bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Written Sources and African History: A Plea for the Primary Source. The Angola Manuscript Collection of Fernão de Sousa
Authors: Heintze Beatrix
Published: May 2006

The written sources for African history are scattered throughout the world, often in archives to which access is difficult. To reach them often requires a considerable expenditure of time and money, quite apart from the necessary linguistic knowledge. As a result, at least in the German-speaking world, much of the writing of African history and anthropology has for decades rested exclusively on published sources. Besides often leading to a serious deficiency of information, such an approach limits the degree of control to which written testimony can be subjected: even the most assiduous textual criticism soon reaches its limits if comparable information is lacking. In addition, where there are only a few published sources, the historian may all too easily be lulled into a false sense of security. To remedy this, it is not enough to plead for as much archival work as possible (a requirement that can today usually be taken for granted in any case) and encourage the publication of more primary sources. We should also pay more attention to the distinction between primary and secondary sources, that is, take more explicitly into account the proximity of a source to the historical event or situation concerned--quite apart from observing all the other rules of textual criticism.

This paper therefore has two purposes. First, I wish to draw attention to a hitherto-neglected source for Angolan history in the first half of the seventeenth century--the manuscript collection of Fernão de Sousa, Governor of Angola from 1624 to 1630. A rough review of its contents and arrangement will perhaps stimulate scholars to study it and facilitate its use.
Ngundeng and the “Turuk:” Two Narratives Compared
Authors: Johnson Douglas H.
Published: May 2006

The historiography of the southern Sudan offers few examples of the critical assessment of sources. Surprisingly, the only conscious attempts at source evaluation have been made by anthropologists or ethnographers. Most historians and political scientists have been preoccupied with chronologies of administration and policy based on colonial documents and have been all too uncritical in accepting these sources for their generalizations on the history of southern Sudanese societies. Part of the reason why the historiography of the southern Sudan has lagged so far behind the rest of Africa in this respect is that, until recently, a limited number of colonial documents were the main sources available on southern Sudanese history, and these remained both unchallenged or uncorroborated by indigenous sources. Over the last ten years, however, it has become possible for scholars to collect and examine a wider variety of local materials in the southern Sudan itself, and the comparison of these materials with the older, better-known, sources can help to produce that creative tension so necessary for any critical advance to be made.

There is an urgent need for an evaluation of oral history in the southern Sudan. Oral traditions have been collected for over eighty years, but most of the recorded forms, those found in government files and reports, are composite summaries and interpretations by their collectors--government officials--rather than systematic comparisons of different accounts. In this form it is often difficult to separate the assumptions of the colonial officials from the claims of their informants, a task made particularly difficult by the fact that rarely does the record specify the source of an account or the context in which it was collected. Comparisons of modern accounts, when the source and context of the narrative are known, with these older, vaguer records can reveal something about both the traditional history of southern Sudanese societies and the assumption of colonial administrators.
Segeju and Daisũ: A Case Study of Evidence from Oral Tradition and Comparative Linguistics
Authors: Nurse Derek
Published: May 2006

The history of “the” Segeju has been the subject of lengthy published debate. The discussion has been based almost entirely on interpretation of oral traditions as recounted by Segeju informants to various scholars. A newcomer with a linguistic bias is struck by certain aspects of much of this debate:

a] the linguistic implausibility apparently involved. Baker, for example, recording fairly literally what he was told, started the history of “the” Segeju in the Middle East: this would presumably involve a community speaking Arabic or Persian. There follows reference to “segeju” travels and sojourns in mainland northeast Africa: linguistic affiliation unknown. This period terminates with their arrival at Shungwaya, in southern Somalia: linguistic affiliation unstated. Later “they” are found on the Upper Tana River: Kamba is mentioned. Finally “they” settle in their present location on the northern Tanzanian coast, where today the language affiliations of people referring to themselves as “Segeju” are various (see below).
A Bio-Bibliography of F.D. Lugard
Authors: Ofcansky Thomas P.
Published: May 2006

It hardly seems necessary to recapitulate the main lines of Lugard's life and career since these are well known and have been studied several times. It might be useful, however, to discuss the political impact of his writings--especially some of his later works--because so many of them helped to influence British colonial policy throughout Africa and the empire.

As early as 1889 Lugard had established himself as an authority on African affairs by publishing a series of articles about Nyasaland and the necessity of suppressing the slave trade. Three years later--after engineering a treaty between Mwanga, the kabaka of Buganda, and the Imperial British East Africa Company--Lugard returned to England to campaign for the retention of Uganda. In addition to making his views known in The Times and in the Pall Mall Gazette, he defended the British position in eastern Africa in such important publications as the Manchester Geographical Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, and the Chamber of Commerce Journal. The Rise of Our East African Empire, a two-volume study of approximately 350,000 words, also helped to convince the British government and public of Uganda's stategic and economic value.

In 1894 Lugard accepted employment with the Royal Niger Company, thereby starting an association with west Africa that lasted for more than forty years. During that time he wrote an astounding number of articles, books, and pamphlets about the region's economic, political, and social life. In one nine-month period, for example, Lugard wrote twelve papers that appeared in a number of journals, including the Scottish Geographical Magazine, The Nineteenth Century, National Review, and The Geographical Journal.
Commodities, Customs, and the Computer
Authors: Johnson Marion
Published: May 2006

Among the various sources of information about the Africa of the Slave Trade era, one of the more voluminous and detailed is the great series of English Customs records held at the Public Record Office in London under CUST 3 and CUST 17. Each year's records are contained in a gigantic ledger. Those up to 1780, in the CUST 3 series, are organized entirely under countries, of which the whole of Africa counts as one (though each West Indian island is separately listed, and most of the North American colonies, though New England is mercifully counted as a single unit, as is “Virginia and Maryland”). In the CUST 17 series, which overlaps with the CUST 3 series from 1772 and runs until 1808, the arrangement is somewhat different, and a second series of entries is arranged under commodities. From 1796, the Cape (newly occupied) is shown separately; Sierra Leone appears in 1798, and Morocco in 1807/08. A fire destroyed all the records for 1813, and export records for the previous years, as well as an unknown number of more detailed records for earlier years, and also the records of the East India trade, and of Prize goods, and odd other parts of the records for the years before the fire. So far as Africa is concerned, it is possible to construct continuous series for Imports into England, and for re-exports, with only 1813 missing, but the export records for 1809-11 inclusive are lost. The list of countries recognized continues to vary after 1809, and from 1827 to 1845 the records divide up the coast of Africa into stretches, of which only “Gold Coast and Cape Coast” bears any relation to later divisions.
Malcolm Guthrie and the Reconstruction of Bantu Prehistory
Authors: Flight Colin
Published: May 2006

As to the scientific method,… it consist in the careful and often laborious classification of facts, in the comparison of their relationships and sequences, and finally in the discovery… of a brief statement or formula, which in a few words resumes the whole range of facts.

Poor Pearson! His punishment was to have practised what he preached.…

The Bantu expansion is one of the most important large-scale problems in African culture history -- an epic enacted over two or three thousand years and ten million square kilometers, by a cast not merely of thousands, but of many millions. By definition, the problem is primarily linguistic, but it cannot fail to engage the interest of other Africanists. The evidence arising from the comparative study of the Bantu languages has to be collated with evidence derived from other sources -- especially from archeology -- and extra-linguistic factors have to be invoked as soon as we raise the question of explanation. Bantu-speaking communities did not expand by virtue of the fact that they spoke Bantu: this at least we may safely take for granted.

Until a few years ago, the argument revolved around the names of two linguists -- about as different in temperament and training as any two linguists could be -- who had both by chance turned their attention to Bantu in the late 1940s. An American linguist, Joseph H. Greenberg, working towards a genetic classification for all African languages, arrived at a controversial conclusion regarding the relationship between Bantu and the so-called “Semi-Bantu” languages of Nigeria.
Royal Pedigrees of the Insular Dark Ages: A Progress Report
Authors: Miller Molly
Published: May 2006

The fall of the Roman empire and the rise of its successor states in continental Europe is reasonably well-documented and royal pedigrees are both brief and among the least of our sources of information. In the islands Roman administration ceased in Lowland Britain in 410, and had never obtained in northern Highland Britain or in Ireland, so that continuing and successor states existed side by side. It is likely that their secular influences on one another are masked by the common process of the conversion to Christianity in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries; certainly the “waves of saints” are prominent both in accounts of the period and in present notions about it. This is no doubt one reason why the various bodies of royal pedigrees have remained until recently (or still) only partially published and little studied.

The matrilinear Picts, however, became a subject for historical and anthropological consultation a century ago. Unfortunately, as we shall see, this conversation has not continued, and it is only of recent years that historians of the Insular Dark Ages have once more become aware of the possibilities of learning (both positively and negatively) from the insights and procedures developed by anthropology. The present moment, when both disciplines are grappling with the problem of what constitutes historical evidence for pre-archival periods, may be a propitious time for recommencing joint consideration of our common interests.
Archives of the Svenska Missionsförbundet
Authors: Widman Ragnar
Published: May 2006

Founded in 1878 the Svenska Missionsförbundet (Mission Covenant Church of Sweden; until 1911 known as the Swedish Missionary Society) established its first mission in the Belgian Congo three years later. The first station was at Mukimbungu and was followed by posts at Kibunzi (1887), Londe Matadi (1892), Kinkenge (1897), Kingoyi (1900), Sundi Lutete (1924), and Matadi (1928). All these stations are in the Kikongo-speaking area of lower Congo. Except for Mukimbungu, transferred to the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society in 1939, these posts were operated until independence. Meanwhile, in the neighboring French Congo, stations were established at Madzia in 1909, Musana in 1910, Brazzaville in 1911, Kolo in 1916, Indo in 1918, Loubetsi in 1922, Mansimou in 1925, Madouma in 1929, Ngouedi in 1930, Pointe Noire in 1933, Zanaga in 1937, Dolisie (Loubomo) in 1938, and Okoyo in 1977. With independence, the churches in the two ex-colonies indigenized; the congregation in Zaire was renamed the Communauté Evangélique du Zaire, while that in Congo-Brazzaville became known as the Eglise Evangélique du Congo. The Svenska Missionsförbundet also engaged in mission activities in Lappland, East Turkestan, India, Japan, and several other areas.

The archives of the Svenska Missionsförbundet are in Stockholm. The mailing address is Box 6302, 113 81 Stockholm. Materials organized by the archives include diaries, minutes, reports, accounts and cash books, and a good deal of ethnographic and linguistic materials. In addition there is collection of more than 20,000 photographs, as well as copies of the various periodicals published by the church.
“Bilali of Faransekila”: A West African Hunter and World War I Hero According to a World War II Veteran and Hunters' Singer of Mali
Authors: Conrad David C.
Published: May 2006

“An only son must never die in war until the end of the world.”

(Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila,” 1:396)

Discussing the significance of Kande Kamara's oral history of West African experiences in the First World War, Joe Harris Lunn observes that, although historians have begun to examine the effects of that war on west Africa, their studies are mostly based on written sources, “and therefore shed little light on the lived reality of the war for the African masses whose perceptions of their experiences were never recorded.” Of particular value then, is the oral history provided by the Guinean veteran Kande Kamara, offering as it does an opportunity for assessing the European war's impact on west Africans. Lunn finds, however, that west African soldiers who served in France during the First World War have left very few records of either their wartime experiences or its effects on their later lives. The text by the late Malian hunters' singer Seydou Camara that is presented here helps to redress this lamentable deficiency because, although it is a step or two removed from the sort of firsthand eyewitness account offered by Kande Kamara, it provides valuable support for and confirmation of certain elements of Kande Kamara's testimony. Composed and sung by Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila” provides us with an oral traditional counterpart to Kande Kamara's firsthand account.
Robert Norris, Agaja, and the Dahomean Conquest of Allada and Whydah
Authors: Ross David
Published: May 2006

In a book in which he gave an account of the reign of Tegbesu (1740-1774), Robert Norris, the late eighteenth-century slave trader historian of Dahomey, included a brief sketch of the career of Tegbesu's father, Agaja (1718-1740), the conqueror of Allada and Whydah. Norris portrayed Agaja as a nation-builder who brought the Dahomeans and the people of Allada and Whydah, “the conquerors and the conquered,” to think of themselves as “one people.” The author claimed that Agaja saw to it after the conquest that “every part of his dominions became replenished with people.” He also argued that Agaja's new subjects were so pleased with his policy of reconciliation that they made no “efforts to regain their independence.”

Norris' account of Agaja has been very influential, especially since the 1960s when I. A. Akinjogbin not only endorsed it but added both that Dahomey was founded by a group of patriotic anti-slave trade Aja and that post-1740 Dahomey was a European-like nation state. Norris' argument, as embellished by Akinjogbin, was reproduced in a number of authoritative 1970s works and appears to have retained its appeal even though Akinjogbin's addenda have been shown to be at odds with the evidence. Norris' original thesis nevertheless is just as flawed as Akinjogbin's various supplementary claims. Agaja was far from having been a nation-builder; still less was he a far sighted statesman who saw to it that “every part of his dominions became replenished with people.”
The Life Story of King Shaka and Gender Tensions in the Zulu State
Authors: Golan Daphna
Published: May 2006

Hundreds of poems, novels, plays, and films have been devoted to Shaka, the king of the Zulu. His life story has been created anew each generation, and his image has changed over the years. For many whites he represents barbarism; for many blacks both within and outside South Africa, he has become a symbol of power. The ways in which Shaka has been portrayed reveal trends of thought and ideological influences prevailing in each period. They record the shifts in white conceptions of blacks in South Africa, and some of the developments in black consciousness.

In this study I suggest that the core of the king's biography, the very basic life story which most historians accept, is but an invention. Shaka's biography closely resembles that of other African leaders such as Sundiata and Mbegha, and of biblical heroes, such as Joseph or Moses. These similarities to stories about other heroes point to the mythic character of the narrative and raise the possibility of investigating the various Shaka stories as symbolic representations of alternative world views, rather than as records of past times.
The Old Shaiqi Language in Historical Perspective
Authors: Spaulding Jay
Published: May 2006

The Shaiqiya are the northernmost Arabic-speaking community of the modern riverain Sudan, residing in the Nile bend below the Fourth Cataract as far as the borders of Nubian-speaking Dongola. Independent confirmation of the existence of the Shaiqiya under that name can be found in European sources of the sixteenth century, while charters, chronicles, saints' lives, and orally-preserved traditions allude to their participation in the political and cultural life of the wider kingdom of Sinnar, of which they formed a part. In November 1820 the Shaiqiya made one of their most dramatic contributions to the historical record by offering determined resistance to the invading Turkish armies of Muhammad Ali, Viceroy of Egypt. When they were defeated twice in quick succession, their homeland was subjected to six weeks of concentrated vengeance before the invaders marched on south. The erstwhile Shaiqi elite took service with the Turks as mercenary colonial troops and departed forever, slave revolts flared on the princely demesnes adjoining their vacant castles, and the servile entourages of the old lords disbanded and decamped. The survivors who remained, largely non-slave peasant cultivators, set out to build a new society under the tutelage of Turkish colonial officials. It is this nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial society, as popularized internationally by the Shaiqi novelist al-Tayyib Salih and the Shaiqi ethnographer Haydar Ibrahim, that is usually understood today to constitute the traditional, historically authentic, pre-modern reality of the Shaiqiya experience.
Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy
Authors: Tangri Daniel
Published: May 2006

The “Zimbabwe controversy” is a name by which disputes over the origins of the people who produced stone ruins and mines in southern Africa are known. Those disputes occurred between informed and lay opinion; informed opinion being represented by archeologists, and lay opinion by local cult archeologists and, at the turn of the century, explorers and excavators. One aspect of lay opinion that has seldom been discussed is the role of popular fiction. Popular novels are often mentioned in works on the Zimbabwe controversy as representing particular viewpoints, but there have been no detailed analyses of their role in that controversy. This paper will set popular novels into the context of the ideologies that influenced them, and gauge their influence on lay opinion and the degree to which they reflected viewpoints that were expressed in political disagreements over the site of Great Zimbabwe.

There are four major nineteenth-century novels that are pertinent to the Zimbabwe controversy: H. M. Walmsley's The Ruined Cities of Zululand, and three works by H. Rider Haggard—King Solomon's Mines, She, and Elissa? The first novel was published in time to incorporate knowledge of recently-reported stone ruins and gold mines. In the 1820s and 1830s stone kraals were known to have been built by black people. By the 1860s, however, when other explorers “discovered” stone ruins, they argued that black people could not have built them. Their arguments were based on prevalent systems of classifying humanity. It was generally believed that races were tied to discrete levels of culture by their average intelligence and their blood. Consequently, races could be characterised in terms of a set number of items of culture. It was also generally accepted that the overall record of humanity was one of cultural progress, or step-by-step advancement toward ever better and more complex cultures. Racial characters were thought to set a limit on the level that each race could reach. It was argued, for instance, that black Africans had reached the limit of their potential progress, whereas Europeans were still undergoing advancement. Consequently, Europeans were seen to belong to the most advanced races in the world; other races were ranked below them, and were thought to represent primitive stages through which Europeans had already passed.
In Quest of Error's Sly Imprimatur: The Concept of “Authorial Intent” in Modern Textual Criticism
Authors: Henige David
Published: May 2006

By common consent the constitution of an author's text is the highest aim a scholar can set before himself.

It is not easy to imagine any historian advancing such a claim these days--or at least meaning it. In fact many historians might not even be sure what Burnet meant by it. Yet, if themétierof textual criticism in history has fallen on hard times, it might not be quite true that there is no place for it at all, even in African historiography. At first glance, to be sure, it might seem quite beside the point to discuss “constituting” any text, written or oral, that Africanists might use as a source, since it must most often seem as if these texts are quite straightforward existing in the state we chance upon them and in that state only.

As is so frequently the case in the study of African history, for example, the only genuine sources for the life and activities of St. Patrick are two brief Latin texts he composed (or so it is widely believed), but which have survived only in versions committed to writing some two and a half centuries after his death. Well might we ask of materials like this: what text is to be “constituted” here? why is it necessary to engage in monotonous and time-consuming efforts to warrant the accuracy--that is, the verbal accuracy--of such texts? what is it possible to do anyway? and what is to be gained by doing it? As it happens, contemporary textual critics would have several answers to each of these questions, but here I want to deal only with a single facet of modern textual critical activity, its unending preoccupation with “authorial intent,” leaving the discussion of several other pertinent issues for another time.
Land, Politics, and Censorship: the Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Lesotho
Authors: Eldredge Elizabeth A.
Published: May 2006

Violent territorial competition is one of the dominant forces in the history of southern Africa, and all historiography with reference to land has significant political ramifications to this day. Nineteenth-century sources in the history of the BaSotho reflect these political considerations, which were as salient then as they are today.

In this paper I investigate the principal nineteenth-century sources for the history of land rights and land conflict affecting the BaSotho. On the basis of archival materials, I identify and assess the sources which early historians relied on. I also examine the background and orientations of these observers, in order to evaluate their interpretations of BaSotho history. The works with which I deal with are well-known to students of Lesotho history, and because they are so often used by modern scholars it is important that their origins, authenticity, and value be assessed.
La problematique de l'histoire ou du choix d'une historiographie au Burundi
Authors: Feltz Gaëtan
Published: May 2006

Le cheminement de l'Histoire s'est fait lentement depuis le temps de ses pères fondateurs au Grand Siècle de Périclès; mais le processus vers l'état des connaissances actuelles s'est accéléré dès la fin du XVIIe siècle avec les débuts de l'Histoire méthodique enrichie par l'Erudition au XVIIIe siècle, pour en arriver à rechercher un sens dans une Histoire conceptualisée. Le XIXe siècle sera marqué par le développement des Philosophies de l'Histoire: elles ont cours encore aujourd'hui bien qu'elles soient entachées de doute, de scepticisme, de relativisme (Bourde/Martin 1983). Le grand débat qui oppose les historiens se situe au niveau de l'interprétation, du sens à donner à l'analyse d'une source, qu'elle soit écrite, orale, archéologique, sonore ou imagée. Ou bien l'analyse critique des documents et leur confrontation permettent de reconstituer la fresque historique à travers ses tenants et aboutissants, ou bien l'on essaye d'aller plus loin en intégrant l'analyse critique dans une conception que l'on se fait de l'évolution historique, en admettant au préalable qu'il existe une dynamique sousjacente, un moteur, une problématique en fait.
“Gendered Narratives,” History, and Identity: Two Centuries Along the Juba River among the Zigula and Shanbara
Authors: Declich Francesca
Published: May 2006

The argument that a process of “making tribes” has invested Africa from early colonial times has been used to explain the emergence of some ethnicities which appear not to have existed before colonialism. This emergence was often accompanied by the creation of written records of male historical discourse, thus not only giving them undue prominence but also suppressing female historical discourses which were not considered pertinent to “history.”

Yet whenever history is recounted orally by either men or women, it contains messages directed to a “gendered” audience (i.e., an audience composed of people of both genders) whose participants perceive messages differently and reproduce separate but interacting discourses. Such diverse perceptions result from certain aspects in oral genres as well as small, coded markers which can evoke immensely potent but gender-specific experiences. Such instances may become public symbols and, along with more obviously historical narratives, greatly influence how people relate to their past. Thus men and women in the same audience, hearing the same story, can make connections between elements of a narrative which are obscure to outside researchers.

Recently, it has become quite common for historians of Africa to deconstruct written historical sources on the basis of the agendas of both the original writer and his informants. These agendas are rarely explicit and thus hiddenly selective. Such deconstruction is a legitimate scholarly procedure; however, as female voices have rarely been recorded—the resulting analysis reinforces the omission of women's roles in the process of remaking history and creating identity.
“Central and Eastern Wangara:” An Indigenous West African Perception of the Political and Economic Geography of the Slave Coast as Recorded by Joseph Dupuis in Kumasi, 1820
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

The mission of Joseph Dupuis, sent as British Consul to Kumasi, the capital of Asante, in 1820, is well known, principally through his own journal of it, published in 1824. In addition to his negotiations with the Asante authorities, Dupuis collected information on Asante history, and on the geography not only of Asante itself but also of neighboring and remoter countries in the interior—the latter presented in Part II of his Journal, entitled “On the Geography of Western Africa” [I-CXV]. His principal informants on both Asante history and West African geography were African Muslims whom he met in Kumasi, and with whom he was able to converse in Arabic. The geographical information was transmitted in part in the form of Arabic manuscripts, some (or perhaps all) of which Dupuis presented, in transcription and translation, in an appendix of “geographical documents” [cxxiv-cxxxv]; but supplementary information was obtained orally in conversations, some passages from which Dupuis purports to reproduce verbatim [XLII-XLIV].

The information which Dupuis obtained can usefully be compared with similar (but, as regards the interior, generally less extensive) material collected by Edward Bowdich on an earlier mission to Kumasi in 1817. Dupuis himself was frequently critical of alleged inaccuracies and confusions in Bowdich's account, though not always with justification. It is noteworthy that he read over at least one section of Bowdich's account to his informants in Kumasi, to obtain their comments on it [XVIII]—an interesting illustration of the potential for interaction between written texts and oral information in Africa even in precolonial times, in a manner more complex than that of “feedback” from written into oral data most commonly discussed by historians.
South Africa and Land Ownership: What's in a Deed?
Authors: Feinberg H. M.
Published: May 2006

The subject of African land ownership is and will continue to be a highly emotional issue of great importance in the new South Africa. Africans and Afrikaners alike have strong historical ties to the land. Thousands of Africans owned land outside the Reserves before 1948. These landowners included large numbers of Africans who purchased over 3,000 farms and lots between 1913 and 1936 in the Transvaal, Natal, and even the Orange Free State (plus uncounted African buyers in the Cape Province). Individuals, tribal groups, or people organized into partnerships owned land. In the 1990s Africans complain bitterly about land losses, especially after 1948 as a result of the apartheid policy of forced removals which aimed to eliminate the so-called “black spots” from white areas. In addition, some Africans point to the problem of land losses between 1913 and 1948, and others resent the severe restrictions resulting from the Natives Land Act, Act No. 27 of 1913, which prevented Africans from freely buying land in three of the four provinces of South Africa after 1913.

On 8 November 1994 the South African Parliament passed the Restitution of Land Rights Act, a law which is intended to allow Africans to reclaim their lost land. Claims by former owners or their descendants will be buttressed by legal documents of one type or another. Some of these legal documents have an interesting and unintended use, however: historians can take advantage of them to build an understanding of African land ownership before and after apartheid began in 1948.
Deng Laka and Mut Roal: Fixing the Date of an Unknown Battle
Authors: Johnson Douglas H.
Published: May 2006

The Gaawar Nuer recall a battle called Mut Roal which Deng Laka, the prophet of the divinity DIU, fought against the Twic Dinka and their “Arab” allies. In this battle the Dinka and the Arabs failed to coordinate their movements, were attacked, and were defeated singly. Deng Laka himself is said to have personally killed the “Arab” commander. A number of rifles were captured and placed in a hut at the Dinka shrine of Luang Deng, in recognition of the help received from both the divinity DENG and the Rut Dinka caretakers of the shrine (a number of Rut Dinka fought alongside the Gaawar in this, as in other battles). The battle was of a recent enough date to be recounted in some detail by Nuer and Dinka participants to those British officials who visited the Zeraf valley in the first three decades of this century. Though the name of the “Arab” leader involved was remembered and given, the British were uncertain about the date of the battle and the identity of the opponents, and frequently assumed that they were “slavers” from the days of the Turkiyya, the Turco-Egyptian period (1840-85).

This seems to be confirmed by contemporary reports given by Casati and Emin Bey, who each recorded the annihilation of an Egyptian army patrol on the Bahr el-Zeraf (the Giraffe River) in 1885. There are some difficulties in reconciling this date with other evidence concerning floods and the opening of age-sets also mentioned by Gaawar and Dinka oral sources. In this paper I will examine the evidence contained in various orally based accounts collected between 1904 and 1982 and compare them with the few contemporary written accounts we have of battles near the Bahr el-Zeraf in the late nineteenth century. I conclude that the battle of Mut Roal was probably fought against the Mahdists in 1896, rather than against “slavers” in 1885. This conclusion in itself has further implications for our understanding of Arab-Nuer relations, and even Nuer-Dinka relations in the late nineteenth century.
“Elephants for Want of Towns:” The Interethnic and International History of Bulama Island, 1456–1870
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

Bulama (otherwise Bolama) Island is the furthest inshore member of the Bissagos Islands, off the West African coast, in the present-day state of Guiné-Bissau. On the east side of the wide estuary of Rio Jeba, it stands near the mouth of Rio Balola. Small, low-lying, partly surrounded by sandbanks and swamps, often uninhabited, and considered by whites scenically attractive but very unhealthy, Bulama has appeared in historical records with disproportionate frequency. It may have been noted during the earliest stages of Portuguese “Discovery;” two centuries on, it was investigated by the French. It was later the locality of a disastrous British settlement, the proposed home for a colony of African-Americans, and for sixty years the site of a colonial capital; and it was the subject of a well-meant arbitration by a President of the U.S.A. Finally, it was the center for an international conference on its own past, held in 1990. That past, of little importance in itself, nevertheless provides a keyhole glimpse of much of the history of the western Guinea coast over four centuries.

Our knowledge of the earlier history of the island of Bulama is slight and depends on European sources. The region of the estuary of Rio Jeba—or “Rio Grande” as it was originally known—was first visited by Europeans in the 1450s. The earliest Portuguese ship to arrive was probably the one on which a certain Diogo Gomes traveled, the date probably 1456. The account of this voyage, as edited by a contemporary scholar in the 1490s from the oral narrative of Diogo Gomes in old age, indicates that the Portuguese landed at a point along Rio Jeba and saw wild animals: deer, elephants, and crocodiles.
Violence Variously Remembered: The Killing of Pieter Oberholzer in July 1964
Authors: Ranger Terence
Published: May 2006

In mid-1964 the Smith regime in Southern Rhodesia was moving towards a final ban on the African nationalist parties, ZAPU and ZANU. At the same time it was widely believed to be preparing for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence and the nationalist parties in their turn were trying to find ways to prevent this. Both chose to launch sabotage campaigns, so as to demonstrate African opposition. In late June 1964 there was a wave of sabotage in Chipinga and Melsetter in Rhodesia's eastern districts. Roadblocks were erected, the police camp was attacked, dynamite was laid at bridges. Notes were left at the scene of some of these actions purporting to come from “the Crocodile Gang.” On the early evening of 4 July 1964, a 45-year-old foreman at the Silver Streams Wattle Factory in Melsetter, Pieter Johannes Andries Oberholzer, was driving home with his wife and daughter along the Umtali/Melsetter road. He came to a low roadblock made of stones; he tried to ram it; the car turned over; Oberholzer was stabbed to death; his assailants dispersed when another vehicle approached. Police found two notes at the site of the attack. One read “Confrontation Smith. Crocodile Gang will soon kill all whites. Beware!” The other read: “Crocodile Group in Action. We shall kill all whites if they don't want to give back our country. Confrontation!”

How are we to read the significance of July 4? The events have been described in five main sources and they look very different from these varying perspectives. “What is Truth?” asks Ndabaningi Si thole, in the earliest of the sources. The Crocodile Gang's killing of Oberholzer constitutes a historical equivalent to the famous old Japanese film, Rashomon, with its presentation of different but equally plausible narratives of a violent event.
Biography Writing in Swahili
Authors: Topan Farouk
Published: May 2006

Any meaningful assessment of biography and autobiography writing among the Swahili as a historical source needs to take at least three factors into consideration. The first is the influence of Arab literary traditions on the emergence of the genre on the East African coast; the second is the relationship between literacy and orality, and its implication for writing and narration in an African context. The role of colonialism, and the introduction of the Western “mode” of biography and autobiography writing, forms the third factor. The aim of the paper is to survey these factors, not chronologically, but as part of a general discussion on the notion and status of the genre in the Swahili context.

Swahili interface with Arabic as an essential ingredient of Islamic practice laid the foundation for the development of literate genres on the East African coast, among them the biographical and the historical. In the process, Swahili adopted styles of narrative expression which are reflected in the terms employed for them. The most common arehabari(from the Arabickhabar) andwasifu(fromwasf). In its original usage,khabardenoted a description of an event or events that were connected in a single narrative by means of a phrase such as “in that year.” It lacked a genealogy of narrators, and the form was stylistically flexible to include verses of poetry relevant to the events. In Swahili the current meaning of the wordhabariis “information” and “news” (and, hence, also a greeting) but, as a historical genre, it has been used in two ways. The first is in relation to the history of the city-states recounted through documents whose titles include the word,khabari/habari, (or the plural,akhbarin Arabic), usually translated as “chronicle(s).”
Afrika-Archiv: A New Series of the Frobenius Institute for the Purpose of Publishing Source Material
Authors: Heintze Beatrix
Published: May 2006

“[D]as Wirkungsvolle wird gepflegt, die Gewissenhaftigkeit schwindet; an Stelle der Fähigkeit zu bergründen, der Kraft zu überzeugen, tritt die Sicherheìt im Behaupten.”

[T]hat what impresses is cultivated, conscientiousness dwindles; the capability to explain, the power to convince are replaced by self-confidence in asserting.

There is nothing more absurd—yet also nothing more common—than a scholarly lifetime of publishing based on materials to which no one else has access.

The series “Afrika Archiv” (“Africa Archives”) was founded recently with the aim of publishing source material referring to the history and anthropology of Africa. In this connection the term “source material” shall be considered in a very broad sense. Thus, beside the usual library and other written sources, as well as written records of oral traditions, for instance, even editions of ethnographic collections or photographic documentation will be taken into consideration. African scholars will be able to publish material from their own countries to which we Europeans and Americans have only difficult access. Western scholars, on the other hand, could publish sources from public and private European or American archives, museums, or even widely dispersed articles in periodicals and newspapers on African history of the nineteenth century which are available only with great difficulty and expenditure of time. As a reviewer once commented, such source editions will still continue to be valued when contemporary interpretations have already long fallen into oblivion.

Endeavors to record systematically varied sources on the history of the continent, the cultural and scientific history of Africa, and to make the essentials generally available to the scientific public still appear inadequate.
Requiem for the Use of Oral Tradition to Reconstruct the Precolonial History of the Lower Gambia
Authors: Wright Donald R.
Published: May 2006

For the simple truth is that much oral tradition is mutually contradictory, biased, garbled, nonsensical, and essentially codswallop.

In 1974—the same year I ventured into the field to begin collecting oral data for my doctoral thesis, a precolonial history of a Mandinka state at the mouth of the Gambia River—Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman published their now much maligned work on African American slavery, Time on the Cross. With publication of the book, Fogel and Engerman did something few historians had done before or have done since: they made public their evidence—all of it, data and statistical methodology—so others could determine how they had arrived at their conclusions. Perhaps it was because their interpretation of slavery was so different from those preceding it that historians used Fogel and Engerman's published evidence to dismantle, piece by piece, their arguments and the way they had arrived at them.

But making available otherwise inaccessible evidence seemed to me the right thing to do. So, in the field and afterward, I offered up my oral data. (The written evidence I used was already available, either published or in archives at various places on three continents.) I deposited copies of cassette tapes of my interviews, with copies of transcribed translations, in the Gambia and in the United States. Also, within a few years of finishing the dissertation I published two volumes of translated, transcribed, and annotated oral traditions from the collection in an inexpensive series that I thought would be accessible to most interested parties. If people wanted to test my hypotheses, attack my methods, or berate my conclusions, they at least had the materials for doing so.
The Ghana Public Records and Archives Administration Department-Tamale: A Guide for Users
Authors: Abdulai Iddirisu
Published: May 2006

This department, which was until December, 1997 known as the National Archives of Ghana, takes care of documents from northern Ghana, and has served both local and international researchers since its establishment in 1960. The Ghana Public Records and Archives Administration department in Tamale has had quite a number of visiting researchers, but there are few descriptive guide for users. This paper is intended to serve as an introductory guide in this respect.

Between 1950 and 1954, the Gold Coast Archivist undertook a survey of District records in the various district headquarters of what was then the Gold Coast Colony, Ashanti, and the Northern Territories. This led to the establishment of the National Archives of Ghana, offices at Kumasi on 3 August 1959. This was intended first to serve the Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo, and Northern Ghana areas. The office was housed on the premises of the Government Agent's office at Kumase. When the Tamale office was opened, it was also housed on the premises of the Regional Administration there. The space is very cramped and there have been constant calls on the department to look for their own accommodation.

The archives opens at 8.00am, but requests for documents from the repository starts only at 9.00am and lasts until 3.00pm, except for a break between 12:30pm and 1:30pm, during which no documents can be requested. The visitors' book must always be signed.

An international/foreign researcher is required to bring a letter of introduction from the Ghana Public Records and Archives Administraton headquarters in Accra.
Finding What You Need in Uganda's Archives
Authors: Barrett-Gaines Kathryn , Khadiagala Lynn
Published: May 2006

Given the growing scholarly interest in Uganda, we thought it might be useful to provide an update on research conditions in the country and the state of some of the archives. Barrett-Gaines is a historian working on the history of the salt trade in the Great Lakes region while Khadiagala is a political scientist studying the adjudication of women's property rights within the courts of law in Uganda. Barrett-Gaines still resides in Uganda, while Khadiagala completed her research in August of 1997. In disclosing our discoveries, it is our hope that additional use of the resources by both Western and Ugandan scholars will spur interest in preserving Uganda's rich historical record.

The first step toward obtaining research clearance is to request affiliation with a research institute or academic department within Uganda. There are several independent research institutions and several universities. The actual clearance process is relatively easy. For social scientists, two possibilities are Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) or the Center for Basic Research (CBR). Scholars intending to travel to Uganda should initiate contact with one of these organizations about four to six months prior to arrival to obtain the application forms. Addresses are supplied at the end of this paper.

Actual research clearance is granted by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST). The application includes a lengthy (and often redundant) form, a brief research proposal, passport-size photographs, and proof of affiliation. On approval, the UNCST issues a small red book that serves as an identification card and a letter for presentation in each district specified in the research proposal.
Livrets Scolaires Coloniaux: Méthodes d'Analyse—Approche Herméneutique
Authors: Vinck Honoré
Published: May 2006

Le livret scolaire africain n'a guere reçu l'attention des historiens de la colonisation ni celle des théoriciens des programmes scolaires qui ont été particulèrement actifs en Occident pendant les trois dernières décénnies. Et pourtant le livret scolaire a joué un très grand rôle dans la divulgation de l'idéologie coloniale et par ricochet dans l'éveil des tendances qui ont mené à la décolonisation. Ici et là ils nous donnent des éléments pour une meilleure compréhension des attitudes des responsables politiques africains du moment.

Le livret scolaire colonial est spécialement conçu pour la colonie. Nous excluons donc les livrets des écoles métropolitaines bien que parfois utilisés dans la colonie. Il doit être étudié dans son propre contexte et par conséquent, les approches seront différentes selon qu'il s'agit de la colonisation belge, française, anglaise ou portugaise.

Dans les colonies françaises et portugaises la langue nationale des colonisateurs était en règle générale aussi celle de l'enseignement. Ceux-ci ne seront pas pris en considération, nos investigations se limitant aux livrets en langues africaines.

Le système d'éducation dans la Colonie Belge était entièrement entre les mains des missionnaires chrétiens jusqu'aux années cinquante. Mêmes les rares écoles organisées par l'Etat (Colonies scolaires et Ecoles ‘congrégationistes’ ou ‘Groupes Scolaires’) ou par certaines Compagnies étaient pour leur organisation effective confiées aux missionnaires catholiques.