bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Prejudice and Ignorance in Reviewing Books about Africa: The Strange Case of Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Emperor (1983)
Authors: Marcus Harold G.
Published: May 2006

In 1983 Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich issued an English version of Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Emperor, Downfall of an Autocrat, published originally in 1978. Of the fifteen reviews I have read, none was written by an Ethiopianist who might have been expected to know something about Ethiopia's most durable emperor (r. 1916-1974). In other words, the published reviews reflect ignorance about the book's subject, so much so that the critics, to a person, found that the book was not about Ethiopia, or even the emperor, but was about Poland and its then dictator Edward Gierek. They fell for the notion, origanlly invented by the book's bitter Polish readers, that The Emperor was an allegory I They comment, therefore, that Haile Sellassie's story merely “illustrates exactly how the mighty rule, and why, as a result, they fall.” Had I been asked to review Kapuscinski's book, I would have regarded the volume as a serious effort to explain Haile Sellassie and commented accordingly.

I would first have stated that Kapuscinski had written a flawed book because he had uncritically believed his informants, several of whom told tall tales about the short monarch. A few examples will suffice to clarify this point. One, Mr. Richard as he is called by several raconteurs, reported that the emperor had a little dog that was permitted to urinate on the shoes of courtiers and that there was a servant whose sole duty was to wipe the offending shoes dry. True, the emperor enjoyed small dogs, but he never would have permitted any animal to humiliate his courtiers. Second, Kapuscinski recounts that the emperor's sole teacher was a French Jesuit, who never was able to inculcate reading into his young charge. In fact, the young Haile Sellassie had several teachers, among them two Capucins but nary a Jesuit. His Ethiopian Capucin, Father Samuel, introduced his student to the classics of Ethiopian and Western philosophical literature and instilled in him a profound respect for reading and learning. Third, Haile Sellassie was, by all reports, a sedulous reader in Amharic, French, and, later, in English. He not only perused books but also reports, newspapers, and magazines. Furthermore, he wrote instructions and orders, giving the lie to Kapuscinski's absurd statement (8): “Though he ruled for half a century, not even those closest to him knew what his signature looked like.”
Deferring to Trade in Slaves: The Jola of Casamance, Senegal in Historical Perspective
Authors: Linares Olga F.
Published: May 2006

An ever-growing literature on West African slavery has, for obvious reasons, tended to concentrate on societies that developed complex forms of domestic slavery and/or were closely tied to the export trade. Three major collections on slavery published in the last ten years deal almost exclusively with such groups. The history of peaples who refused, at least in the beginning, to take captives for the purpose of selling them to outsiders or keeping them for themselves has been ignored. And yet these acephalous groups are very instructive. They illustrate how certain structural features and other cultural preferences may have impeded, or at least retarded, the development of indigenous slaving institutions.

This paper discusses the role of slavery in a marginal area of the Upper Guinea coast. Emphasis will be placed on how practices surrounding the acquisition and disposal of captives were embedded in local institutions. Because these practices developed in the context of Africans dealing with each other, and not exclusively in the context of their dealings with the Europeans, they reflected modes of thinking and organizations intrinsic to certain forest groups of west Africa. A comprehensive history of why the Jola of Lower Casamance, Senegal, were slow to develop various kinds of slaving practices emphasizes their resistance to currents of change affecting the political economy of this region before, during, and after the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade.
Africana Resources in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England
Authors: Hendrix Melvin K.
Published: May 2006

Beginning in the latter part of the sixteenth century British naval and shipping interests gradually emerged as one of the major maritime forces operating in African waters and, by the end of the eighteenth century, British shipping dominated the export slave trade. The establishment of colonial plantation economies in the Americas, the global expansion of British political and commercial interests resulting from the Napoleonic Wars, and the anti-slave trade suppression campaign in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century all brought British seafarers into intimate association with African peoples. This relationship became more intense with the scramble for colonial territories throughout the continent in the late nineteenth century.

As a direct consequence of this extensive political and economic relationship a voluminous amount of documentary material exists. One of the principal depositories of this material is the National Maritime Museum (NMM) of Great Britain located in Greenwich, southeast of Central London. This essay reviews some of the documentary holdings found in the Library of the NMM, resources that scholars might find useful in reconstructing British maritime activities in relation to peoples of African descent. Located within the Museum its holdings include printed books and other printed materials, maps and atlases, rare and original manuscripts, ship's plans and drawings, collections on shipwrecks, piracy, and boats, together with various photographic and art collections. While the Library is free and open to the public, it is helpful to contact the Secretary of the NMM with a letter of introduction prior to a first visit.
From Heroism to History: Mapondera and the Northern Zimbabwean Plateau, 1840-1904
Authors: Beach D. N.
Published: May 2006

Mapondera was born in the 1840s and spent most of his life in the upper and middle Mazowe valley until in about 1894 he embarked on a career that reached its climax in 1901 when he and a large group of allies fought a pitched battle with the Rhodesian colonial authorities that led to his trial and imprisonment. Few people of his time and region have received as much attention from modern writers: articles, sections of books and a historical novel have been based on his career, and he has even had an important building named after him.

This paper examines his life. It is a long paper, partly because there is so much evidence available, but also because the evidence is often vague or contradictory on certain crucial points. For example, his son and grandson could not even agree on the identity of his father. Such points must be discussed in detail before even tentative conclusions are drawn. This paper also differs from others in that most works introduce the reader to the subject by reviewing the historiography. In this case an attempt will be made to examine the evidence first and then to refer to previous writing, to allow the readers to form their own conclusions unaffected by earlier views. It also tries to use only the terminology that would have been familiar to Mapondera and his contemporaries. Thus it refers tovarunguandvazungunot Rhodesian or Portuguese colonialists, and it refers to non-African individuals by their African names.
Virtù, andFortunain Radama's Nascent Bureaucracy, 1816–1828
Authors: Berg Gerald M.
Published: May 2006

“I suppose pedigree and land belong to a fine match,” said Deronda coldly. “The best horse will win in spite of pedigree, my boy. You remember Napoleon'smoi-je suis ancêtre,” said Sir Hugo, who habitually undervalued birth, as men dining well agree that the good life is distributed with wonderful equality. “I am not sure I want to be an ancestor,” said Deronda. “It doesn't seem the rarest sort of origination.”

In the late eighteenth century Imerina was checkered with a myriad of tiny principalities, each ruled from hilltop fortresses. In just fifty years from 1780 to 1830, it was unified under a single ruler, drawing Merina into increasingly wider systems of obedience and creating a vastimperiumthat held sway over most of the island of Madagascar, a landmass the size of France, Belgium, and Holland combined.

And yet, the half century of tumultuous change that characterized the empire's rise brought no revolution in the Merina's own understanding of the world of power, a view which I have termedhasinaideology. Merina saw historical reality as the product not of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence,hasina, which flowed downwards on obedient Merina from long—of dead ancestors in a sacred stream that connected all living Merina. For obedient Merina, politics consisted in nothing more and nothing less than the lifelong quest to position oneself favorably in that sacred stream as close as possible to ancestors and then to reap the material benefits of that cherished association. Ancestors made their pleasure known by bestowing blessings, “superior”hasina, on those who honored them.
Two Lives of Mpamizo: Understanding Dissonance in Oral History
Authors: Willis Justin
Published: May 2006

In August 1993 and February 1994 I conducted two interviews with a woman in Buhweju, a county in southwestern Uganda. The interviews were part of a series concerning the social and political history of Buhweju, which is now part of Bushenyi District. In the precolonial period, Buhweju was a small autonomous polity ruled by an hereditary “king;” in the colonial period it was subsumed into the neighboring kingdom of Nkore, which became known as Ankole.

The first interview, like most of my interviews, focused on the history of the family of the interviewee, and she said that her paternal grandfather, whose name was Mpamizo, had been a Hima, or pastoralist. In Buhweju, and elsewhere in Ankole, this meant, and still means, very much more than simply being a keeper of cattle. The agriculturalist Iru and pastoralist Hima share the same language and much of the same culture, but speak and behave differently in a number of significant ways (diet and mode of subsistence being prominent among these), so that whether one is a pastoralist or an agriculturalist is very apparent to any other member of society. The woman to whom I was talking is very evidently an Iru, an agriculturalist, in her manner and in the way she lives, as is her husband, and so I was surprised to hear that her grandfather was a Hima, a pastoralist. It was partly for this reason that I went back to talk to her again: but on the second occasion, there was an important shift in her presentation of Mpamizo—a dissonance in her account of the past. Mpamizo, she now said, was an Iru. This dissonance is the subject of this paper, for it holds important lessons both about society in Buhweju and about the ways in which we interpret oral accounts of the past.
The Archives and Library of the Berlin Mission Society
Authors: van der Heyden Ulrich
Published: May 2006

This paper highlights a rich source of history of the cultures of foreign peoples hitherto referred to little by academics—the archive and library of the Berlin Mission Society, now the Berliner Missionswerk. It will discuss the immense opportunities that the library and the archives offer for academic research. It is not intended to be a history of the Berlin Mission Society or its institutions but will rather suggest initial points of interest for further investigation. I shall also refer to the present state of research in both history and anthropology of foreign peoples based on an assessment of the materials available in the mission societies in the former German Democratic Republic. This paper then is less a contribution to theoretical problems than an attempt to draw the attention of historians, anthropologists and others to the resources of the Berlin Mission Society.

In the street called Georgenkirchstrasse, No. 70, in East Berlin, opposite the fairy tale Fountain of Friedrichshain and the famous park, is the Berlin Mission House, built in 1873—the location of the Berlin Mission Society, founded in 1824. Until 1991 the latter was called the Ecumenical Missionary Centre/Berlin Mission Society (Ökumenisch-Missionarisches Zentrum/Berliner Missionsgesellschaft).

As one of the largest missionary societies, its missionaries have worked since the mid-nineteenth century in South Africa and later in China and East Africa. In the long history of the Berlin Mission many printed and unpublished texts, as well as drawings, maps, and photographs were collected. The archives retain 270 meters of file. There are also the records of other missions, as well as the largest specialist library for missions and ecumenical movements (50,000 volumes and scholarly papers) in the former GDR.
Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships
Authors: Keita S. O. Y.
Published: May 2006

This discussion seeks to evaluate some of the previous writings on the biological origins of the northern Nile valley population or peoples, who came to be known as “ancient Egyptians.” The subject is of interest for three reasons. The first is that Egypt lies at a geographical crossroads and would have been subject to possible colonization or migration from all directions. The second is that Egypt is in Africa and there is no scientific reason to think that Egyptians would not share some biological origins with other Africans. The third reason is that previous discussions have been misguided in focusing on “race” as opposed to biological affinity. There seems to be a problem in understanding that human genetic variation cannot always be easily described. Genetic origins can cut across ethnic (sociocultural or national) lines. At what village along the Nile valley today would one describe the “racial” transition between “Black” and “White”—assuming momentarily that these categories are real? It could not be done.
Saving Francophone Africa's Statistical Past
Authors: Gervais Raymond R. , Marcoux Richard
Published: May 2006

Colonial administration, as every other administration, was built on the production and management of numbers: export figures (to assess the economic performance of each colony); population estimates, often falsely labeled “censuses” (to establish each colony's capacity to pay the head tax); school enrollment statistics (to establish budgets and document the road to “civilization”). French colonialism was probably one of the more centralized and number-producing systems. The regional (e.g., Dakar) and central (Paris) capitals were always requesting data for budgeting or simply for monitoring the evolution of each component of the empire.

In the field of population statistics, before 1945 the process yielded very few reliable data, though a more systematic examination is required to be sure. Historically this can be explained by the evolution both of data collection and training in statistics in France during the first half of the twentieth century. The situation was well documented in the first decades of the century by Fernand Faure, a prominent member of the Société de Statistique de Paris, who noted that training in statistics was not very popular in the French civil service because no specific demand was made by higher levels of administrative or political power. Nevertheless, the Société and individuals in the Statistique Générale de France did succeed in pressing for the creation in 1922 of the Institut Supérieur de Statistique de l'Université de Paris (ISUP), but the lack of means at the institute made it virtually impossible for it to meet its training objectives.
Memory, Myth and Ethnicity: A Review of Recent Literature and Some Cases from Zaire
Authors: Turner Thomas E.
Published: May 2006

Historians, facing “an interconnected crisis of content, method and audience,” have attempted to resolve this crisis by calling upon “a new inter-disciplinary approach to the study and understanding of human memory” (Thelen, 1989a:B1). I believe that such an interdisciplinary approach can shed much light on the phenomenon of ethnicity. I shall attempt to demonstrate this point by examining a number of recent works dealing with the historical identity of the English and with “tribalism” (cultural identity) in southern Africa. Then I shall attempt to apply some of the insights gained to interviews I conducted in Sankuru Sub-Region (Kasai Oriental Region, Republic of Zaire) in 1970.

According to Thelen, the crisis of content in the discipline of history arose out of the need to publish or perish. Scholars have researched and written about increasingly specialized topics. “Common questions about how people make sense of their pasts go unasked” (Thelen 1989a:B1).
Textual Incest: Nathaniel Isaacs and the Development of the Shaka Myth
Authors: Wylie Dan
Published: May 2006

Literary practitioners have long been, often uncomfortably, aware of the ambivalently fruitful and constraining rhetorical influences of the past. Writers successively utilize or rebel against traditional tropes, poetic conventions, and narrative norms, balancing cultural depth against individualist innovation, acceptability against rejection, public intelligibility against the opacity of private connotation. By such gestures towards the traditions, literature challenges, upholds, or leaves unquestioned the moral, political, and cultural pre-suppositions of its day.

South African historiography is less aware than it might be of its textuality, in this sense, of its immersion in a similar “anxiety of influence,” as Harold Bloom has termed it. Little attention has been paid to its rhetorical lineaments and heritage or to the ways historians have read, used, and departed from one another. This is dramatically illustrated by the case of the historiography of Shaka Zulu (assassinated in 1828). Nowhere else has such poverty of evidence and research spawned such a massively unquestioned, long-lived, and monolithic “history.” Only in the last decade has the legendary, verbal construction of the Shaka figure been seriously questioned; only in 1991, at an important colloquium at the University of the Witwatersrand, was something approaching an academic consensus reached that themfecane—the notion of Shaka's Zulus as the “storm-center” of a sub-continental explosion of autophagous, black-on-black violence—was no longer a credible vehicle for understanding the early nineteenth century in southern Africa.
The Vaitupu Company Revisited: Reflections and Second Thoughts on Methodology and Mindset
Authors: Munro Doug
Published: May 2006

It has been said that “Old movies seen again after many years seem different not because they have altered but because we have.” For the same reason, a rereading of older historical texts will convey different meanings, and reveal deficiencies and perhaps even profundities that were not initially apparent. In this paper, these observations are applied to a piece of research that was special to me at the time. I now see more clearly the extent to which my methods and mindset were a product of time, of place, and of my own training and preferences. So I will retrace my footsteps—insofar as is possible after all these years—and consider how the preconceptions and expectations of the moment affected the outcome. In other words, to reflect on the nature of thinking and writing.

My research was not concerned with African but Pacific Islands history. From the mid 1970s through to the early 1980s I engaged in dissertation work in the nineteenth-century history of Tuvalu, formerly the Ellice Islands. Older maps will identify Tuvalu as the southern portion of a British dependency, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (astride the equator and just east of the International Date Line). The nine Tuvalu islands are tiny even by the standards of coral atolls; by far the largest is Vaitupu at about six square kilometers, and the group remains economically unimportant and strategically insignificant. During the nineteenth century Tuvalu was incorporated into the world economy through the whaling industry and the copra trade, and further exposed to Western influences by missionization. The paucity of exploitable resources, however, coupled with an inhospitable environment and smallness of scale, rendered the islands unsuitable for large-scale European settlement and muted the potential disruptions of outside contacts. But there were aberrant events, such as the Vaitupu Company, which placed individual island communities under strain from time to time.
Muhammadu Agigi's Trans-Saharan Saga by Haji Ahmadu Kano: Comments on an Early Hausa Dramatic Text
Authors: Ahmed Umaru B.
Published: May 2006

The material under review comprises two texts of dramatic narratives in Hausa by one “Hajj Ahmed” (henceforth Haji Ahmadu) Kano, who was based in Tunis. The narration was done in 1902, and the story was about the trans-Saharan journey of another Bakano or Kano citizen, from Tripoli to Kano. This traveler was a merchant called Muhammadu Agigi. Haji Ahmadu's narratives were done at the instance of a German scholar and traveler, Rudolf Prietze, who specified the form, which was dialogue, the narration should take. Prietze subsequently had the recorded material annotated, translated, edited and published. Prietze's article appeared under the general title “Wüstenreise des Haussa-Händlers Mohammed Agigi” (“The Journey of the Hausa Trader Muhammadu Agigi Through the Desert”) with the sub-title “Gespräche eines Kaufherrn auf der Reise nach Kano” (“Conversations of a Merchant En Route to Kano”), and was published in two parts (“Von Ghadames nach Rhat [Ghat]” and “Gespräche in Rhat”) in Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin (1924), 1-36,175-246.
Portuguese Documents on Africa and Some Problems of Translation
Authors: Hair P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

In 1983 a note in History in Africa described a survey of Portuguese archive documents on West Africa organized by Vice-Admiral Avelino Teixeira da Mota but left stranded by his untimely death in 1982. The task of continuing the project—by extending the survey, completing the transcription of the survey documents and other relevant material, and publishing the transcripts—has latterly been taken up by the present successor of Teixeira da Mota in the directorship of the same scholarly unit, Dr Maria Emilia Madeira Santos. The first two volumes of Portugaliae Monuments Africana appeared in 1993 and 1995, volume 3 has been at the press since 1997, and the material for at least two more volumes is in advanced preparation. As the title shows, the geographical range of the series is wider than that of the original survey. The documents appear in Portuguese (or occasionally Latin). But a brief summary of each document is supplied in French and English, as well as in Portuguese, making the contents to some extent accessible even to those African historians who do not read (late-medieval) Portuguese. Having translated into English some thousand or so of these document summaries, I now discuss some of my problems in translating, and hence certain problems for African historians in using this material.

PMA earns all those responsible the highest commendation for undertaking this difficult project; it is invaluable for that period of early African-European contacts it progressively covers; and it deserves the support of the scholarly community. The comments that follow are intended to make it better known and to explain some of its features, advantages and limitations.
The Arquivo Historico de Moçambique and Historical Research in Maputo
Authors: Liesegang Gerhard
Published: May 2006

The Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique (hereafter AHM) holds mostly nineteenth- and twentieth-century documentation. Most of the documents available were generated by organs of the public (colonial) administration. There are very few fragmentary private papers (collected as “espólios”) and a few collections of documents originated by companies and associations (e.g., Notícias, Moçacor, ATCM, BNU).

In the 1890s, when the administrative capital of Mozambique was still on the Island of Moçambique, António Enes ordered all documents prior to the liberal revolution of 1833-34 to be sent to Lisbon. As a result most of the correspondence between the island of Moçambique and the colonial districts for the period ca. 1750-1830 (correspondence and registers and copies of outgoing correspondence in bound books) was sent to Lisbon where it can be consulted in the original in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarine Most of these now exist on microfilm in the AHM as well. In the 1930s the colonial intellectuals of Mozambique working in different government services founded a scientific society. The colonial administration added to this a cultural publication (Moçambique, Documentário Trimestral, 1935-1960), and also in 1934 the Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, which was set up step by step between 1938 and 1940. Originally, this was part of the Library of the Department of Statistics (Costa 1987:4). From 1943 to 1963 it was headed by Lt. Caetano Montez and collected nineteenth- and a few early twentieth-century documents and any archival material tranferred by their originating institutions and partly indexed them.
Faly aux vazaha: Eugène Bastard, Taboo, and Mahafale Autarky in Southwest Madagascar, 1899
Authors: Kaufmann Jeffrey C.
Published: May 2006

This paper examines a transformation in Mahafale relations with the French at the end of the nineteenth century. The study is based on an analysis of Eugène Bastard's published accounts of his travels among the northern Mahafale, a remnant of the Maroseraña dynasty, in 1899. Rather than disregard Bastard as a mere colonial propagandist, which he was in part, it is worth considering him as a potential source on Mahafale history and ethnography at the beginning of the colonial period. Of central interest is his account of transgressing an old taboo,faly aux vazaha, that had kept all Mahafale territories except the coastal “exterior” closed to Europeans for generations.

Removing this idea of “tabooed white foreigners,” which Bastard thought would ease Mahafale submission to the French, was not as easy as he assumed. Each “headman” in the region, and there were many, could negotiate his own position toward this taboo. Moreover,faly aux vazahawas deeply rooted in the structure of Mahafale society, connected with group identity and an ideal of autarky or independence from others. Tampering with this taboo, this vehicle of resistance to external power, heaped new problems on the French. The more militant Mahafale responded with armed resistance, which continued until the French, using biological warfare, finally subdued the last pockets of resistance around 1930. Although Bastard oversimplified the meaning of this taboo and its removal, his reports show Mahafale actors struggling with a central part of their social structure during a turbulent historical period.
Herodotus on the Garamantes: A Problem in Protohistory
Authors: McCall Daniel F.
Published: May 2006

The Garamantes first come to our notice with Herodotus' Survey of Libya. Hekataeus of Miletus traveled along the Libyan coast over half a century before Herodotus, but his work is preserved only in fragments. Hekataeus may have mentioned the Garamantes, but if so, that part of his work has not survived. TheHistoriesof Herodotus (iv.174) lists the “Garamantes” among the peoples of eastern Libya, giving to each a brief description; and iv.183 refers to them in another list, this one a sequence of stopping places on a desert trail which includes “the country of the Garamantes.”

The earlier paragraph had fewer than half a dozen lines and the later one fewer than two dozen; not very much in total, but as Vansina has recently affirmed, the medievalist's axiom also applies to Africa: “the fewer the sources… the more they are treasured and scrutinized.”

The intent of this paper is to attempt to determine how the two references, four paragraphs apart, are related to each other; and thereby to prepare the way to extract as much as we can learn from these two references about the Garamantes in the time of Herodotus, the fifth century BC.
The Moravian, Berlin, and Leipzig Mission Archives in Eastern Germany
Authors: Sunseri Thaddeus
Published: May 2006

The reunification of the Germanies in 1990 has opened up research opportunities for historians of Africa. While research in East German archives was possible for Western scholars during the Cold War, conditions for research were not as easy or affordable as they currently are. Intent on obtaining foreign exchange, East German authorities channeled Western researchers to expensive hotels and limited the number of files a researcher could see in a day in order to prolong the process. Visas had to be obtained well in advance of research trips, and for prescribed durations, curtailing the flexibility one needed if archival materials proved to be especially rich. From the Western side, while the Federal Republic was generous in allocating funds for research in its archives (particularly through DAAD—German Academic Exchange Service—research grants), it prohibited use of those funds for research undertaken in East Germany. Today it is possible to use DAAD funds for travel and research throughout reunited Germany.

While federal and state archives in eastern Germany offer valuable resources for researchers interested in the former German colonies, mission archives located in the East have not been widely used by historians of Africa. For the most part these have been content to use published mission histories and newspapers as their sources of information, neglecting diaries, station reports, and correspondence which offer more nuanced and detailed pictures of African life.
Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script
Authors: Tuchscherer Konrad , Hair† P.E.H.
Published: May 2006

A cornerstone of the Western intellectual heritage is the fervent belief in the power of the written word to transform man and society. In this tradition, the existence of writing serves as a hallmark for civilization and a marker to separate history from prehistory. While a great deal of scholarly work has dispelled many myths about literacy, thus bridging “the great divide” between the written and the oral, our intellectual and emotional attachment to writing persists. This appears to be especially the case in reference to the origins of writing systems, many of the latter being claimed and reputed to have been “independently invented.” For those peoples most involved historically in such developments, the invention and use of original scripts are points of pride, and hence claims for the “authenticity” of the scripts, that is, for their invention and coming into use having been an entirely indigenous undertaking, are passionately guarded.

Historians of writing, however, are cautious of claims for independent invention. From ancient to modern times, the history of the development of writing has been characterized by a balance between “independent invention” and “stimulus diffusion.” While epigraphers and paleographers attempt to unravel the inevitably obscure origins of certain ancient scriptspossiblydevised in environments free from external influence, no script devised in the last two thousand years is likely to have emerged totally independent of the stimulus of some diffused knowledge of the previous history of scripts—at the very least, the mere idea of writing. Nonetheless, for many modern observers, any suggestion of an outside stimulus on the development of such scripts is considered virtual heresy, tantamount to an attack on the intellectual ability of the peoples who claim to have single-handedly devised the scripts.
Further Light on John Duncan's Account of the “Fellatah Country” (1845)
Authors: Law Robin
Published: May 2006

The kingdom of Dahomey (in the modern Republic of Bénin) was one of the African states best known to Europeans in the precolonial period, from its prominent role as a supplier of slaves for the trans-Atlantic trade. In the late eighteenth century it was said that the road from Ouidah, the coastal port of Dahomey, to Abomey, its royal capital 100 kilometers inland, was “perhaps the most beaten track, by Europeans, of any in Africa.” Beyond Abomey, however, European knowledge of the interior was limited, and prior to the nineteenth century based only upon hearsay. This reflected in part the deliberate policy of Dahomey, which normally sought to bar direct access to the interior, in defense of its position as middleman in the supply of slaves to the coast. Archibald Dalzel, who served as Governor of the British fort at Ouidah in 1767-70, opined that “to pass from [Abomey] towards the northern country was next to impracticable … from the extreme jealousy of the Dahomans and their government.” It was known, however, that the immediate northern neighbors of Dahomey, against whom it fought a series of wars during the eighteenth century, were the Mahi (commonly “Mahees” in contemporary sources). There were also vaguer reports of another people further inland, the Bariba (“Barrabas,” “Barbar” etc.) of Borgu, from whom, as well as from the Mahi, slaves were brought for sale at the coast.
Literate Ethnohistory in Colonial Zambia: The Case of Ifikolwe Fyandi na Bantu Bandi
Authors: Macola Giacomo
Published: May 2006

Most precolonial African states were characterized by a manifest disparity of control between center and periphery. This was certainly true of the kingdom of Kazembe, founded as a result of the collapse of the Ruund colony on the Mukulweji River towards the end of the seventeenth century and the subsequent eastward migration of an heterogeneous group of “Lundaized” titleholders. A set of flexible institutions and symbols of power helped the rulers of the emerging kingdom to maintain a degree of influence over much of southern Katanga and the westernmost reaches of the plateau to the east of the Luapula river. But in the lower Luapula valley, the heartland of the polity from about the mid-eighteenth century, eastern Lunda rule impinged more profoundly on the prerogatives of autochthonous communities and hence called for the elaboration of legitimizing devices of a special kind. In this latter context, the production and diffusion of an account of the prestigious beginnings of the Mwata Kazembes dynasty, its early dealings with the original inhabitants of the area, and later evolution served the dual purpose of fostering a dominant and discrete Lunda identity and cementing the links of subordination between foreign conquerors and local lineage or sub-clan leaders. This paper is an extended commentary on Ifikolwe Fyandi na Bantu Bandi, a mid-twentieth century offshoot of this royal tradition and a fine example of vernacular “literate ethnohistory.”

Nowadays, Ifikolwe Fyandi is first and foremost the “tribal bible” that shapes the ethnic consciousness of eastern Lunda royals and aristocrats and stifles the emergence of alternative historical discourses. Ifikolwe Fyandi, however, is more than yet another manifestation of the “ubiquity” of “feedback,” for its local hegemony is mirrored by its pervasiveness within the historiography of the eastern savanna of central Africa.
A Cupboard of Surprises: Working in the Archives of the Church of Uganda
Authors: Howell Caroline
Published: May 2006

I spent a month in Uganda on a ‘fact-finding mission,’ attempting to ascertain the general potential of the archives there for my D. Phil research. I planned to work in the manuscripts section of Makerere University library and in the Uganda National Archives at Entebbe. In addition, since my interest was in church-state relations in the pre-independence period, I was particularly keen to discover what church or mission material might be accessible to me. I knew of no researcher who had used local church records in recent years, and certainly not for the decolonization era.

Although I tried to secure institutional affiliation and research clearance prior to my departure (through MISR, the Makerere Institute of Social Research), I still had to climb a mountain of paperwork on arrival. At Makerere University itself, the library archives held some material of interest to me, such as an extensive newspaper collection, local church publications, some of the papers of the major political parties from the 1950s and 1960s, and a number of relevant research dissertations. Nevertheless, due to the prohibition of photocopying and a shutdown of at least two hours for lunch each day, working through it called on reserves of patience and negotiating skills that I did not realize I had!

At the Uganda National Archives, Entebbe, although a number of detailed handlists existed for early twentieth-century papers, later material was far less readily accessible. Files from the 1940s, for instance, did not appear to be cataloged at all.
Enhanced Mitogenic Signaling in Skeletal Muscle of Women With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Authors: Corbould Anne , Zhao Haiyan , Mirzoeva Salida , Aird Fraser , Dunaif Andrea
Published: May 2006

Insulin resistance in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) results from a postbinding defect in signaling. Insulin receptor and insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1 serine hyperphosphorylation by an unidentified kinase(s) contributes to this defect. We investigated whether insulin resistance is selective, affecting metabolic but not mitogenic pathways, in skeletal muscle as it is in cultured skin fibroblasts in PCOS. Extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK)1/2 activation was increased in skeletal muscle tissue and in cultured myotubes basally and in response to insulin in women with PCOS compared with control women. Mitogen-activated/extracellular signal–regulated kinase kinase (MEK)1/2 was also activated in PCOS, whereas p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphorylation and signaling from the insulin receptor to Grb2 was similar in both groups. The activity of p21Ras was decreased and Raf-1 abundance increased in PCOS, suggesting that altered mitogenic signaling began at this level. MEK1/2 inhibition reduced IRS-1 Ser312 phosphorylation and increased IRS-1 association with the p85 subunit of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase in both groups. We conclude that in PCOS skeletal muscle, 1) mitogenic signaling is enhanced in vivo and in culture, 2) ERK1/2 activation inhibits association of IRS-1 with p85 via IRS-1 Ser312 phosphorylation, and 3) ERK1/2 activation may play a role in normal feedback of insulin signaling and contribute to resistance to insulin’s metabolic actions in PCOS.
Overexpression of Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling 3 in Adipose Tissue Causes Local but Not Systemic Insulin Resistance
Authors: Shi Hang , Cave Belinda , Inouye Karen , Bjørbæk Christian , Flier Jeffrey S.
Published: May 2006

In adipocytes, suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS)3 deficiency increases insulin-stimulated insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1 and -2 phosphorylation, IRS-associated phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase activity, and insulin-stimulated glucose uptake. Moreover, SOCS3 is required for tumor necrosis factor-α full inhibition of insulin-stimulated IRS-1 and -2 phosphorylation, phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase activity, and glucose uptake. Whether SOCS3 also inhibits adipocyte insulin signaling in vivo and whether this action further affects systemic insulin sensitivity is not clear. We therefore generated a transgenic mouse (aP2-SOCS3 mouse) overexpressing SOCS3 in adipose tissue. Overexpression of SOCS3 in adipocytes decreases IRS1 protein levels and subsequent insulin-stimulated IRS-1 and -2 phosphorylation, decreases p85 binding to IRS-1, and leads to decreased insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in adipocytes. This impaired insulin signaling in adipose tissue of aP2-SOCS3 mice causes decreased lipogenesis and blocks insulin’s antilipolytic action. However, because of decreased energy partitioning in adipose tissue, aP2-SOCS3 mice are resistant to diet-induced obesity and are protected against systemic insulin resistance caused by a high-fat diet. Therefore, overexpression of SOCS3 in adipocytes causes local adipocyte insulin resistance, but it is not sufficient to cause systemic insulin resistance.
Role of Hepatic Glycogen Breakdown in Defective Counterregulation of Hypoglycemia in Intensively Treated Type 1 Diabetes
Authors: Kishore Preeti , Gabriely Ilan , Cui Min-Hui , Di Vito Joseph , Gajavelli Srikanth , Hwang Jong-Hee , Shamoon Harry
Published: May 2006

Impairment of hypoglycemic counterregulation in intensively treated type 1 diabetes has been attributed to deficits in counterregulatory hormone secretion. However, because the liver plays a critical part in recovery of plasma glucose, abnormalities in hepatic glycogen metabolism per se could also play an important role. We quantified the contribution of net hepatic glycogenolysis during insulin-induced hypoglycemia in 10 nondiabetic subjects and 7 type 1 diabetic subjects (HbA1c 6.5 ± 0.2%) using 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, during 2 h of either hyperinsulinemic euglycemia (plasma glucose 92 ± 4 mg/dl) or hypoglycemia (plasma glucose 58 ± 3 mg/dl). In nondiabetic subjects, hypoglycemia was associated with a brisk counterregulatory hormone response (plasma epinephrine 246 ± 38 vs. 2,785 ± 601 pmol/l during hypoglycemia, plasma norepinephrine 1.9 ± 0.2 vs. 2.5 ± 0.3 nmol/l, and glucagon 38 ± 7 vs. 92 ± 17 pg/ml, respectively, P < 0.001 in all), and a relative increase in endogenous glucose production (EGP 0.83 ± 0.14 mg · kg−1 · min−1 during euglycemia yet ∼50% higher with hypoglycemia [1.30 ± 0.20 mg · kg−1 · min−1], P < 0.001). Net hepatic glycogen content declined progressively during hypoglycemia to 22 ± 3% below baseline (P < 0.024). By the final 30 min of hypoglycemia, hepatic glycogen fell from 301 ± 14 to 234 ± 10 mmol/l (P < 0.001) and accounted for ∼100% of EGP. In marked contrast, after an overnight fast, hepatic glycogen concentration in type 1 diabetic subjects (215 ± 23 mmol/l) was significantly lower than in nondiabetic subjects (316 ± 19 mmol/l, P < 0.001). Furthermore, the counterregulatory response to hypoglycemia was significantly reduced with small increments in plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine (126 ± 22 vs. 448 ± 16 pmol/l in hypoglycemia and 0.9 ± 0.3 vs. 1.6 ± 0.3 nmol/l, respectively, P < 0.05 for both) and no increase in plasma glucagon. EGP decreased during hypoglycemia with no recovery (1.3 ± 0.5 vs. 1.2 ± 0.3 mg · kg−1 · min−1 compared with euglycemia, P = NS), and hepatic glycogen concentration did not change significantly with hypoglycemia. We conclude that glycogenolysis accounts for the majority of EGP during the first 90 min of hypoglycemia in nondiabetic subjects. In intensively treated type 1 diabetes, despite some activation of counterregulation, hypoglycemia failed to stimulate hepatic glycogen breakdown or activation of EGP, factors that may contribute to the defective counterregulation seen in such patients.
Genetic Mapping of Disposition Index and Acute Insulin Response Loci on Chromosome 11q
Authors: Palmer Nicholette D. , Langefeld Carl D. , Campbell Joel K. , Williams Adrienne H. , Saad Mohammed , Norris Jill M. , Haffner Stephen M. , Rotter Jerome I. , Wagenknecht Lynne E. , Bergman Richard N. , Rich Stephen S. , Bowden Donald W.
Published: May 2006

Glucose homeostasis, a defining characteristic of physiological glucose metabolism, is the result of complex feedback relationships with both genetic and environmental determinants that influence insulin sensitivity and β-cell function. Relatively little is known about the genetic basis of glucose homeostasis phenotypes or their relationship to risk of diabetes. Our group previously published a genome scan for glucose homeostasis traits in 284 African-American subjects from 21 pedigrees in the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study Family Study (IRASFS) and presented evidence for linkage to disposition index (DI) on chromosome 11q with a logarithm of odds (LOD) of 3.21 at 81 cM flanked by markers D11S2371 and D11S2002 (support interval from 71 to 96 cM). In this study, genotyping and analysis of an additional 214 African-American subjects in 21 pedigrees from the IRASFS yielded independent evidence of linkage to DI. When these two datasets were combined, a DI linkage peak was observed with an LOD of 3.89 at 78 cM (support interval from 67 to 89 cM). Fine mapping with 15 additional microsatellite markers in this 11q region for the entire 42 pedigrees resulted in an LOD score of 4.80 at 80 cM near marker D11S937 (support interval from 76 to 84 cM). In these 42 pedigrees, there was also suggestive evidence for linkage to acute insulin response (AIR) at two separate locations flanking the DI peak (64 cM, LOD 2.77, flanked by markers D11S4076 and D11S981; and 85 cM, LOD 2.54, flanked by markers D11S4172 and D11S2002). No evidence of linkage to the insulin sensitivity index (Si) was observed. Nine positional candidate genes were evaluated for association to DI and AIR. Among these candidates, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in muscle glycogen phosphorylase showed evidence of association with DI (P < 0.011). In addition, SNPs in the pyruvate carboxylase gene showed evidence of association (P < 0.002) with AIR. Further analysis of these candidate genes, however, did not provide evidence that these SNPs accounted for the evidence of linkage to either DI or AIR. These detailed genetic analyses provide strong evidence of a DI locus on 11q in African-American pedigrees, with additional suggestive evidence of independent AIR loci in the same region.
Synthesis and Conformational Analysis of Galactose‐Derived Bicyclic Scaffolds
Authors: Mari Silvia , Cañada F. Javier , Jiménez‐Barbero Jesús , Bernardi Anna , Marcou Gilles , Motto Ilaria , Velter Ingrid , Nicotra Francesco , La Ferla Barbara
Published: May 2006

Two novel galactose‐derived bicyclic acetamides were synthesized. The conformational behavior of these cyclic acetamides in aqueous solution was fully investigated. The NMR spectroscopic data suggests that the pyran ring interconverts between two (4C1, 1S3) or three (4C1, 1S3 and 1C4) conformations and molecular modelling studies allowed the structures’ geometries to be defined. Three different force fields were used (Amber*, MM3* and OPLSAA) and fitting procedures were employed to reproduce the experimental 3JH–H coupling constants and NOE contacts. Evaluation of the results established which of these three well‐known force fields were the most reliable in reproducing the experimental observations and should therefore be used for analogous design studies. (© Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2006)
Vibrational spectra of three new diarsenates containing scandium(III)
Authors: Baran Enrique J. , Schwendtner Karolina , Kolitsch Uwe
Published: May 2006

The powder Fourier transform (FT) infrared and Raman spectra of the new isotypic diarsenates RbScAs2O7, TlScAs2O7, and (NH4)ScAs2O7 are discussed with a factor group analysis, on the basis of their known structural characteristics. The spectroscopic behavior clearly reflects all the structural peculiarities and also confirms the rotational quenching of the NH4+ cation in (NH4) ScAs2O7. The crystal structure of TlScAs2O7 is also reported for the first time and is briefly discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Rapid MR elastography using selective excitations
Authors: Glaser Kevin J. , Felmlee Joel P. , Ehman Richard L.
Published: May 2006

Rapid MR elastography (MRE) techniques using spatially‐selective excitations to reduce acquisition times to a few seconds or less were devised and tested. The techniques included reduced field of view (rFOV) MRE and 1D MRE (beam MRE) using 2D spatially selective RF excitations for gradient‐echo (GRE) applications and intersecting 90° and 180° slice‐selective excitations for spin‐echo (SE) applications. It was shown that scan times could be reduced by a factor of 8 using rFOV MRE, and by 64 using beam MRE, while still obtaining stiffness estimates comparable to full‐FOV MRE. Results were shown in gel phantom experiments as well as in the case of a preserved postmortem breast tissue specimen with a stiff lesion. These methods can be used to more rapidly interrogate regions of interest (ROIs) in tissue to quickly obtain information about the viscoelastic properties of that tissue. Magn Reson Med, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.