bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
History From Linguistics: The Case of the Tana River
Authors: Nurse Derek 
Published: May 2006

It is the purpose of this article to investigate certain aspects of the Pokomo (P) language, and thereby to present a more detailed picture of Pokomo history than is currently available. Pokomo is an ideal laboratory for comparative linguistics. Whereas much as been written about most adjacent peoples, such as Orma, Somali, Mijikenda (MK), and Swahili, little has been said on the Pokomo, or their neighbors, the Dahalo; virtually no archeological work has been done along the Tana river, while Pokomo (and Dahalo) traditions are scantily recorded.Further, the Tana represents more or less the extreme northeast border of the Bantu-speaking area, and it the meeting point for northern pastoralists and southern farmers. It is surrounded on all sides by speakers of Cushitic languages, from Ogaden Somali near Garissa, through Orma and Waata (all Eastern Cushitic), to Dahalo (Southern Cushitic) and Boni (Eastern Cushitic), on the Indian Ocean. At the same time, it is fairly remote from other Bantu-speaking groups. The nearest Kamba communities are nearly 100 miles as the crow flies to the west, across semi-desert, and the nearest sizeable Giriama settlement a similar distance south of Garsen across comparable terrain. The main Swahili communities of the Lamu Archipelago, north of the mouth of the river, have--at least today--little regular contact with the Pokomo. The relatively small Pokomo population--between 40,000 and 50,000--lives huddled along the banks of the Tana from Garissa in the north to the northern bank of the Indian Ocean estuary, a stretch of some 150 miles, although, if we exclude Malankote, the Pokomo territory is only some 100 miles long. They are primarily agricultural, although fishing and some hunting are also practiced.
Dhaagicw Life-Stages: A Study in Paradigmatic Reconstruction
Authors: Bennett Patrick R. 
Published: May 2006

Among the goals of diachronic linguistic research, we may recognize two types of what is commonly called “reconstruction.” One of these involves postulation of a “proto-unit,” such as vowel-quality assumed to underlie an observed correspondence set, or the probable original rule of relative-clause formation. The other involves the “reconstruction” of a system or paradigm. Examples are the postulation of an ancestral set of phonemic contrasts, or determination of the original pattern of case markings. Within each type, we may further distinguish between reconstruction of the probable situation at å given point in the history of the languages (as exemplified by most reconstructions of Proto-Bantu), and postulation of a sequence of stages and changes leading up to the present situation.The historian often has recourse to these reconstructions. If carefully used, they may be an important form of evidence in plumbing the history of the peoples speaking the languages concerned. Though such evidence should not, generally, be used alone, linguistically-based conclusions may validly add their weight to the evaluation of other data. As one might expect, the different types of linguistic reconstruction differ widely in utility to the historian. Reconstruction of the original shape of a word meaning ‘tree,’ for example, will help the historian but little, whereas reconstructing the developmental sequence of a grammatical system, with conclusions as to the nature and relative chronology of the linguistic separations and contacts involved, is likely to be more directly useful.
The Past and Present of an Anlo-Ewe Oral Tradition
Authors: Greene Sandra E. 
Published: May 2006

In 1680 Jean Barbot made the following observation about the religious institutions found in the Slave Coast Ewe communities of Keta and Anlo: “Their…religion [is] much the same as on the Gold Coast, only they have a vast quantity of idols…” A similar observation was made by Danish cartographer P. Thøning on his 1802 map of the lower Volta, when he described a site near the Anlo capitol of Anloga, as an “Amegase fetisch-plads,” an important religious shrine. Subsequently this shrine was identified as that which belonged to one of the clans from whose ranks was chosen the awoamefia, the highest leadership position in Anlo. In 1935 this clan, the Bate, was, in turn, described by the German missionary D. Westermann as composed of priests, soothsayers, and magicians. It is not surprising then, given such references, that R.A. Kea suggested that “the Anlo ruler's supremacy was based, at least initially on religious and ritual ascendancy.”In 1978, however, when Anlo elders were consulted on this issue, most were surprisingly vehement in their denials of any such association, past or present, between religious concerns and the offices in the Anlo political system, particularly that of the awoamefia. They pointed to the popular traditions--those published in local textbooks and recited at annual festivals--to support their contention that the two clans which had gained custody of the awoamefia office, the Adzovia and Bate, had gained and retained the same through the “right of inheritance” and the “right of service” respectively.
C.A. Willis and the “Cult of Deng: “A Falsification of the Ethnographic Record
Authors: Johnson Douglas H. 
Published: May 2006

The ethnographic record of Africa, on which anthropologists and historicans rely, is drawn from accounts of widely varying quality written by observers of varying ability. It is frequently distorted, and while we often suspect distortion in specific accounts, we are not always able to pinpoint how that distortion occurred or on what sources it was based. For this reason any use of the ethnographic record must include some form of source criticism if the modern researcher is to have any hope of assessing the quality of the ethnography, or even of discovering just what the record records.“We knew that truth is to be had,” wrote Collingwood, “not by swallowing what our authorities tell us, but by criticizing it,” and modern anthropologists apply this principle in their theoretical reassessments of the classic ethnographies of their predecessors. Many reinterpretations of the works of such anthropologists as Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard have drawn on other sources in the ethnographic record to make their criticisms. But in general anthropologists have found it easier to confine themselves to examining intellectual influences on scholarly works by tracing the genealogy of academic theories, than to investigate what shaped the thoughts and observations of non-academics. The works of soldiers and administrators, for instance, have not always been analyzed as rigorously as the works they are used to criticize. An essential element of source criticism is therefore often missing.
Beyond Migration and Conquest: Oral Traditions and Mandinka Ethnicity in Senegambia
Authors: Wright Donald R. 
Published: May 2006

One of the most prevalent and widely-accepted themes in the history of the Mandinka of Senegambia concerns the great Mandinka migrations--the westward movement of large groups of people that included the distant ancestors of today's Senegambian Mandinka population. The migrants are supposed to have come from traditional Manding homelands east and southeast of present locations of Mandinka peoples in Senegambia; conquest and longterm settlement were the ususal results of these migrations.For over a century scholarly (and not so scholarly) works dealing with the western Mandinka have shown acceptance as fact and included discussions at varying length of the early westward migrations. At a 1980 conference in Dakar, which historians, linguists, anthropologists, traditionists, and others from four continents attended, considerable time actually went toward discussing and disputing the specific routes the major migrant leaders took and toward attempting to work out paradigms of the various “waves” of Mandinka migration. And lest I appear too smug in my implied criticism of studies of these migrations, I should admit that I, too, have written of the phenomena in ways that could be interpreted as scholarly discussion of their causes, timing, and (gulp) even their “flow.”The major reason for the widespread acceptance of early Mandinka westward migrations and subsequent conquest and settlement--aside from the present ethnic and linguistic arrangement of the western Mandinka--is, of course, the frequency with which one hears tales of such in Senegambian traditions of origin. It is a rare Gambian Mandinka oral narrative--whether focusing on the history of a state, a village, or a separate lineage--that does not begin with where the ancestors originated.
The Lovedale Press: Literature for the Bantu Revisited
Authors: Peires Jeffrey 
Published: May 2006

The fact is that the mass of the vernacular literature published in the past emanated, and still to-day emanates, from missionary presses, and naturally such literature has sought to fulfil the aims of missionary societies.The special features of written vernacular history as a specific category of African historical documentation still await a general theoretical analysis. This article makes no attempt to remedy the deficiency, but considers two possible hypotheses from the relationship between Xhosa traditional historians and the Lovedale Press during the 1930s. First cf Vansina, that it is not only oral traditions which are affected by their mode of transmission. Second, cf Goody and Watt, that it is one thing to be literate, but quite another to find a publisher.Perhaps the first printed work in Xhosa was that of a stoic-looking cow bestriding the legend “All cattle come from God,” which appeared in 1823. The writer was Rev. John Bennie of the Glasgow Missionary Society, and the printing was done at the Chumie mission station, shortly to be renamed Lovedale. From that time, Lovedale remained the focal point of the literate Christian culture which emerged among the Xhosa of South Africa's Eastern Cape. This primacy was reinforced in 1915 when the South African Native College (now Fort Hare) was established nearby under the chairmanship of the Principal of Lovedale. The Lovedale Press flourished along with its host institution. The only available estimates indicate that up to January 1939, 238 books were produced in Xhosa, more than in any African language except Swahili.
Decompiling Dapper: A Preliminary Search for Evidence
Authors: Jones Adam 
Published: May 2006

Geographical compilations used to be valued because they made things easy for those who read them: instead of being confronted with a set of barely intelligible travelers' accounts, the reader was offered their essence in a predigested form. Yet today most self-respecting historians pride themselves on using only “original” sources. In the recent historiography of Africa much useful work has been devoted to the task of showing the derivative nature of certain seventeenth-and eighteenth-century European works.One of the victims of this growing awareness has been the monumental book on Africa by Olfert Dapper (1668). Many of Dapper's sources for individual regions have been identified, notably for the Cape of Good Hope, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Allada, and Loango. In the case of Tunis it has even been possible to show that everything in Dapper's account derived from published sources. Not surprisingly, some scholars have contemptuously dismissed the book as a “mere compilation.”
Research Protocol and Resources in Burundi
Authors: Hunt Nancy 
Published: May 2006

Information on the existence and resources of African libraries and archives is scanty at best, and the scene changes quickly. No one has attempted to assemble a list for researchers of such institutions and resources in Burundi since 1974, when Daniel Nyambariza provided a list of documentation and research centers and other adresses intéressantes as a preface to his bibliography. No doubt once a very useful list, much of Nyambariza's information is now obsolete. The present report, based on my experiences conducting urban, social history research in Bujumbura in 1984/85, is intended to provide specific information on gaining access to and the availability of documentary sources in Burundi. Private and public libraries and archival locations are included.I have tried to describe Burundi's archival situation from my own experiences as well as from printed information, not all of which I was able to verify. Although there probably exists some small area of duplication between the colonial records held in Brussels at the Archives Africaines and those to be found in Burundi, most of Burundi's archives--particularly low-level, local governmental records--can be assumed to be unique. Although most printed sources are usually more readily available in European or American libraries, I have assumed that a descriptive list of libraries would be an aid to other researchers and have tried to indicate rare and/or locally–generated publications and documents. At the close I have also assembled a list of other potential research locations which I did not visit personally owing to time constraints and the scope of my research.
Historical Discourse: the Achievement of Sieh Jeto
Authors: Tonkin Elizabeth 
Published: May 2006

In this paper I consider how an African historian, Sieh Jeto, plotted his narratives. Sieh was a citizen of Jlao/Sasstown, a Kru polity in Southeastern Liberia. Jlao also author and perform other past-oriented accounts in different genres, and I have written on some of these. There is not room here to discuss all the ways in which Jlao refer to their pasts, and scene-setting is equally brief. I also confine myself to Sieh Jeto's plotting of narrative.I first encountered Jlao in 1972, and spent a year there in 1975/76. The new regime of President Tolbert at first promised reform, but emergent contradictions and rising opposition culminated in the coup of 1980. Kru groups had several times fought against the ‘Americo Liberian’ government, and in the 1930s Sasstown was the focus of a long war (in which the League of Nations at first intervened) which they lost after painful struggles. No history could be neutral there, and some people were very cautious about provoking official wrath by talking about these times. While fanpote, ‘old time business’, of a distant past might be safer, it was denied in the official ideology that indigenous Liberians had a significant history at all.It now seems to me that the performances I recorded at different times were part of general changes of consciousness in the country. Sieh Jeto was recommended to me by an eminent Jlao man in Monrovia.
African Material Culture Information Network
Authors: Stanley Janet L. 
Published: May 2006

The African material culture network—if indeed one can posit a network—is multidimensional, consisting of scholars, objects, and information. The linkage between scholars and objects of material culture that are the focus of their study is information, in particular, the ways in which that information is collected, codified, and communicated. Documentation is the process that generates and orders the information about objects, relates objects one to another, and channels appropriate information into scholarly inquiry.The primary network is one of people: the scholars who are engaged in the study of the object—the mask, the ritual vessel, the woven textile, the dwelling. Information about the object; its use and function; its esthetic and formal qualities; the technique of its manufacture; and its social, economic, and historical context comes from many sources: from examination of the object itself; from contextual, collection, and associated data, including oral data; and from the published literature, unpublished written records, and visual images. These three kinds of data, in turn, constitute secondary networks: information which is generated, processed, and utilized by scholars or other specialists (curators, librarians, archivists, bibliographers). These secondary networks correlate roughly to the institutional settings of museums, archives, and libraries. Information does not exist in a vacuum; it serves a purpose, even if one not always apparent. Thus, the process of creating and manipulating information about African material culture objects, or simply documentation, has as its goal to match in perfect overlay the information about objects with scholarly inquiry.
Museum Collections as Sources for African History
Authors: Kriger Colleen E. 
Published: May 2006

A vast store of untapped primary sources for African history sits waiting to be exploited in museum collections around the world—the products made by African hands, or, if you will, African “material culture.” Within this general category I include not only the masterpieces of African artists and manufacturers, but also the more humble and mundane products used as everyday objects or as items of trade or currency, and everything in between. Although selected numbers of these works have been targeted for study by some anthropologists and art historians, historians of Africa rarely include such objects as sources in their research.This situation is not peculiar to African history—historians in general seem reluctant to interrogate sources other than those of the printed word. What, after all, does one do with objects? Not entirely ignored, historians of various schools have examined them with mixed results. Some historians have treated certain objects as the embodiments of more general, dynamic intellectual or cultural forces set in motion by elites. Other historians, especially those associated with the Annales school, see material objects occupying layers of culture more slow to change, representing the culture of commoners and the ‘structures of thought’ that shaped their mental universe. Perhaps more familiar are the studies that view certain objects as indicators of various aspects of modern industrial history—mass production and advertisement, consumer culture, and the social meanings of things in capitalist societies. Nevertheless, such studies as these are far from the norm in history, and in them objects serve primarily as illustrations of historical trends and events already sketched out to some degree. Moreover, they imply that the material evidence in objects is most useful simply for providing additional texture and detail to our views of the past. Historians seldom consider objects as sources that can show us anything new.
Erieza Kintu's Sulutani Anatoloka: A Nineteenth-Century Historical Memoir From Buganda
Authors: Rowe John A. 
Published: May 2006

An 85-year-old villager named Erieza Kintu died at Kabubu in the county of Bulemezi, kingdom of Buganda, sometime in 1965. His passing was virtually unnoticed, except by relatives and a few neighbors. Through my research trips between 1962 and 1964 had on several occasions brought me to within a few miles of his house, I never met Kintu. Yet he is one of my best sources for the history of Buganda in the 1890s. Indeed, his memory of the so called “rebellion” by Kabaka Mwanga against the British in 1897 is the single best source I know, particularly valuable as an “insider” eyewitness participant. Even more importantly, unlike the earlier “official” histories of Mwanga's uprising, Kintu's view is from the point of the losers in the conflict—those who had resisted the new order of Christianity, private land tenure, and protectorate status within the British empire.As so often happens with the vanquished, their history was suppressed by the victors, who—through the control of schooling and the printing press— ensured that only their own version of the conflict would become history. Yet somehow, at the age of almost seventy years the non-literate Erieza Kintu managed to dictate his oral memoirs to the manager of the Baganda Cooperative Society Press, and the result was Sulutani Anatoloka, a printed pamphlet that went on sale in Kampala priced one shilling a copy. After a few days no doubt the small edition was sold out and disappeared from view. Fortunately, one copy wound up in the hands of a prominent anthropologist from the University of Chicago, Lloyd Fallers, who was director of the East African Institute of Social Research at Makerere University in the early 1950s. Years later, when Fallers returned to Chicago, he brought back the pamphlet and offered me a photocopy, which I translated from Luganda into English in 1964. At that time I knew nothing about the author, except what was printed in his memoir covering the years from 1892 to 1899, nor did I know the circumstances surrounding the publication, or even the date when it had been printed. So here was a mysterious, unique, and potentially invaluable historical source—if only one could investigate its provenance.
Integrating Arochukwu into the Regional Chronological Structure
Authors: Nwauwa A. O. 
Published: May 2006

The Niger-Benue Valley regional chronology is expanding. This is satisfying. Dates from the early city states and chiefdoms in the lower Cross river valley have been suggested and integrated into the larger regional chronological structure. Arochukwu was one such chiefdom. Utilizing the available genealogies from within Arochukwu and its satellite settlements, and guided by the existing methodology of chronology, I have calculated what I believe to be fairly reliable dates which locate the foundation of the chiefdom, ca. 1690/1720. These dates have been interrelated with the importation of the first guns into Calabar, since firearms were said to have been used in the war which ultimately resulted in the foundation of the Aro chiefdom (Arochukwu). They appear firm. Aro influence was evident in the whole of the Niger Benue-Cross river area, especially during the period when the Atlantic slave trade climaxed. Hence it seems appropriate to situate the foundation generation in the wider framework.Arochukwu was not merely the product of the Atlantic trade, but also a response to events in the interior of the Bight of Biafra as far north as the Benue valley. The chiefdom was an offshoot of the Igbo movement into the tropical rain forest, accelerated by the southward expansion of ironsmelting and smithing, and correlated with the foundation of the Efik towns of Calabar. It was founded as a response to the shift in power centers from the upper Benue valley, which had been linked to the Rio del Rey trade route, down the river to concentrate on the Niger. It was significant that the Kwararafan takeover in Idah occurred in exactly the same generation when Arochukwu was founded.