bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Petrarch and the Black Death: From Fear to Monuments
Authors: Watkins Renee Neu
Published: May 2006

It was Petrarch's lot to live through the massive onslaught of bubonic plague in 1348 known as the Black Death. In poetry and prose, he recorded his subjective response. We know him indeed more intimately than any other man of the late medieval West. This paper concerns the way he looked at the event—the way he responded to private losses and to public calamity. My plan is essentially narrative, to tell a psychological story. The story helps to illuminate both Petrarch's creative processes and the way the Black Death touched and modified cultural history.

Petrarch scholars have recognized, of course, the centrality of the theme of death in his work. Of Bosco's Francesco Petrarca, it has been said, ‘Seeking a single key, [Bosco] views the sense of life's transitoriness as the radiant core of the Petrarch phenomenon … ‘.
The Rise of Secular Drama in the Renaissance
Authors: Bradner Leicester
Published: May 2006

The revival of the drama was not one of the accomplishments of the Renaissance. This revival had already taken place during the later Middle Ages, and by the twelfth century the plays connected with the festivals of the church had reached a considerable degree of complexity and dramatic effect. By the end of the fourteenth century the cycles of Biblical plays were well established, and in the fifteenth century they reached their greatest development. The rise of the moralities—those plays in which personified virtues and vices struggle for the possession of man's soul—also took place in the later Middle Ages, although the earliest references to them go back no further than the last quarter of the fourteenth century.
Sir Thomas More's Life of Pico della Mirandola
Authors: Lehmberg Stanford E.
Published: May 2006

Although the importance of Sir Thomas More's Life of John Picus, Earl of Mirandula in the development of the English biography has been noted, historians concerned with More's life and thought have singularly neglected the work. A study of it, however, reveals much of interest concerning More's psychological crisis of 1504, about his attitude towards the papacy, and about his desire to avoid public office.

More's Life of Pico, written in 1504, is not an original work. It is, rather, a translation of a biography written by Pico's nephew, Gianfrancesco Pico, as an introduction to Pico's collected works. More's translation is generally quite literal; he makes, however, a number of omissions and additions, and from these we can gain insight into certain of his own ideas.
Erasmus, Colet, and the Schoolboy Jesus
Authors: Rieger James Henry
Published: May 2006

And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.

And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers…

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business;

(Luke ii. 46-47, 49)

In September 1511 Robert de Keyzere published five poems written by Erasmus in honor of the new school ‘quern nuper instituit Coletus’ and of its ‘president’, the Boy Jesus. These poems, which are usually grouped together under the title Carmina scholaria, were evidently intended to be sung as hymns by the boys of St. Paul's; they are still so classified in the 1896 edition of Preces hymni et catechismus Graece et Latine in usum antiquae et Celebris Scholae S. Pauli, etc.
Denis Lambin: Humanist, Courtier, Philologist, and Lecteur Royal
Authors: Stevens Linton C.
Published: May 2006

The reputation of Denis Lambin as a scholarly commentator on the texts of Lucretius, Horace, and Cicero is well known to students of the French Renaissance, but his social activities, his relation to contemporary literary groups, and especially his critical opinions as expressed in his numerous orationes have not been adequately explored. As a Hellenist, Lambin was not the equal of Budè, Turnèbe, or Henri Estienne, but as a Latinist, his erudition was recognized by Joseph Scaliger and confirmed by the modern editor of Lucretius, Munro.

Like Postel, Lambin was of rather humble origin. His father, Nicolas Lambin, was a locksmith. After prehminary studies at Montreuil-surmer where he received the tonsure, he left for Paris at the age of fifteen. As he tells us himself, he began Greek at this time.
A Florentine Prison: Le Carceri delle Stinche
Authors: Wolfgang Marvin E.
Published: May 2006

Not Far from the majestic Santa Croce in Florence, there is a small street known as Isola delle Stinche. Students of the late middle ages and the early Renaissance have long neglected the meaning and significance of this street, and many well-informed residents of the city, including historians, have only vague notions about the name Stinche.

The present analysis is part of a larger study of crime and punishment in the early Renaissance. The original study focuses on Le Stinche, a Florentine prison that reflected changing currents of legal and penal thought from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the fall of the republic in 1530. I shall not here attempt to trace the development of criminal law and penal treatment that was manifested in the administration of the prison or in records of commitments of prisoners to the institution.
Sculptors' Partnerships in Michelozzo's Florence
Authors: McNeal Caplow Harriet
Published: May 2006

The study of the socio-economic aspects of artists' workshops and partnerships in early renaissance Florence has not stimulated much interest, perhaps because there remains the temptation to savor the romantic idea that the individual genius creates his masterpiece in solitude and sweat. But art production in the Renaissance was much like any other business, and its history in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries is inextricably tied to the workshop method. Few works of art were produced by the endeavors of one man alone, and in each city there were groups of artists working together in competing botteghe. The shop operated as a small clan with its own supporters, clients, and publicity, and often included carpenters, gilders, carvers of moldings, etc.—what we would call minor craftsmen.
Natural Law as the Foundation for an Autonomous Ethic: Pierre Charron's De la Sagesse
Authors: Horowitz Maryanne Cline
Published: May 2006

Living during the French religious wars, Pierre Charron (1541-1603) was acutely aware of the dangers inherent in basing morality on religion. The battles between the Huguenot minority and the Catholic majority raged in the pulpits as well as on the streets. Calvinist ministers flocking into France from Geneva gave leadership to Huguenot demands for religious liberty. While before 1562 most ministers tried to quell rather than incite riots, after war broke out many utilized their influence and their pulpits to aid the Protestant side. On the other side, the French Catholic clergy, aided by royal persecution edicts, was generally in favor of a policy of wiping out Huguenot heresy. Massacre, persecution, martyrdom, political resistance, and assassination became topics and events of the day.
The Archives of the Jesuit Province of Toulouse Relating to Madagascar
Authors: Berg Gerald M.
Published: May 2006

In the Jesuit scheme of things the missionary fields of Madagascar and Maduré (that is, Madura in south India) fell to the Order's Toulouse province. What follows is a brief description of some of the materials relating to Madagascar in the archives of the Toulouse Jesuits, based on a recent short visit there.

I might mention first the most important Jesuit missionary journal of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relating to Madagascar. Like most missionary periodical publications, this particular journal underwent several changes of title. Beginning publication in 1838 as Lettres des Scolastiques de Vals, the title was later changed to Lettres du scolasticat de Vals, and then to Lettres de Vals. From 1882 to 1897 it was known as Lettres d'Uclès, then until 1901, again as Lettres de Vals; finally, from 1903 until 1914 it was called Lettres de Gemert. The Toulouse archives has a complete set of these, none of which was originally issued for public consumption and hence are difficult to locate. As each of the titles suggests, this journal consisted of letters written from missionaries in the field to their Apostolic Vicars. Such letters were then excerpted and summarized and sent on to Vals, a Jesuit training seminary, for circulation among the missionaries in training there. Originally the excerpts were handcopied and arranged by region: Madagascar, India, Oceania, etc., but later they were lithographed or printed.
The Problem of the Lwo
Authors: Wrigley C.C.
Published: May 2006

The Lwo language, a cluster of dialects belonging to the Western branch of the Nilotic family, was spoken as a mother tongue at the end of the colonial period by some two and a half million people scattered over a vast area of the Upper Nile basin from the Shilluk country in the Sudan to central Uganda and from northeast Zaire to western Kenya. The several components of this stock vary greatly in size, from the five thousand people who comprise the Bor groups of the western Bahr el Ghazal to the Kenya Luo group with well over a million members. Despite their extraordinary numbers, however, the Luo--like the Bor, the Shilluk, the Anywak, and other groups in the Sudan--form an enclave among peoples of quite different speech; the main continuous block of Lwo-speakers is in northern Uganda, consisting of the Alur, Acholi, and Langi peoples, together with the Jo-pa-Lwo (or Chope) group, who live in the corner of the Bunyoro district that is formed by the Victoria Nile as it flows north and then west from Lake Kyoga to the Albert confluence.

This peculiar configuration, very different from the normal pattern of linguistic fragmentation in sub-Saharan Africa, offers historians a problem and an opportunity, for it must be the residuum of an unusual event or series of events. Languages cannot travel unless people carry them; and so it is reasonable to assume that the Lwo-speakers of a few centuries ago lived as a compact community, which developed an exceptional capacity both for the incorporation of aliens and the propagation of its own genes.
The East African Campaign in the Rhodesian Herald
Authors: Ofcansky Thomas P.
Published: May 2006

Although the East African campaign (1914-1918) was, in comparative terms, one of the Great War's minor episodes, it is a vital aspect of Africa's military history. Despite this importance, however, much remains unknown about this conflict, which claimed the lives of untold thousands of European and African soldiers. Understanding the operational and historical evolution of the campaign requires more than just a survey of books, articles, and official documentation. Newspapers such as the Leader of British East Africa and the East African Standard are invaluable sources for information about day-to-day fighting and living conditions. Unfortunately, very little work has been done with newspapers published outside the operational theater, which oftentimes contain materials unavailable elsewhere.

One of the most important newspapers in this category was the Rhodesia Herald. Apart from the Reuter's News Agency field dispatches, the newspaper included scores of articles and letters to the editor written by Rhodesians from the front or by family members who remained at home. These items covered a wide range of topics, including recruitment difficulties, experiences of individual soldiers, and, perhaps most importantly, the exploits of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment, which fought in the East African bush for twenty-three months.
How is Historical Knowledge Recognized?
Authors: Wamba-dia-Wamba Ernest
Published: May 2006

Historical knowledge exists in all human societies. It is the cognitive appropriation of socially-determined material transformations necessary for life process. We must begin with this fact. It is a form of social consciousness, a socially-determined interpretation of the movement of those transformations. But where do we find it and how do we recognize it? Where is the place of historical knowledge? Where and how does it exist? On the printed page, in books, of course, and prior to printing and writing, in oral traditions (all those forms of a human community's collective memory--some names of people or places; songs, stories, poems, legends, tales, cosmogonic myths; drawings, carvings, cave inscriptions, tablets, bone/bamboo inscriptions; languages; old roads; etc.). Historical knowledge exists nowadays as well on tapes, cassettes, computer memory, films, pictures, etc.

Historical knowledge exists in different degrees of elaboration, of truth character, of accuracy, as well as of scope. All human societies have undergone, and continue to undergo, social transformations. Some have experienced or experience more slow processes of movement than rapid ones and thus their social awareness of those processes of transformations has been or is less sharp. That is why the conscious control and social mastering of the social process of transformation has been or is less developed. Other societies at a certain level of world social process experienced or experience more rapid processes of transformations leading to sharper forms of social consciousness of those processes and specific needs of developing ways and tools for handling those processes.
Albert Luthuli and the African National Congress: A Bio-Bibliography
Authors: Woodson Dorothy C.
Published: May 2006

Seek ye the political kingdom and all shall be yours.

No minority tyranny in history ever survived the opposition of the majority. Nor will it survive in South Africa. The end of white tyranny is near.

In their Portraits of Nobel Laureates in Peace, Wintterle and Cramer wrote that “the odds against the baby born at the Seventh-Day Adventist Mission near Bulawayo in Rhodesia in 1898 becoming a Nobel Prize winner were so astronomical as to defy calculation. He was the son of a proud people, the descendant of Zulu chieftains and warriors. But pride of birth is no substitute for status rendered inferior by force of circumstance, and in Luthuli's early years, the native African was definitely considered inferior by the white man. If his skin was black, that could be considered conclusive proof that he would never achieve anything; white men would see to that. However, in Luthuli's case they made a profound mistake--they allowed him to have an education.”

If there is an extra-royal gentry in Zulu society, then it was into this class that Albert John Luthuli was born. Among the Zulus, chieftainship is hereditary only for the Paramount Chief; all regional chiefs are elected. The Luthuli family though, at least through the 1950s, monopolized the chieftainship of the Abasemakholweni (literally “converts”) tribe for nearly a century. Luthuli's grandfather Ntaba, was the first in the family to head the tribe and around 1900, his uncle Martin Luthuli took over.
Agaja and the Slave Trade: Another Look at the Evidence
Authors: Henige David , Johnson Marion
Published: May 2006

The Atlantic slave trade in its various manifestations has never lacked scholarly attention, be it disinterested or selfish. The major focus has often been on the motivations and roles of those who participated in the trade other than as victims. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, interest tended to be confined either to the apologists for the trade or to its critics; but in recent years, the matter has not failed to engage the attention of more serious enquiry.

As a major center of the trade throughout the period, Dahomey has been studied extensively from the very beginning. Much of the work has regarded Dahomey as the slave trading state par excellence. Recently, however, I.A. Akinjogbin has advanced the stimulating and appealing argument that the Dahomey state was created partially, but explicitly, in defensive reaction to early signs of European interest in slaves on the Guinea coast. Akinjogbin further argues that–although Dahomey did in fact eventually develop into an important slave trading polity–it did so reluctantly and only because the Europeans trading along the coast demanded slaves–and only slaves–for their own goods.

Needless to say, attractive arguments rather have a way of being more readily (and less discriminatingly) accepted, and Akinjogbin's interpretation of early Dahomey history has already re-appeared in several important recent works on the history of west Africa. With this in mind, the present paper has two purposes. First, it proposes to examine the validity of Akinjogbin's thesis by examining one particular aspect of his argument: the motives of the Dahomey ruler Agaja (ca. 1708 to 1740) in conquering the coastal states of Allada and Whydah between 1724 and 1727. In discussing Akinjogbin's elucidation of Agaja's motives, we propose to concentrate not so much on the logic of his argumentation, but on his use of the sources on which any assessment of Agaja's motives must be based. With a single exception the material examined here is the same used by Akinjogbin, and in this sense the first part of the paper should be seen as a study in the use of evidence and inference.

The second part of this paper will be an examination of European and Dahomean commercial activities in the first few years after the conquest of the two coastal states. The sources describing these activities suggest that the motives and mechanisms of all parties were more complex than generally assumed.
The Myth of Racial Strife and Merina Kinglists: The Transformation of Texts
Authors: Berg Gerald M.
Published: May 2006

Early history of the central highlands of Madagascar, called Imerina, must be written from oral literature. The first European account dates only to the late eighteenth century, long after the Merina monarchy arose, and it is not until the nineteenth century with the establishment of the London Missionary Society that detailed written sources appear. Moreover, unlike his colleagues in African history, the historian of Imerina cannot refer to archeology to test conclusions derived from oral sources since archeology in Imerina has only a few years of work behind it. Thus oral literature alone holds the key to questions about the foundations and growth of the Merina monarchy which by the mid-nineteenth century ruled all of Madagascar.

In one respect, however, the historian of ancient Imerina is more fortunate. The Merina have produced perhaps the largest corpus of historical literature in any part of Africa. I intend first to describe this literature and to point out in very general terms the problems of using it. I will focus not only on the Malagasy milieu which gave rise to historical material, but also on two related aspects of European influence. First, I will show how European ideas of social evolution penetrated Merina thinking. Second, and perhaps more important because it has received such scant attention, is the effect of the introduction of writing and printing on Malagasy texts. I consider this the outstanding historiographical problem: how did writing, editing, and redacting change the Merina's own view of their distant past. Finally, to illustrate general points raised in the first section of this study, I will examine a particular historical problem, the founding of monarchy, and show how the transformation of Merina kinglists through years of editing created a new vision of the past. I see this transformation of Malagasy texts by writing as the most important European influence on the development of a Merina history.
Himba Epochs
Authors: Gibson Gordon D.
Published: May 2006

In contrast to most other nonliterate African peoples, the Himba and Herero -- pastoral Bantu peoples of southwestern Africa -- have developed quasiannual chronologies based upon important episodes and occasional conditions of the region in which they live. For example, to establish the time of a personal or family event, a Himba may refer to the epoch of the disarming or the epoch of the locust invasion as readily as we refer to 1917 or 1923. Such a chronological system is naturally of interest to the student of African history, for it is a key to the events that are considered important by the Himba themselves. But beyond this, a system of ordered epochs is also of value for demographic and other sociological studies in which the ages of individuals are important for, while the Himba, like most non-literate peoples, do not enumerate the years of their lives or the years that have passed since crucial events, many are able to provide the names of the epochs of their birth, marriage, childrens' births, and so forth. It remains, then, for the investigator merely to correlate the epochal names with our numbered years in order to determine, with a fair degree of approximation, individuals' current ages and their ages at their life crises -- data which are important for certain kinds of detailed sociological research. In essence this procedure is simple enough, but establishing a sufficiently accurate correlation between the Himba epochs and the numbered years has proved to be a difficult task and one requiring a variety of approaches. The nature of the Himba epochal chronology and the method employed for correlating it with the years of the Christian calendar are the subjects of this paper.
Impeachable Source? On the Use of the Second Edition of Reindorf'sHistoryas a Primary Source for the Study of Ghanaian History - I
Authors: Jenkins Ray
Published: May 2006

“The matter in the first Edition has not undergone any radical change with the exception of a few alterations here and there …

The Rev. Carl Christian Reindorf began his research into the history of the Gold Coast and Asante in the early 1860s. His decision to collect and record traditions appears to have been stimulated by the death in 1860 of his grandmother and by the Basel Mission which in 1864 under the direction of J.G. Christaller entered an important phase in its study of the language, traditions, and folklore of the Gold Coast peoples. Some thirty years later Reindorf'sHistory of the Gold Coast and Asante based on Traditions and Historical Facts Comprising a Period of more than Three Centuries from about 1500 to 1860was published.

The process of revisingHistory Ibegan as early as 1907 and culminated in 1951 with the publication of a revised edition in Basel and later (in 1966) in Ghana. Not surprisinglyHistory IIhas become much more widely available and used thanHistory I-- in no small measure because of the increasing demands from a new generation of historians for ‘a new look’ at the history of Ghana and the part played in it by Africans. As a result ReindorfsHistory IIhas been used increasingly in the reconstruction and reinterpretation of Ghanaian history. In his recent study of Asante Ivor Wilks recognized this development by deciding to use onlyHistory IIon the grounds that it was more readily available to the reader. Earlier Michael Kwamena-Poh had noted the difficulties in consultingHistory Iwhen, after quoting at second-hand a passage from it he cautiously added that

this quotation is obtained from Wilks … who apparently got it from the first edition of Reindorf'sHistory of the Gold Coast and Asante, a copy of which [i] have been unable to obtain. The edition [I] used is the one revised by his sons C.J. Reindorf and C.E. Reindorf, and in which much of the information contained in the original has been left out.
Double Dutch? A Survey of Seventeenth-Century German Sources for West African History
Authors: Jones Adam
Published: May 2006

Following the lead of two Dutch pioneers, historians have recently made considerable progress in the critical analysis of seventeenth-century European sources relating to west Africa. Many important works, however, have yet to be dealt with. Among these are the German sources, without which the other sources cannot fully be understood. Although no German state was as important in seventeenth-century trade with west Africa as the Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese, the German literary output was as significant as that of any nation except the Dutch. Having just completed a critical English edition of seventeenth-century German writings on west Africa, I think it appropriate to review the extent to which these can be regarded as primary sources. I propose to look at each author in chronological order.
The Sacred Meadows: A Case Study of “Anthropologyland” vs. “Historyland”
Authors: Curtin Patrica Romero
Published: May 2006

In 1974 Abdul Hamid M. el Zein published The Sacred Meadows: A Structural Analysis of Religious Symbolism in an East African Town. The town in question was Lamu on an island of the same name off the northern coast of Kenya. The population of Lamu, holding steady at about 5,000 during this century, is mostly Muslim and mostly of mixed Arab and African descent. Arabs began to visit Lamu centuries ago and over time Arab traders settled on the tiny island, married local women, and created what we know today in the larger context along the East African coast as Swahili language and culture. Dhows came each year with the northeast monsoon bringing Arab sailors and a trickle of new immigrants from Arabia. (Not only Arabia, however, as dhows came from many parts of the Indian Ocean to Lamu and the east coast of Africa). As sailors, Lamu people continued to revisit Arabia, among many ports, for commerce as well as for pilgrimage to Mecca. The Arab strain in Lamu culture was therefore reinforced; that culture has therefore tended to sway toward the Indian Ocean in recent centuries and to Arabia in the past one hundred and fifty years.

Until the last decade or so the town had a tight social hierarchy with the old Arab (as they identified themselves) families at the top, followed by Indian traders and merchants (who often worked in partnership with the old families), and then other merchants, such as late nineteenth century arrivals from the Hadramawt, free Africans and Bajuni (the Swahili people from nearby islands), and finally, slaves (or ex-slaves after 1907).
Bibliographie ethnographique de l'Afrique sud-Saharienne
Authors: Newbury David
Published: May 2006

Colonially-imposed linguistic boundaries have often represented important obstacles to historical and anthropological research in Africa. Even where researchers working in African vernaculars employ data in a transfrontier context, their publications usually appear in only one European language, and are therefore often not accessible to Africans or western researchers unacquainted with that language. The resultant linguistic fragmentation of Africanist publications sometimes leaves the impression of limited sources on a given topic, whereas in fact the relevant sources may be very rich when the writings of two or more national units--often presenting quite different conceptual approaches as well as languages--are drawn on fully.

Some of the most arresting examples of such myopic behavior are evident along Zaire's eastern border with former British administered areas of eastern Africa. T.O. Ranger's valuable account of the Mwana Lesa Watch Tower movement is a case in point. His discussion of Tomo Nyirenda's activities in northern Zambia is detailed and highly revealing. But the Mwana Lesa Movement was also active in the southern pedicule of Zaire, and there are numerous published works (of varying quality) in French on this fascinating example of colonial repression of African religious initiative. Although his account does draw on works in English which are based on (unspecified) Congo materials, only a single francophone source appears in Ranger's otherwise intriguing synthesis.

Farther north, the long border between Zaire and former British-administered areas provides many other examples of similarly narrow linguistic horizons. Little work, for example, has appeared on the translacustrine ties among people living on the lakeshores of the western rift lakes.
The Archives of the Gold Mines of Kilo-Moto
Authors: Bakonzi Agayo
Published: May 2006

The gold mines of Kilo-Moto are located at the extreme northeast of Zaire. They include two centers of mining operations: the gold mines of Moto in the District of the Upper Uélé and the gold mines of Kilo in the District of the Kibali-Ituri. Gold was discovered there in 1903, and the mining of gold began in 1905 in Kilo and in 1911 in Moto. The local management of the gold mines of Kilo is located at Kilomines or Bambu; and that of Moto is at Watsa.

From 1905 to 1919 Kilo-Moto was a colonial state corporation and gold was mined by the colonial administration. The mines were organized into a special service depending on the Department of Public Works in the Ministry of the Colonies in Brussels. In Africa, the Governor-General and the Governor of the Province Orientale (now Haut-Zaire) were responsible for the implementation of colonial regulations in the gold mines. Africans were recruited from the rural areas by the colonial administration to work for the gold mines.

From 1919 to 1926 the gold mines of Kilo-Moto were organized into an autonomous colonial state corporation managed by a Board of Directors in Brussels, appointed by the Minister of the Colonies. The service of the gold mines then moved from the Ministry of the Colonies to a separate building and this marked the beginning of the constitution of the Archives of Kilo-Moto. The headquarters of Kilo-Moto since 1937 have been located at 1, Place de Luxembourg in Brussels. From 1926 to 1967 Kilo-Moto was a private corporation, and the Management Committee and the Board of Directors of the private company have always operated from the same building.
Africanist Archival Research in Brussels
Authors: Dickerman Carol , Northrup David
Published: May 2006

Belgian archives and libraries contain essential collections of sources for the history of central Africa, although locating and gaining access to materials can be difficult, if not impossible. We hope that by describing our triumphs and failures in using these facilities in 1980/81 we can simplify these tasks for future researchers. This survey, like others existing in English, is less than complete, having been conceived only after we completed our separate research in Belgium and thus reflecting the limitations of our particular research interests. Nevertheless, the breadth of our familiarity with the facilities and of our individual interests (Dickerman worked on the history of Burundi's capital Bujumbura; Northrup on African labor in the former Province Orientale of Zaire) seems sufficient to justify this note.

In general it must be said that access to archival materials in Belgium is fairly restricted. The worst case is the Archives du Gouvernement-Général, Léopoldville/Kinshasa, the largest and most important collection for the history of the Belgian Congo. These records, estimated to occupy five to seven kilometers of shelf space, were removed from the colony just before independence and are now housed in the Archives Générales du Royaume (2-6, rue de Ruysbroek, Brussels). However, as a consequence of legal efforts by the government of Zaire to recover all or part of the collection, it has remained totally closed to all researchers.
The Enemy Is Us: Eponymy in the Historiography of the Maasai
Authors: Berntsen John L.
Published: May 2006

A major theme in the historiography of the Rift Valley region of east Africa has been the series of raids and wars during the nineteenth century between groups of Maa-speaking peoples who dominated the plains from northern Kenya to central Tanzania. Since the 1840s European and African observers have tended to divide the combatants into two factions, usually called the Maasai on one hand and the Iloikop (or Kwavi) on the other. Since the 1880s European administrators and western scholars have tended to designate the groups they have called Maasai as “pastoralists” or sometimes “pure pastoralists” and the groups they have called Iloikop/Kwavi as “agriculturalists” or “semi-pastoralists.” According to this interpretation, the “Iloikop Wars” or the “Wars between the Maasai and the Iloikop” of the nineteenth century pitted agricultural Maa-speakers against pastoral Maa-speakers. In surveying the relevant literature and in analyzing the European descriptions in light of explanations of my Maasai informants, it became clear that this orthodox dichotomy rests on a mistakenly static perception of socio-economic groups and denies the precariousness of pastoral life in the Rift Valley. Scholarly acceptance of the Maasai-Iloikop (Kwavi) dichotomy as the basis of interpretation of nineteenth-century Maasai history has resulted in a serious distortion of that history and an avoidance of more complex and important issues. In this paper I will review the literature on the “identities” of the Maa-speaking peoples -- identities attributed to them by outside observers -- and subject those interpretations to the perceptions and explanations of the Maa-speaking peoples themselves.
Endre Sik and the Development of African Studies in the USSR: A Study Agenda From 1929
Authors: Darch Colin , Littlejohn Gary
Published: May 2006

Writing in 1963, the late D.H. Jones commented on the first volume of the Hungarian Endre Sik's History of Black Africa that

“this is simply another pot-boiling account of the European colonisation of Africa, about 1910 vintage, distinguished from others of its kind only by the slightly greater space it allots to speculation about the mysterious native past…Professor Sik's unexacting standards of evidence are those of the crudest type of political controversy.”

On the second volume, the same reviewer wrote four years later that it was

“a very bad book which invites the strictures levelled against its predecessor: a crudely partisan selection and treatment of the evidence, a very imperfect acquaintance with recent research, an outmoded, essentially European-centred perspective…Professor Sik is…deficient in narrative skill and historical insight…All the diversity and detailed irregularity of the historical landscape is smothered under a uniform blanket of naive moralising which all but obliterates its significant features.”

This is undoubtedly strong stuff, especially as Jones was some way from being a reactionary scholar; although he noted that Sik's book (hereafter HBA) is “sharply Marxist in tone,” he pointedly refrains from attacking it on that score. Sik, according to Jones, is simply incompetent.
Historical Writing in Nineteenth Century Segu: A Critical Analysis of an Anonymous Arabic Chronicle
Authors: Hanson John H.
Published: May 2006

All too often Africanist historians use Arabic sources without serious consideration of the circumstances surrounding their composition. Many historians have used the Kano Chronicle, for example, as a primary source for fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Hausaland. Since it is a history of the kings of Kano, organized by reign, one could assume that successive writers, contemporaneous with the reigns, produced a documentary record of their era which was perpetuated by subsequent contributors to the chronicle. Murray Last's recent analysis reveals, however, that one man compiled the Kano Chronicle during the mid-seventeenth century, and that it was updated by subsequent writers a few reigns at a time. Although many historians found it convenient and advantageous to assume that the Kano Chronicle was a reliable primary source, Last clearly demonstrates the need for close textual analysis of any Arabic source used for historical reconstruction.

B.G. Martin errs in the opposite direction. He attributes a nineteenth-century Arabic chronicle to a twentieth-century cleric, Cierno Malik Diallo of Kidira, Senegal. Diallo is actually the custodian of one of several versions of this anonymous Arabic account of Umar Tal's jihad (hereafter Chronicle X). The Umarian chronicles, of which Chronicle X is merely an example are one group of written materials generated in the aftermath of the jihads of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West Africa. Host of the efforts in documentary analysis have focused on the writings of Uthman dan Fodio, Muhammad Bello, and other members of the Sokoto elite.
The Nine Lives of Semei Kakungulu
Authors: Twaddle Michael
Published: May 2006

Semei Kakungulu enjoyed at least nine lives in the area of the Uganda Protectorate immediately before, during, and after the imposition of British protectorate rule there at the close of last century, in his successive roles as elephant hunter, guerrilla leader, Ganda chief, border warlord, British ally in military campaigns, “native collector,” colonial client-king, President of the Busoga Lukiko, and leader of the anti-medicine Bamalaki and Bayudaya separatist sects. The purpose of these notes, however, is not to provide more details about these successive phases in Kakungulu's extraordinary career, but rather to comment briefly on the nine major surviving vernacular accounts of his very full life.

John Rowe remarks that “it was natural that biographies, particularly of men of heroic proportions, should also [have been] mobilized in the struggle against moral decline” after the First World War by Ganda vernacular authors, along with works of moral admonition and military memoir once uncritical admiration for British Christianity gave way to a more guarded and wary respect for things British with the increased penetration of Buganda by both British rule and mercantile capitalism. Rowe may also be right in saying that the many biographies of Kakungulu in Luganda “may have reflected the particular attraction of a non-conforming heroic figure who turned his back on the ‘establishment,’ carved a kingdom for himself in the east and virtually thumbed his nose at Apolo Kagwa and the British.” Certainly, this is a major attraction as regards my biographical interest in the man! But, as I hope the following notes on his nine principal vernacular lives may indicate, there are also other explanations.
Of Biases and Queens: The Shi Past Through an Androgynous Looking Glass
Authors: Sosne Elinor
Published: May 2006

Social scientists have recently become more aware of the pervasive male bias in western scholarship, a bias firmly rooted in European cultures and their offshoots. Deriving from this bias are theories which, by assuming a male-centered universe, nurtured generations of male scholars who rarely questioned their sufficiency. Although we are beginning to understand and correct for western androcentrism, we have not yet studied how African societies, especially patrilineal ones, perpetuate their own male-centered worldview in their oral traditions. Thus we have not begun to examine how distorted histories can result when African and western biases coincide and reinforce each other as androcentric researchers collect and then analyze materials which androcentric Africans consider “historical.”

By analyzing data from the Shi kingdom of Ngweshe in eastern Zaire, this paper addresses the linked problems of African and western bias. It argues that -- contrary to the Shi conception of politics as a series of on-going contests and formal structural relationships between royal men, a view I shared while in the field -- one cannot begin to understand the Shi past without acknowledging the role played by non-royal women in shaping its course. More specifically, a careful reading of the data suggests that despite the cultural emphasis on patrilineal descent and the insistence that a reigning king be the biological son of his predecessor, many men who succeeded to the Ngweshe kingship were not the sons of previous monarchs; and even when they were, the selection of a king depended as much on who his mother was as on who his father might have been.
The Presence of Islam Among the Akan of Ghana: A Bibliographic Essay
Authors: Silverman Raymond A. , Owusu-Ansah David
Published: May 2006

The primary geographical focus for the historical study of Islam in west Africa, until recently, was the western and central Sudan. As the often-cited J. S. Trimingham wrote (1962:7) “The Guinea States in the south lie outside our sphere since they were not in contact with the Sudan states and were uninfluenced by Islam.” Trimingham's conclusion paralleled those of early twentieth-century French and English scholars who dealt with the issue of Islam in west Africa. Paul Marty's voluminous studies, dating from the second decade of this century, dealt with the Islamic and Muslim-influenced traditions of the various peoples of Francophone west Africa. H. R. Palmer, one of the early British writers of this century, concentrated on the northern territories of Nigeria, where Islam has enjoyed a long history.

Two factors explain the focus of these scholars on the western and central Sudan. First, the better known Islamic-influenced kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornu were all located in this region. Second, the Islamic states of the western and central Sudan, in particular, presented the greatest problem to both the French and the British during the early periods of the colonial era. Therefore, the focus on this area may have been motivated by the desire of these writers to understand the Islamic factor. Whatever the motivation of writers like Marty, Palmer, and their associates, Trimingham was wrong to conclude that the “the Guinea States” (i.e., the peoples living in the coastal forest belt) were “uninfluenced by Islam.”
Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I, Asante History, and the Historian
Authors: Adjaye Joseph K.
Published: May 2006

For long Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I (1888-1931) has had a curious, almost unenviable reputation that is in many respects undeserving. His memory in both oral and written records is one that is inexorably linked to the British occupation and colonization of Asante and the concomitant exile which he suffered. In other words, Agyeman Prempe is remembered more for his failures—his inability to retain Asante sovereignty—than for his accomplishments. However, new evidence coming to light since the 1970s is increasingly enabling the historian of Asante to offer a more accurate assessment of Prempe I's career and accomplishments. It has now been demonstrated, for instance, that the Asantehene's arrest and exile in 1896 were a function of British duplicitous conduct and the failure of the Asantehene's supreme faith in diplomacy rather than his indifference and ineptitude; that the Asantehene did not remain indifferent to his long exile in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Seychelles (1896-1924) but fought repeatedly for his repatriation; that in the Seychelles he saw to the perpetuation of the Asante community under his care as well as the preservation of Asante values and practices; and that he accomplished significant achievements during his exile, including maintaining extensive records of both his personal correspondence and his compilation of a history of Asante.
Creating and Using Photographs as Historical Evidence
Authors: Papstein Robert
Published: May 2006

The use of photographs as research data is becoming of increasing interest to historians of Africa. The School of Oriental and African Studies' Workshop on “Photographs as sources for African history” is only the most recent example of this emerging concern. This paper is designed to discuss some of the conceptual problems one might meet when attempting to understand photographs as data. It also discusses making photographs as a systematic part of field research. Lastly, it provides a brief primer on the type of photographic equipment best suited for fieldwork.

Historians of Africa are used to thinking of themselves as dwelling at the very cutting edge of methodological and theoretical innovation, but in the use of visual data we lag behind our colleagues in ethnology, anthropology, and sociology. Fieldwork historians, virtually all of whom take photographs, have rarely accepted photography as an integral part of their field research data. Nor has readily available visual data been widely used by historians: compare the extensive historical use of conventional anthropological data with the almost total neglect of visual anthropology.

Although the eye is our most important information-gathering sense, we find it surprisingly difficult to agree about the meaning of images. Ironically, one of the attractions of the photograph, its apparent accessibility (and implied objectivity), dissolves into subjectivity when closely ‘read.’ Since we cannot readily agree about photography's meaning and content we tend to discard or marginalize its use as data. Obviously I am overstating the case somewhat. We have of course learned to ‘read’ photographs; this is the reason we can recognize a tree as a tree. But compared to the way we have learned to read text, we read images in haphazard and non-systematic ways. Outside art history and cinema courses, image reading is rarely taught systematically.
Physical Anthropology and the Reconstruction of Recent Precolonial History in Africa, II: A Dermatoglyphic Survey From Kenya
Authors: Rosa Peter
Published: May 2006

Earlier I discussed the potential of physical anthropology for the reconstruction of precolonial history in Africa. As a traditional branch of the biological sciences, physical anthropology draws on advances in genetics, population genetics, numerical taxonomy, and other biological disciplines whose paradigms define a logical framework by which the biological history of human populations can be explored. Sophisticated techniques can now be applied not only to the study of biological history, but also to the investigation of hypotheses of wider historical interest (i.e., those arising from the consideration of nonbiological sources of historical evidence). Having outlined some of the possibilities of new techniques and contrasted them to more basic techniques available to pre-war physical anthropologists, who tended to be preoccupied by the construction of racial taxonomies, I ended the paper by discussing ways by which the wider historical potential of physical anthropology could begin to be realized.

In this sequel the onus is on trying to demonstrate in a limited way some of these possibilities through an empirical study. The study in question is a biological survey of Kenyan peoples which I undertook in the early and mid-1970s. During this survey I obtained palm and finger prints from over 6,000 primary and secondary school children drawn from some 60 population units (tribes and sub-tribes). The finger and palm prints provided over 150 biological measures, which are genetically determined, to compare the population units sampled and to analyze the biological patterns of differentiation of Kenyan peoples.