bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Sekondi Archives
Authors: Silver James B.
Published: May 2006

In the late 1950s, the National Archives of Ghana (NAG) began a decentralizaton programme which has progressed to the point where there is now a NAG regional depository in eight of the country's nine regions, the only exception so far being the Upper Region. Furthermore, unlike many of the efforts at bureaucratic decentralization in Ghana, which have been more de jure than de facto -- archival decentralization in Ghana is a reality. As a result, the historical researcher who limits his efforts to the Accra branch of the NAG is risking the loss of considerable richness of detail, as a recent trip to Sekondi made abundantly clear to me.

Sekondi houses the Western Regional Branch of the NAG. The Western Region is, in many respects, one of Ghana's most interesting areas. Until relatively recently it was, at one and the same time, the major center of foreign business activity in the country, and one of the country's most backward and underdeveloped areas. While ironic, this juxtaposition is certainly not surprising. But more importantly, from the point of view of the researcher into Ghana's history, it affords the opportunity for a more detailed micro-level historical examination of, for instance, the relationship between “modernity” and “tradition,” or between the “capitalist mode of production” and the “pre-capitalist mode of production.” The Western Region has been almost an ideal type in this respect, and as a consequence is virtually a laboratory, not only for the historian, but also for the historically-minded sociologist, economist, and political scientist.
Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants
Authors: Wright Donald R.
Published: May 2006

In the late summer of 1976, amid considerable publicity, Doubleday and Company published Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Almost overnight author and book gained considerable fame. Americans and soon others accepted the essential validity of the story of Haley's maternal ancestors, which reached back to the Gambia River and to the eighteenth century. Within a few months of its publication Roots had been serialized for televison. Before a year had passed Doubleday had sold over 1,500,000 copies of the book, it had gone into translation in several dozen languages, and Haley had been awarded a special Pulitzer Prize, neither for fiction nor non-fiction, but for something in between felicitously denominated “faction.” The magnitude of Roots' impact makes criticism of the basis of its argument somewhat indivious but perhpas all the more necessary.

One aspect of Roots that added considerably to its popularity was the apparent authenticity of the genealogy which Haley used to identify his African ancestor. Haley claimed that, largely through oral history, he had proved the existence of his ancestor, one Kunta Kinte, who had been kidnapped into slavery over two hundred years ago and brought directly to the British North American colonies. A decade of diligent searching had made it possible for Haley to piece together the basic outlines of his ancestry. To nearly everyone who read the book or heard the story of his quest, such success in locating his roots in Africa, after a century of slavery and another of difficult freedom, seemed to justify the endeavor.
Early Yoruba Historiography
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

The pre-colonial history of the Yoruba has attracted considerable attention from academically trained historians in recent years. This academic historiography–in Yorubaland as elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa–does not antedate the 1950s, but it was preceded by a tradition of historical writing by local amateur historians which stretched back well into the nineteenth century. The modern academic historians owe a great deal to these amateur predecessors: much of the “oral tradition” utilized by the academic historians comes in fact at second hand from the writings of the amateurs, and the current generation of local historians has figured prominently among the informants from whom the academics have collected their oral evidence.

This fusion of academic and amateur historiography was, indeed, given some institutional recognition in the Yoruba Historical Research Scheme launched by the government of the Western Region of Nigeria in 1956, in which both academics and local historians were employed as research associates to collect traditional material. Despite their importance, however, little serious work has been done on the early historians of Yorubaland. The existence of a local tradition of historiography in Yorubaland has been mentioned in general surveys of historical writing on Africa, and attention has been drawn to it as constituting an aspect of the development of “cultural nationalism” among western-educated Africans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These discussions of early Yoruba historiography, however, have dealt with only a few of the better known works and have given little idea of the wealth of the published material or of its character—nor is there any comprehensive bibliography of the writings of the early Yoruba historians. The present article, therefore, attempts to present as complete a survey as possible of historical writing on Yorubaland in the period before c. 1950 and seeks to make some contribution towards assessment of the value of the Yoruba local histories as sources by giving some information on the context in which the local historians wrote and the way in which they went about the task of reconstructing Yoruba history.
English Bosman and Dutch Bosman: A Comparison of Texts - III
Authors: van Dantzig Albert
Published: May 2006

[This continues the comparison of texts of the English and Dutch versions of Bosman. For earlier instalments see History in Africa 2(1975), pp. 185-216, ans 3(1976), pp. 91-126. Procedural matters are discussed in the first instalment, to which the reader is referred]
Translations as Sources for African History
Authors: Heintze Beatrix
Published: May 2006

Translations ought not to serve as sources for academic research. This precept is an ideal which has today become quite unattainable in many fields, notably in the natural sciences and medicine. In the human sciences it is still widely operative (at least tacitly), yet here too it is increasingly becoming Utopian. For any scholar of German literature, of course, command of the German language is (and, one hopes, will remain) an essential prerequisite: a treatise on Goethe's Faust based on a translation of this work could scarcely be taken seriously. Likewise it should be expected of classical historians that they study their Greek and Latin sources in the original language. The question becomes more problematic, however, when we consider the citation of modern pieces of research and other secondary literature. Admittedly, the majority of studies are still published in one of the major world languages, and it is possible to get by with a command of two or three modern languages (e.g. with English and French, with Russian and English, or with Arabic and French). But the internationalization of research is gaining ground steadily. A book written in Japanese on, say, the history of South America has little prospect of coming to the notice of western historians unless it is made accessible to them in translation, in this instance probably in Spanish, Portuguese, or English (leaving aside as a rare exception the historian with an above-average flair for languages).
Archival Materials on the Brandenburg African Company (1682-1721)
Authors: Jones Adam
Published: May 2006

Brandenburg-Prussia was the last European power to enter the African trade in the seventeenth century. In an attempt to emulate the success of the Dutch West India Company, the Great Elector granted a charter to a newly-created company in 1682. It was known under various names--as the Electoral Brandenburg African Company, the Emden Company, the Brandenburg Afro-American Company, and (after the Great Elector's successor had made himself “King in Prussia” in 1701) the Royal Prussian African Company. By 1686 it had acquired a fort and two trading posts on the western Gold Coast and a fort on the island of Arguin (now part of Mauritania). Through an agreement with the Danish crown, it was also allowed to occupy a small part of the Caribbean island of St. Thomas and sell slaves there. Nevertheless, the company never really got off the ground, and from about 1698 onwards, as its fortunes steadily declined, its representatives in Africa were left more and more to their own devices. Lacking support from Europe, the last Brandenburg-Prussian Director-General abandoned the Gold Coast in 1716, and five years later Arguin was captured by the French.

In most respects the company was more Dutch than German. Its formation was the work of Benjamin Raule, the Great Elector's Dutch-born Naval Director; a large proportion of its capital, merchandise, and ships came from the Netherlands; and from about 1698 (if not earlier) the Brandenburg forts in Africa did more trade with Zeeland interlopers and English “ten per cent” ships than with vessels sent by the company. Furthermore, all but one of the Directors-General on the Gold Coast and Commandants at Arguin were Dutchmen (usually former servants of the Dutch West India Company), as were more than half of their subordinates. It is not surprising, therefore, that about three-quarters of the surviving records are in Dutch.
Recent Historical Research in the Area of Lake Kivu: Rwanda and Zaire
Authors: Chubaka Bishikwabo , Newbury David
Published: May 2006

The Rwandan revolution of 1959-1962 marked an important watershed not only for the history of the country but also for its historiography. Within Rwandan historical studies these political changes encouraged the development of a more broadly-based analysis, one which went beyond the earlier tendency to focus on the Nyiginya royal court. The effects of this new historiography were not limited to Rwanda alone, however, since historical perceptions ultimately derived from Rwandan studies had dominated much of the earlier research on pre-colonial history both east and west of the lake. Combined with the emergence of new analytic assumptions elsewhere in Africa, the shift in Rwanda during the 1960s therefore freed studies west of the lake from the constraints of a particularly sterile historical model and opened the way for the initiatives of a new generation of Zairean historians conducting research there in the 1970s. This changing context of research initiatives and the continuing process of reassessment within Rwanda has also aligned perceptions of Rwandan history more closely with those of other areas. We can look forward in the future to more fruitful regional historical perspectives which transcend present political boundaries; it may well be that Rwandan research of the 1980s will draw increasingly on the concepts and conclusions of Zairean research of the 1970s.

Even while this new approach has perforated political boundaries on the ground, it has also dissolved the earlier rigid disciplinary boundaries of research. The major influence in this new approach came from the work of anthropologists (or historians with anthropological training).
A Note on the Town Archives of Amsterdam: The Notarial Records
Authors: Kea R.A.
Published: May 2006

The notarial records (Notariel Ardhief) in the Amsterdam town archives (Gemeente Archief) offer a rich source of data on Dutch West African trade for the period between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. In 1962 Patricia Carson published a fairly extensive list of references to these records for the years between 1651 and 1709, indicating thereby the importance of the notarial documents as a source material. However, to my knowledge this material has not been systematically examined by historians of West Africa. The purpose of this note is to draw once again the attention of historians to these documents. My comments are to be considered as supplementary to Carson's account.

The notarial records are, to put it mildly, extraordinarily voluminous. The prospective researcher should allot himself or herself a minimum time of about six months if he or she intends to examine even a representative sampling of the records in a thorough manner. Unfortunately, the records are neither catalogued nor indexed as far as the West African data are concerned, hence the researcher must read a great deal of superfluous material in hopes of coming across references to West Africa. The records are not easy to read, so it is not possible to ‘skim’ through the folios in the hope of spotting a West African place name. Each folio must be carefully examined. The records are in Dutch and the handwriting is in the Gothic script. Although the handwriting is generally clear and legible, it is remarkably -- indeed almost unnaturally-small, so that a magnifying glass would be an asset.
White Roots: Written and Oral Testimony on the “First” Mr. Rogers
Authors: Jones Adam
Published: May 2006

Three descent groups in southern Sierra Leone derive their names from Englishmen who married African women in the late seventeenth century: the Caulkers of Shenge, the Tuckers of Gbap, and the Rogerses of Kpaka chiefdom. The names Caulker, Tucker, and Rogers occur frequently in the records of the Royal African Company T70 series and each group retains traditions about its English ancestor. Previous attempts to correlate this written and oral testimony have not been very successful. In this article I shall discuss the Rogerses, dealing first with the written material and then with their oral (or quasi-oral) traditions, which I collected in 1977–78.

From the 1620s onwards, a series of English companies had agents in the Sherbro area. The main item purchased was camwood, especially from the Bum Kittam River. Sloops were also sent to Cape Mount to buy ivory and cotton textiles (cloths, shirts and breeches, which were resold at Sherbro and further north). The slave trade was of marginal importance in this area until the mid-eighteenth century.

The Royal African Company entered the Sherbro trade in 1678. At first its base was on the mainland, but in 1688 it was transferred to York Island, where a weak stone fort was built. From 1689 to 1700 the company's Sherbro agent controlled trade at Sierra Leone as well as at Sherbro. The Sherbro fort also generally had at least three or four outfactories.
Interwar Schools and the Development of African History in French West Africa
Authors: Kelly Gail P.
Published: May 2006

This paper focuses on the history curriculum in the schools of French West Africa in the period from 1918 to 1938. Specifically, it investigates the frames used to investigate the past, the sources for the generation of historical data, and the substance and interpretation of history taught in the schools. Written histories of the vast territories of Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF) for the most part were impelled by the development of schooling under colonial rule. Pedagogues and politicians alike could not conceive of education that did not convey a sense of the past. J.L. Monod, a school inspector and author of several texts for AOF's schools, stated: “It is necessary that native youth know the history of their own ancestors and the transformations that we have brought [about] in their own country.” Countless curriculum guides and educational legislation of the interwar years echoed these sentiments.

While history was to have a place in the schools, written texts that would form the basis for instruction were all but non-existent. As the schools expanded, both in the number of students they reached and in the years of education offered, schoolmen grappled with the rather complicated task of creating history. The issues those in the interwar years faced are ones that still confound historians of Africa: what defines the search for the past; what constitutes data about the past; and finally, what interpretations of the past can be made. The first of these issues, perhaps, was the most thorny in the interwar years for the most obvious frames were those that essentially denied the past and that derived from French political boundaries of AOF, colonie, or cercle. This initial formulation led to the questioning of whether more appropriate frames for creating history were available on other geographical, cultural, or political terms whose shape differed radically from those of the interwar years.
R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History: An Appraisal
Authors: McCaskie T.C.
Published: May 2006

“It must be remembered that in Ashanti really valuable anthropological information is possessed by comparatively few of its inhabitants. Those who have accurate knowledge are the older men and women who have few dealings with the foreigner, live secluded lives in remote villages, and are ignorant of or indifferent to the social and religious changes brought about by the European.

“When Prempeh returned, to what had once been known as ‘the city of blood’, he was a cultured, elderly gentleman, who took his place at the head of the Kumasi town council, and his old capital had become almost a city, with many fine and imposing buildings. I met Prempeh twice; once when he and sixty thousand Ashantis assembled to welcome my little Moth aeroplane, as it swooped down on Kumasi, which, from a great height, looked like a small brown patch in a sea of green. I met him again on my way home, after my last ‘tour’.”

“Listen! Rattray knew no secrets, nothing…You will never know secrets…”

To the historian, no less than to any other student of Asantesεm (Asante matters), the collected works of Rattray (1881–1938) are unavoidable, an ineluctable presence. There they sit on the library shelf--a monument of colonial ethnography and manifestly a major source--to be chewed over and ransacked, to be digested and distilled, to be scissored and parcelled out in the footnotes that support or refute an argument, and ultimately--and always--to be returned to again and again. All historians of Asante use Rattray and are grateful to him. It is important at the outset to record that fact of simple gratitude, for, to the historian of Asante, there is much to criticise in Rattray's work. What follows, then, is a critical assessment of that work.
Some Reflections on the Oral Traditions of the Galinhas Country, Sierra Leone
Authors: Jones Adam
Published: May 2006

Whenever historians of Africa write: “According to tradition…”, they evade the crucial question of what kind of oral tradition they are referring to. The assumption that oral tradition is something more or less of the same nature throughout Africa, or indeed the world, still permeates many studies on African history; and even those who have themselves collected oral material seldom pause to consider how significant this material is or how it compares with that available in other areas.

The majority of studies of oral tradition have been written by people who worked with fairly formal traditions; and those who, after reading such studies, go and work in societies where such traditions do not exist are often distressed and disappointed. There is therefore still a need for localized studies of oral tradition in different parts of Africa. As far as Sierra Leone is concerned, no work specifically devoted to the nature of oral tradition has been published, despite several valuable publications on the oral literature of the Limba and Mende. The notes that follow are intended to give a rough picture of the kind of oral material I obtained in a predominantly Mende-speaking area of Sierra Leone in 1977-78 (supplemented by a smaller number of interviews conducted in 1973-75, 1980, and 1984). My main interest was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century history of what I have called the Galinhas country, the southernmost corner of Sierra Leone.

I conducted nearly all of my interviews through interpreters and did not use a tape recorder more than a very few times. This was partly because the amount of baggage I could carry on foot was limited, but also because I soon found that some informants were disturbed by the tape recorder, and because it was difficult to catch on tape the contributions of all the bystanders.
Mid-Nineteenth Century Dahomey: Recent Views vs. Contemporary Evidence
Authors: Ross David
Published: May 2006

Three mid-nineteenth century English travellers, F.E. Forbes, R.F. Burton, and J.A. Skertchly, published books which contain detailed descriptions of the way in which the Dahoman state was then organized. The three authors' works, when taken together, form the most coherent, best researched, precolonial account of the Dahoman kingdom.

Dahomey's more recent historians, while purporting to rely on Forbes', Burton's, and Skertchly's evidence, have nevertheless advanced arguments which are incompatible with that evidence. The three authors believed that Dahomey was an Abomey area slave-raiding community, whereas the kingdom's new historians claim that Dahomey was a European-like nation state. They have, it appears, while searching for their new interpretations, lost sight of their source material. As a means of drawing attention back to these sources there follows an analysis of Forbes', Burton's, and Skertchly's testimony.

F.E. Forbes was a naval officer who became interested in Dahomey while serving on board one of the anti-slave squadron's ships. R.F. Burton, the well-known explorer and author, made a study of the kingdom while he held the position of British Consul for the Bight of Biafra. J.A. Skertchly was an entomologist who developed an interest in Dahomey while on a West African specimen collecting trip.

Forbes gathered his material in 1849/50, while Burton collected his in 1863/64. Both visited Dahomey as members of anti-slave trade factfinding missions and both considered that their instructions obliged them to find out as much as they could about the way in which the kingdom was organized. Forbes' and Burton's books are published versions of their official reports.3 Skertchly, who collected his evidence in 1871, had intended to spend only about a week in Dahomey but was detained there for almost eight months, during which he was unable to collect specimens.
Rediscovering Sources of Nigerien History: The Dosso Archives
Authors: Painter Thomas M.
Published: May 2006

This is a report on provisional efforts to reorganize a regional archive in Dosso, Niger. The information is provided in hopes that it will be of some use to students of West African history, and will arouse the interest of archivists.

While conducting research in the Dosso region of Niger during 1981 and 1982, I had occasion to work with historical materials in the Prefectural archives of the Department of Dosso. At the time of my arrival in Dosso, the archival documents were stored in more than twenty metal and wooden cabinets and files, and on open shelves. These were located inside a very large room without electric lights, illuminated dimly during the daylight hours by a single small window, permanently open and paneless, high on as eastward facing wall. The disorder of the cabinets inside the room was such at the beginning that it was impossible to penetrate more than a few feet. In some cabinets the contents were more or less uniform, but in most there was considerable disarray, said to date from the late 1970s when a national youth festival was held in Dosso. As a result, it was not uncommon to find mimeographed reports from the 1970s alongside registers of handwritten.entries dating from the early 1900s, and typescripts from the 1930s and 1940s. In others, voracious termites left for years to eat as they liked, had caused considerable destruction, consuming the documents, and in the case of wooden construction, the cabinets and shelves that contained them.
The Lists of Phalaborwa Rulers: A Comparison of Variant ‘Fixed’ Sources
Authors: Scully R.T.K.
Published: May 2006

In this paper I discuss genealogical material documented in the past about the ruling families of Phalaborwa in the northeast Transvaal. Recent archeological research in Phalaborwa demonstrates a continuous Iron Age cultural complex in the area centered around Lolwe hill since the eighth century A.D. Subsequent investigations of Phalaborwa oral tradition clearly link the present BaPhalaborwa Sotho-speaking population with the Iron Age past, adding considerable specific detail for the historical reconstruction of this remarkable 1000-year old metalproducing and trading society.

Noble and royal genealogies among the BaPhalaborwa focus on the main line of Malatji clan rulers and in all of the Malatji lines the genealogies merge at one or other ascending levels. There is consequently a single ultimate prestige genealogy for all noble and royal families in Phalaborwa which has become fixed by the efforts of various of the tribe literates since the 1930s. Inconsistencies in oral tradition from diverse groups, however, suggest that this genealogy was not rigid in the past, but flexible, allowing certain direct lines of descent to become obscured and the collateral and even unrelated lines which have found their way into political association with the ruling house of Phalaborwa by various means to be added.
Columbus from Guinea to America
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

yo e andado veynte y tres años en la mar.y ví todo el levante y poniente,…y e andado la Guinea…

The first world empire (truly one on which the sun never set) was created by the union of the crowns of Portugal and Spain in 1580. If the events immediately leading up to the union were unexpected and contingent, the creation of a global hegemony had been adumbrated nine decades earlier, with the almost simultaneous voyages, to west and to east, of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. What lay behind these voyages on the parts of Portugal and Spain, and hence the respective claims of these nations to have set in motion the process which led to world empire, form the background theme of this paper.

Concentration on the heroic figures of Vasco da Gama and Columbus has often prevented historians from appreciating the significance of earlier developments. Writers discussing Columbus and the consequent impact of Spain on the Americas regularly fail to lay sufficient weight on the seventy years of previous Portuguese discovery of the coast of Africa, and therefore on the consequent Portuguese grapplings with the political, economic, and moral problems of culture contact and imperial policy in an Outer Continent. Equally, historians of the Portuguese imperial effort, eager to reach the better-evidenced complexities of the Lusitanian contact with Asia, tend to neglect, not only the Portuguese effort in the South Atlantic, but also the rival Castilian effort in the same ocean—an effort that preceded Columbus and paralleled, to some extent, the deeds of Portugal. Yet, within Iberia the two kingdoms, Portugal and Castile (the latter in process of generating the new kingdom of Spain), were in close and involved contact, not least because the territorial shape of each in the 1490s had only been hammered out during the preceding one hundred years. There is thus a strong case for treating the global expansion of Iberia as a single process and not merely as two coincidental thrusts around the globe, ultimately in opposite directions.
Court Records in Africana Research
Authors: Dickerman Carol , Gocking Roger , Abel Richard L. , Renne Elisha P. , Christelow Allan , Roberts Richard , Robinson David , Dunbar Roberta Ann , Spaulding Jay , Schmidt Elizabeth
Published: May 2006

A series of panels at the ASA meeting in November 1989 focused on sources and methods for the study of law in colonial Africa. At an informal discussion held afterwards, participants agreed that court records are potentially very valuable sources for historians, anthropologists, and other scholars of Africa but that they have not been used as widely as they might be. In an effort to alert Africanists to the existence of such documents and to encourage their use, those of us who had used court records in our research were asked to provide descriptions of them. This paper is a collection of the responses.

Courts were established in the African housing quarters in what was then Usumbura in 1938 as part of a broad reorganization by the colonial administration of the conditions of African residence in the city, one in the quartier of Buyenzi and the other in that of Beige (today Bwiza). These tribunals, which are still in existence, were granted jurisdiction over civil and minor criminal cases between Africans; each court had its own officials, advisors, and clerks, prominent residents of the quartier appointed by the colonial administration. Buyenzi's population was predominantly Muslim, and its court officials were men knowledgeable about Islamic law. Beige, in contrast, was a more heterogeneous community, and its court tended to be staffed by residents who had risen in the African ranks of the civil service.

Men and women of both housing quarters resorted frequently to the courts, with the Buyenzi court hearing approximately 9,000 cases and Beige almost twice that many in the years between their establishment in 1938 and independence in 1962. Their complaints covered a wide range of matters: debts, business ventures, bridewealth disputes, divorces, child rights, property transfers, and various quarrels between friends, neighbors, and family members. Procedure was relatively simple. A man or woman who wished to present a complaint went before the court and was given an appointment for the case to be heard. At the time the court considered the complaint, both accuser and defendant were present. Although the parties might bring with them supporters and witnesses, there were no intermediary personnel such as lawyers. Each individual argued his own case and answered questions put by the judges. A judgment was usually handed down immediately, and it was based on customary rather than European practice. As these courts were originally established, their autonomy was very great: in principle, unless the decisions violated colonial law, they could not be overruled by Belgian officials.
The Many Minds of Sir Halford J. Mackinder: Dilemmas of Historical Editing
Authors: Dawson Marc H.
Published: May 2006

While doing research in Rhodes House Library I cam across a magnificently detailed description of parts of Kikuyuland in 1899 in the travel notebooks of Sir Halford John Mackinder. In this work Mackinder recounted his expedition's successful effort to be the first recorded group to ascend Mount Kenya. He is also one of the few travelers to leave a detailed account of this area for the nineteenth century. Furthermore, I discovered he had compiled a typescript of his notebooks clearly intended for possible publication. I did not compare the two closely at the time, as I relied on the notebooks, but when the African Studies Association announced a program to publish valuable unpublished primary sources, I immediately thought of Mackinder's work as being an important unpublished source for central Kenyan History. Here I discuss some of the implications of that thought that I have so far discovered.

Mackinder (1861–1947) was one of the intellectual founders of modern political geography. He read both natural science and modern history as a student at Christ Church College, Oxford and went on to study law and qualify as a barrister in London. Mackinder also traveled widely in 1885 as part of the Oxford extension movement, lecturing on his ideas concerning a “new geography.” He believed that there was a growing rift between the natural sciences and the humanities and that geography could act as a bridge between the two. Physical geography could aid in understanding and explaining human activities.
The Siege of Makapansgat: A Massacre? and A Trekker Victory?
Authors: Naidoo Jay
Published: May 2006

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is not Christian dealing, but it is the dealing with which fair unbiased history proves to have been in the end most productive of good and least productive of evil, when communities of white men have coterminous frontiers with tribes of blacks.

In November of 1854 a particularly violent clash between Dutch farmers and Ndebele tribesmen took place in the Waterberg district of the Transvaal, resulting in a spiral of killings which ultimately -- and apparently -- led to the massacre of an entire tribe. The standard account, by Theal, may be summarized briefly as follows. Hermanus Potgieter, a man of “violent temper and rough demeanour”, entered Makapan's capital with a party of men, intending to trade some ivory. This Makapan was of a ferocious disposition” and had the reputation, among the surrounding tribes, of being “a man of blood.” Unfriendly newspaper correspondents claimed that Hermanus Potgieter and his men made demands, without payment, for sheep and oxen. They also demanded gifts of African children. This seems improbable, for white men would hardly have ventured thus. Tribesmen are easily irritable and it is possible that some banal act excited “the Africans to frenzy.” Potgieter was “flayed alive,” and his skin, prepared in the same way as that of a wild animal. Makapan's forces then attacked neighboring settlements. The Farmers in Zoutpansberg and Rustenberg abandoned their homes and formed laagers. P.G. Potgieter led a force to the troubled area, where he found that the hostile tribesmen had sought refuge in a nearby cave.
Africa on Film to 1940
Authors: Roberts Andrew D.
Published: May 2006

In the course of bibliographical work on volume 7 of theCambridge History of Africa, I realized that there was no guide to film as a historical source for this or any other period in African history. Lists had been made of films on Africa available for loan or hire in the U.S.A., but no one had tried to list at all comprehensively what had actually been made or what had survived. I therefore decided to compile such a guide myself, tracing the making of non–fiction film in Africa from early days up to 1940: this seemed a suitable cutoff date, since it was clear that from the Second World War the scale of filmmaking in Africa, as elsewhere, increased very considerably, and in any case was beginning to attract the attention of historians.

I was emboldened in this project by the publication in 1980 of the non–fiction catalog of the British National Film Archive. This immediately showed that a wide variety of relevant films had been not only made, but preserved, and for several there are viewing as well as archive copies. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent published catalog for any other major film archive. I have been able, however, to glean much information from a variety of guides, filmographies, and historical studies. Among lists of films in archival collections, the most useful were those in the U.S. of UNESCO for ethnographic films, McClintock for films on North Africa, and South's guide to African materials in the U.S. federal archives.
Voices From the Past: Remarks on the Translation and Editing of Published Danish Sources for West African History During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Authors: Winsnes Selena Axelrod
Published: May 2006

For the past four years I have been engaged in translating into English and editing published Danish sources for west African history. Having begun with pure translation I soon realized that, were the translations to be clear and, indeed, comprehensible, editing was sine qua non. A translation I made last year of H. C. Monrad Bildrag til en Skildring of Guinea Kysten og dens Indbyggere (Copenhagen, 1822) is finished, but not yet edited. But the main thrust of my work so far has been preparing an edited translation of Paul Erdmann Isert, Reise nach Guinea und den Caribäischen Inseln in Columbien (Copenhagen, 1788).

It has been in the course of this work that I have been made aware, both by reading and by personal communication, of the growing interest in new and careful translations of the early sources. In this paper I shall address six aspects of the work: a brief overview of the current situation regarding Danish sources for west African History from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; a review of the available printed Danish sources and the status of their translation into other languages; a discussion of technical problems; a discussion of some of the traps of translation and interpretation; the early sources' use of earlier sources; the modern sources' use of early sources. It is my intention, here, to present a case showing the need for new and carefully edited translations of the early sources for west African history, and to champion the recognition of this field of endeavor as something far more than “just translation.”
The Swaziland Oral History Project
Authors: Hamilton C.A.
Published: May 2006

In 1985 an oral history project was established in Swaziland, based in the National Archives at Lobamba. The Oral History Project set itself three tasks; the establishment of an oral archive on Swazi history; the publication of a selection of transcripts form the oral archive concerning the precolonial history of Swaziland; the popularization of precolonial history.

The precolonial history of Swaziland is the history of a largely non–literate people. The colonial period is well–documented, but mostly from the perspective of the colonial administration. Oral traditions are thus a primary source for both the precolonial and the later history of Swaziland. The Project is concerned to preserve oral testimonies about all periods of Swazi history, including the immediate past. Special attention however, has been paid to the collection and preservation of the oral record pertaining to the precolonial history of Swaziland, a period for which documentary sources are largely absent.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the relative stability of the Swazi kingdom and its high degree of centralization imparted to early Swazi traditions a unique chronological depth. Secondly, the varied circumstances of incorporation of its many component chiefdoms have endowed Swaziland with an exceptionally rich corpus of local and regional traditons. This diversity facilitates the development of a picture of precolonial life that moves beyond the elitist versions of history which have long dominated both Swazi history and precolonial history elsewhere in southern Africa. Not only are the surviving Swazi oral traditions about the precolonial past unusually rich, but Swaziland occupied a pivotal political position in nineteenth–century southeast Africa. Its traditions illuminate the processes and forces that shaped the history of the entire region
A Neglected Account of the Dahomian Conquest of Whydah (1727): the “Relation de la guerre de Juda” of the Sieur Ringard of Nantes
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

The conquest of Whydah by the Dahomians under King Agaja in March 1727 was indisputably an event of great historical importance. In Dahomian tradition it was recalled above all-- with a degree of oversimplication--as marking the beginning of Dahomey's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, and was regarded as Agaja's greatest triumph, commemorated in his surname “Hunyito” (“taker of ships”) and his heraldic emblem, a European ship. It also made a considerable impression on contemporary European observers, being perceived from the first as an especially dramatic and significant event - “a great Revolution,” in the words of one eyewitness. Part of the impact of the fall of Whydah lay in the scale and comprehensiveness of the human and material destruction which the Dahomian conquest involved, and the contrast with Whydah's former prosperity: “such a terrible Desolation by the Sword, Fire and Famine, as hardly ever befel any Country… It was a lamentable Story to hear, and a dismal Sight to see, the Desolation of so fine a Country, lately exceedingly populous, now destroyed in such a manner by Fire and Sword”. In addition, the defeat of Whydah by Dahomey had been wholly unexpected. Before the event Bulfinch Lamb, an English trader held captive in Dahomey, had advised Agaja against attacking Whydah, urging that given the large population and access to imported European firearms of the latter “there was no probability of Success.”
A Traditional History of the Konyan (15th-16th Century): Vase Camara's Epic of Musadu
Authors: Geysbeek Tim
Published: May 2006

In an oral discourse passed down through many generations, the village elder Vase Kamara describes how a slave named Zo Musa Kòma founded the ancient town of Musadu in Guinea-Conakry, and he explains how the legendary Kamara ancestor Foningama later became a leader in Musadu. We tentatively date some elements of the Zo Musa stories to about the fourteenth and fifteenth century, when the Manding began to assimilate and push the Southwestern and Eastern Mande-speaking peoples from the Musadu area in the Konyan to the forest. Some of the Foningama related accounts seem to correspond to the era when the Kamara who settled in the Konyan became active in the sixteenth-century Mane “invasions.”

Stories about Musadu's founding provide information about these movements and help bridge the histories of the savanna and forest peoples who live in Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, and Liberia. The Musadu legend links the Konyaka to their kinsmen who live in the traditional heartland of the Mali empire in present-day northern Guinea and southern Mali. In addition, some Manding, Vai, Loma, Gola, Kpelle, Konor, Dan, and Mano trace their origins to Musadu, and reflect one Loma writer's claim that “all of the tribes in Liberia are from Musadu, or have some association with Musadu” (Korvali 1960:7).

The main actors are Manding (Mandekan) speakers who migrated to the Mau/Gbè and Konyan regions of western Côte d'Ivoire and southern Guinea respectively. The Mauka/Gbèka and Konyaka are members of the Northern Mande language group and are classified as Maninka (Malinke). The Bamana (Bambara), Dyula (Jula), and Vai are other Northern Mande speakers. Vase claims that Foningama was Manding, and that Zo Musa was Kpelle. The Kpelle, Loma, and Konor are Southwestern Mande speakers, and the Dan (Gio) and Mano are Eastern Mande speakers.
A Historical Whodunit: The So-Called “Kano Chronicle” and its Place in the Historiography of Kano
Authors: Hunwick John
Published: May 2006

Murray Last obliquely suggests that [the “Kano Chronicle”] is best regarded as a rather free compilation of local legends and traditions drafted in the mid-seventeenth century by a humorous Muslim rationalist who almost seems to have studied under Levi-Strauss.

The danger lies in being carried away by one's own ingenuity.

The question of the authorship and date(s) of writing of the so-called “Kano Chronicle” (KC) and hence how historians should evaluate it as a source, have intrigued students of Kano (and wider Hausa) history since the work was first translated into English by H. R. Palmer in 1908. Palmer himself had the following to say:

The manuscript is of no great age, and must on internal evidence have been written during the latter part of the decade 1883-1893; but it probably represents some earlier record which has now perished….The authorship is unknown, and it is very difficult to make a guess. On the one hand the general style of the composition is quite unlike the “note” struck by the sons of Dan Hodio [ʿUthmān b. Fūdī, Abdulahi and Muḥammad Bello, and imitated by other Fulani writers. There is almost complete absence of bias or partizanship…. On the other hand, the style of the Arabic is not at all like that usually found in the compositions of Hausa mallams of the present day; there are not nearly enough “classical tags” so to speak, in it…. That the author was thoroughly au fait with the Kano dialect of Hausa is evident from several phrases used in the book, for instance “ba râyi ba” used in a sense peculiar to Kano of “perforce.” The original may perhaps have been written by some stranger from the north who settled in Kano, and collected the stories of former kings handed down by oral tradition.
Constructing a Precolonial Owan Chronology and Dating Framework
Authors: Ogbomo Onaiwu W.
Published: May 2006

Oral tradition has been recognized by historians as a vital source for historical reconstruction of non-literate societies. However, one of its “deficienc[ies] is an inability to establish and maintain an accurate assessment of the duration of the past [it] seeks to reconstruct.” As a result of its time-lessness it has been declared ahistorical. In the same vein R.A. Sargent argues that

[c]hronology is the framework for the reconstruction of the past, and is vital to the correlation of evidence, assessment of data, and the analysis of historical sources. Any construction of history [which] fails to consider or employ dating and the matrix of time to examine the order and nature of events in human experience can probably be labelled ahistorical.

Basically, the concern of critics of oral tradition is that, while they are veritable sources of history, the researcher “must work and rework them with an increasing sophistication and critical sense.” Because dating is very pivotal to the historian's craft, different techniques have been adopted alone or in combination to create a relative chronology. In precolonial African history, the most commonly used have been genealogical data which include dynastic generations, genealogical generations (father-to-son succession) and the age-set generation. Also systematically charted comets, solar eclipses, and droughts have been employed by historians in dating historical events, or in calculating the various generational lengths.

A dynastic generation is determined by “the time elapsing between the accession of the first member of a given generation to hold office and the accession of the first representative of the next.”
The Contours of Vegetation Change and Human Agency in Eastern Africa's Great Lakes Region:ca. 2000 BC toca. AD 1000
Authors: Schoenbrun David Lee
Published: May 2006

Elsewhere I have set forth a basic outline for charting histories of vegetation change through the use of paleoenvironmental data (Schoenbrun 1991). This essay builds on the previous one by laying out the contours of vegetation change and human agency in the Great Lakes region (Map 1) over the roughly three millennia afterca. 2000 BC.

The history of the vegetation in eastern Africa's Great Lakes region brings into focus several important features of long-term environmental change—human action, climatic shift, and internal successional patterns. The primary sources for this history come from a variety of published palynological and limnological studies from Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zaire. Perhaps the most rewarding data for reconstructing climatic and vegetational change come from palynological studies. Pollen studies often reflect detailed changes in the constitution of plant communities, and their value for reconstructing the vegetational and climatic contexts for Holocene human history has provoked the development of a rigorous method for their analysis. Contemporary studies of plant community succession and human-vegetation relationships are a secondary source for the history of land clearance in the Great Lakes region. These works provide a means to determine the different imprints of human and climatic action on the paleoenvironmental record.

In this study I combine the full range of paleoenvironmental evidence to reconstruct the form and pace of vegetation change. I focus on a part of eastern Africa famous for its great ecological diversity. One of the rewards of this endeavor is to demonstrate to paleoecologists, archaeologists, and historians alike the value of a truly interdisciplinary approach to environmental change.