to Engels, some works historicized female oppression and analyzed its political and economic determinants. To demonstrate that gender inequality was the product of specific historical formations, the observable gender relations were, at times, opposed to a prior egalitarian social order in which value differentiation was not attached to the gendered labor division (e.g., Leacock 1981). The approach was criticized by those who believed that female subordination characterized present and past societies on which solid documentary evidence was available (e.g., Rosaldo 1974). The idea that gender realtions in some non-western societies were marked by parity prior to the degradation produced by colonization was not abandoned, however, and influenced neighboring disciplines.

Recent studies concerned with the transformations of gender relations in sub-Saharan Africa over the twentieth century tend to stress the decline in social and economic position of women. Ethnographic, economic, and historical studies state that the traditional value attached to being female is threatened by the economic and political developments of the last century. Women are said increasingly to lose their previous independence, to have to cater for children and elderly by themselves, and to lose ground in productive activities (Robertson and Berger 1986; Mikell 1997a; Baerends 1998).