bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Benin Kinglist/s: Some Questions of Chronology
Authors: Eisenhofer Stefan 
Published: May 2006

The chronology of the history of the Benin kingdom is seen by many historians as clarified in the main back to the thirteenth century and even earlier. Apart from the reports of European travelers and missionaries and some information given by merchants, this chronology is based mainly on the Benin kinglist for the periods before 1897. This list names 38 kings (obas) of Benin and covers past centuries with seemingly great accuracy (see table 1).In spite of the many names of formerobasand the pretended accuracy of the list's time-frame, it would be problematic to take it as historically factual since it cannot be corroborated by any documentation before the mid-nineteenth century. The data concerning the period before this time are almost exclusively based on the writings of the Benin amateur historian Jacob Egharevba. In his work Egharevba reported on important events in the oral traditions of Benin and connected the reign of former kings with specific years. In doing so he forced his African oral material into a linear European time scheme and into the framework specified by European written sources.Unfortunately, very few historians have as yet critically analyzed the chronological data for Benin. This is surprising, since the great Benin researcher Bradbury noted some time ago that Egharevba's “chronological conclusions have been accepted too uncritically, especially for the period up to the first European contact” (Bradbury 1959:285f) and have been seen as historical facts without any further consideration ever since. Neither the question of so-called “genealogical parasitism,” nor any of the other fundamental problems which arise when studying kinglists have been addressed.
Slender Evidence, Weighty Consequences: On One Word in the Periplus Maris Erythraei
Authors: Vansina Jan 
Published: May 2006

From time to time one encounters a situation where a wisp of a source yields evidence of momentous consequence for the understanding of a whole society in the past. Such a situation raises the question of how much evidentiary weight a slender source can credibly bear, for when the evidence is so slender or tenuous, the slightest misunderstanding or misinterpretation can lead to hugely magnified errors in historical reconstruction. At the same time, the more slender the evidence, the more tempted researchers will be to interpret it according to their own a priori vision of the past in question. This is a genuine problem which can only be overcome by finding more relevant evidence.Such situations naturally crop up wherever sources (written or otherwise) are very rare, so that every scrap of evidence must be scrutinized and exploited with the greatest care and to its fullest extent, a common circumstance in African history in relation to written documents before ca. A.D. 1450 and documents at all times about topics such as, for instance, women's history or specific techniques of agriculture that were normally not recorded. The situation then, while unusual, is frequent enough to warrant a more detailed discussion of one such instance to illustrate what the problem is and how it can be tackled. This illustration will be the case of oratoi, a single word in the Periplus Maris Erythraei.The Periplus is justly famous in African historiography. Known from a single manuscript now in Heidelberg and held to date from the early tenth century and a much later copy from that now in the British Museum, written in a mixture of classical and vulgar Greek by either a Greek living in Egypt or an Egyptian, and firmly dated to between AD 40-55, the Periplus contains the first, albeit succinct, information about the inhabitants of the East African coast, more than half a millennium before other comparable written mentions occur.
Photographic Sources for the History of Portuguese-Speaking Africa, 1870-1914
Authors: Dias Jill R. 
Published: May 2006

The wealth of the photographic record of Portuguese Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is only beginning to be appreciated. Until recently it was not only ignored but totally neglected. As a result much has been destroyed. The full extent of the surviving material is, as yet, unknown. Collections of photographs are dispersed in various archives, libraries, and private collections throughout Portugal. In most cases almost nothing is known of the photographers or of the circumstances in which then-work was produced. The photographs themselves have not been studied, so that the work of dating and evaluating their content has yet to be done.In this paper then I can present only a very preliminary and incomplete survey and exploration of some of the very diverse categories of photographic sources available for the history of Portuguese-speaking Africa between the 1870s and early 1920s, concentrating particularly on Angola and Mozambique. Whenever possible I also try to draw attention to some of the practical and theoretical problems involved in their interpretation as a step towards assessing more accurately their historical and sociological value.
Hawkins' Hoax? A Sequel to “Drake's Fake”
Authors: Fage J. D. 
Published: May 2006

English schoolchildren were once brought up on tales of the exploits of Drake and the two Hawkins, father and son, leaders of the English seafaring adventures who invaded the monopolies of Atlantic trade claimed by the Iberian monarchs, who signed Philip II's beard, and who eventually brought his great Armada to destruction. Strangely enough, some two centuries later the names Drake and Hawkins would seem to reappear in Atlantic history as those of two North American adventurers who sought to profit in the slave trade from West Africa.Not so long ago my friend and colleague T. C. McCaskie presented in History in Africa grounds for believing to be spurious inventions those parts of the published reminiscences of Richard Drake which deal with Asante, the great kingdom behind the Gold Coast (on which he may well have traded), and which he claimed to have visited in 1839. Unlikely though it may seem, there would also appear to be substantial grounds for believing that Joseph Hawkins' account of a trip into the interior of West Africa, which he claimed to have made from the Rio Nunez in 1795, is also at least in some measure an invention.
The Quest for “Tarra”: Toponymy and Geography in Exploring History
Authors: McDougall E. Ann 
Published: May 2006

Some years ago, Robin Winks edited a series of essays entitled The Historian as Detective, invoking the intellectual joys of an Agatha Christie mystery to explain the value of history to society. It drew no examples from Africa, perhaps reflecting the infancy of African historiography at the time. However, it is no exaggeration to say that in the intervening decades, the piecing together of African history has raised for historians challenges of method and complexities of interpretation fully worthy of Hercule Poirot.Contributions to this recent genre of detective work have been especially notable on the part of those investigating Africa's precolonial past. The reasons for this are many: a paucity of reliable witnesses, extreme difficulty (not to mention expense) in tracking down those who do exist, a shortage of suitably trained and dedicated ‘gum-shoes,’ and an abundance of clues which frustratingly seem to lead at one and the same time ‘both everywhere and nowhere,’ as Poirot would probably put it. But where detectives like him achieved fame and fortune by finding conclusive answers, detectives of early African history have had to settle for the relative obscurity which accompanies the unsolved case. ‘Mysteries’ which leave the choice of solution to the reader are more characteristic of the field than those with definitive, final-page revelations. In this, the quest for “Tarra” proves itself no exception.
The Archives of Zambia's United National Independence Party
Authors: Musambachime M. C. 
Published: May 2006

In an introduction to a University of Zambia publication entitled A Catalogue of Unpublished Materials in Zambia, published in 1978, J. K. Rennie observed that in Zambia there were “many depositories or collections of private and official papers, the extent of whose holdings are imperfectly known and the state of whose preservation was uncertain.” The Catalogue, which was supposed to be the first in a series and was intended to be a “guide to unpublished primary materials … and an aid to research in history and social sciences,” identified thirty government and non-government depositories located in various parts of Zambia. The wealth and diversity of materials held in these depositories were of immense value and benefit to researchers— academics and students interested in historical studies requiring archival research. Rennie, and others who assisted him in locating and documenting these depositories, made what they called a “humble minor beginning in a much larger enterprise. This paper is intended as a further contribution to this enterprise.In Zambia, one depository that is little known by social science researchers is the archives held by the ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP), located in Freedom House, the party headquarters at the southern end of Cairo Road, which forms part of the Research Bureau of the party. This archives holds important files formerly held by the African National Congress (ANC) formed in 1948 and disbanded in 1973 after the Chôma declaration which ushered in the one-party state and of UNIP, formed in 1960, which today is the only political party in Zambia.
“A Smattering of Education” and Petitions as Sources: A Study of African Slaveholders' Responses to Abolition in the Gold Coast Colony, 1874–1875
Authors: Akurang-Parry K.O. 
Published: May 2006

By the mid-nineteenth century African societies had begun to use petitions as an instrument of agitation for reforms in nascent colonial policies. This was especially true of those societies located in the coastal enclaves where precolonial European and diasporic African influences were markedly profound. Compared with other African responses to European colonial rule, anti-colonial petitions are less spectacular. This explains, perhaps-deservingly so, why petitions or memorials, which also took the form of deputations, as a historical genre have been marginalized in the polemical studies of African responses to colonial rule. Such studies have included militant responses in the form of war, riots, social banditry, millennarianism, arson, strikes, avoidance of conscription, desertion, and mass migration. Other forms of African response, devoid of militancy or overly tumultuous actions, have been aptly described by James C. Scott as theWeapons of the Weak. These have included foot-dragging, the use of songs, and the protest politics of the indigenous African press.This study deals with how slaveholders in the Gold Coast responded to British abolition of slavery and pawnship in the Gold Coast in 1874-75. Specifically, I examine how the African intelligentsia in the Gold Coast Colony used quasi-legal means, essentially petitions, to oppose abolition and emancipation of slaves and pawns. This opposition was undertaken on behalf of slave/pawnholders, including the indigenous rulers of the coast, especially the Fante region. Additionally, the study draws attention to Africans' use of petitions as an important historical source that can benefit the study of various aspects of colonial rule and facets of African responses.
Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in “Portuguese” Accounts on “Guinea of Cape Verde” (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)
Authors: da Silva Horta José 
Published: May 2006

Portugal and Western Africa have built a common history since the middle of the fifteenth century. In this century the Portuguese maritime expansion was a pioneer movement within the European expansion process. It established an uninterrupted connection between societies that had never met before. After a short period of Portuguese warlike activities (1436-48), the African resistance to enslavement, inter alia, forced a radical change of strategy. By 1460 the Portuguese had explored the western African coast as far as the present Sierra Leone, and had begun to establish with African societies a fairly peaceful relationship founded on mutual trade interests. Within this context, Christianity, although it might be faced in a different way by each culture, constituted a common “language,” a path to find approaching ground and fulfil reciprocal needs.From the beginning, the Portuguese Crown attempted to establish a monopoly on the European coastal and riverine activities, an attempt that was progressively challenged, in loco, by the French, the English and the Dutch, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the State interests were also challenged by illegal private traders that came both from the Iberian Peninsula and Santiago Island and had their own agents in Guinea.The geographical basis for trade activities (legal and illegal) were, at least until the 1560s, the Cape Verde islands, which were discovered ca. 1460-1462. Trade—together with the strategic value of the archipelago to the Atlantic navigation—was the reason why the colonization of the main island, Santiago, began very early, in 1462, followed, at the end of the century, by Fogo island.
History and Historiography in Precolonial Nigerian Societies: The Case of the Ekiti
Authors: Agboola C.O.O. 
Published: May 2006

Today the Ekiti, a major dialectal segment of the Yoruba-speaking group, inhabit the Ekiti State and the Oke-Ero and Ekiti Local Government Areas of Kwara State in Nigeria. Otun Ekiti, or simply “Otun,” one of the Ekiti towns (spelt “Awtun” in many colonial records), is presently the headquarters of the Moba Local Government Area of Ekiti State. During British colonial rule in Nigeria, the people of Otun had cause to narrate to the authorities their oral traditions and history. In that process they claimed, like most Yoruba-speaking groups, that they and their oba originated from Ile-Ife, the traditional core of Yoruba dispersal. They also claimed that their oba, the Oore (also sometimes spelt “Ore” or “Owore”) was, and had always been, the preeminent oba among the Ekiti oba.Based largely on those claims, the people of Otun undertook some major actions, especially their separatist activities in Ilorin Division from about 1900 to 1936. Similarly, due largely to those claims and the resultant reactions from the people, the colonial government took some major decisions and actions. The most important of such actions was the administrative excision of Otun District from Ilorin Division of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria and its merger with the Ekiti Division of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria in 1935/36.There appeared, however, in 1947, a publication titled Itan Oore, Otun ati Moba, written by David Atolagbe, and a second edition came out in 1981. Of relevance to the thrust of this paper are the claims made by the author to the effect that the Oore and people of Otun originated, not from Ile-Ife as had earlier been claimed by some sources, but independently from the Creator of the universe, even though he still maintained the paramountcy of the Oore among the Ekiti oba.
“What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa?”: Thoughts on Boundaries—and Related Matters—in Precolonial Africa
Authors: Wright Donald R. 
Published: May 2006

I made a mistake teaching my course on precolonial African history this past fall. I vowed (to myself) to be absolutely honest. I decided to admit to students how little historians know for certain about much of Africa's early history. I focused on the evidence, emphasizing how little there is for determining what occurred several centuries ago—let alone 2000 years ago—in sub-Saharan Africa. I gave one lecture—downright sterling, I thought—in which, in the first part, I taught about “Bantu Expansion” as I had done in my first year on the job, way back in 1976. I had read Roland Oliver's 1966 article in theJournal of African History, which had made everything clear to me once upon a time.With that as a basis I laid out an entire scheme about how these humans, who spoke related languages, had populated nearly all of sub-equatorial Africa since the beginning of the modern era. I had maps on overhead projection (copies handed out) showing when the Bantu migrated where; I spoke of the evidence for it all, even reading from Ptolemy'sGeographyand thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea; and recalled how clear it all was to myself and the students, who wrote down nearly every word and made notations on the maps.Then, in the second part of the lecture, I talked about how incorrect it all was (student pens here coming to rest)—how our reading of some of the linguistic evidence was faulty, how we read things into Ptolemy and thePeriplusbecause they fit the scheme, and how subsequent archeological evidence has simply proved most of the neat scheme wrong. I concluded with an honest, if pessimistic, note that, because of the paucity of evidence, there simply is a lot about early African history that we will not be able to know.
The Informant as Resolute Overseer
Authors: Kaufmann Jeffrey 
Published: May 2006

In this paper I take into account informants who oversee fieldworkers in local arenas. My intention is not to question the importance of participant-observation as the hallmark of field research but to elevate the recognition of informants in fieldwork. The argument centers on local overseers who are integral to participant-observation by controlling more of what the researcher observes, and with whom one participates, than they are usually given credit for in the literature. I intentionally use “overseer” rather than the usual “gatekeeper” label to convey a strong sense of informant involvement in ethnographic research (cf. Ellen 1984 where “gatekeeper” is used to describe a range of actors who control access, channel activities, and so on). The case study is drawn from my experiences with a host family in southwest Madagascar with whom I lived for 10 months in 1997.There are different ways of representing informants in the literature. One way is to draw a wide line between informant and participant-observer. Informants are defined as local people who willingly provide information to participant-observers. Participant-observers are non-locals involved in intense interaction with members of a community over a long period such as a year. The two are not to overlap. Evans-Pritchard found informants vital to his Azande research, participant-observation central to his Nuer fieldwork. “Azande would not allow me to live as one of themselves; Nuer would not allow me to live otherwise. Among Azande I was compelled to live outside the community; among Nuer I was compelled to be a member of it” (Evans-Pritchard 1940:15). This tradition, of treating each as a separate method, is widespread (see, for example, Bernard 1995:136-79; Casagrande 1960; Ellen 1984; Freilich 1970:541; Herskovits 1955:376; Jackson 1997:188; Malinowski 1961:1-25; Pelto and Pelto 1973:242-43; Spradley 1980:177).
The Roots of the African Diaspora: Methodological Considerations in the Analysis of Names in the Liberated African Registers of Sierra Leone and Havana
Authors: Nwokeji G. Ugo , Eltis David 
Published: May 2006

Europe and the Americas have long dominated studies of transatlantic exchanges and much more is known about European participation in the Atlantic world than of its African counterpart. Current knowledge of how those parts of Africa located a few miles away from the African littoral contributed to the early modern Atlantic World is particularly sparse. This is despite the fact that the slave trade was the largest branch of transatlantic migration between Columbian contact and 1870, and that it is becoming apparent that Africans and indigenous Americans helped shape the new political and economic power structures, as well as the post-Columbian worlds of culture and labor.Assessments of the impact of any group on the global stage must begin with the nature of the group itself, and thus efforts to raise the African profile in Atlantic scholarship and to focus on the agency of Africans must quickly face the contentious issue of ethnicity. From the broadest perspective, it is odd that the way the ancestors of the Atlantic World defined themselves should have become so much more contentious among Africanists and Afro-Americanists than among those scholars who study Europe and Europeans overseas. At the outset of the repeopling of the Americas, the European state existed in nascent form in only Spain, Britain, and France. The predominance of the nation-state in the way the world is organized in the twenty-first century—rather than its status in 1492—has perhaps led scholars to stress the contrasts between Africa and Europe on issues of early modern nationhood, and, more generally, human identity.
Oral Tradition in Changing Political Contexts: The Kisra Legend in Northern Borgu
Authors: Akinwumi Olayemi 
Published: May 2006

Until the mid-1950s all the received traditions in Nigerian Borgu were unanimous that Bussa was established by Woru, the eldest son of Kisra (alhough some versions claim that it was Kisra himself), while Shabi and Bio, his younger brothers, established Nikki and Illo respectively. These traditions were recorded in the early period of colonial rule by colonial anthropologists and most of these accounts are deposited at the National Archives in Kaduna.From the 1950s new traditions began to emerge challenging certain aspects of these earlier versions. One such aspect that has attracted attention is the order of the establishment of the principal Borgawa states. The new traditions denied any link between Kisra and Bussa, and also condemned the prominent role assigned to the Emir of Bussa. The principal objective of the present paper is to explain the political situation that gave rise to the emergence of these new traditions, and to show how suspectible oral tradition, especially traditions of origin, is to political manipulation.Edmund Leach and J.A. Atanda have demonstrated this in different works. In his work on highland Burma Leach shows how traditions of origins “change with clock-like regularity in response to shifts in the political constellation.” In his turn Atanda shows how oral tradition “undergoes revisions when regimes change, care being taken that materials ‘useless’ to the new regime are expunged and new ‘useful’ materials added to evolve to an acceptable ‘standard version’.”