bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Production of History and Social Conscience, or How to “Civilize” the Other
Authors: Jewsiewicki Bogumil 
Published: May 2006

“… depuis que les toubabs sont arrivés nous n'avons plus d'histoire, parce qu'ils nous l'ont volée. Ils nous ont enseigné que notre histoire, c'est seulement d'avoir été vaincus par eux. C'est vrai, nous ne savons plus de nous et de nos pères que ce qu'ils nous en disent, à savoir qu'ils nous ont vaincus un point c'est tout… Ce qui distingue le maître de l'esclave? C'est simple finalement:l'un est persuadé qu'il doit nécessairement vaincre, l'autre qu'il doit nécessairement être vaincu.”“… un champ épistémologique s'opposera d'autant plus fortement à une menace de remaniement qu'il est peu autonome. Cet aspect de l'inertie traduit une sorte de principe de la totalité. Les croyances fournissent une intérpretation totalitaire; on ne pourra done admettre qu'elles puissent être mises en question par une perturbation d'ordre purement local, ne concernant que les faits isolés ou des idées de portée limitée.”For the majority of historians the philosophy of history seems to be the exclusive domain of the philosophers, who often do not understand historical practice. It is thus an easy matter to consider that all discussion of this problem places itself outside both the framework of historical production and the field of its consumption. In the same manner as this refusal to admit the existence of the problem, we easily confuse a teleological history with the philosophy of history. The rejection is both obstinate and blind. I am not sufficiently competent to attempt here a collective psychoanalysis, yet the conviction that historical practice is either empirical or doctrinaire, and thus taken in hand by an ideological orthodoxy, is tenacious. In his Ecriture de l'histoire de Certeau offers, in way of explanation, certain reasons for this attitude.
Theophile Conneau at Galinhas and New Sestos, 1836–1841: A Comparison of the Sources
Authors: Jones Adam 
Published: May 2006

The recent publication of the original manuscript of the autobiography of the slave trader Théodore Canot, alias Théophile Conneau, makes an important contribution to West African history. Previously historians have had to rely on the “improved” version by Brantz Mayer, published in 1854 and subsequently republished in several different forms and languages. The original manuscript is of far greater use; but we cannot altogether dispense with Mayer's book, since he obtained his information not only from Conneau's manuscript but from conversations with its author.Unfortunately the editors of the original manuscript demonstrate little interest in African history, except as a theme for moral philosophy, and they ignore the considerable amount of research which has been conducted in order to verify particular aspects of Conneau's account. My aim here is to fill one of the gaps left by existing studies--the period between 1836 and 1841--and to assess the accuracy of Conneau's manuscript and Mayer's book for this period.First, however, some information about Mayer's background is necessary. Born in Baltimore in 1809, he had by the time he met Conneau visited China, India, and Europe, and served as Secretary of the United States legation in Mexico for three years. But he never visited Africa and his interest in Africa must have been slight, for his huge library contained only two books relating to it. Like Conneau, he was an excellent linguist, fluent in Spanish and his father's native tongue, German. Whereas Conneau had received a fairly rudimentary education, Mayer had been taught by a private tutor and had studied law at the University of Maryland. In rewriting Conneau's autobiography, he took pains to demonstrate his knowledge of classical and contemporary literature, as well as of history.
George McCall Theal and Lovedale
Authors: Saunders Christopher 
Published: May 2006

South Africa's most prolific and influential historian still awaits a biographer. Such brief biographical sketches of his life as do exist say little about his career before he began work in the Cape archives in the late 1870s. Given the views he espoused in his later writings, it is at first surprising to find that he spent over five years at the Lovedale Seminary outside Alice in the eastern cape working closely with missionaries and Africans. An examination of this period of his life throws light on his historiographical career as a whole and reveals new complexities in his character.In the early 1870s Lovedale was the most influential institution of its kind in South Africa. A non-sectarian, non-denominational Christian school and a theological seminary, it had been founded by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries in 1841. It was rejuvenated under the leadership of Dr. James Stewart--missionary, medical doctor, explorer--who came to it as teacher in 1867 and took over as its second principal in 1870. Stewart emphasized the importance of “industrial” activities, including printing and bookbinding, and greatly enlarged Lovedale's intake of students. Drawing Africans not only from the eastern Cape but increasingly also from farther afield, the school grew from 92 pupils in 1870 to 336 in 1873 and 460 in 1876.In mid-1872 Stewart needed someone who could both teach and supervise the printing works. George McCall Theal met these requirements. He had taught at a small elementary school at Knysna in the late 1850s, then from 1867 in the public undenominational school at King William's Town, later to be known as Dale College.
For Marx, but with Reservations About Althusser: A Comment on Bernstein and Depelchin
Authors: Law Robin 
Published: May 2006

The 1970s have seen the growing influence of Marxism in the field of African history, with both the application of the neo-Marxist theory of “underdevelopment” to the study of the impact of international capitalism upon Africa and the employment of the more orthodox Marxist categories of “relations of production” and “mode of production” to the analysis of the indigenous social formations of Africa. The appearance in this journal of the programmatic article by Henry Bernstein and Jacques Depelchin, arguing for the development of a Marxist history of Africa, is therefore no surprise. It is, however, something of a disappointment, inasmuch as “Marxism” is peddled by Bernstein and Depelchin in a form particularly unhelpful to historians. Like Hindess and Hirst,” the ostensible inspirers of much Marxist work on African history, Bernstein and Depelchin subscribe to a particular variant of Marxism, that associated with the French philosopher Louis Althusser. While Marx should certainly be made welcome in the field of African history, since he has a great deal of interest to say on the crucial question of the relationship between economic, political, and ideological developments, it is less clear that Althusser is his most useful interpreter.Since Bernstein and Depelchin consistently emphasize the “radical break” which supposedly exists between Marxism, represented by themselves, and “bourgeois [i.e. non-Marxist] social thought” (1979: 31; cf. 1978:2) it is first of all necessary to consider the question: who is a Marxist? Many of the features which Bernstein and Depelchin, following Althusser, present as being distinctive of Marxism would, in fact, be contested by others equally claiming to be Marxists.
A Bio-Bibliography of C.W. Hobley
Authors: Matson A.T. , Ofcansky Thomas P. 
Published: May 2006

Charles William Hobley, C.M.G., was born in 1867 at Chilvers Coton in Warwickshire. Educated at King Edward VI School, Nuneaton, he enrolled in 1882 for a three-year engineering course at the Mason Science College, Birmingham, and spent the next five years in the shops and drawing offices of engineering firms at Nuneaton and at Dartford in Kent. He was admitted as a student in 1888 to the Institution of Civil Engineers, to which body he was elected an Associate Member in February 1894.In March 1890 he was appointed geologist to the Imperial British East Africa Company, which was trying with pitifully inadequate resources to administer and develop the British sphere in East Africa, for which it had been granted a charter by the British government. Like most of the handful of trained members of the Company's staff, Hobley had to carry out a multitude of duties outside the scope of his appointment, among them surveys for the ill-fated Central Africa Railway, road building, improvements to water supplies on the Uganda road, and exploratory surveys. During the course of these duties he devoted some time to investigating the mineral resources of the coast and hinterland. The most important exploratory survey was the journey in the stern-wheeler Kenia up the Tana River as far as Hameye, whence Hobley and a companion marched across country to the slopes of Mount Kenya and Machakos, and back to Mombasa along the Uganda road. After a period as Transport Superintendent at the coast, Hobley left East Africa in September 1893, at a time when it was becoming obvious that the Company could not long continue to meet the obligations imposed on it by its charter.
The Background and Possible Historical Significance of a Letter and Manuscript of 1798 Concerning Timbuktu
Authors: Stieber Michael T. 
Published: May 2006

The word ‘Timbuktu’ usually evokes an image of a place of exotic mystery in some far-removed corner of the earth. It evoked similar ideas in the European mind as early as the sixteenth century. By this time Timbuktu was one of the major trade centers of the unknown interior of Africa. Colonies along the western coast of Africa were not only enriching European nations with slaves, but also giving them access to trade routes to the kingdoms of the interior from which they obtained gold dust and other commodities. Timbuktu was also a Muslim center for scholars including the famous Ahmad Baba, to whom reference is made later.Besides Timbuktu, Gao and Jenne were major cities of the River Niger and its tributary the River Bani during the sixteenth century. From 1493 to 1591 the Songhay rulers extended their kingdom to include the most northern extent of the River Niger at the southern edge of the Sahara, opening trade routes with many of their neighbors, including some intercourse with Morocco.In the Archives of the Hunt Institute is a French extract from an Arabic manuscript which recounts the fall of Timbuktu to Moroccan forces in 1591. It is not known whether the Arabic manuscript is extant today. According to this manuscript, the Pasha Judar drove Ishaq from Tondibi to Caro (which is probably a lapsus calami for Gao), to which he laid siege for a short time and then returned to Timbuktu to await orders from the Sultan. The emperor sent Mahmud Zarkun with additional troops, and the latter relieved Judar of his command, attacked Caro, and chased Ishaq to Conkia [=Kukya?], where the latter died.
The Vernon Anderson Papers
Authors: Sanders James 
Published: May 2006

The papers in this collection were generated by Rev. Vernon Anderson, a Presbyterian missionary who served in the Belgian Congo. Born in Illinois in 1896, Anderson was raised in Alabama where he attended the Alabama Presbyterian College. After graduation he continued his studies at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, from which he received his B.D. degree in 1920. Anderson joined the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and assumed a post with that mission in the Kasai Province in 1921. The earliest Presbyterian missionaries to work in the Congo had established a station at Luebo in 1891. Their missionary efforts were concentrated among the Bena Lulua of the Lulua river valley. Anderson, however, was sent to the station of Bibanga situated near the Lubilashi river in the area southeast of Luebo. Bibanga lay within the broad area between Lake Tanganyika and the Kasai river in which the Luba live. The Baluba have been separted into two groups--the Baluba-kasai and the Baluba-katanga--by one present-day scholar. The Baluba-lubilashi are a subgroup of the Baluba-kasai.Anderson was one of the first missionaries to work among the Baluba-lubilashi, from 1921 to 1946. In addition to his duties as a missionary he spent a considerable amount of time studying Luba society, in part through the collection of primary data from informants. From this material he wrote a Ph.D. dissertation entitled Witchcraft in Africa: A Missionary Problem and received his degree in 1942 from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Another project to engage his scholarly interest in the Luba was the revision of an early Tshiluba-English dictionary.
The Thorny Road From Primary to Secondary Source: The Cult of Mumbo and the 1914 Sack of Kisii
Authors: Maxon R.M. 
Published: May 2006

For almost two decades, the cult of Mumbo or Mumboism has attracted the attention of historians and other social scientists interested in the colonial history of western Kenya. This has led to its recognition as an important protest response to colonial rule among the Gusii and Luo from the period just prior to World War I through the 1930s. Its importance has been magnified by ascribing to it responsibility for the looting of Kisii town, the administrative headquarters of what was then South Kavirondo district in southwestern Kenya. The Gusii people living near Kisii did indeed loot the town in September 1914 in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the British administration and a battle between an invading German force from German East Africa to the south and British troops, but the responsibility of the cult of Mumbo is at very best problematical. An examination of contemporary documentary and published primary sources shows that the cult of Mumbo or its teachings had nothing whatever to do with the looting and destruction of Kisii town, and offers a cautionary note on the use and abuse of colonial sources in Kenya history.Such a cautionary note is particularly highlighted by two recently published secondary works: Bill Freund's The Making of Contemporary Africa and E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo's chapter in volume VII of the UNESCO sponsored General History of Africa. In constructing their broad accounts, neither author had the opportunity to make extensive use of primary source material.
The Seventeenth Century Chronicles of Mārvāṛa: A Study in the Evolution and Use of Oral Traditions in Western India
Authors: Ziegler Norman P. 
Published: May 2006

Having won the great battle, Rāo Tīido returned to Mahevā with great wealth in train. Upon arrival, he divided up the wealth and property. To the Cāraṇas and Bhāṭas he gave many cows, many female camels and buffalo. And there were noble songs [vaḍā gîta] and exalted poems [vaḍā kavita] recited of the glorious battle and the renowned victory.The poets are the chief, though not the sole, historians of Western India;… they speak in a peculiar tongue, which requires to be translated into the sober language of probability. To compensate for their magniloquence and obscurity, their pen is free: the despotism of the Rajpoot princes does not extend to the poet's lay, which flows unconfined except by the shackles of the chhund bhojunga, or “Serpentine stanza”…. On the other hand, there is a sort of compact or understanding between the bard and the prince, a barter of “solid pudding against empty praise,” whereby the fidelity of the poetic chronicle is somewhat impaired. The sale of “fame” as the bards term it, by the court-laureates and historiographers of Rajasthan, will continue until there shall arise in the community a class sufficiently enlightened and independent to look for no other recompense for literary labor than public distinction.Stretching across North-central India from Kāthiāvaṛa to Orissa lies a great geographical and cultural shatterbelt formed by the Vindhyan mountains and their associated tracts, an area traditionally characterized by high internal subdivision and political fragmentation. The northwestern extension of this belt comprises the frontier zone today known as Rājasthān (“the land of the Princes”). Strategically situated between the rich Gangetic plains of Hindustān to the northwest and the fertile regions of Mālvā and Gujarāt to the south and southwest, it forms an area of marginal agricultural importance whose historical significance lay primarily in its position as a key transitional zone between larger cultural centers, criss-crossed and intersected at a number of points by major caraven routes.
Africana in the Goa Archives
Authors: Beach D.N. 
Published: May 2006

Gaining access to the Portuguese archives in Goa, now part of the Indian state of Goa, is (or, at least, was in my case) relatively easy. About two months in advance I wrote to Dr. V.T. Gune, the Director, asking permission to carry out research. After clearance had been obtained from New Delhi—I had the impression that no research on Africa would be regarded as “sensitive” by the Indian government—Dr. Gune very quickly granted me access.The archives are located in the town of Panjim in Goa, which can be reached by bus from neighboring Maharashtra or by the daily plane from Bombay and Trivandrum. Intending visitors should bear in mind that the monsoon can (and often does) sever all of these routes at various times. Panjim supplies most human needs, but microfilm has rarely been seen there since the Indian occupation of Goa in 1961, and researchers are warned to bring their own, although the actual work will be done by the photographic section. The section prefers extra fine grain Recordak Microfile Pancromatic 35mm double-perforated film, although similar films are acceptable. The main archives building houses most of the files, and researchers are provided space in the Archivist's office. Photography, however, is carried out at a separate depot in town. Unless they are unusually busy, the photographic staff can process material very quickly; in my case, they were able to film 863 exposures in little more than a week.
The Northern Regional Archival Center, Tamale, Ghana
Authors: Patterson K. David 
Published: May 2006

The Regional Archival Center at Tamale contains extensive documentation on the former Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, which today make up the Northern and Upper Regions of Ghana. The bulk of the records relating to the colonial period are held in the main repository in Accra, but any scholar working on a northern topic should plan to visit Tamale. While there is a tendancy for “older” (i.e., pre-1940 materials) to be in Accra and for more recent items and Native Authority records to be in Tamale, there is no hard and fast rule, and many exceptions and duplications exist.There is no catalog for the collection. Accession lists for the seventeen classifi¬cations employed are quite helpful, but they are often somewhat sketchy and sometimes give little indication of the actual contents of a file or the time period which it covers. Following is a list of the classifications, together with titles of selected files, to illustrate their extent and the types of material they contain.
Traditions of Genesis and the Luba Diaspora
Authors: Reefe Thomas Q. 
Published: May 2006

Origin stories are an important genre of central African oral traditions. Historians have long been intrigued by these stories, for their plots tell of the beginnings of societies and of the founding of ruling dynasties. It has been possible to cross-check the information in the oral traditions of many of the societies of west central Africa against data in Portuguese written records dating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These documents have helped to direct investigators towards the best assumptions to make when analyzing the oral traditions of west central African societies. However, writing the early history of the savanna societies in the very middle of central Africa (in southern Zaire and northern Zambia) has always been hampered by the absence of written documents which describe the area much before the early nineteenth century. Historians studying the early political history of these societies have been forced to link the events and characters of origin stories to each other without any anchor in written documentation.Recently, doubts have been raised about the nature and function of origin stories. It is no longer clear that the first step in studying the early history of central African savanna societies is to compare different origin stories with each other, as one would a group of written documents, in order to establish a consistent historical story-line or narrative. Rather, questions raised about the nature of origin stories have brought out the point that the first step in writing the early history of this area is to resolve methodological and historiographical issues, before the historical essence can be distilled from these tales.
The Archives of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (C.I.C.M.)
Authors: Raskin Albert 
Published: May 2006

Since China was initially the favorite field of activity of the C.I.C.M. founded at Scheut (a suburb of Brussels) in 1862, it is not surprising that the oldest documents in its archives refer to the China missions. In 1888, however, three years after the establishment of the Independent State of the Congo, the first C.I.C.M. missionaries were sent out there and their successors still continue their activities. Thus nowadays a very important part of the archives concerns the Congo, covering a period of nearly ninety years.At first the Apostolic Vicariate entrusted to the C.I.C.M. missionaries covered the entire extent of the Congo except for parts of the Apostolic Vicariate of Tanganyika, created two years earlier and given to the White Fathers to administer. Gradually, however, other missionaries came to help the C.I.C.M. pioneers and were put in charge of various territories which had originally been part of the Apostolic Vicariate. Eventually the C.I.C.M. retained only Leopoldville and its surrounding area, and the regions of Lower Congo, Equator, Lake Leopold II, and Kasai which, from the religious point of view, gave rise to the present C.I.C.M. provinces of Kinshasa, Boma, Lisala, Budjala, Inongo, Kananga, and East Kasai. This dismemberment explains why the documents preserved in the archives become more and more concentrated on these regions.
Drake's Fake: A Curiosity Concerning a Spurious Visit to Asante in 1839
Authors: McCaskie T. C. 
Published: May 2006

A wholly fraudulent source is an unusual occurrence in historical research. What is much more common and of much more intellectual interest is the discovery of a source that skilfully combines spurious invention with some regard for accuracy and convincing detail. This second kind of source is of course very familiar to historians of Africa, and the present note deals with a document of this type that, among other things, purports to offer a brief first-hand account of life in Kumase in 1839. I am chiefly concerned hare with the accuracy or inaccuracy of this piece of reportage; and--unusually for precolonial Africa--the document presently under review can be directly compared with a number of other precisely contemporary written accounts of life in Kumase.In his pioneering work published over thirty years ago on the suppression of the illicit nineteenth-century slave trade from Africa, Christopher Lloyd remarked on the paucity of first-hand accounts authored by slave traders. He also offered a number of judicious observations respecting the veracity or reliability of such accounts of this type as did exist. In his treatment of the workings of the illegal West African slave trade, Lloyd relied very heavily on one of the annotated editions of the memoirs of Théodore Canot (alias Théophile Conneau). Canot or Conneau is justly famous, and in the intervening years since the appearance of Lloyd's book this important source has become something of an exegetical industry among historians of West Africa.