bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Florentine Society in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries*
Authors: Berner Samuel
Published: May 2006

The study of late-cinquecento Florence might well commence by repeating the plaint voiced by Professor J. H. Elliott with reference to seventeenth-century Spain: ‘… in most of its aspects, our picture of the reigns of Philip III and IV remains very much as it was drawn by Martin Hume in the old Cambridge Modern History over fifty years ago’. Indeed, we might go further by saying that our subject remains pretty much today where Riguccio Galluzzi left it in 1781: aterra incognitaeven the contours of which are hazy. This essay seeks to adumbrate the shape and texture of this society, to isolate some of its prominent and especially revealing features, to suggest that it retained some of the vitality and tension it had known in the past and, hopefully, to encourage others to turn their attention to this neglected area of Florentine studies.
Book Four of Castiglione's Courtier: Climax or Afterthought?
Authors: Ryan Lawrence V.
Published: May 2006

In his description of life at the courts of Italian princes during the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt looks upon the ideal cortegiano of Baldassare Castiglione as an embodiment of the self-possessed and self-centered individualism of the period. The courtier, he asserts, ‘was regarded by the civilization of that age as its choicest flower; and the court existed for him rather than he for the court'. As a consequence of his assumption, Burckhardt could discern no. unity between the earlier and the later portions of Castiglione's work.
Il principe and lo stato
Authors: Hexter J. H.
Published: May 2006

A scholar who has given much of his life to the study of Machiavelli and Machiavellianism, Prof. Giuseppe Prezzolini, recently observed that Machiavelli himself is partly responsible for the weird interpretations of which he has been victim, ‘because he did not take pains to express himself in a systematic form and with a coherent vocabulary. His way of writing is cited in the history of Itahan literature for its perspicuity, simplicity, absence of rhetoric. But it could not be cited for its precision … Machiavelli uses the same word for different concepts and expresses the same concepts with different words.' Prezzolini offers confirmation for his remarks from the corroborative reports of other explorers who wore themselves out slogging through the swamp of Machiavelli's vocabulary.
The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge
Authors: Jardine Lisa
Published: May 2006

According to the social historian, it is difficult to reconcile the expanding outlook and increased involvement in the world of public affairs of a university like Cambridge during the sixteenth century with the conservatism and insularity of the teaching programme which apparently persisted throughout the period. In the present paper I reconsider this question of the integration or lack of integration of the Cambridge curriculum with expanding interests outside the university, taking as the focus for my inquiry the pivotal study of the course, dialectic. I start by looking at the four-year arts course, leading to the first degree of B. A., as a whole.
Professor Wickhoff on Roman Art
Authors: Gardner Percy
Published: May 2006

Until recent years, Roman art had not seriously engaged the attention of the historians of art. It had been regarded as a sort of supplementary chapter to Greek art. In his great history of Greek sculpture Overbeck had inserted two or three chapters on the monuments of the Roman age. Collignon in France and Ernest Gardner in England in their works on Greek sculpture only briefly touched on the sculptural monuments of Rome.
Vespasian's Reconstruction of Spain—Addenda
Authors: McElderry R. Knox
Published: May 2006

On p. 55 the persistence of the diocesan system under Vespasian in Hither Spain was assumed, perhaps too readily, on the authority of Marquardt, Mommsen, Domaszewski, and Kornemann. But on p. 87, n. 2, a suggestion was made which leads to a different view, and should have been developed further.
Iuno Sospita of Lanuvium
Authors: Douglas E. M.
Published: May 2006

The city of Lanuvium, now called Civita Lavinia, stands on a beautiful site looking out westwards over its vine-clad slopes across the plain to the sea, and eastwards to the mountains beyond Velletri. The oldest city stood on the crest of the hill; on the central of the three summits was the arx and near were remains which have been connected with a temple. Moreover, excavation has disclosed something of the ancient plan of the city, a theatre, an underground aqueduct and other structures.
Colonia Caesarea (Pisidian Antioch) in the Augustan Age
Authors: Ramsay W. M.
Published: May 2006

Colonia Caesarea was the oldest and the chief among the Pisidian coloniae which were founded by Augustus. The emperor briefly refers in the Monumentum Ancyranum to one or more colonies in Pisidia; but the reference is so slight as to give no evidence of their number or of the time or circumstances of foundation : it only shows that he planted in Pisidia at least one colony of soldiers. Strictly these garrison cities were ’Pisidian,’ not ‘in Pisidia’: they were founded on the Pisidian frontier of the empire, but the Romans expressed themselves with geographical looseness, and the looseness had a political meaning and purpose : Rome did not trouble herself about barbarian geography, but intended to substitute a Roman geography and classification.
The Professiones of the Heraclean Tablet (Lex Iulia Municipalis)
Authors: Elmore Jefferson
Published: May 2006

The text relating to these declarations, though on the whole well preserved, suffers from an omission at the beginning of the first line which, while not greatly obscuring the sense, leaves the sentence grammatically somewhat in the air. In Bruns' recension it runs as follows: … ‘Quem h(ac) l(ege) ad co(n)s(ulem) profiterei oportebit sei is, quom eum profiterei oportebit, Romae non erit, tum quei eius negotia curabit, is eadem omnia, quae eum quoius negotia curabit, sei Romae esset, h. l. profiterei oporteret, item isdemque diebus ad cos. profitemino.’ The lack of concinnity between ‘Quem profiterei oportebit’ and ‘quei eius negotia curabit, is … profitemino’ is apparent. As this is not due to effacement of letters on the bronze, it must result from the graver's failure to reproduce accurately the copy before him. What stood in the archetype is almost certainly an introductory Quod in the sense of ‘as to the fact that,’ or ‘in the case of,’ the omission being due to the presence of the same initial letter in the adjoining quem. This restoration articulates the sentence, and at the same time reveals the idiomatic character of the syntax. The construction with quod is too common in the literature to need paralleling; significant as suggesting a contemporary provenance is its frequent use by Cicero in the Letters. As to its use in legal texts we may point to a near-by occurrence in v. 13 of this inscription, introducing one of the provisions with which we are dealing: ‘Quod quemquem h. l. profiterei oportebit, is apud quem ea professio fiet … ea quae professus erit … in tabulas publicas referunda curato.’ Another example is the lex agraria, cap. 26: ‘Quod quisque pecudes in calleis viasve publicas itineris causa induxerit … neiquid populo neive publicano dare debeto.’ It may also be noted that this construction early became stereotyped in the preambles of senatus consulta.
Britannia on Roman coins of the second century A.D.
Authors: Toynbee Jocelyn
Published: May 2006

The history of art in the Roman period is the history of the interplay of two opposite tendencies. On the one hand there is the Roman taste for realism and accurate representation, combining with the Italian love of naturalism; on the other, the fostering of the Greek tradition of idealism in art both by the Greek artists who worked at Rome and by the Greek enthusiasts among their Roman employers. After the culmination of Roman historical art under the Flavians and Trajan, the second century, as is well known, was marked by a great reaction in favour of things Hellenic, and it is with one small part of the Greek revival under Hadrian and the Antonines, when Greek art blossomed afresh for the last time during the history of the ancient world, that I propose to deal in this paper.
Two ‘Virtues’ of Tiberius: A Numismatic Contribution to the History of his Reign
Authors: Sutherland C. H. V.
Published: May 2006

Mr. M. P. Charlesworth's Raleigh Lecture, ‘The Virtues of a Roman Emperor: Propaganda and the Creation of Belief,’ serves admirably to illuminate a new aspect of the history of the Roman Empire, in which the debt of pure history to numismatics (and notably to the work of Mr. Mattingly in the British Museum Catalogues) will be plain. From the numismatic point of view there is, indeed, one curious omission in Mr. Charlesworth's argument; and attempts to make good the omission have opened up a series of speculations which are here discussed.
The Illyrian War of Octavian
Authors: Vulić N.
Published: May 2006

This important war has recently been the subject of several studies. None the less, opinions are still divided about the central problem—did Octavian occupy only a small portion of Roman Dalmatia, or did he conquer almost the whole of that region? That is the question, and there is as yet no final solution. The following pages are written in an attempt to make a solution easier.
Papyrus Tebtunis 33
Authors: Wilhelm Adolf
Published: May 2006

The Papyrus Tebtunis 33 contains the copy of a letter, probably from a high official at Alexandria, to Asklepiades, superintendent of revenues, announcing the approaching visit to the Fayûm of Lucius Memmius, a Roman senator who was coming as a tourist, and giving instructions for his reception and entertainment. The copy is enclosed in a letter, dated [(ἔτους)] ε Ξαντικοῦ ιζ Μεχεὶρ ιζ (i.e. 112 B.C.), from Hermias—probably the Hermias mentioned in the lengthy document P. Teb. 27 of 113 B.C.—to Horos, the royal scribe, telling him to take care that its instructions are followed.
On Augustus and The Aerarium
Authors: Frank Tenney
Published: May 2006

In a very persuasive article in the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy (1931, p. 772 ff.) Wilcken has argued that Augustus in the third section of his Res Gestae enumerated only the expenses that he paid out of his patrimonium ,his privatum, and the manubiae, and that Mommsen, Hirschfeld, and Rostovtzeff were probably in error when they supposed that some of these payments derived from the Fiscus. To Wilcken's argument, which I accept in the main, I wish only to add some calculations of the amounts attributed to the various chests, in order to see how far his theory stands the test of practical application. And before doing this I wish also to call attention to some slight matters in his article that may need closer examination.
Harbour and River Boats of Ancient Rome
Authors: Casson Lionel
Published: May 2006

From the moment Rome's port city of Ostia was founded, boats of all kinds were needed to take care of the traffic about the Tiber's mouth and up-river to the capital. As the centuries passed, and both Rome and Ostia grew, the number and variety of such boats increased apace.

Ancient writers and, more important, inscriptions give the names of many of these craft and of the men who specialized in operating the particular types. We hear of codicarii, lenuncularii, scapharii and so on. What were their boats like? What special service did each perform?
The Culex
Authors: Fraenkel Eduard
Published: May 2006

It would be a waste of our time if in this lecture we concerned ourselves solely with the old question whether or no it was Virgil who wrote the Culex. More than enough has been written on this subject to guide those who know an argument when they see it. I should, of course, fail in my duty if I concealed my personal view on the problem of the authorship, and I shall, perhaps, be able to add to the discussion a point or two of my own. But I also want to use this queer problem to illustrate certain minor phenomena in the literary history of the Augustan period. It is the chief value of the so-called Appendix Vergiliana that it provides us with a variety of works of different origin and very unequal quality. Among them some are early products of Virgil himself, some are poems written several decades after his death; some never had anything to do with Virgil, claimed no relation to his works and got into this collection by mere accident, others were conceived as deliberate fakes, i.e. pretended to be written by Virgil.
Cyrenaica, Pompey and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus
Authors: Reynolds Joyce
Published: May 2006

The eight inscriptions transcribed and discussed below concern, in the first instance, the early history of Cyrenaica as a Roman province; but since most of them certainly and all of them perhaps involve Pompey and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, one of his legates in 67 B.C., they have a much wider significance in illustrating Pompey's policy and position in that year.

1 and 2. Two rectangular marble bases, each inscribed on one face with identical texts. Found at Cyrene, one in 1860, within the Temple of Apollo (now in the British Museum), the other in 1927, in front of the same Temple (left in situ).
Sulla Felix
Authors: Balsdon J. P. V. D.
Published: May 2006

Livy wrote of the great Scipio at the conclusion of the second Punic war ‘primus certe hic imperator nomine victae ab se gentis est nobilitatus’. But already more than half a century earlier M'. Valerius Maximus, consul of 263 B.C., who captured Messana and was honoured with the cognomen ‘Messalla’, had received a title from a conquest in war. In the century and a half after Scipio became Africanus, many such honourable cognomina were acquired by others. In only six cases is there evidence of the cognomen descending within the family: Valerius Messalla, Scipio Africanus, Scipio Asiaticus, Metellus Creticus, Servilius Isauricus, and (with a slight difference) Pompeius Bithynicus.
Tripolitania and the Marble Trade
Authors: Perkins John Ward
Published: May 2006

The excavation of Lepcis Magna and of Sabratha has yielded a number of inscriptions that document the supply and use of marble for architectural purposes under the Roman Empire. The texts of these inscriptions will appear shortly in the collection, ‘Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania,’ which is now being prepared by Miss J. M. Reynolds and the writer for publication by the British School at Rome (referred to hereafter as IRT). Few of them have been previously published, and of none has the significance been discussed. They have, however, an important bearing both on the architectural and on the economic history of their times; and the pages that follow are an attempt to indicate something of their character and significance, and to suggest further useful lines of inquiry.
The Peasant's Pre-Emption Right: An Abortive Reform of the Macedonian Emperors
Authors: Ostrogorsky G.
Published: May 2006

The struggle which the Byzantine government had to wage in the tenth century to protect small freeholders against the landed aristocracy represents a most interesting and important phase in the internal development of the Byzantine State. It can be said without exaggeration that the issue of the struggle determined the very fate of the Empire. The history of this stubborn, dramatic conflict has been outlined more than once. My intention is not to narrate it again, but to illustrate by a few concrete examples the causes which prevented the Byzantine government from effectively safeguarding the smallholder.

The system of land tenure by free peasant proprietors and stratiotai—soldiers settled in the themes—formed the mainstay of the Byzantine Empire from the time of its recovery in the seventh century, as well as its principal source of both internal strength and external power. Naturally, the imperial government intervened in favour of the smallholder when it became clear that peasant and stratiote property was being rapidly absorbed by big landholders, with their former owners becoming serfs on the estates of lay landowners and monasteries. In protecting the smallholder against the encroachments of the feudal landed aristocracy, the State endeavoured to safeguard its soldiers and its best taxpayers, as well as its actual existence; for the development of the centrifugal forces of feudalism constituted a menace to the centralized and autocratic power of the Byzantine emperors.
‘Great and Lesser Bear’ (OVID, Tristia 4. 3)
Authors: Nisbet R. G. M.
Published: May 2006

When Ovid was relegated in A.D. 8, he left a notorious problem for scholarship. Some attribute his downfall to the Ars Amatoria, whose second edition appeared about 1 B.C., but that raises questions about the time-lag as well as about the misunderstanding of literature. Others emphasize the disgrace of Augustus' grand-daughter Julia, banished for adultery in the same year as Ovid, but doubts remain about the degree of complicity needed to explain the poet's punishment. Again it has been supposed that the domestic scandal masks a political plot, a possibility that has also been canvassed over the disgrace of the elder Julia in 2 B.C. Unfortunately the evidence for the various theories is so scattered that it may distract attention from the tone of particular poems, yet in this psychological drama over-all impressions ought to count as well as fragments of fact. Here I shall try to interpret a single elegy, Tristia 4. 3, looking at it in sections as it comes; though the debate about the exile will not be repeated in detail, a view will emerge at the end about what happened.
The Origin and Growth of the Cities of Southern Gaul to the Third Century A.D.: An Assessment of the Most Recent Archaeological Discoveries
Authors: Février Paul-Albert
Published: May 2006

There is scarcely a region of the Roman west which can claim, superficially, to be better known than southern Gaul. There can be no lover of antiquities who has not visited Arles or Nîmes, studied the arch of Orange or the Pont du Gard, devoted some interest to the monuments of Fréjus, the sculptures of Nîmes, or the mosaics of Vienne, not to mention the houses of Glanum or Vaison which have been recovered from the earth by the dedication of Henri Rolland and Canon Sautel. And yet many of these famous monuments have had to wait until very recent years before becoming the subject of detailed monographs: so, the trophy of the Alps, the arch of Orange, or the mausoleum of Glanum. Others, without having received exhaustive publication, have only in recent decades been properly dated (the amphitheatres of Arles and Nîmes) or adequately described: I am thinking of the Maison Carrée.
Pompey's Organization of Bithynia-Pontus: two neglected Texts
Authors: Marshall A. J.
Published: May 2006

The surviving literary evidence for the lex Pompeia, provincial charter of the joint province of Bithynia-Pontus, is of prime importance for our knowledge of the nature and content of these charters, which established the fundamental organization of a Roman province. Of the charters of other provinces, only the lex Rupilia of Sicily is known in any comparable detail. Our knowledge of Pompey's law, a piece of work which stood the test of time and lasted, with some modification, until the day of Cassius Dio, also affords some reasonable basis for an assessment of his administrative achievement.

The discussion of Pompey's organization of this province has tended to concentrate attention on two traditional questions. Firstly, controversy about the extent of the territory added to Bithynia from the kingdom of Mithridates to form the new province has led to lengthy debate concerning the exact location of the eastern frontier. Secondly, much speculation has centred around the attempt to determine Pompey's ultimate purpose in organizing this area as he did and to accord him appropriate praise or condemnation.
The Dirae
Authors: Fraenkel Eduard
Published: May 2006

This strange poem, preserved as part of the miscellaneous collection which Scaliger named Appendix Vergiliana, is interesting from more than one point of view. But if we want to understand it and form an idea of its background, we must first clear up some points of detail and also, where it is necessary, examine the readings of our text, based as it is on manuscripts whose quality is not all that we might wish. Since for this initial section a separation of the major points from the minor ones has not proved feasible, my comments will simply follow the order of the lines.
The Dependent Tenant: Land Leasing and Labour in Italy and Greece
Authors: Foxhall Lin
Published: May 2006

‘Farm’ sites of various kinds have been a striking feature of survey archaeology in most areas of Greece and Italy in recent years, and a number of such sites dating to the Roman period have been located. In many parts of Greece there seem to be particularly large numbers of later Roman sites, with fewer which can be firmly dated to the earlier imperial period, while in a few areas the Imperial Roman period is one of dense occupation. In Italy, too, there seems to be considerable regional variation in peak periods of rural settlement, so that in some areas numbers of small sites are greatest for the Republican period (second to first centuries B.C.), while in other areas there are many small sites of the first century a.d. or even later. The tendency of archaeologists working in both Greece and Italy, especially in the early years of the survey boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was to categorize these smaller sites as peasant farms (generally assuming peasant free-holders), while larger, more opulent sites were classed as ‘villas’. This encouraged both archaeologists and historians to jump to the conclusion that the development of large estates attested in the literary record from the later second century B.C. onward had not effected the complete demise of small-scale, free subsistence farmers.
Cicero and Divination: the Formation of a Latin Discourse
Authors: Beard Mary
Published: May 2006

This article is intended to be read in association with that of Schofield which follows. They share a common outlook—for we both believe that an understanding of the literary form ofDe Divinationeis integral to an understanding of its philosophical and historical point. But in detail our approaches are rather different. My own paper is the work of an historian and is concerned principally with the intellectual and cultural context ofDe Divinatione. My analysis of the text, highlighting its tensions and unresolved contradictions, follows from my analysis of that broader context. Schofield, by contrast, studiesDe Divinationeas an example of Hellenistic philosophical argumentation and explores the ways Cicero translates this not merely into Latin, but into a specifically Roman rhetorical mode. Other differences—in particular some disagreement as to how far it is possible to identify a ‘Ciceronian position’ on religion—are signalled in the text and notes of what follows.
Aeneas and Mount Atlas
Authors: Morwood J. H. W.
Published: May 2006

In the fourth book of the Aeneid Mercury flies to Carthage on the orders of Jupiter to bid Aeneas be mindful of his destiny and sail away. First he binds his winged sandals on his feet; then he takes up his mystical wand, which he uses to make his way through the sky. Next, before he comes to Carthage and sees the glittering figure of Aeneas, he observes and touches down on Mount Atlas, which is arrestingly personified as an old man:

iamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit

Atlantis duri caelum qui vertice fulcit,

Atlantis, cinctum adsidue cui nubibus atris

piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri,

nix umeros infusa tegit, turn flumina mento

praecipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba.
Municipium Flavium Irnitanum: a Latin Town in Spain
Authors: Galsterer Hartmut
Published: May 2006

It is understandable that the small town of Irni attracted no attention from historians and geographers in Antiquity. Pliny the Elder, whose lists of cities in the provinces include so many insignificant as well as important communities, eschews any mention of it; in his eyes it will have been neither ‘dignum memoratu’ nor ‘Latio sermone dictu facile’ (NHIII, 7). It was left to the enterprise of amateur archaeologists equipped with modern metal-detectors to bring to light the city law, and with that the existence of the city itself. The story of the find and of the stages leading to publication is recounted by J. González in the original publication of two years ago, and need not be repeated here. It is beyond question that it represents an extraordinary enrichment of our knowledge of the Roman city, not just in the Iberian peninsula but throughout the Roman Empire.
For Braudel: A Note on the ‘Ecole des Annales’ and the Historiography of Africa
Authors: Clarence-Smith W.G.
Published: May 2006

The historiography of continental Europe has been revolutionized since the Second World War by a group of historians generally known as Annales School, from the name of the periodical which has served as their principal forum. Originally a somewhat eccentric group, they have come in the eyes of many to incarnate historical orthodoxy. And yet Africa has scarcely been touched by these profound currents which have so powerfully affected Europe. It therefore seems necessary to attempt a brief sketch of the nature of the Annales movement and to consider how African historiography might benefit from this approach.

Annales historiography derives from a very broad and relatively recent tradition in Europe, which may be characterized as involving the rejection of the centrality of events in history in favor of more unobtrusive but more basic structures. This approach is perhaps most clearly apparent in the work of Marxist historians, but it can be seen more generally in the growing body of social and economic history written from a wide variety of ideological perspectives. Annales thus owes much both to Marxism and to such inter-war historians as Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. In addition, Annales is rooted in the peculiar French academic tradition of treating history and geography as a single indivisible subject.
The Observance of All Souls' Day in the Guinea-Bissau Region: A Christian Holy Day, An African Harvest Festival, an African New Year's Celebration, or All of the Above(?)
Authors: Brooks George E.
Published: May 2006

“[A] desecration of our religion.”

On the eve of All Saints' Day on November 1, 1898, a Portuguese army officer, Henrique Augusto Dias de Carvalho, observed a colorful and noisy crowd of people wending through the streets of Bolama beginning the celebration of dia dos finados (All Souls' Day), which day of supplication for the faithful departed is observed by Christians on November 2.

The indigenous Christians generally from long-standing custom and according to local practices customarily pay homage to the dead on the second day of November, beginning this commemoration on the eve of All Saints' Day after midnight.

They come out of their dwellings and gather at the door of the local church whence they proceed with little lights walking in procession through all the streets singing the Ave-Maria mixed with African songs.

Men and women with fantastic costumes, as if it were carnival, and swigging aguardente and palm wine wander about for three entire nights in this manner until after daybreak; then they disperse, everyone returning to their dwellings, to come out again at night, and spending all day on the 2nd in singing and dancing. The groups combine this with alcoholic drinks and engage in lewd behavior, which debauchery attains its peak during the night of the 2nd until dawn, when after several hours of rest, the finale of the commemoration takes place, which consists of feasting and more drinking, inside or in the open air at a place some distance from the settlement, afterwards singing once again Ave-Marias for the souls of all the departed.
A Commentary on Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Account of the Lower Guinea Coastlands in his Esmeraldo De Situ Orbis, and on Some Other Early Accounts
Authors: Fage J.D.
Published: May 2006

The earliest European accounts of the Lower Guinea coastlands are fewer and less informative than those available for the coastlands of Upper Guinea. This is not surprising. The exploration of the 900 or so miles of the Guinea coast to about as far as Cape Mesurado was a more deliberate process, over some eighteen years, than was that of the nearly 2000 miles of coast between Cape Mesurado and Cameroun, which seems to have been undertaken essentially in the five years, 1471/75. It was also probably a more open process, involving sailors and merchants of many nations besides the Portuguese, men who were full of a Renaissance wonder at what they saw and keen to communicate their new knowledge. Some of these men or their followers were soon – certainly by about 1500 – residing more or less permanently in African communities on the Upper Guinea coasts, subject to little or no effective control from the Portuguese authorities, becoming lançados. On the other hand, by the later 1470s the discovery of the gold wealth of Mina had led the Portuguese crown to seek to establish a royal monopoly over sea trade with Lower Guinea, and to confine it to a few posts over which it sought to assert its direct control.

The first comprehensive account of the Upper Guinea coasts to have survived is to be found in the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis of Duarte Pacheco Pereira, almost certainly written between the years 1505 and 1508. It is constructive to compare this work with its contemporary, the Description of the West Coast of Africa written by Valentim Fernandes, probably in 1506 or 1507, which describes the Guinea coast only as far as Cape Mount (although it also has fascinating accounts of the islands of São Tomé and Annobón in the Gulf of Guinea).
Time and the Calendar in Nineteenth - Century Asante: An Exploratory Essay
Authors: McCaskie T.C.
Published: May 2006

Historians recognize that the perception and organization of time are fundamental to the internal ordering of all human cultures. However, the history of pre-colonial Africa has largely been written to conform to the calendrical rhythms of an imposed European chronology. Regret over this discrepancy has been tempered by recognition of the very real problems involved in rectifying it. Chief among these is the fact that linear chronology per se -- in purist interpretation requiring numbered series derived from a fixed base, and therefore the mnemonic support of a graphic record -- is beyond the technological competence of any pre-literate society. However, the inability to maintain chronologically precise memorials of the past by no means precludes the existence of sophisticated mechanisms for ordering and dividing temps courant. That is, a historical sense disordered or dissolved through the agency of unassisted, and thus all too fallible, human memory may happily co-exist with an exact (and often symbolically charged) calendrical time. Broadly speaking, the foregoing was the situation obtaining-in Asante in the nineteenth century. Time in nineteenth-century Asante, in a number of its aspects, is the subject of this paper.

The establishment of a historical chronology in nineteenth-century Asante was severely inhibited, and in ultimate terms negated, by the absence of a literate culture. It is the case that rare and isolated individuals like oheneba Owusu Ansa (ca. 1822-1884) and oheneba Kwasi Boakye (1827-1904) acquired in foreign exile skills in European languages. However, Akan Twi was not effectively reduced to writing until the mid-nineteenth century, and then not in Asante. Thus, at the time of the British usurpation in 1896 Asante was still a pre-literate culture.
The Conquest That Never Was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. II. The Local Oral Sources
Authors: Conrad David C. , Fisher Humphrey J.
Published: May 2006

“The land took the name of the wells, the wells that had no bottom.”

In Part I of this paper we examined the external written sources and found no unambiguous evidence that an Almoravid conquest of ancient Ghana ever occurred. The local oral evidence reviewed in this part of our study supports our earlier hypothesis, in that we find nothing in the traditions to indicate any conquest of the eleventh-century sahelian state known to Arab geographers as “Ghana.” Instead, the oral traditions emphasize drought as having had much to do with the eventual disintegration of the Soninke state known locally as “Wagadu.”

An immediate problem involved in sifting the oral sources for evidence of an Almoravid conquest is that a positive identification between the Wagadu of oral tradition and the Ghana of written sources has never been established. Early observers like Tautain (1887) entertained no doubts in this regard, and recently Meillassoux seems to have accepted a connection, if not an identification, between Ghana and Wagadu when he notes that “les Wago, dont le nom a donné Wagadu, sont les plus clairement associés à l'histoire du Ghana.” However, much continues to be written on the subject, and the question remains a thorny one. On the lips of griots (traditional bards) and other local informants, Wagadu is a timeless concept, so a reliable temporal connection between people and events in the oral sources on one hand and Ghana at the time of the Almoravids on the other, is particularly elusive. Indeed, any link between the traditions discussed here and a specific date like 1076 must be regarded as very tenuous, as must any association of legendary events with Islamic dates. In western Sudanic tradition influenced by Islam, the hijra (A.D. 622) is both prestigious and convenient, a date with which virtually any event in the remote past can be associated, though such a claim may have nothing to do with any useful time scale.
The Use of Comorian Documents
Authors: Ottenheimer Martin
Published: May 2006

The Comorian archipelago is located at the northern end of the Mozambique channel in the western Indian Ocean. Of volcanic origin, the archipelago consists of four major islands and several smaller ones which, for many centuries, have been the sites of ports for ships from Asia, Africa, and Europe. They played an especially prominent role in the networks of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean during the fifteenth century and were involved in the maritime trade much earlier. As one would expect of people involved in trade over a long period of time, Comorians have been keepers of records. Thus, the Comoro Islands have become a rich source of both written and oral documents.

Some of the numerous documents that have been discovered on the islands have served as the basis of the published histories of the Comoros. Others have been published themsleves and all have provided valuable information about life in the islands. Many documents, however, still remain unpublished. I have had the opportunity to collect numerous documents over the nearly twenty years that I have been gathering information about the Comoro Islands, and this collection continues to grow today. When I am not in the islands, Comorians send or bring documents to me in Kansas which I copy or record before returning them to their owners. During my trips to the islands I have taped oral information, photographed data of historical significance, hand-copied documents, and have been given or lent rare publications.
Hausa Poems as Sources for Social and Economic History, II
Authors: Duffill M. B.
Published: May 2006

In the following commentary on three Hausa poems presented in Part I of this essay, I attempt to analyze each poem, paying greatest attention toWakar Talauci da Wadata. First I take up the matter of the dating of the poem from internal evidence and follow that with some general observations on the problems and methods involved in the analysis. The detailed commentary onWakar Talauci da Wadatafollows, divided into four sections: an examination of the objective conditions of poverty and wealth as they are presented in the poem; a discussion of the subjective evaluation of the condition of poverty and the condition of wealth, as Darho observed it among the Hausa; an examination of the way in which women are represented in the poem; and a discussion of the proposition that there are contradictions in the poem itself and in the social position of the poet. After discussingWakar Madugu YahayaandWakar Abinda, I try to placeWakar Talauci da Wadatain the comparative context of several Western European literary products and one Arabic. The object of this excursus is to show that in the literature of other cultures, more or less distant in both time and space, there have been concerns and preoccupations that are essentially the same as those that occupied the mind of Darho.

Unlike the 1903 version of the poem used by Pilaszewicz and Tahir/Goody, the version from the Mischlich collection is undated, but there is internal evidence to suggest that the poem was composed no earlier than 1874/75 and probably between 1896 and 1910.
Reversible Social Processes, Historical Memory, and the Production of History
Authors: Roberts Richard
Published: May 2006

In my research on gender relations and household dynamics in the handicraft textile industry of the western Sudan, I have been frustrated by the silences in the oral record concerning changes during the early colonial period. Whereas I have been able to reconstruct the social history of the precolonial era, including the changes induced by increased use of slave labor, my informants have been silent on what I would consider equally significant changes in the early colonial period.

Using colonial sources, I have been able to reconstruct the broad contours of the period following the end of slavery, which hint at profound changes in the nature of the textile industry, gender relations, and household dynamics. These would, I anticipated on the basis of my previous fieldwork, be exactly the kind of transformative social change which would be recalled in the oral record. They ought to have become a central part of the social construction of the meaning of historical processes. But, as far as I have been able to determine, this has not been the case. Detail on gender relations and the productive processes appear again in my informants' accounts for the period just before and after World War II, drawn from personal experience. This paradox—apparently richer evidence in the oral record for an earlier era than for a chronologically closer one—has implications for both fieldwork strategies and for social history.
Knowledge Brokers: Books and Publishers in Early Colonial Zaire
Authors: Yates Barbara A.
Published: May 2006

This paper is concerned with the process, problems, and politics of knowledge transfer in King Leopold's Congo. Since European languages were infrequently taught in Congo schools, the availability of printed materials in local African languages served as the primary means of achieving literacy and subsequently knowledge beyond that learned through practical experience.

With the exception of Swahili, used in the Eastern Congo as a lingua franca, none of the several dozen major languages or the several hundred minor languages and dialects spoken in the Congo Basin had been reduced to written form before modern missionaries established themselves there beginning in 1879. Between 1879 and 1908, when the Congo was the personal possession of Leopold II, nineteen Congolese languages were reduced to written form and more than 400 titles in these languages were published. To the sophisticated modern reader such a narrow choice of literature may seem unworthy of study. But this printed media stock--primers, readers, textbooks, religious tracts, Gospels, and magazines--was all that was available to some tens of thousands of seekers after literacy and the major printed communications between Westerners and Africans in the Congo Basin. This fact, alone, gives such materials significance.

Most of this literature was prepared for use in elementary schools. In 1908, when King Leopold's Congo was annexed by the Belgian Parliament, some 46,000 pupils of all ages were enrolled in colonial schools. Another 50,000 had probably attended these schools between 1879 and 1908. Over ninety-nine percent of these pupils attended schools run by eighteen mission societies (nine Protestant and nine Catholic).
La Renaissance de l'histoire eotile dans les années soixante
Authors: Perrot Claude-Hélène
Published: May 2006

Dans le Sud-Est de la Côte d'Ivoire le début des années soixante est marqué par la tentative de sécession du Sanwi et ses retombées. Le roi du Sanwi, décidant de se détacher de l'Etat ivoirien qui vient d'accéder à l'independance, est allé avec ses partisans s'établir au Ghana où il a formé un gouvernement provisoire. II donne légitimité à ce mouvement en faisant référence au traité d'alliance qu'un de ses prédécesseurs Amon Ndiffou avait signé avec la France, représentée par Fleuriot de Langle, le 4 Juillet 1843.

L'érection du Sanwi en Etat indépendant est le signal d'une sévère politique de répression qui s'abat sur les Anyi de la région. A Aboisso régne le sous-préfet Haccandie qui met en place un réseau d'agents de renseignements dans un pays où les villages et les families sont profondément divisées par ce qu'on commence à appeler “I'affaire du Sanwi”. En outre les crédits affectés à la région sont drastiquement réduits. Or antérieurement le Sanwi avait été le premier pôle de développement de la Colonie, dotée d'un important réseau routier pour l'écoulement des “produits” (café, cacao) et d'équipements sanitaires et scolaires. Et brusquement ce pays, d'où était issue une élite de lettrés et de fonctionnaires, se trouve déiaissé, voire sacxifie, au bénéfice d'autres parties de la Côte d'Ivoire.
William Ofori Atta, Nnambi Azikiwe, J.B. Danquah and the “Grilling” of W.E.F. Ward of Achimota in 1935
Authors: Jenkins† Ray
Published: May 2006

In December 1932 J. B. Danquah identified five stages or “ages” in the coastal political history, or the “national history,” of the Gold Coast. This paper may be described as a temporary departure from a preoccupation with “Ages” two, three, and four (1867-1930) and a tentative entry into the study of the fifth: Danquah's post-1930 “Age of Enlightenment.” What follows therefore is more of a shift in time than of space and focus—the area and arena of coastal politics in the colonial Gold Coast. If a new age did dawn in the 1930s, then for an influential core of today's Ghanaianist historians, it would seem that the turning point occurred in 1935. In that year the radical response of I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson and Nnambi Azikiwe (“Zik”) to the Ethiopian crisis galvanized those forces that presaged the later emergence of Kwame Nkrumah, one of history's winners. In sharp contrast, J.B. Danquah, one of history's losers, represented the continuity of past conservatism during—and after—the 1930s.

A bold attempt to confirm or contradict the 1935 “discontinuity thesis” is beyond the scope of this progress report on an act of trespass into the 1930s. The modest outcome of the latter is a snapshot of Accra-based politics. It tries to bring into focus several elements: the texture, style, and ‘reach’ of urban-based politics and politicians; the place of the study and teaching of history in anticolonial nationalist thought; and the extent to which rhetoric served as a mask for the pursuit of group or personal grievance and ambition. In short, this paper re-examines an old theme—the relationship between past history and present politics, albeit within the confines of a British colonial state.
Mythe, Politique et Histoire: Le Mythe De Mande Katawa Chez Les “Luluwa” Du Kasayi
Authors: Ngalamulume Kalala
Published: May 2006

En Novembre 1985, à l'occasion de la finale de la Coupe du Zaire des clubs champions opposant Tshinkunku de Kananga à Bilima de Kinshasa, la “UNE” de la rubrique sportive du quotidien de Kinshasa Salongo décrivait ainsi la mobilisation des habitants de Kananga:

L'hallali de guerre résonna: toutes les vieilles sorcières des Bakwa

Katawa et Bena Mutombo accoururent “nues” à l'appel du grand chef

Kalamba pour immoler Bilima.

Ce reportage, qui passa presqu'inaperçu, avait pourtant un caractère hautement symbolique puisqu'il traduisait une réalité devenue banale: la division de fait du groupe ethnique “Luluwa,” qui avait cent ans d'existence, en deux groupes distincts, les Bakwa Katawa et les Bena Mutombo.

Ce constat nous poussa à en savoir davantage sur les origines du groupe ethnique usager du Ciluba appelé “Luluwa,” sur les influences que le groupe a subies, la stabilisation de sa dénomination, le moment privilègié de la création de ce groupe, et enfin la dynamique de sa scission en deux groupes presque antagonistes. Notre hypothèse de travail est que l'administration coloniale n'a pas créé de toutes pièces un groupe ethnique ex nihilo; elle a mis en place un cadre et des institutions qui ont permis l'élargissement de l'identité ethnique existante à un ensemble plus grand. Il en est résulté un “centre“ et une “périphérie.” Le centre comprend les descendants de Mande Katawa (Bena Kapuku, Bena Mande, Bena Mukadi, et Bena Mukangala), les descendants de Ntiite Maloba, et ceux de Muena Mushilu; ces clans entourent en quelque sorte la ville de Kananga. La “périphérie” comprend tous les clans qui ont en commun l'éloignement géographique de la ville de Kananga, et done un accès un peu tardif à la modernité.
“Proprietor of Natal:” Henry Francis Fynn and the Mythography of Shaka
Authors: Wylie Dan
Published: May 2006

If ever South Africa could boast of a Robinson Crusoe of her own, as affable, shrewd, politically sagacious, courageous and large-hearted as Defoe's, here is one to life… “Mr Fynn”

[Fynn is] a greater ass and Don Quixote than one could possibly conceive.

The fictional referents in these diametrically opposed judgments of Henry Francis Fynn (1806-61) alert us to the “constructed” nature of the reputation of this most famous of Shakan eyewitnesses. Although Nathaniel Isaacs' Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa (1836) first introduced Shaka and his Zulu people to the British reading public, and had easily the profoundest influence on popular conceptions, Fynn was the more widely acknowledged “expert” on the Zulu. Having pursued an extraordinarily tortuous, violent, and well-documented career through forty formative years of South African frontier history, he left a body of writings which belatedly attained authoritative status in Shakan historiography. Since 1950, Fynn's so-called “Diary” has become the paramount, and until recently largely unquestioned, source on Shaka's famous reign (ca. 1815-1828). As recent political power struggles centered on the “Shaka Day” celebrations in Zululand have amply demonstrated, there is no more appropriate juncture at which to reassess the sources of this semi-mythologized Zulu leader's reputation.