bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of “Mina” (Again)
Authors: Law Robin 
Published: October 2005

The term “Mina,” when encountered as an ethnic designation of enslaved Africans in the Americas in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, has commonly been interpreted as referring to persons brought from the area of the “Gold Coast” (“Costa da Mina” in Portuguese usage), corresponding roughly to modern Ghana, who are further commonly presumed to have been mainly speakers of the Akan languages (Fante, Twi, etc.) dominant on that section of the coast and its immediate hinterland. In a recently published paper, however, Gwendolyn Hall has questioned this conventional interpretation, and suggested instead that most of those called “Mina” in the Americas were actually from the “Slave Coast” to the east (modern southeastern Ghana, Togo, and Bénin), and hence speakers of the languages nowadays generally termed “Gbe” (though formerly more commonly “Ewe”), including Ewe, Adja, and Fon. Given the numerical strength of the “Mina” presence in the Americas, as Hall rightly notes, this revision would substantially alter our understanding of ethnic formation in the Americas.In further discussion of these issues, this paper considers in greater detail than was possible in Hall's treatment: first, the application of the name “Mina” in European usage on the West African coast itself, and second, the range of meanings attached to it in the Americas. This separation of African and American data, it should be stressed, is adopted only for convenience of exposition, since it is very likely that ethnic terminology on the two sides of the Atlantic in fact evolved in a process of mutual interaction. In particular, the settlement of large numbers of returned exslaves from Brazil on the Slave Coast from the 1830s onwards very probably fed Brazilian usage back into west Africa, as I have argued earlier with respect to the use of the name “Nago” as a generic term for the Yoruba-speaking peoples.
A Critical Examination of Isaria Kimambo's Ideas Through Time
Authors: Mapunda Bertram B.B. 
Published: October 2005

In this paper I attempt to review critically the historical thought of Isaria Kimambo through time by examining a selected number of his publications and manuscripts. The paper also incorporates comments from his peers and colleagues, as well as his own assessment. In conclusion, the paper appeals to historical institutions and organizations in the developing world (including the Department of History, University of Dar es Salaam and the Historical Association of Tanzania) to cultivate a culture of awarding outstanding historians for the purpose of promoting creativity, commitment, and devotion to the discipline.Isaria Ndelahiyosa Kimambo turned 72 years of age in 2003, For half his lifetime Kimambo has served the Department of History of University Dar es Salaam and the Historical Association of Tanzania (HAT). Established in 1964, the Department of History is one of the oldest departments in the University, which started in 1961 as a college of the University of London. In 1963 this became the college of the University of East Africa, based at Makerere, Uganda, and in 1970 it became a full-fledged University. HAT, which became a non-governmental organization in 2000, was born in 1966, with Kimambo as one of the founding members.Kimambo joined the Department of History in 1965, when he was in his third year of doctoral studies at Northwestern University. In 1967 he successfully defended his dissertation entitled “The Political History of the Pare People to 1900,” which was based on research he conducted in Upare in northeastern Tanzania. In 1969 he became the Head of History Department, the first indigenous Head, taking over from Terence O. Ranger, who left the Department and joined the University of California at Los Angeles as Director of African Studies.
Historical Research in Eastern Uganda: Local Archives
Authors: McConnell Stuart 
Published: October 2005

Conducting historical research in countries with few resources necessary for the maintenance of documents and other sources on which we, as historians, depend is an exercise commonly fraught with difficulty. It need hardly be said that different problems confront us according to the themes and chronology of our studies, and so this paper cannot hope to be a comprehensive guide to any and every researcher working on Uganda. It can, however, illustrate some difficulties and successes of my particular research experience, which has been based overwhelmingly on the perusal of archival data. That experience was gained on two separate trips, one between January and August 2003 and one for the month of September, 2004. My research topic concerns the political history of two colonial districts in eastern province between 1945 and 1962. More particularly, it has set out to explore how political identity related to issues of class and class conflict in what was supposedly the first nationalist era. While I settled on these two districts, I initially began with three, and so conducted research at local archives for what were in the 1950s three districts of eastern province. Those districts were Teso, Busoga, and Bukedi, whose archives are at Soroti, Jinja, and Tororo respectively.Attaining research permission in Uganda is a straightforward affair. Applications are made to the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST), a body based in Uganda House on Kampala Rd., the main artery running through the city center. Their application forms can be downloaded from the internet at www.uncst.co.ug, or they can be telephoned at 00256 41 250499. The Council requires a brief research proposal, which is usually processed within a month of submission. On arrival in Kampala, they also require that one is ‘attached’ to a local institution before research papers are released. One can choose from Makerere University's Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) or the Centre for Basic Research (CBR) in Kololo, a research center for social sciences established by Mahmood Mamdani some years ago. Both institutions are in Kampala, are easy to access, and each charge around $US100 for annual membership.
Reading Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes: Political and Racial Sentiments in the Travel Writings of Alexander Bulatovich, 1896–1898
Authors: Mirzeler Mustafa Kemal 
Published: October 2005

It is hard to imagine so many contrasts united in one person, as are united in the Abyssinian character. Their character is like the nature around them-where precipices, cliffs, mountains and plains alternate among one another, and cold is mixed with tropical heat. If I allow myself a rather free comparison, this is how I would characterize the Abyssinian. He is talented and receptive, like a Frenchman. With his practicality, with the way he deals with those he has conquered and his governmental abilities, he is like an Englishman. His pride is like that of a Spaniard. By his love for his faith, his mildness of character and tolerance, he is like a Russian. By his commercial abilities, he is like a Jew. But in addition to all these characteristics, he is very brave, cunning, and suspicious (Seltzer 2000:73).For us, Abyssinia can present the following interest. Having cast a glance at the map of Central Africa and on the borders of the Ethiopian Empire, you can easily see that being located in the vicinity of the Middle Nile, halfway between Egypt and the great lakes, which belong to England, Abyssinia, which is expanding each year more and more and taking large tracts of land which had been free-rich and densely populated territory-must become the natural and main enemy of England in Central Africa. England is also our enemy. To help the enemy of our enemy, to make him as much stronger as possible-that is our main goal in Abyssinia (Seltzer 2000:144).
Television Docudrama as Alternative Records of History
Authors: Ogunleye Foluke 
Published: October 2005

From time immemorial human beings have sought to document their activities in realistic forms in order to pass across information about their lives to posterity. Even before the advent of cinematography, human beings had attempted to show life, not as static, but as dynamic. Cave paintings done by early men have shown an attempt to demonstrate movement through drawings of animals with many legs, designed to simulate motion. Also, attempts at showing moving images have included the shadow plays of North Africa and India, puppetry in many parts of the world, the pot art of India, etc. These activities presented the culture of the people and showed how icons are developed, what they stand for in the people's lives, and how people made meaning out of their lives and activities. With the development of the arts of cinematography and television, these also became vehicles to document happenings and events in the lives of the people.In this study, I discuss the television docudrama as an alternative means of documenting history. There are many reasons necessitating an alternative source of documenting history, but two examples from Nigeria will suffice to justify this position. The powers-that-be in Nigeria have decreed that it is no longer necessary to study history in primary and secondary schools, and the subject has been removed from the curriculum. Consequently, if a Nigerian citizen does not go to a tertiary institution to study history, the past of her/his people will forever remain a mystery to her/him. Currently, there is a very lively debate in Nigeria about the origins of the Yoruba people. Traditional rulers, who are supposed to be the custodians of history, are at loggerheads with each other and with eggheads in history departments. The traditional rulers are bringing out diverse facts and evidence that differ from previously written histories.
Francophone Catholic Achievements in Igboland, 1883-–1905
Authors: Okafor Eddie E. 
Published: October 2005

When the leading European powers were scrambling for political dominion in Africa, the greatest rival of France was Britain. The French Catholics were working side by side with their government to ensure that they would triumph in Africa beyond the boundaries of the territories already annexed by their country. Thus, even when the British sovereignty claim on Nigeria was endorsed by Europe during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, the French Catholics did not concede defeat. They still hoped that in Nigeria they could supplant their religious rivals: the British Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the other Protestant missionary groups. While they allowed the British to exercise political power there, they took immediate actions to curtail the spread and dominion of Protestantism in the country. Thus some of their missionaries stationed in the key French territories of Africa—Senegal, Dahomey, and Gabon—were urgently dispatched to Nigeria to compete with their Protestant counterparts and to establish Catholicism in the country.Two different French Catholic missions operated in Nigeria between 1860s and 1900s. The first was the Society of the African Missions (Société des Missions Africaines or SMA), whose members worked mainly among the Yoruba people of western Nigeria and the Igbos of western Igboland. The second were the Holy Ghost Fathers (Pères du Saint Esprit), also called Spiritans, who ministered specifically to the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria. The French Catholics, the SMA priests, and the Holy Ghost Fathers competed vehemently with the British Protestants, the CMS, for the conversion of African souls. Just as in the political sphere, the French and British governments competed ardently for annexation and colonization of African territories.
Mallam Muhammad Bakatsine and the Jihad in Eastern Kano
Authors: Shea P.J. 
Published: October 2005

Mallam Muhammad Bakatsine was one of the most outstanding figures in nineteenth-century Kano history. He stands out in tradition as a figure who is almost luminescent—his virtues seem overpowering and his faults, if any, totally unrecorded. And yet we know surprisingly little about him; we don't know when he was born nor when he died. Although praised as a great scholar, we don't seem to know of anything he wrote. He was, in short, a legend in his own time, and as with most legends the personal traits and characteristics that are so necessary for us to grasp the personality of a historical character have been completely eliminated from the record. It is troublesome that the record is so vague for such an important historical figure, but even more upsetting is that the modern literature has distorted Mallam Muhammad Bakatsine's role, even to the extent of accusing him of being a collaborator with the anti-jihad forces in Kano and of being an opportunist.I believe that these distortions have resulted from a very uncritical use of colonial sources. These colonial sources were not the product of careful scholarly historical research, even though they often reflect something from the oral traditions about the jihad. These colonial recorders were generally opportunists themselves, as indeed were many of those Kano citizens supplying them with information, and so we must be very cautious when using the information they provide. Too frequently—as with the story of Bakatsine's sister Habiba's alleged interview with Sheikh Usman dan Fodio resulting in a new name for their clan—they have been repeated over and over again in the literature without being examined to see if there is any merit in them.
Myth in the Context of African Traditional Histories: Can it be Called “Applied History”?
Authors: Shokpeka S.A. 
Published: October 2005

For the reconstruction of history from oral sources, four broad types are usually distinguishable. These are myth, legend, songs, and what Phillips Stevens calls “popular history.” All of them fall under the generic heading of “folklore”—a term which is so broad in its application that it could include nearly all expressive aspects of culture. The only type that we will concern ourselves with in this study is myth. A comprehensive examination of the issue in question in the study requires a definition of the word myth; an examination of the characteristics of “applied history;” and the application of these characteristics to myth with a view to finding out any point of agreement between them, before a final answer will be given to the question whether “myth in the context of African traditional histories,” can be called applied history.The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English defines myth as a “story handed down from olden time, containing the early beliefs of a race.” Vansina identifies myths by their subject matter and talks about them as those stories which “deal with and interpret the relations between the natural and the supernatural and are concerned with all that part of religious life that lies beyond the moral order. “ He says that they “attempt to explain the world, the culture, the society … in terms of religious causes.” McCall, for his part, refers to myths as “stories concerning the supernatural, the activities of deities, spirits and semi-divine heroes on the origin of the world, mankind and cultural artifacts and institutions which usually are said to have been achieved through the instrumentality of these sacred beings.” Afigbo, in turn, considers myths as having the “tendency to explain historical institutions and development by appeal to non-historic factors and forces”—as stories that see “the supernatural acting at times through the agency of man, at times through the agency of the lower animals and other times even through the agency of inanimate object, as the original and continuing causes of motion in a society.”
Parish Registers: a Challenge for African Historical Demography
Authors: Siiskonen Harri , Taskinen Anssi , Notkola Veijo 
Published: October 2005

On the worldwide scale Africa is the least-known continent demographically. Until the mid-twentieth century not even the size of the population was precisely known in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The major problems in African historical demography have either been the almost total lack of relevant sources or, if some have been available, they have been fragmentary and non-systematic. The reliability of the most commonly-used sources in African historical demography—population counts and early censuses—remained questionable until the 1960s. However, fairly far-reaching conclusions and estimations based on these sources using indirect methods have been drawn. Despite the development of methods in historical demography, the questionable source materials have naturally provided serious grounds for argumentation.An excellent example is the debate between the natalistic and antinatalistic school over changes in fertility and mortality in sub-Saharan African societies during the precolonial and early colonial period. The fragmentary nature of the available sources has offered a firm basis for the disagreement.The objective of this paper is to discuss limitations, pitfalls, and opportunities related to sources used in African historical demography. The paper first reviews the conventional sources—population counts, censuses, and surveys—and then presents an old but seldom-used group of sources, Christian parish registers. The usability of parish registers is discussed through a concrete research project based on data produced since the late nineteenth century in the parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (ELCIN). Finally, attention is paid on widening the range of disciplines where African parish registers could be utilized.
Phoenix from the Ashes: Rediscovery of the Lost Lukiiko Archives
Authors: Tuck Michael W. , Rowe John A. 
Published: October 2005

On 24 May 1966 the 500-year-old kingdom of Buganda came to an end. That was the day that Prime Minister Obote sent Colonel Idi Amin to attack the Mengo palace of Kabaka Frederick Mutesa, who was also the President of Uganda. A 120-man bodyguard defended theKabaka; Amin had automatic and heavy weapons. Nevertheless, Obote was much annoyed that the palace held out against Amin's troops. An audience watched the battle from nearby hilltops, where expatriates and others brought out folding chairs, until a mid-afternoon thunderstorm sent everyone scurrying for cover. TheKabakaused this interruption to scale the rear wall of Mengo palace, where he hailed a passing taxicab and set off for Burundi and ultimately exile in London. Obote divided Buganda into two separate districts (East Mengo and West Mengo), promoted Amin, and gave him the palace as a barracks for his “paratroop” battalion, and more importantly also gave him Buganda's legislative hall—theBulange—to become Amin's national military headquarters.The casualties in the “battle of Mengo” were certainly few in number compared to the destruction Amin would wreak after his coup in 1971. But one invisible casualty of the Bulange occupation was especially significant for historians. The Bulange was not only the seat of the Lukiiko, the Ganda legislature, it was also the storage building for the Buganda government archives, which went back to the 1890s, and were still well organized anu maintained in 1956-58 when Peter Gutkind made use of them for his doctoral research. By 1963 storage space was becoming scarce when Rowe made several visits to Shaykh Ali Kulumba, the Speaker of the Lukiiko. Shaykh Kulumba opened up cupboards and closets packed with archival folders from floor to ceiling. Clearly the archives were still being preserved, but organization and access had suffered. Three years later, when Amin occupied the Bulange, he simply destroyed the entire archive—the historical record of sixty years of Buganda government ceased to exist.
The Documentary Impulse: Archives in the Bush
Authors: Zeitlyn David 
Published: October 2005

A wide variety of documents exist in Cameroonian rural villages, few of which are likely to be preserved since many are not perceived as being worthy of long-term conservation as well as being vulnerable to damp, termites, and to recycling in the form of cigarette or wrapping paper. In this paper I consider the information contained in the different types of written record and how they interrelate. In a companion piece (Zeitlyn mss) I continue to discuss a diary written at my instigation over an eighteen-month period.Anthropologists and historians alike are prone to a writing disease: “If in doubt write it down.” We record things often for the sake of recording (sometimes without having a specific end in mind for any particular record). Valuable serendipity often results, and our colleagues and successors, as well as the descendants of those we have worked with are sometimes the beneficiaries. Academics, and anthropologists among them, often seek out like-minded people to spend time with. This in itself raises some questions about the generalizability of information so received. But leaving that aside, the accounts of anthropologists and their key informants (for example Muchona [Turner 1967], Ogotommêli [Griaule 1965]) are striking, as much for the resemblances between academic and informant as for their putative differences.
Quality of Effluents from Channel Catfish Hatcheries in Northwestern Mississippi
Authors: Tucker Craig S 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
Samples of water supply and effluent were collected from five commercial hatcheries for channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus in northwestern Mississippi. Hatcheries were visited three times at 2-week intervals during the peak of the catfish spawning season. Samples were analyzed for total suspended solids, soluble and total phosphorus, total ammonia, total nitrogen, and 5-d biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5). Net pollutant loads (effluent concentration minus inflow concentration) were low for all variables. Maximum average net loadings were 10.7 mg/L for total suspended solids, 0.13 mg/L for total phosphorus, 0.28 mg/L for total nitrogen, and 2.07 mg/L for BOD5. Because net pollutant loadings were low and groundwater supplies initially had low concentrations of solids and organic matter, effluents were of excellent quality with respect to those variables. Four of the groundwater supplies contained substantial background levels of phosphorus or nitrogen; accordingly, effluents from those hatcheries had moderate levels of those substances. The highest average effluent concentrations (ranges for all samples in parentheses) were as follows: total suspended solids, 12.3 mg/L (7- 19 mg/L); soluble reactive phosphorus, 0.36 mg/L (0.007–0.390 mg/L); total phosphorus, 0.45 mg/L (0.15- 0.53 mg/L); total ammonia nitrogen, 0.49 mg/L (0.13- 0.57 mg/L); total nitrogen, 0.60 mg/L (0.19–0.72 mg/ L); and BOD5, 3.03 mg/L (0.85–4.03 mg/L). These concentrations are lower than the corresponding concentrations in most potential effluent-receiving streams in northwestern Mississippi, and total effluent volume from catfish hatcheries constitutes less than 0.02% of total annual streamflow in the region. It is therefore unlikely that catfish hatchery effluents will have a negative effect on receiving stream water quality.