bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An 1804 Slaving Contract Signed in Arabic Script From the Upper Guinea Coast
Authors: Brooks George E. , Mouser Bruce L. 
Published: May 2006

Few slaving agreements contracted between African sellers and American purchasers appear to have survived. They were rarely committed to paper, were destroyed after commitments were fulfilled, or were removed from business records kept by slave traders. The contract discussed here is of considerable interest as a document which, although brief, records important information and offers intriguing insights concerning African-European and African-African relationships in Guinea-Conakry at the turn of the nineteenth century.The slaving contract is dated 15 November 1804, and apparently was negotiated aboard the merchant ship Charlotte of Bristol, Rhode Island, Jonathan Sabens, master, anchored at the Iles de Los archipelago.Nov. th[ursday] 15-1804Shipe Charlottefortay days after date I Promas to pay Jno. Sabens or orde[r] nin[e] hundard and ni[ne]ty five Bars to be Pade in Rice and Slave Say fore tun of Rice at nity Bars par tun the Remandr in Slaves at one hundard and Twenty Bars par Slave.[signed in Arabic] Fadmod [Fendan Modu Dumbuya][signed in Arabic] Muhammad Sa'ab shokr Mohammed Sakib Fana/Ta/ Mohammed Shabaan(the month before Ramadan)Respecting the American traders involved, the Charlotte was jointly owned by George D'Wolf and Jonathan Sabens of Bristol, Rhode Island. Captain Jonathan Sabens was an experienced mariner, involved in at least three previous slaving voyages, including one as master of the Charlotte. Members of the D'Wolf family were associated with numerous slaving voyages to west Africa and continued to invest in slaving ventures long after Rhode Island made the trade illegal in 1787.
Interesting Document, Dangerous Translation
Authors: Johnson Marion 
Published: May 2006

Under the not very informative cover title of Munger Africana Library Notes 3, the library of that name published in 1971 a group of four French documents, collectively called The Choiseul papers, secret documents prepared for the peace negotiations to end the Seven Years' War in 1762/63. There is no indication as to the original authorship of these documents, except that the first, with a date of 6 January 1681, is noted as “sent on behalf of M. de Bussy.” The editor, Monique le Blanc, in her short introduction which places these documents in their historical setting, says that they were obtained from the family of the Duc de Nivernais, the French representative at the negotiations. The editor also notes that they were used in part by André Delcourt in his IFAN Memoire La France et les établissements français au Sénégal entre 1713 et 1763 (Dakar, 1952). The translator, James Greenlee, provides brief notes concerned mainly with the orthography of the copyists, who, he suggests, may in two cases have been Spanish. (Their French spelling is in some ways similar to that of Jean Barbot nearly a century earlier--were they, like him, from La Rochelle?)The purpose of the present brief note is both to draw attention to these documents, which are reproduced in facsimile (slightly reduced in size), but also, regretably, to warn those who wish to use them to beware of the translation which accompanies them. The documents consist of four secret mémoires--one entitled “first secret mémoire on the Coast of Africa”, dated 1761 (translated as “last secret communication…”), a second entitled “First secret mémoire on Senegal and the Island of Gorée,” followed by a second secret mémoire on Senegal and Gorée and a third secret mémoire on the west coast of Africa, forwarded to the Duc de Nivernais by the Comte de Choiseul, then Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The Collector's Unconscious: Innocence and Culpability in Field Research
Authors: Hoffman Rachel 
Published: May 2006

During February of 1987 the National Museum of Mali in Bamako and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA began a collaborative project to study and document social institutions that support weaving and associated technologies in Mali, and to collect examples of locally-produced textiles for each of the two museums. Claude Daniel Ardouin, Director of the National Museum of Mali until 1987, defined a textiles collection project as part of what he conceived to be the National Museum's mandate to protect Mali's cultural heritage, a heritage in which the production of textiles plays a significant role. Ardouin quite literally reinvented Mali's National Museum as an actively archival institution, believing it to be essential and instrumental in conserving the country's rich artistic traditions. Toward this end, in 1986 Ardouin and Philip L. Ravenhill, then Director of the West African Museums Project, began discussions with Doran H. Ross, Deputy Director of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, about collaborative, long-term research. Resources and expenses would be shared, resulting in a mutually enriching collaboration.Early 1987 marked the first field season of the partnership that developed out of that early meeting. By 1991, under the joint auspices of Ross and Samuel Sidibe, present Director of the National Museum of Mali, the collaboration had completed the projected five field seasons of textiles documentation and collection covering five regions of Mali. This paper addresses some practical aspects of this extended, institutionally sponsored, collaborative fieldwork. It also discusses the collaborative project under the sometimes harsh light of postcolonial self-examination.
Was Columbus' First Very Long Voyage A Voyage from Guinea?
Authors: Hair P.E.H. 
Published: May 2006

In 1492 Columbus made a non-stop voyage, on the high seas of the Atlantic, between the Canary Islands and an uncertain island off the coast of America, a distance of some 3,100 nautical miles. But there is a strong likelihood that he had earlier traveled on a voyage which may also have been non-stop on the Atlantic high seas and yet been even longer. According to casual references, made in notes apparently either written or authorized by Columbus himself, he had, at an unstated date, seen and perhaps been within the castle of São Jorge da Mina in Guinea. Assuming for the purposes of further discussion that this interpretation of the notes is correct, he had therefore sailed to Mina (Elmina in present-day Ghana), most probably, it is generally thought, between 1482 and 1484, not long after the Portuguese founded the fort. He must have sailed in some capacity aboard a Portuguese vessel, possibly as a trader, if not as a mariner.Although not otherwise recorded, the voyage to Mina is plausible since it occurred during the period of nearly ten years in which Columbus was employed within the Portuguese sphere. Little is known of his activities in this period but it is evidenced that he worked at one stage as a trader and made voyages in the 1470s to the Madeira group, where he resided for a time. When he traveled to America his descriptions of features there were not infrequently in terms of comparisons with features of Guinea, indicating that he was to some extent informed about the latter region and suggesting, perhaps strongly, that he had visited certain parts, as I noted in an earlier paper.
The Representation of Status in Mande: Did the Mali Empire Still Exist in the Nineteenth Century?
Authors: Jansen Jan 
Published: May 2006

For the reconstruction of the history of the aftermath of the Mali empire, that is, the period 1500-1800, oral traditions are the only source of information. The history of this period has been reconstructed by Person and Niane. Their work has gained widespread acceptance. In this paper I will argue that these scholars made significant methodological errors—in particular, in interpreting chronology in genealogies, and their reading of stories about invasions and the seizure of power by younger brothers.My reading of the oral tradition raises questions about the nature of both sixteenth- and nineteenth-century Mande (that is the triangle Bamako-Kita-Kankan (see map), the region where the ‘Malinke’ live), and the medieval Mali empire, because I think that Mande royal genealogies have wrongly been considered to represent claims to the imperial throne of the Mali empire. In contrast, my reading of oral tradition suggests in retrospect that the organizational structure of the Mali empire may have been segmentary, and not centralized, ranking between segments under discussion, each group thereby creating a hierarchical image.The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Mali empire collapsed/disintegrated in the period from 1500 and 1800. As Person put it:Dans le triangle malinké, on ne trouvera plus au XIX siècle que des kafu, ces petites unités étatiques qui forment les cellules politiques fondamentales du monde mandingue. Certains d'entre eux savaient faire reconnaître leur hégémonie à leurs voisins, mais aucune structure politique permante n'existait à un niveau supérieur. Beaucoup d'entre eux, dont les plus puissants et les plus peuplés, seront alors commandées par des lignées Kééta qui se réclament avec quelque vraisemblance des empereurs du Mali médiéval.
Making the James Stuart Archive
Authors: Wright John 
Published: May 2006

Since the first of its volumes appeared in 1976, the James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples has become well known to students of the precolonial history of southern Africa generally, and of the Natal-Zululand region in particular. The four volumes, edited by Colin Webb and myself, which were published by the University of Natal Press between 1976 and 1986, have become a major source of evidence for students of the history of African communities in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.Although the various volumes have been reviewed in a number of international academic journals, the Stuart Archive is still, I suspect, little known outside the ranks of historians of southern Africa. The hiatus that has occurred in the process of publication since volume 4 came out has not helped in drawing the series to the attention of a wider circle of scholars. In writing this paper, one of my aims is to bring the existence of the Stuart Archive to the attention of Africanists at a time when work on the projected three volumes which still remain to be published is about to resume.Another and more specific aim is to outline the nature of the processes by which the Stuart Archive was brought into existence, in order to underscore for users and potential users the need to use it critically as a source of evidence.
Sources vs. Text: An “Integrated Edition of Sources”
Authors: Vansina Jan 
Published: May 2006

The aim of this note is to attract attention to a new venture in scholarly publication—Beatrix Heintze's Alfred Schachtzabel's Reise nach Angola, 1913-1914. Und seine Sammlungen für das Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Rekonstruktion einer Ethnographischen Quelle (Köln, 1995), the first issue of Afrika Archiv, a new series to be devoted to text editions. That this is not to be confused with an ordinary text edition is already intimated by the work's title, which translates as Alfred Schachtzabel's Voyage to Angola, 1913-1914, and his Collections for the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Reconstruction of an Ethnographic Source. In other words, it speaks of a “reconstruction” and “a source edition,” not “text edition.” As well, Heintze is described as the author of this book rather than the editor. Yet she presents the work as a new kind of edition—the “integrated edition of sources.”Heintze is an experienced text editor, having published both a voluminous conventional collection of documents and a set of ethnographic drawings. Yet when she examined the surviving documentation pertaining to Schachtzabel's expedition in Angola, she became convinced that a standard edition of all his work would be unwise. The unpublished materials at hand are too disparate and slender.
Pease Porridge in a Pot: The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa
Authors: Fetter Bruce 
Published: May 2006

Pease porridge hot, pease porridge coldPease porridge in the pot nine days oldSome like it hot, some like it coldBut none like it in the pot nine days old.The recent flurry of monographs and collections relating to the social aspects of medicine and disease in Africa and elsewhere ensures that collections of essays on this topic will receive much attention and will be concomitantly influential. Under the circumstances it is particularly regretable that the volume under review has been published so many years after most of the essays in it were written, precluding their referring to the many recent advances in the field. Of the 21 articles and introductory essays in Steven Feierman and John Janzen, eds., The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), six (amounting to 24% of the text) are reprints, seven (35%) are revisions whose originals date from 1979 and 1981, and eight (41%) are originals. Of these latter, two chapters date from 1983, and two of the reprints have been supplanted by book-length monographs. One must therefore ask of the editors, the press, and the Joint Committee on African Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council whether such unusually delayed publication is justified.
Religious and Colonial Realities: Cartography of the Finnish Mission in Ovamboland, Namibia
Authors: Kokkonen Pellervo 
Published: May 2006

Missionary work was one of the main forces in the opening of the African continent to direct western influence. In many cases, from the 1830s onwards, missionaries were the first Westerners residing in the interior of the continent, thus accumulating considerable knowledge concerning geographical conditions in their respective areas of residence.The question arises: how did information from these people with scarce knowledge about the interior filter down to representations of geographical conditions such as maps and literary descriptions? Working in close cooperation with Africans, their conceptions were likely to be somewhat more detailed than those of the colonial administration. Politically, they often assumed the role of mediators between the foreign powers and local societies; perhaps this was also the case where geographical knowledge was concerned. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the Finnish Mission in colonial Ovamboland under German influence had an active role in mapmaking.One ostensible reason for Germany's annexation of colonies was to turn a profit from them and strengthen the economy of the homeland. An additional function of German colonies was to persuade people who otherwise would have emigrated to the United States or Latin America to stay within the German economic sphere. White settlers were to supplant what was considered inefficient African land use with commercial agriculture whose products were to be exported to Germany. Public opinion in Germany also advocated colonization for status reasons, which made politicians sensitive to it.
Resources At the Institute for Contemporary History, University of the Orange Free State
Authors: Jones H. C. 
Published: May 2006

Towards the end of 1964 a campaign was launched by the University of the Orange Free State to collect political documents dating back as far as 1902 throughout South Africa. It was an attempt to gather all politically relevant documents still in private possession under one roof in a centrally situated place of safekeeping, where they could be arranged systematically and made available to researchers. The success of this venture and the rate at which political documents poured into the then Political Archive undeniably proved the need for such a center in South Africa.It soon became clear that the function of the Political Archive extended beyond the mere collecting of documents. Scholarly interpretation of the material, the introduction thereof to the public and the stimulation of contemporary history were urgently necessary. This led to the establishment of an Institute for Contemporary History in 1970, formed around the nucleus of the Political Archive.
Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction with Examples from Southern Senegambia and Germany
Authors: Bühnen Stephan 
Published: May 2006

Written sources for the history of sub-Saharan Africa (with the exception of East Africa) only begin to appear with the inception of Arabic records from the ninth century onwards, and these are restricted to the Sahel and the northern part of the savanna belt. European sources begin in the mid-fifteenth century, first for Senegambia. They, in turn, confine themselves to the coast and its immediate hinterland, as well as the navigable courses of rivers, with few, and often vague, references to the interior. For the time before the early written sources and for those extensive areas which only much later entered the horizon of writing witnesses, other sources illuminating the past have to be traced and tapped. Among such non-written sources are the findings of anthropology and archeology, of research in oral tradition and place names. Because of their interdependence, working with different source types contributes to the reliability of results.So far little systematic use has been made of place names as a source for African history. Houis' 1958 dictum, “la toponymie ouest-africaine n'est pas encore sortie de l'oeuf,” has not yet been proven obsolete. In this paper I hope to stimulate the process of shedding the egg shells. It is intended as a short introduction to the potential historical treasures place names may yield, into their characteristics, and into some principles guiding their interpretation. With the aim at illustrating my arguments, I add examples of place names. These I have chosen from two areas which, at first sight, seem to have been selected rather randomly; southern Senegambia and Germany. In fact both areas share few features, both geographically and historically. Two reasons have led me to select them. First, they simply are the regions I know best. Secondly, the recourse to German place names is instructive, as research on place names has been undertaken there for more than a century, leading to a wide range of data and to the accumulation of rich research experience.
Towards a Chronology of the Publications of Francis Moore's Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa…
Authors: Hill Matthew H. 
Published: May 2006

There are two book length, English language, descriptions of precolonial life on the Gambia. The earlier, Richard Jobson's The Golden Trade of the Moors of 1620, is widely available, having been reprinted three times in this century. The other, Francis Moore's Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa of 1738 is equally valuable, but much rarer. Although Moore's book appeared in several editions in the eighteenth century, it has not been published in anything close to its entirety in almost two centuries. Moore stayed much longer on the Gambia than did Jobson and his more circumstantial account deserves greater accessibility for its contemporary influence as well as its source value. I am beginning the process of preparing a new edition of Moore and present this short bibliographical note as a first product of my research.Francis Moore was hired as a writer, or clerk, by the Royal African Company in 1730 and spent almost four and a half years (November 1730 to May 1735), on the river Gambia, first as a writer and subsequently as Factor, at several of the Company's establishments. During his stay he apparently wrote a general journal for his own uses, as well as the “true and particular Journal of all his Proceedings relating to the Affairs of the…Company” (Moore 1738, Appendix 1:2-3) which his contract obliged him to keep. Subsequently, Moore added several other texts as well as amending and extending his journals to produce the book first published in 1738. I will discuss these additions, amendments, and extensions below.
The Malian National Archives at Kuluba: Access and Applicability
Authors: Harmon Stephen A. 
Published: May 2006

The Malian National Archives are located at Kuluba, an administrative suburb of Bamako. The collection is remarkable because of its vast scope. While for the post-independence period only materials from the Republic of Mali are included, for the colonial period the collection includes documents from what was then called the French Sudan, of which Bamako was the capital. At various times the French Sudan comprised, besides all of modern Mali, portions of Mauritania, all of Burkina Faso, and for brief periods portions of Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Benin. In addition, documents from the military department of Niger (now Republic of Niger) also came into Kuluba.Among the documents one might not expect to find at Kuluba is a collection from the southeastern portions of Mauritania, including territory that at one time formed parts of the cercles of Kayes, Nioro, and Timbuktu, as well as the entire cercle of Nema. These districts, comprising the modern Mauritanian centers of Walata, Timbedra, and Aiun el-Arms, an area of nearly 300,000 square kilometers, were removed from the Sudan and appended to Mauritania in 1945. Many documents from what is today the nation of Burkina Faso are also found at Kuluba. All of what was later to be called Upper Volta was part of the Sudan until 1914, when it was made a separate colony. In 1932 the cercles of Wahiguya and Tugan were reattached to the Sudan, and again removed in 1947 when Upper Volta was reconstituted.
Editing Nineteenth-Century Intelligence Reports on the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, or the Delights of a Collaborative Approach
Authors: Kanya-Forstner A.S. , Lovejoy Paul E. 
Published: May 2006

For the past several years, we have been editing a series of intelligence reports on the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, all of them prepared by French officials in Tunisia during the 1890s, using information gathered from Muslim pilgrims who were passing through the Regency on their way to or from Mecca. Now that our edition is complete and we have regained a measure of control over our lives, we have been persuaded to jot down some of our reflections on this experience for the benefit of those who might be embarking on collaborative ventures of a similar sort.Scholarly collaboration, at least in History, usually begins in one of two, overlapping, ways. Individual researchers often develop an interest in a particular topic and then seek out one or more collaborators to work on it. The reasons for doing so can be as varied as the individuals concerned—to fill some gap in their own expertise, to lighten the research load, or to ease the loneliness which the more gregarious among us feel when working in scholarly isolation.Alternatively, two or more scholars may decide to work together and then seek out a research topic which best suits their collective interests. The reasons for adopting this second approach can be as varied as those for the first—friendship (and those involved are almost invariably friends before they become collaborators), a sense of intellectual affinity, or more crassly the attraction of being able to claim credit individually for all the work done collectively, since co-authored works still tend to “count” as much as those bearing only one name on the cover.