Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-7nlkj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-01T14:02:47.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Toward a History of Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Hubert Deschamps
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is now almost two centuries since James Cook discovered the oikoumene, and fifty years since explorers planted their flags at the Poles. Clio has marched more cautiously. Historians, those sons of Herodotus, have only slowly rounded off his domain. The textbooks of my childhood remained confined to the Mediterranean and the “little promontory” of Europe, as at the times of Bossuet. I would not swear that they have progressed very much. If La Fontaine required two days to travel from Paris to Clamart, a single day suffices for us to reach the tip of Africa, and soon we will be able to circle the globe several times in eighty minutes. The earth is no more than a house and the antipodes are close neighbors. It is no longer enough, therefore, to know only oneself and one's own history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 10 , Issue 37 , March 1962 , pp. 105 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The history of colonizations, of course, constitutes an important aspect of African history. Ch. A. Julien, particularly, has freed it of its apologetic vein and dealt with it according to its due.

2 Maurice Delafosse, Haut Sénégal, Niger, 3 vols., Paris, 1912.

3 R. P. Callet, Tantaran'ny Andriana etc. Madagascar, 1st edition, Tanana rive, 1873.

4 J. Vansina, "Recording the Oral History of the Bakuba", Journal of African History, No. 1, 1960. The author is going to publish a work on the same subject: "La valeur historique de la tradition orale et l'histoire Kuba," Annales du Musée Royal du Congo Belge.

5 Ethnographic Survey of Africa, No.'s appearing to date: English Series 32, Franch 8, Belgian 5, South African 4, Madagascan 1.

6 The Journal of African History, Cambridge University Press.

7 H. Deschamps, Histoire de Madagascar, Paris, Berger-Levrault, 1960.

8 B. Davidson, Old Africa Rediscovered, London, Victor Gollancz, 1959. A French translation should soon appear, published by the Presses Universitaires de France.

9 R. Cornevin, Histoire des peuples de l'Afrique noire, Paris, Berger-Le vrault, 1960.

10 G. P. Murdock, Africa, Its Peoples and Their Culture History, New York, McGraw Hill Book Co., 1959.