bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
George Gershwin's Concerto in F at the Yale School of Drama
Authors: Kurath Gertrude Prokosch
Published: May 2006

Gertrude Kurath's article “George Gershwin's Concerto in F at the Yale School of Drama” gives us entry into the dances of two worlds. One is the Euro-American world of creative dance composition exemplified by the 1930 slice of time at the then newly established Yale School of Drama. The other is the Native American and Black American dance world that allows a glimpse into the expansive transformation of Kurath's “kinetic empathy” (Kurath 1986:3).

For the first, Kurath reminisces about the 1930 Yale dance group. During an informal meeting Gershwin discussed with Kurath and Harriet Meyer their experimental choreography for his Concerto in F. This vignette is a gem that is salvaged for history by Kurath's reconstruction.

Some persons in the 1930 Yale dance group became known by works that could not have been predicted by their activities at the Yale School of Drama, Virginia More Roediger, for example, later wrote the unique and valuable reference book Ceremonial Costumes of the Pueblo Indians (1941). Kurath later became the doyen of dance ethnology, her great life work. That two of this small group would contribute important studies about American Indians is noteworthy and startling. The influences of non-Euro-American dances — chronicled extensively — must have become embedded in the world view of Euro-American concert dancers by the time Kurath and her colleagues were studying at the Yale School of Drama.

In footnote four of the current article, Kurath suggests “pertinent” references that are reprinted in her 1986 book of essays. Choreographic guidelines are packaged in “Dance Design” (1931 in 1986:2) along with “Harmony and Conflict in Structure” (1932 continuation of 1931 in 1986:9). She instructs that a group composition should have parallelisms and contradictions that are achieved, respectively, by repetition and counter-motifs. Kurath notes that “concentration and harmony are the first prerequisites; interest is increased and pattern enriched by contrasting and conflicting lines. All point is lost if the ensemble does not build to a climax” (1932 in 1986:14). That the Yale performance of Gershwin's Concerto in F follows these guidelines is demonstrated in her analytical description, and the pattern contrasts indicated by the drawings that accompany this current article.
The Problem of Latin Renaissance Poetry*
Authors: Spitzer Leo
Published: May 2006

It is a result of our modern overspecialization in scholarship that, although every one knows of the excellence of Latin Renaissance poetry and of the reputation it enjoyed in its time, this poetry is not yet studied today as it deserves. The scholar in Romance, for example, while realizing that literary figures such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ronsard, DuBellay were bilingual and wrote in Latin as well as in the vernacular, that DuBellay drafted his sonnet Heureux qui comme Ulysse … first in Latin, that Petrarch appreciated his Africa more than his Canzoniere, is more apt to study the Latin works of the Renaissance poets for the light they may cast on their works in the vernacular than as works of art which have their meaning in themselves.
Legal Humanism and the Sense of History
Authors: Kelley Donald R.
Published: May 2006

It seems to be a commonplace that our modern ‘sense of history’ is largely a creation of Renaissance humanism, but the precise debts of modern historical thought to humanist scholarship are still insufficiently understood. The purpose of this paper is to indicate a little more concretely the historical attitudes and ideas which informed one of the major scholarly enterprises of the Renaissance, that is, legal humanism, and so to throw further light upon the significance of humanist philology for historical thought. It is natural to begin the discussion with Lorenzo Valla, arch-grammarian and one of the founding fathers of legal humanism, since, in addition to his work on Roman law, he contributed perhaps more than any other humanist to the alliance of philology and history, and in the process provided perhaps the first philosophic justification of historical scholarship.
The Cosmic Voyage in French Sixteenth-century Learned Poetry1
Authors: Ridgely Beverly S.
Published: May 2006

Persée voltigeant, le heros Lathmien,Cephee, & sa familhe, & cil qu'á son lienUne mute de chiens encor la haut promeine,M'invitent á voler d'une plume hautainePar les dorés Lambris qui planchent ce grand ToutPour nous rendre du Ciel savans de bout en bout.

When in 1583 the young French poet and savant Jean- Edouard du Monin included these lines in introducing the second book of his Uranologie, he was but paraphrasing, with the same classical allusions, both the aspiration and the intention expressed at the corresponding point in the text of his model, a manuscript version of the Sphera of George Buchanan.
Continental Humanists and Chapman's Iliads
Authors: Phinney Edward
Published: May 2006

Conventional criticism of the Homeric translations of George Chapman has generally limited itself either to invidious comparisons between the English of Chapman and the original Greek of Homer or to enthusiastic pronouncements on the beauty and the poetic value of Chapman's translation as an independent poem. A more sophisticated criticism, however, has been the objective of such modern Chapman scholars as George deF. Lord and Allardyce Nicoll, and the success, for instance, of Mr. Nicoll's labors may easily be judged from a comparison of his recent Pantheon edition of Chapman's Homer with the florid Victorian edition to which Swinburne wrote an introduction. Meritorious as their researches have been, however, both Mr. Lord and Mr. Nicoll have often obfuscated the understanding of Chapman's text by underestimating the influence of continental humanism upon his methods of translation.
Popular Response to Standing Military Forces in Fifteenth-Century France
Authors: Solon Paul D.
Published: May 2006

At the beginning of 1445 the kingdom of France lay in ruins after a century of warfare. Yet in the spring of that year a reform began which ultimately brought military victory to the house of Valois and restored peace and effective political direction to the lands of the French monarchy. Charles VII, acting with the support of many elements of French society, created the famed Compagnies d'ordonnance which proved instrumental in ending the chaos which had threatened the destruction of the realm. Charles's military innovation was strikingly simple and clearly evolutionary. It amounted to little more than the enforcement of many previous royal edicts concerning military affairs directed against independent mercenary companies.
William Harrison (1535-1593)
Authors: Edelen Georges
Published: May 2006

The only serious study of the life of William Harrison, antiquarian and social historian, author of the much-quoted Description of England in Holinshed's Chronicles, was undertaken by Frederick J. Furnivall for his edition of the Description. All later biographies stem directly from Furnivall. I have recently uncovered new material which supplements the known facts of Harrison's life, corrects some inaccuracies in Furnivall's biography, and occasionally throws new light on Harrison's garrulous, anecdotal account of Elizabethan England.

A search for Harrison material leads, somewhat improbably, to the Diocesan Library of the Church of Ireland in Londonderry, a phenomenon which can only be explained by the marriage of Harrison's daughter, Anne, to George Downham, a noted teacher of Ramian logic at Cambridge and later bishop of Derry.
Alessandro Piccolomini's Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle
Authors: Cerreta Florindo V.
Published: May 2006

Recent scholarship dealing with Renaissance literary criticism has unduly neglected a very significant commentary on the Poetics, the Annotationi nel libro de la Poetica d'Aristotele by the Sienese humanist Alessandro Piccolomini. This commentary has, indeed, drawn the attention of Ebner, Saintsbury, Spingarn, Guerrieri-Crocetti, and Croce, but only in an incidental or fragmentary manner. Maria Rossi, in her monograph on Piccolomini, rehashed for the most part the comments made by Ebner in the nine pages she devoted to the Annotationi. Subsequently, Prof. Toffanin, in propounding his theory that Italian romanticism can be traced back to the sixteenth century, distorted the meaning of the Annotationi in order to make Piccolomini a precursor of Vico and Manzoni.
On the Attitude toward the Vulgo in the Spanish Sigh de Oro
Authors: Green Otis H.
Published: May 2006

Who o'er the herd would wish to reign,
Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain!

—Scott.

First of all, a delimitation of the field: in this article I intend to discuss the vulgo, not the pobre, the villano, the labrador, or the pastor, eliminating in this way the entire theme of ‘contempt of court and praise of simple life’. It will be well to point out, however, that the ambivalent attitude of Golden Age Spaniards toward the villano, or peasant, is analogous to the ambivalence of their attitude toward the herd (necio-discreto) which will be our main concern
Music: a Book of Knowledge in Renaissance England
Authors: Finney Gretchen L.
Published: May 2006

The Renaissance man was as eager as any twentieth-century scientist to understand the universe and himself, the center of that universe, but he sought that knowledge in a different way. He relied heavily upon the Word of God. He accepted with little question the words of wise men of the past—Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Boethius, St. Augustine. He was fascinated with the mysterious hieroglyphics and drawings left by the Chaldeans and Egyptians, untranslatable in his time but thought to be an esoteric language which might reveal hidden secrets of the universe. But his most accessible book was the ‘universal and publick Manuscript’ of nature, that great volume written in the language of God, sometimes in ‘Hieroglyphicall Characters’ difficult to decipher, again in figures and ‘letters’ easily understood by any one who would take time to observe them.
The Object of African History: A Materialist Perspective
Authors: Bernstein Henry , Depelchin Jacques
Published: May 2006

The establishment of a journal specifically concerned with method in African history is to be welcomed. However, the early issues of History in Africa have demonstrated that the content of the term ‘method’ is itself at stake. The great majority of contributions to date have seized on a narrow and limiting conception of method as the development of techniques of collecting and evaluating data. The necessity of such techniques is not in question, but they are subordinate to, and indeed partially determined by, a broader and more fundamental conception of method as the principles of investigation and explanation in scientific practice. There are historians who do not regard the production of historical knowledge as a scientific enterprise, hence subject to certain theoretical demands, and they would not want to. Accordingly, they need not read on, but we are confident that there are others who are interested in method in the second sense and who may also have noticed its virtual absence in the pages of this journal.

On the other hand, it would be disingenuous to imply that a common interest in method in the broader and more fundamental sense is sufficient ground for agreement. Our argument in what follows derives from an understanding of historical materialism that has nothing in common with the stereotyped views held by it bourgeois critics. Our central concern is with method as the principles of constructing scientific explanations. But what is to be explained? We attempt to show that method necessarily starts with the correct posing of questions, as well as bearing on their investigation.
Hamlet in an Afro-Portuguese Setting: New Perspectives on Sierra Leone in 1607
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

For thirty-eight days in August and September of 1607, two ships of an English expedition to the East Indies lay in the Sierra Leone estuary, mainly in order that the sailors might recover from the scurvy developed in a four-months' voyage by drinking lime-water prepared from local fruits. When the ships returned from the East, journals of the expedition became available. Richard Hakluyt collected three, including that of the expedition's commander, William Keeling. These passed eventually to Samuel Purchas, who in 1625 published extracts from them and from other journals independently collected. In Purchas' publication the Sierra Leone stage of the voyage is referred to in extracts from two writings: Keeling's daily journal, and the “large Journall” of the merchant William Finch -- not in fact a daily journal but a detailed, accurate, and very valuable synoptic description. While Finch's “Remembrances touching Sierra Leone” appears to have been published in full, Purchas cut the relevant section of Keeling's journal. He stated “I have beene bold to so shorten as to express only the most necessary Observations for Sea or Land Affaires.” The original of Keeling's journal has disappeared, and therefore, with the exception of some entries to be shortly described, what Purchas cut cannot now be reinstated. However, four other journals of the voyage which contain material on Sierra Leone have survived. The one with the briefest reference to Sierra Leone was published in 1878, and extracts from the Sierra Leone sections of the other three appeared in print in 1877 and 1923. The present paper makes use of a transcription of the whole of the relevant sections in the three manuscripts, a transcription which I hope to publish soon elsewhere.
Slave Systems in Africa
Authors: Harms Robert
Published: May 2006

The slave trade has been a major theme of historical writing on Africa for many years, but it is only recently that scholars have begun to look seriously at slavery within African societies themselves. With the recent publication of three books the trickle of studies on this subject has now become a flood. The first of these, L'esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, edited by Claude Meillassoux, contains seventeen studies of slavery, mostly from francophone West Africa. Slavery in Africa, edited by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, includes sixteen studies, eleven of which focus on west Africa. Frederick Cooper's book, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa, presents a regionally comparative study of east African plantations. Each of these volumes opens with a general introduction to the subject of African slavery, and these will form the primary focus of this essay.

A salient impression that emerges from reading the three books is that African slave systems showed enormous diversity; plantation slaves in Zanzibar had little in common with the elite military tyeddo in Senegambia, or for that matter with Sena slaves in Mozambique, who were integrated into the acquiring lineages. Often, a single society would embrace several co-existing slave systems, and the picture is further complicated by the fact that slave systems changed over time. Miers and Kopytoff underline this diversity by suggesting no fewer than seventeen different (though sometimes overlapping) terms to describe different types of slavery (p. 77).
Du Hirsute Au Hamite: Les Variations Du Cycle De Ntare Ruhatsi, Fondateur Du Royaume Du Burundi
Authors: Chrétien Jean-Pierre
Published: May 2006

A peine admises dans le monde de l'histoire académique, les sources orales sont vivement contestées par plusieurs spécialistes. L'ouvrage de David Henige, The Chronology of Oral Tradition, en 1974, s'en prend à la “chimère” qu'ont pu nourrir celles-ci, notamment en matière de chronologie, compte tenu du fonctionnement de la tradition orale et de ses contacts récents avec les cultures écrites. L'exemple du Bunyoro auquel, entre autres, il se réfère est particuliè rement éclairant aussi pour le Burundi. Quelles que soient nos convictions, enracinées sur l'expérience et sur les résultats acquis, concernant la richesse des témoignages oraux dans les sociétés de l'Afrique des Grands Lacs, la recherche ne peut que bénéficier de ces critiques radicales si elle en situe la portée exacte. Les problèmes d'interprètation historique sont particulièrement délicats en ce qui concerne les récits de fondation ou d'origine, vu l'ancienneté des faits évoqués et la redondance des traditions, généralement plus discrètes sur les périodes intermédiaires que sur les débuts. Aux difficultés de méthode face à des récits où les faits politiques, religieux, les mythes et la poésie, les localisations spatiales et temporelles s'emmêlent de façon aussi variée que contradictoire, s'ajoutent les problèmes idéologiques étroitement confondus avec les interprètations tirées de ces récits, voire avec les formulations les plus récentes de ces dernières. Idéologies nées des contradictions de la société locale, mais aussi du choc avec les cultures étrangères, musulmanes ou surtout, dans notre cas, occidentales.

Depuis une quinzaine d'années nous sommes préoccupé par ce type de questions dans l'histoire du Burundi et nous avons relevé avec interêt les recherches parallèles sur d'autres anciens Etats de la région, telles qu'elles transparaissent par exemple depuis 1974 dans History in Africa.
The Production of History and Social Conscience, or How to “Civilize” the Other
Authors: Jewsiewicki Bogumil
Published: May 2006

“… depuis que les toubabs sont arrivés nous n'avons plus d'histoire, parce qu'ils nous l'ont volée. Ils nous ont enseigné que notre histoire, c'est seulement d'avoir été vaincus par eux. C'est vrai, nous ne savons plus de nous et de nos pères que ce qu'ils nous en disent, à savoir qu'ils nous ont vaincus un point c'est tout… Ce qui distingue le maître de l'esclave? C'est simple finalement:l'un est persuadé qu'il doit nécessairement vaincre, l'autre qu'il doit nécessairement être vaincu.”

“… un champ épistémologique s'opposera d'autant plus fortement à une menace de remaniement qu'il est peu autonome. Cet aspect de l'inertie traduit une sorte de principe de la totalité. Les croyances fournissent une intérpretation totalitaire; on ne pourra done admettre qu'elles puissent être mises en question par une perturbation d'ordre purement local, ne concernant que les faits isolés ou des idées de portée limitée.”

For the majority of historians the philosophy of history seems to be the exclusive domain of the philosophers, who often do not understand historical practice. It is thus an easy matter to consider that all discussion of this problem places itself outside both the framework of historical production and the field of its consumption. In the same manner as this refusal to admit the existence of the problem, we easily confuse a teleological history with the philosophy of history. The rejection is both obstinate and blind. I am not sufficiently competent to attempt here a collective psychoanalysis, yet the conviction that historical practice is either empirical or doctrinaire, and thus taken in hand by an ideological orthodoxy, is tenacious. In his Ecriture de l'histoire de Certeau offers, in way of explanation, certain reasons for this attitude.
Theophile Conneau at Galinhas and New Sestos, 1836–1841: A Comparison of the Sources
Authors: Jones Adam
Published: May 2006

The recent publication of the original manuscript of the autobiography of the slave trader Théodore Canot, alias Théophile Conneau, makes an important contribution to West African history. Previously historians have had to rely on the “improved” version by Brantz Mayer, published in 1854 and subsequently republished in several different forms and languages. The original manuscript is of far greater use; but we cannot altogether dispense with Mayer's book, since he obtained his information not only from Conneau's manuscript but from conversations with its author.

Unfortunately the editors of the original manuscript demonstrate little interest in African history, except as a theme for moral philosophy, and they ignore the considerable amount of research which has been conducted in order to verify particular aspects of Conneau's account. My aim here is to fill one of the gaps left by existing studies--the period between 1836 and 1841--and to assess the accuracy of Conneau's manuscript and Mayer's book for this period.

First, however, some information about Mayer's background is necessary. Born in Baltimore in 1809, he had by the time he met Conneau visited China, India, and Europe, and served as Secretary of the United States legation in Mexico for three years. But he never visited Africa and his interest in Africa must have been slight, for his huge library contained only two books relating to it. Like Conneau, he was an excellent linguist, fluent in Spanish and his father's native tongue, German. Whereas Conneau had received a fairly rudimentary education, Mayer had been taught by a private tutor and had studied law at the University of Maryland. In rewriting Conneau's autobiography, he took pains to demonstrate his knowledge of classical and contemporary literature, as well as of history.
George McCall Theal and Lovedale
Authors: Saunders Christopher
Published: May 2006

South Africa's most prolific and influential historian still awaits a biographer. Such brief biographical sketches of his life as do exist say little about his career before he began work in the Cape archives in the late 1870s. Given the views he espoused in his later writings, it is at first surprising to find that he spent over five years at the Lovedale Seminary outside Alice in the eastern cape working closely with missionaries and Africans. An examination of this period of his life throws light on his historiographical career as a whole and reveals new complexities in his character.

In the early 1870s Lovedale was the most influential institution of its kind in South Africa. A non-sectarian, non-denominational Christian school and a theological seminary, it had been founded by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries in 1841. It was rejuvenated under the leadership of Dr. James Stewart--missionary, medical doctor, explorer--who came to it as teacher in 1867 and took over as its second principal in 1870. Stewart emphasized the importance of “industrial” activities, including printing and bookbinding, and greatly enlarged Lovedale's intake of students. Drawing Africans not only from the eastern Cape but increasingly also from farther afield, the school grew from 92 pupils in 1870 to 336 in 1873 and 460 in 1876.

In mid-1872 Stewart needed someone who could both teach and supervise the printing works. George McCall Theal met these requirements. He had taught at a small elementary school at Knysna in the late 1850s, then from 1867 in the public undenominational school at King William's Town, later to be known as Dale College.
For Marx, but with Reservations About Althusser: A Comment on Bernstein and Depelchin
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

The 1970s have seen the growing influence of Marxism in the field of African history, with both the application of the neo-Marxist theory of “underdevelopment” to the study of the impact of international capitalism upon Africa and the employment of the more orthodox Marxist categories of “relations of production” and “mode of production” to the analysis of the indigenous social formations of Africa. The appearance in this journal of the programmatic article by Henry Bernstein and Jacques Depelchin, arguing for the development of a Marxist history of Africa, is therefore no surprise. It is, however, something of a disappointment, inasmuch as “Marxism” is peddled by Bernstein and Depelchin in a form particularly unhelpful to historians. Like Hindess and Hirst,” the ostensible inspirers of much Marxist work on African history, Bernstein and Depelchin subscribe to a particular variant of Marxism, that associated with the French philosopher Louis Althusser. While Marx should certainly be made welcome in the field of African history, since he has a great deal of interest to say on the crucial question of the relationship between economic, political, and ideological developments, it is less clear that Althusser is his most useful interpreter.

Since Bernstein and Depelchin consistently emphasize the “radical break” which supposedly exists between Marxism, represented by themselves, and “bourgeois [i.e. non-Marxist] social thought” (1979: 31; cf. 1978:2) it is first of all necessary to consider the question: who is a Marxist? Many of the features which Bernstein and Depelchin, following Althusser, present as being distinctive of Marxism would, in fact, be contested by others equally claiming to be Marxists.
A Bio-Bibliography of C.W. Hobley
Authors: Matson A.T. , Ofcansky Thomas P.
Published: May 2006

Charles William Hobley, C.M.G., was born in 1867 at Chilvers Coton in Warwickshire. Educated at King Edward VI School, Nuneaton, he enrolled in 1882 for a three-year engineering course at the Mason Science College, Birmingham, and spent the next five years in the shops and drawing offices of engineering firms at Nuneaton and at Dartford in Kent. He was admitted as a student in 1888 to the Institution of Civil Engineers, to which body he was elected an Associate Member in February 1894.

In March 1890 he was appointed geologist to the Imperial British East Africa Company, which was trying with pitifully inadequate resources to administer and develop the British sphere in East Africa, for which it had been granted a charter by the British government. Like most of the handful of trained members of the Company's staff, Hobley had to carry out a multitude of duties outside the scope of his appointment, among them surveys for the ill-fated Central Africa Railway, road building, improvements to water supplies on the Uganda road, and exploratory surveys. During the course of these duties he devoted some time to investigating the mineral resources of the coast and hinterland. The most important exploratory survey was the journey in the stern-wheeler Kenia up the Tana River as far as Hameye, whence Hobley and a companion marched across country to the slopes of Mount Kenya and Machakos, and back to Mombasa along the Uganda road. After a period as Transport Superintendent at the coast, Hobley left East Africa in September 1893, at a time when it was becoming obvious that the Company could not long continue to meet the obligations imposed on it by its charter.
The Background and Possible Historical Significance of a Letter and Manuscript of 1798 Concerning Timbuktu
Authors: Stieber Michael T.
Published: May 2006

The word ‘Timbuktu’ usually evokes an image of a place of exotic mystery in some far-removed corner of the earth. It evoked similar ideas in the European mind as early as the sixteenth century. By this time Timbuktu was one of the major trade centers of the unknown interior of Africa. Colonies along the western coast of Africa were not only enriching European nations with slaves, but also giving them access to trade routes to the kingdoms of the interior from which they obtained gold dust and other commodities. Timbuktu was also a Muslim center for scholars including the famous Ahmad Baba, to whom reference is made later.

Besides Timbuktu, Gao and Jenne were major cities of the River Niger and its tributary the River Bani during the sixteenth century. From 1493 to 1591 the Songhay rulers extended their kingdom to include the most northern extent of the River Niger at the southern edge of the Sahara, opening trade routes with many of their neighbors, including some intercourse with Morocco.

In the Archives of the Hunt Institute is a French extract from an Arabic manuscript which recounts the fall of Timbuktu to Moroccan forces in 1591. It is not known whether the Arabic manuscript is extant today. According to this manuscript, the Pasha Judar drove Ishaq from Tondibi to Caro (which is probably a lapsus calami for Gao), to which he laid siege for a short time and then returned to Timbuktu to await orders from the Sultan. The emperor sent Mahmud Zarkun with additional troops, and the latter relieved Judar of his command, attacked Caro, and chased Ishaq to Conkia [=Kukya?], where the latter died.
The Livingstone Documentation Project
Authors: Clendennen Gary , Casada James A.
Published: May 2006

The centenary anniversary of Dr. David Livingstone's death in 1973 occasioned a number of further additions to the already vast corpus of literature dealing with the renowned missionary-explorer's career. More importantly, the centennial observances resulted in an undertaking which promises to be a singular landmark in Livingstone studies as well as being of more general importance to Africanists in a variety of areas. This undertaking, which is described below in some detail by its principal researcher, Gary Clendennen, came to be known as the David Livingstone Documentation Project. Its first stage has now been completed with the publication of David Livingstone: A Catalogue of Documents. Clendennen provides ample information concerning the goals and the general development of the Project below, but some thoughts on its potential importance both to students of Livingstone and to Africanists interested in the milieu in which he worked also seemed to be worthy of mention. Accordingly, Clendennen's presentation is followed by my overview Of fields where we need further research on this pivotal figure in European contact with the interior of Africa and its peoples, together with some suggestions regarding how the material brought together by the Project can further such research.
The Vernon Anderson Papers
Authors: Sanders James
Published: May 2006

The papers in this collection were generated by Rev. Vernon Anderson, a Presbyterian missionary who served in the Belgian Congo. Born in Illinois in 1896, Anderson was raised in Alabama where he attended the Alabama Presbyterian College. After graduation he continued his studies at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, from which he received his B.D. degree in 1920. Anderson joined the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and assumed a post with that mission in the Kasai Province in 1921. The earliest Presbyterian missionaries to work in the Congo had established a station at Luebo in 1891. Their missionary efforts were concentrated among the Bena Lulua of the Lulua river valley. Anderson, however, was sent to the station of Bibanga situated near the Lubilashi river in the area southeast of Luebo. Bibanga lay within the broad area between Lake Tanganyika and the Kasai river in which the Luba live. The Baluba have been separted into two groups--the Baluba-kasai and the Baluba-katanga--by one present-day scholar. The Baluba-lubilashi are a subgroup of the Baluba-kasai.

Anderson was one of the first missionaries to work among the Baluba-lubilashi, from 1921 to 1946. In addition to his duties as a missionary he spent a considerable amount of time studying Luba society, in part through the collection of primary data from informants. From this material he wrote a Ph.D. dissertation entitled Witchcraft in Africa: A Missionary Problem and received his degree in 1942 from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Another project to engage his scholarly interest in the Luba was the revision of an early Tshiluba-English dictionary.
The Thorny Road From Primary to Secondary Source: The Cult of Mumbo and the 1914 Sack of Kisii
Authors: Maxon R.M.
Published: May 2006

For almost two decades, the cult of Mumbo or Mumboism has attracted the attention of historians and other social scientists interested in the colonial history of western Kenya. This has led to its recognition as an important protest response to colonial rule among the Gusii and Luo from the period just prior to World War I through the 1930s. Its importance has been magnified by ascribing to it responsibility for the looting of Kisii town, the administrative headquarters of what was then South Kavirondo district in southwestern Kenya. The Gusii people living near Kisii did indeed loot the town in September 1914 in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the British administration and a battle between an invading German force from German East Africa to the south and British troops, but the responsibility of the cult of Mumbo is at very best problematical. An examination of contemporary documentary and published primary sources shows that the cult of Mumbo or its teachings had nothing whatever to do with the looting and destruction of Kisii town, and offers a cautionary note on the use and abuse of colonial sources in Kenya history.

Such a cautionary note is particularly highlighted by two recently published secondary works: Bill Freund's The Making of Contemporary Africa and E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo's chapter in volume VII of the UNESCO sponsored General History of Africa. In constructing their broad accounts, neither author had the opportunity to make extensive use of primary source material.
English Bosman and Dutch Bosman: A Comparison of Texts, II
Authors: van Dantzig Albert
Published: May 2006

[This continues the comparison of the texts of the Dutch and English versions of Bosman which was begun in History in Africa 2 (1975): 185-216, and which will be continued in future numbers. Procedural matters are discussed in the first installment, to which the reader is referred.]
The Seventeenth Century Chronicles of Mārvāṛa: A Study in the Evolution and Use of Oral Traditions in Western India
Authors: Ziegler Norman P.
Published: May 2006

Having won the great battle, Rāo Tīido returned to Mahevā with great wealth in train. Upon arrival, he divided up the wealth and property. To the Cāraṇas and Bhāṭas he gave many cows, many female camels and buffalo. And there were noble songs [vaḍā gîta] and exalted poems [vaḍā kavita] recited of the glorious battle and the renowned victory.

The poets are the chief, though not the sole, historians of Western India;… they speak in a peculiar tongue, which requires to be translated into the sober language of probability. To compensate for their magniloquence and obscurity, their pen is free: the despotism of the Rajpoot princes does not extend to the poet's lay, which flows unconfined except by the shackles of the chhund bhojunga, or “Serpentine stanza”…. On the other hand, there is a sort of compact or understanding between the bard and the prince, a barter of “solid pudding against empty praise,” whereby the fidelity of the poetic chronicle is somewhat impaired. The sale of “fame” as the bards term it, by the court-laureates and historiographers of Rajasthan, will continue until there shall arise in the community a class sufficiently enlightened and independent to look for no other recompense for literary labor than public distinction.

Stretching across North-central India from Kāthiāvaṛa to Orissa lies a great geographical and cultural shatterbelt formed by the Vindhyan mountains and their associated tracts, an area traditionally characterized by high internal subdivision and political fragmentation. The northwestern extension of this belt comprises the frontier zone today known as Rājasthān (“the land of the Princes”). Strategically situated between the rich Gangetic plains of Hindustān to the northwest and the fertile regions of Mālvā and Gujarāt to the south and southwest, it forms an area of marginal agricultural importance whose historical significance lay primarily in its position as a key transitional zone between larger cultural centers, criss-crossed and intersected at a number of points by major caraven routes.
Africana in the Goa Archives
Authors: Beach D.N.
Published: May 2006

Gaining access to the Portuguese archives in Goa, now part of the Indian state of Goa, is (or, at least, was in my case) relatively easy. About two months in advance I wrote to Dr. V.T. Gune, the Director, asking permission to carry out research. After clearance had been obtained from New Delhi—I had the impression that no research on Africa would be regarded as “sensitive” by the Indian government—Dr. Gune very quickly granted me access.

The archives are located in the town of Panjim in Goa, which can be reached by bus from neighboring Maharashtra or by the daily plane from Bombay and Trivandrum. Intending visitors should bear in mind that the monsoon can (and often does) sever all of these routes at various times. Panjim supplies most human needs, but microfilm has rarely been seen there since the Indian occupation of Goa in 1961, and researchers are warned to bring their own, although the actual work will be done by the photographic section. The section prefers extra fine grain Recordak Microfile Pancromatic 35mm double-perforated film, although similar films are acceptable. The main archives building houses most of the files, and researchers are provided space in the Archivist's office. Photography, however, is carried out at a separate depot in town. Unless they are unusually busy, the photographic staff can process material very quickly; in my case, they were able to film 863 exposures in little more than a week.
The Northern Regional Archival Center, Tamale, Ghana
Authors: Patterson K. David
Published: May 2006

The Regional Archival Center at Tamale contains extensive documentation on the former Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, which today make up the Northern and Upper Regions of Ghana. The bulk of the records relating to the colonial period are held in the main repository in Accra, but any scholar working on a northern topic should plan to visit Tamale. While there is a tendancy for “older” (i.e., pre-1940 materials) to be in Accra and for more recent items and Native Authority records to be in Tamale, there is no hard and fast rule, and many exceptions and duplications exist.

There is no catalog for the collection. Accession lists for the seventeen classifi¬cations employed are quite helpful, but they are often somewhat sketchy and sometimes give little indication of the actual contents of a file or the time period which it covers. Following is a list of the classifications, together with titles of selected files, to illustrate their extent and the types of material they contain.
Traditions of Genesis and the Luba Diaspora
Authors: Reefe Thomas Q.
Published: May 2006

Origin stories are an important genre of central African oral traditions. Historians have long been intrigued by these stories, for their plots tell of the beginnings of societies and of the founding of ruling dynasties. It has been possible to cross-check the information in the oral traditions of many of the societies of west central Africa against data in Portuguese written records dating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These documents have helped to direct investigators towards the best assumptions to make when analyzing the oral traditions of west central African societies. However, writing the early history of the savanna societies in the very middle of central Africa (in southern Zaire and northern Zambia) has always been hampered by the absence of written documents which describe the area much before the early nineteenth century. Historians studying the early political history of these societies have been forced to link the events and characters of origin stories to each other without any anchor in written documentation.

Recently, doubts have been raised about the nature and function of origin stories. It is no longer clear that the first step in studying the early history of central African savanna societies is to compare different origin stories with each other, as one would a group of written documents, in order to establish a consistent historical story-line or narrative. Rather, questions raised about the nature of origin stories have brought out the point that the first step in writing the early history of this area is to resolve methodological and historiographical issues, before the historical essence can be distilled from these tales.
The Archives of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (C.I.C.M.)
Authors: Raskin Albert
Published: May 2006

Since China was initially the favorite field of activity of the C.I.C.M. founded at Scheut (a suburb of Brussels) in 1862, it is not surprising that the oldest documents in its archives refer to the China missions. In 1888, however, three years after the establishment of the Independent State of the Congo, the first C.I.C.M. missionaries were sent out there and their successors still continue their activities. Thus nowadays a very important part of the archives concerns the Congo, covering a period of nearly ninety years.

At first the Apostolic Vicariate entrusted to the C.I.C.M. missionaries covered the entire extent of the Congo except for parts of the Apostolic Vicariate of Tanganyika, created two years earlier and given to the White Fathers to administer. Gradually, however, other missionaries came to help the C.I.C.M. pioneers and were put in charge of various territories which had originally been part of the Apostolic Vicariate. Eventually the C.I.C.M. retained only Leopoldville and its surrounding area, and the regions of Lower Congo, Equator, Lake Leopold II, and Kasai which, from the religious point of view, gave rise to the present C.I.C.M. provinces of Kinshasa, Boma, Lisala, Budjala, Inongo, Kananga, and East Kasai. This dismemberment explains why the documents preserved in the archives become more and more concentrated on these regions.
Drake's Fake: A Curiosity Concerning a Spurious Visit to Asante in 1839
Authors: McCaskie T. C.
Published: May 2006

A wholly fraudulent source is an unusual occurrence in historical research. What is much more common and of much more intellectual interest is the discovery of a source that skilfully combines spurious invention with some regard for accuracy and convincing detail. This second kind of source is of course very familiar to historians of Africa, and the present note deals with a document of this type that, among other things, purports to offer a brief first-hand account of life in Kumase in 1839. I am chiefly concerned hare with the accuracy or inaccuracy of this piece of reportage; and--unusually for precolonial Africa--the document presently under review can be directly compared with a number of other precisely contemporary written accounts of life in Kumase.

In his pioneering work published over thirty years ago on the suppression of the illicit nineteenth-century slave trade from Africa, Christopher Lloyd remarked on the paucity of first-hand accounts authored by slave traders. He also offered a number of judicious observations respecting the veracity or reliability of such accounts of this type as did exist. In his treatment of the workings of the illegal West African slave trade, Lloyd relied very heavily on one of the annotated editions of the memoirs of Théodore Canot (alias Théophile Conneau). Canot or Conneau is justly famous, and in the intervening years since the appearance of Lloyd's book this important source has become something of an exegetical industry among historians of West Africa.
The Resources of Paris Missionary Archives and Libraries for the History of Gabon
Authors: Gardinier David E.
Published: May 2006

The first members of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost arrived in the Gabon estuary in 1844. Their activities were largely confined to the northern shore of the estuary and nearby Cape Esterias until 1878. When they began to establish posts on the coasts from Loango to Rio Muni and at various points in the Ogooué and N'Gounié valleys. The establishment of New Kamerun and the coming of the First World War delayed their penetration into the Fang areas of the northern interior until the 1920s. Prior to the early 1880s all of Gabon belonged to the Vicariate Apostolic of the Two Guineas with its bishop at Libreville. After that time the southern coasts were assigned to the new Vicariate Apostolic of Loango. Loango itself formed part of the colony of Gabon until 1918 when it was definitively attached to the Middle Congo.

The kinds of records deriving from the Spiritan presence in Gabon, which are housed in the mother house of the French province, include: (1) the Bulletin Général de la Congrégation, handwritten from 1857 to 1885 and then printed. The Bulletin summarizes the activities of each vicariate and each mission station, annually at first and then for periods of two to four years. (2) Annual and five-year reports to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome; annual reports to the Oeuvres de la Propagation de la Foi and the Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance, French lay organizations which provided the bulk of the funds for missionary activities; reports to the superior-general of the congregation and later to the secretary for African missions.
Taking Arms Against a Sea of Scholarship: Serial Bibliographies and Indexes of Interest to African Historians
Authors: Henige David
Published: May 2006

Hopkins' observation that bibliographies are “the basis of all academic study” would seem to be indisputable. Yet this paper is in large part a response to a study that indicates that, if not open to dispute in principle, in practice this dictum is more widely ignored than heeded. The study in question purports to demonstrate that, by and large, historians admittedly do not attempt to make systematic use of bibliographic tools, relying instead on footnotes, word of mouth, and serendipity, thereby falling short of their academic obligation to be exhaustive in the research enterprise. I was reluctant at first to credit this claim, preferring to put it down to a defect in the questionnaire approach of the author. But then I discovered that the latest edition of the Jahresberichte für deutsche Geschichte, by far the pre-eminent German historical bibliography, had escaped deflowering (that is, its pages had remained uncut) on the shelves of our Reference Department for nearly two years!

One robin does not, as they say, make a spring and I would hesitate to draw any far-reaching conclusions from this single example, no matter how egregious. Yet, when I began to search out historical bibliographies, I was surprised at how many there were, particularly so for serial bibliographies and indexes, of which I have so far found about 900, at least three times as many as I had naively anticipated initially.

Bibliographies come in a variety of forms. There are major retrospective bibliographies, which aim to include all or virtually all that has been published on a particular subject during a particular period of time. Such bibliographies sometimes appear as articles, but more often as books. For African studies, Scheven has undertaken to produce periodic indexes of bibliographies of this kind, in both formats.
A Report on the State of the Moroccan Archives
Authors: Park Thomas K.
Published: May 2006

A gradual transformation is taking place in Morocco in the ease with which it is possible to have access to archives. In a year and a half in Morocco my research in the archives both of Rabat and of the town of Essaouira was expedited by the administrators and ministries responsible in a way that approached what is current in England, for example. Those who have done archival research in Morocco will recognize the significance of such a change.

This report begins with a discussion of living accommodations in Morocco that may be of interest to those wishing to do research in the archives. Following this section I have tried to set out, first, the types of archives to be found, as well as their accessibility, and, second, the sorts of archival material likely to be found in each archive. Finally, I have appended a few suggestions about getting permission to do research in these archives. I can speak with accuracy for Rabat and Essaouira and, though it may be unwise to say they are representative of large and small towns, at least the two examples may be of some general significance.

Those who can afford to stay at the Rabat Hilton may skip this section because it is targeted to those who cannot or would prefer not to spend that much money. A fairly inexpensive hotel, yet one that a North American would feel comfortable in, is fairly easy to find in most of the major cities or towns of Morocco. These would run about $20 to $30 a night for two people. In Rabat two possibilities are: BELERE (33, Av. Moulay Youssef) and LES OUDAYAS (4, Rue Tobrouk). Both are within an easy walk of the Royal Archives and the Archives of the Bibliothèque Générale.