bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An Inventory of Microfilms of Selected Danish Archives (Rigsarkvet-Københaven) Concerning West Africa
Authors: Sanders James 
Published: May 2006

The following inventory of eighty-five reels of microfilm represents a selection of documents which relate to West Africa from the State Archives of Denmark. The documents date from 1624 to 1823, though the majority of them originated in the eighteenth century. They were taken from three major classes of records in the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen: the West India and Guinea Company (Vestindiskguineisk Kompagni), the Guinea Company (Guineisk Kompagni), and the Various Records from Guinea (Diverse arkivalier fra Guinea). The West India and Guinea Company and the Guinea Company (or, more specifically, the Royal Chartered Danish Guinea Trading Company) were two of the most important companies involved in the West African trade in the eighteenth century. However, there was another, the Royal Danish Baltic-Guinea Company, which received a charter in 1779. Unfortunately, its records have not survived. Most of the documents in this collection are written in Danish, but some are in Dutch since many of the Danish Guinea Company's employees were Dutch.The West India and Guinea Company (1671-1755) archives consist of three groups of material: company records in Copenhagen, records sent to Denmark from the Government on the Guinea Coast (1698-1754), and accounts sent to Denmark from the Guinea Coast (1698-1754). The company records in Copenhagen, inventory numbers 28-483 (reel numbers 1-27), consist mainly of letter books of the Board of Directors and incoming and outgoing letters and documents. Records in the second group, inventory numbers 880-890 (reel numbers 27-33), include Minutes of the Council at Christiansborg and journals, letter books, and court records. The third group, inventory numbers 891-932 (reel numbers 33-50), consists mostly of account books, cash books, and ledgers.
The Kumase Branch of the National Archives of Ghana: A Situation Report and Introduction for Prospective Users
Authors: Austin Gareth 
Published: May 2006

The Ashanti Regional Office of the National Archives of Ghana is a repository of great value for historians and social scientists of Asante, and of major importance for Ghana studies generally. So far, its contents are semiorganized and they are decaying steadily. Having worked several stretches in it during the period from 1979 to August 1985, I offer the following account from a researcher's perspective, aimed at providing a guide to some practicalities of using this archive; at highlighting its need for greater resources; at going some way to clarify how its contents are arranged; and finally, at briefly illustrating their--hitherto underestimated--importance to scholars.The NAG-K is situated in the grounds of the National Cultural Centre. The formal requirement for admission is a NAG Searcher's Ticket, obtainable on the spot or at the Accra headquarters, normally by means of a letter of introduction. The Archivist, Mr. C.A. Azangweo, and his often-changing staff have maintained an impressive friendliness and helpfulness over very difficult years. But as in the Ghanaian public service generally, low pay has led to an exodus of skilled personnel and contributed to low morale among most of those who remain, while suspension of non-salary expenditure has undermined conditions of work and, more importantly, the physical state of the documents themselves.
Oral Tradition: Primary Source Only for the Collector?
Authors: Heintze Beatrix 
Published: May 2006

The golden rule of all scientific publication is that the reader must be in a position to be able to check the author's statements.The scientific level of existing publications of oral traditions is, as a rule, not very high.The ideal treatment of oral traditional materials by the historian may be considered as occurring in four main stages:1. the collection of the traditions in the field2. the creation of a primary souce with the pubhcation of the raw materials3. the analysis of this raw material4. the creation of a secondary source with the publication of the results of this analysis and interpretationThese various stages cannot easily be demarcated very clearly. Preliminary analyses influence the field work and often pass into the pubhcation of the raw material (that is, the nature of the published material is anticipated in the very recording of the data). In turn, the publication of the interpretative analysis frequently contains quotations from the raw field data and should yield insights into the analytical process.The accumulated (and rather extensive) literature on this subject has heretofore been devoted mainly to the analysis of traditions, and quite rightly so: if anything, it has tended to discuss the methodological problems associated with the analysis, sometimes drawing attention to these problems for the first time. After Jan Vansina, it was Philip Curtin who particularly concerned himself with the first stage (the collecting and recording of traditions in the field), outlining the standard to be sought and offering a series of important practical suggestions. In my opinion, Curtin is the only author so far who has dealt in a systematic manner with the preliminary processing and publication of the raw material (stage 2) and established guidelines for it.
New Light on Venda Traditions: Mahumane's Account of 1730
Authors: Liesegang Gerhard 
Published: May 2006

In the early eighteenth century a Venda kingdom stretched from the Limpopo in the north to the Olifants or even Ngwenya (Crocodile) in the south and included the much smaller area now inhabited by the Venda. The main evidence for the existence of this polity comes from data on the Venda gathered between 1723 and 1730 by the Dutch at Delagoa Bay. The most substantial of these sources, part of which has been transcribed and translated here, is the so called ‘report of Mahumane’, an African from the chiefdom of Mpfumo near the Dutch trading factory who had visited the Venda king in 1727/28 and who named a number of rivers which can still be identified. Mahumane's account supports Venda traditions of an earlier and larger state, a tradition whose validity has sometimes been questioned in the last decades. The report shows that from the early eighteenth to the second half of the nineteenth centuries cultural and political changes occurred which influenced the identification of groups by outsiders and to some extent also their own self-identification. In turn this suggests that it is not always safe to project groups and polities as they existed in the second half of the nineteenth century into the remoter past.The report also contains some information on the Lemba and on the northern and eastern neighbors of the Venda. In order not to raise false hopes I might add that Mahumane's account contains no information on the identity of the royal lineage of the Venda in the 1720's and earlier.
Written Sources and African History: A Plea for the Primary Source. The Angola Manuscript Collection of Fernão de Sousa
Authors: Heintze Beatrix 
Published: May 2006

The written sources for African history are scattered throughout the world, often in archives to which access is difficult. To reach them often requires a considerable expenditure of time and money, quite apart from the necessary linguistic knowledge. As a result, at least in the German-speaking world, much of the writing of African history and anthropology has for decades rested exclusively on published sources. Besides often leading to a serious deficiency of information, such an approach limits the degree of control to which written testimony can be subjected: even the most assiduous textual criticism soon reaches its limits if comparable information is lacking. In addition, where there are only a few published sources, the historian may all too easily be lulled into a false sense of security. To remedy this, it is not enough to plead for as much archival work as possible (a requirement that can today usually be taken for granted in any case) and encourage the publication of more primary sources. We should also pay more attention to the distinction between primary and secondary sources, that is, take more explicitly into account the proximity of a source to the historical event or situation concerned--quite apart from observing all the other rules of textual criticism.This paper therefore has two purposes. First, I wish to draw attention to a hitherto-neglected source for Angolan history in the first half of the seventeenth century--the manuscript collection of Fernão de Sousa, Governor of Angola from 1624 to 1630. A rough review of its contents and arrangement will perhaps stimulate scholars to study it and facilitate its use.
Ngundeng and the “Turuk:” Two Narratives Compared
Authors: Johnson Douglas H. 
Published: May 2006

The historiography of the southern Sudan offers few examples of the critical assessment of sources. Surprisingly, the only conscious attempts at source evaluation have been made by anthropologists or ethnographers. Most historians and political scientists have been preoccupied with chronologies of administration and policy based on colonial documents and have been all too uncritical in accepting these sources for their generalizations on the history of southern Sudanese societies. Part of the reason why the historiography of the southern Sudan has lagged so far behind the rest of Africa in this respect is that, until recently, a limited number of colonial documents were the main sources available on southern Sudanese history, and these remained both unchallenged or uncorroborated by indigenous sources. Over the last ten years, however, it has become possible for scholars to collect and examine a wider variety of local materials in the southern Sudan itself, and the comparison of these materials with the older, better-known, sources can help to produce that creative tension so necessary for any critical advance to be made.There is an urgent need for an evaluation of oral history in the southern Sudan. Oral traditions have been collected for over eighty years, but most of the recorded forms, those found in government files and reports, are composite summaries and interpretations by their collectors--government officials--rather than systematic comparisons of different accounts. In this form it is often difficult to separate the assumptions of the colonial officials from the claims of their informants, a task made particularly difficult by the fact that rarely does the record specify the source of an account or the context in which it was collected. Comparisons of modern accounts, when the source and context of the narrative are known, with these older, vaguer records can reveal something about both the traditional history of southern Sudanese societies and the assumption of colonial administrators.
Segeju and Daisũ: A Case Study of Evidence from Oral Tradition and Comparative Linguistics
Authors: Nurse Derek 
Published: May 2006

The history of “the” Segeju has been the subject of lengthy published debate. The discussion has been based almost entirely on interpretation of oral traditions as recounted by Segeju informants to various scholars. A newcomer with a linguistic bias is struck by certain aspects of much of this debate:a] the linguistic implausibility apparently involved. Baker, for example, recording fairly literally what he was told, started the history of “the” Segeju in the Middle East: this would presumably involve a community speaking Arabic or Persian. There follows reference to “segeju” travels and sojourns in mainland northeast Africa: linguistic affiliation unknown. This period terminates with their arrival at Shungwaya, in southern Somalia: linguistic affiliation unstated. Later “they” are found on the Upper Tana River: Kamba is mentioned. Finally “they” settle in their present location on the northern Tanzanian coast, where today the language affiliations of people referring to themselves as “Segeju” are various (see below).
A Bio-Bibliography of F.D. Lugard
Authors: Ofcansky Thomas P. 
Published: May 2006

It hardly seems necessary to recapitulate the main lines of Lugard's life and career since these are well known and have been studied several times. It might be useful, however, to discuss the political impact of his writings--especially some of his later works--because so many of them helped to influence British colonial policy throughout Africa and the empire.As early as 1889 Lugard had established himself as an authority on African affairs by publishing a series of articles about Nyasaland and the necessity of suppressing the slave trade. Three years later--after engineering a treaty between Mwanga, the kabaka of Buganda, and the Imperial British East Africa Company--Lugard returned to England to campaign for the retention of Uganda. In addition to making his views known in The Times and in the Pall Mall Gazette, he defended the British position in eastern Africa in such important publications as the Manchester Geographical Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, and the Chamber of Commerce Journal. The Rise of Our East African Empire, a two-volume study of approximately 350,000 words, also helped to convince the British government and public of Uganda's stategic and economic value.In 1894 Lugard accepted employment with the Royal Niger Company, thereby starting an association with west Africa that lasted for more than forty years. During that time he wrote an astounding number of articles, books, and pamphlets about the region's economic, political, and social life. In one nine-month period, for example, Lugard wrote twelve papers that appeared in a number of journals, including the Scottish Geographical Magazine, The Nineteenth Century, National Review, and The Geographical Journal.
Malcolm Guthrie and the Reconstruction of Bantu Prehistory
Authors: Flight Colin 
Published: May 2006

As to the scientific method,… it consist in the careful and often laborious classification of facts, in the comparison of their relationships and sequences, and finally in the discovery… of a brief statement or formula, which in a few words resumes the whole range of facts.Poor Pearson! His punishment was to have practised what he preached.…The Bantu expansion is one of the most important large-scale problems in African culture history -- an epic enacted over two or three thousand years and ten million square kilometers, by a cast not merely of thousands, but of many millions. By definition, the problem is primarily linguistic, but it cannot fail to engage the interest of other Africanists. The evidence arising from the comparative study of the Bantu languages has to be collated with evidence derived from other sources -- especially from archeology -- and extra-linguistic factors have to be invoked as soon as we raise the question of explanation. Bantu-speaking communities did not expand by virtue of the fact that they spoke Bantu: this at least we may safely take for granted.Until a few years ago, the argument revolved around the names of two linguists -- about as different in temperament and training as any two linguists could be -- who had both by chance turned their attention to Bantu in the late 1940s. An American linguist, Joseph H. Greenberg, working towards a genetic classification for all African languages, arrived at a controversial conclusion regarding the relationship between Bantu and the so-called “Semi-Bantu” languages of Nigeria.
Royal Pedigrees of the Insular Dark Ages: A Progress Report
Authors: Miller Molly 
Published: May 2006

The fall of the Roman empire and the rise of its successor states in continental Europe is reasonably well-documented and royal pedigrees are both brief and among the least of our sources of information. In the islands Roman administration ceased in Lowland Britain in 410, and had never obtained in northern Highland Britain or in Ireland, so that continuing and successor states existed side by side. It is likely that their secular influences on one another are masked by the common process of the conversion to Christianity in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries; certainly the “waves of saints” are prominent both in accounts of the period and in present notions about it. This is no doubt one reason why the various bodies of royal pedigrees have remained until recently (or still) only partially published and little studied.The matrilinear Picts, however, became a subject for historical and anthropological consultation a century ago. Unfortunately, as we shall see, this conversation has not continued, and it is only of recent years that historians of the Insular Dark Ages have once more become aware of the possibilities of learning (both positively and negatively) from the insights and procedures developed by anthropology. The present moment, when both disciplines are grappling with the problem of what constitutes historical evidence for pre-archival periods, may be a propitious time for recommencing joint consideration of our common interests.
Archives of the Svenska Missionsförbundet
Authors: Widman Ragnar 
Published: May 2006

Founded in 1878 the Svenska Missionsförbundet (Mission Covenant Church of Sweden; until 1911 known as the Swedish Missionary Society) established its first mission in the Belgian Congo three years later. The first station was at Mukimbungu and was followed by posts at Kibunzi (1887), Londe Matadi (1892), Kinkenge (1897), Kingoyi (1900), Sundi Lutete (1924), and Matadi (1928). All these stations are in the Kikongo-speaking area of lower Congo. Except for Mukimbungu, transferred to the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society in 1939, these posts were operated until independence. Meanwhile, in the neighboring French Congo, stations were established at Madzia in 1909, Musana in 1910, Brazzaville in 1911, Kolo in 1916, Indo in 1918, Loubetsi in 1922, Mansimou in 1925, Madouma in 1929, Ngouedi in 1930, Pointe Noire in 1933, Zanaga in 1937, Dolisie (Loubomo) in 1938, and Okoyo in 1977. With independence, the churches in the two ex-colonies indigenized; the congregation in Zaire was renamed the Communauté Evangélique du Zaire, while that in Congo-Brazzaville became known as the Eglise Evangélique du Congo. The Svenska Missionsförbundet also engaged in mission activities in Lappland, East Turkestan, India, Japan, and several other areas.The archives of the Svenska Missionsförbundet are in Stockholm. The mailing address is Box 6302, 113 81 Stockholm. Materials organized by the archives include diaries, minutes, reports, accounts and cash books, and a good deal of ethnographic and linguistic materials. In addition there is collection of more than 20,000 photographs, as well as copies of the various periodicals published by the church.
“Bilali of Faransekila”: A West African Hunter and World War I Hero According to a World War II Veteran and Hunters' Singer of Mali
Authors: Conrad David C. 
Published: May 2006

“An only son must never die in war until the end of the world.”(Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila,” 1:396)Discussing the significance of Kande Kamara's oral history of West African experiences in the First World War, Joe Harris Lunn observes that, although historians have begun to examine the effects of that war on west Africa, their studies are mostly based on written sources, “and therefore shed little light on the lived reality of the war for the African masses whose perceptions of their experiences were never recorded.” Of particular value then, is the oral history provided by the Guinean veteran Kande Kamara, offering as it does an opportunity for assessing the European war's impact on west Africans. Lunn finds, however, that west African soldiers who served in France during the First World War have left very few records of either their wartime experiences or its effects on their later lives. The text by the late Malian hunters' singer Seydou Camara that is presented here helps to redress this lamentable deficiency because, although it is a step or two removed from the sort of firsthand eyewitness account offered by Kande Kamara, it provides valuable support for and confirmation of certain elements of Kande Kamara's testimony. Composed and sung by Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila” provides us with an oral traditional counterpart to Kande Kamara's firsthand account.
Robert Norris, Agaja, and the Dahomean Conquest of Allada and Whydah
Authors: Ross David 
Published: May 2006

In a book in which he gave an account of the reign of Tegbesu (1740-1774), Robert Norris, the late eighteenth-century slave trader historian of Dahomey, included a brief sketch of the career of Tegbesu's father, Agaja (1718-1740), the conqueror of Allada and Whydah. Norris portrayed Agaja as a nation-builder who brought the Dahomeans and the people of Allada and Whydah, “the conquerors and the conquered,” to think of themselves as “one people.” The author claimed that Agaja saw to it after the conquest that “every part of his dominions became replenished with people.” He also argued that Agaja's new subjects were so pleased with his policy of reconciliation that they made no “efforts to regain their independence.”Norris' account of Agaja has been very influential, especially since the 1960s when I. A. Akinjogbin not only endorsed it but added both that Dahomey was founded by a group of patriotic anti-slave trade Aja and that post-1740 Dahomey was a European-like nation state. Norris' argument, as embellished by Akinjogbin, was reproduced in a number of authoritative 1970s works and appears to have retained its appeal even though Akinjogbin's addenda have been shown to be at odds with the evidence. Norris' original thesis nevertheless is just as flawed as Akinjogbin's various supplementary claims. Agaja was far from having been a nation-builder; still less was he a far sighted statesman who saw to it that “every part of his dominions became replenished with people.”
The Life Story of King Shaka and Gender Tensions in the Zulu State
Authors: Golan Daphna 
Published: May 2006

Hundreds of poems, novels, plays, and films have been devoted to Shaka, the king of the Zulu. His life story has been created anew each generation, and his image has changed over the years. For many whites he represents barbarism; for many blacks both within and outside South Africa, he has become a symbol of power. The ways in which Shaka has been portrayed reveal trends of thought and ideological influences prevailing in each period. They record the shifts in white conceptions of blacks in South Africa, and some of the developments in black consciousness.In this study I suggest that the core of the king's biography, the very basic life story which most historians accept, is but an invention. Shaka's biography closely resembles that of other African leaders such as Sundiata and Mbegha, and of biblical heroes, such as Joseph or Moses. These similarities to stories about other heroes point to the mythic character of the narrative and raise the possibility of investigating the various Shaka stories as symbolic representations of alternative world views, rather than as records of past times.