One of the foremost achievements of missionary enterprise in the African region was the training of individuals, particularly clergymen, who came to play pioneering roles in the documentation of the history of their peoples. One of the reasons usually advanced by such chroniclers for taking part in this tedious attempts at historical reconstruction, is basically, to safeguard the history of their people and most especially, the need to prevent their history from being distorted, forgotten or sent into some oblivion. Examples of clergymen or missionary influenced personalities who have performed such tasks in Nigeria include Reverend Samuel Johnson, on the history of the Yoruba, J.D. Egharevba on the history of Benin, and Reverend Samuel Ojo, on the history of Ilorin and Shaki.

These chronicles have their limitations. The writers often serve as public image launderers for the people they write about. As a result, a lot of bias and subjectivism is embellished in what they attempt to project. Historical facts are distorted in this process. The lack of the chroniclers' basic methods of historical research is also evident in their narrative method of historical writing. This approach does not provide any opportunity for proper historical analysis. In spite of the limitations of these chronicles, they have served as very useful sources of primary information for contemporary historians. More importantly, their writings have been able to create a sense of identity and cultural awareness among their intended audience. In other words they have sometimes proved more relevant and acceptable to the intended audience even more than the works of contemporary historians.2 It is with this hindsight that we examine Iwe Itan Ofa by The Very Reverend J.B. Olafimihan.

In the course of the 1970s, one of the principal focuses of the emerging feminist anthropology was the reassessment of issues of gender inequality. Drawing their inspiration from Marxist theory going back to Engels, some works historicized female oppression and analyzed its political and economic determinants. To demonstrate that gender inequality was the product of specific historical formations, the observable gender relations were, at times, opposed to a prior egalitarian social order in which value differentiation was not attached to the gendered labor division (e.g., Leacock 1981). The approach was criticized by those who believed that female subordination characterized present and past societies on which solid documentary evidence was available (e.g., Rosaldo 1974). The idea that gender realtions in some non-western societies were marked by parity prior to the degradation produced by colonization was not abandoned, however, and influenced neighboring disciplines.

Recent studies concerned with the transformations of gender relations in sub-Saharan Africa over the twentieth century tend to stress the decline in social and economic position of women. Ethnographic, economic, and historical studies state that the traditional value attached to being female is threatened by the economic and political developments of the last century. Women are said increasingly to lose their previous independence, to have to cater for children and elderly by themselves, and to lose ground in productive activities (Robertson and Berger 1986; Mikell 1997a; Baerends 1998).

Dans les années qui suivirent la prise de Gorée par les Français (en 1677), plusieurs dirigeants de la compagnie concessionnaire française manifestèrent un grand intérêt pour les “Rivières du Sud.” Leur intention, bien sûr, était d'y étendre les activités commerciales de leur compagnie et, si possible, de les appuyer par un établissement militaire. On sait que ce dernier projet, tenté par Brüe en 1699 dans l'île de Bolama, puis en 1700 dans l'île de Bissau, échoua finalement devant l'opposition des Portugais. De cette période, et de cette politique, sont restées deux importantes descriptions françaises des régions situé es entre la Gambie et le Corubal (c'est-à-dire actuellement en Casamance et en Guinée-Bissau):

- celle de Michel Jajolet de La Courbe, relatant un voyage effectué par l'auteur lui-même de juillet 1686 à février 1687. La Courbe sera directeur de la concession française du Sénégal de 1689 à 1693. Auparavant, il avait été envoyé en mission d'inspection par la direction parisienne de la compagnie. Avant son retour en France (via les Antilles), il entreprit un voyage qui le mena d'abord, par voie de terre, d'Albréda, sur la Gambie, à Cacheu, en passant à hauteur de Ziguinchor. De Cacheu, il embarqua pour Bissau, où la compagnie française avait un commis, et, de là, il rayonna dans les îles et dans les fleuves. Ce voyage est assez bien connu puisque les manuscrits de La Courbe ont été retrouvés et publiés au début du siècle par Cultru. On sait aussi que quelques pages (seize exactement) manquaient au texte manuscrit.

Puisqu'il n'existe pas de mots qui ne soient à personne
(Bakhtin 1979 in Todorov 1981: 83)
Le discours, c'est-à-dire le langage dans sa totalité concrète et vivante.
(Bakhtin 1963 in Todorov 1981: 44)

European travel accounts are widely used as sources to write the history of societies that did not themselves produce a large amount of textual documentation. On the Coast of Guinea, and more particularly on the area formerly known as Gold Coast (approximately the littoral of modern Ghana), many of the written documents providing historians with information on coastal societies prior to nineteenth century were produced by Europeans travelers. Most of these individuals were merchants, craftsmen, pastors or soldiers who had settled several years in the numerous forts and trading posts erected along the seashore to protect and enhance the trade of chartered companies. Others were seamen and merchants who only spent a few weeks at a stretch plying the African Coast aboard men-of-war or trading ships, exchanging manufactured goods for gold, slaves, and ivory. Professional writers, who had not traveled to Africa, but had obtained data from various written sources or from travelers, also composed some of the accounts. Therefore, these documents show an extraordinary diversity in form and content, which historians and archeologists need to investigate before using them as primary sources for reconstructing the past.

In the first part of the present paper, which focuses on a specific genre, the seventeenth-century travel accounts, I recall the historiography of the recent critique of these sources. I also point out that despite decisive methodological breakthroughs, some heuristic dimensions or attributes of these texts are yet to be recognized and assessed. I then re-examine these sources from the dual perspective of historic and linguistic anthropological methods and introduce an exploratory approach centered on the Bakhtinian approach to discourse.

The word “club” as employed in “Mombasa Club” derives from the late eighteenth century and signifies “an association of people formed mainly for social purposes and having premises, providing meals, temporary accommodation, etc., for the use of members.” The early nineteenth century saw a spate of new London clubs such as the Travellers in 1819 (for gentlemen who had traveled abroad), and in 1824 both the Athenaeum (the most intellectually elite of all the London clubs), and the Oriental (founded by officers in the service of the East India Company who were not eligible for the military clubs of Pall Mall). One purpose of these clubs was to give gentlemen living space from which their womenfolk were excluded. The expansion of a new British empire, from the beginning of Queen Victoria's long reign, saw the establishment of “English” clubs in Asia (especially in the Indian subcontinent) and in Africa (especially from Cape Town to Cairo). A major purpose of these “English” clubs abroad was to give members living space from which natives were excluded. The Mombasa Club, dating from the end of Queen Victoria's reign, fits into this pattern.

From 1952 to 1955 I carried out field research in eastern Nigeria, centered at Enugu, and I wrote the paper below, with the present title, before leaving Nigeria, which to my regret I have never revisited. It is reproduced with a very slightly edited text (but added explanatory footnotes), since it now supplies a twofold historical testimony, first, to an African situation, and second, to the discourse interests (and terminology) of an expatriate “colonialist,” a British academic historian, half a century ago. In the paper I commented on the first. I now let the second speak for itself. The article should incite Nigerian scholars—or ex-Cowboys—to question, correct, enlarge, and update my account.

At a conference recently, a member of the audience criticized a historian (not present and not me) for adopting an “ad hominem” strategy in some published criticism. Later I asked her what she meant. Her reply was that the historian had not been content to disagree with certain approaches in another field, but went farther by specifying examples to sustain his case. In other words, he had named names. This struck me as rather a peculiar application of the phrase, but also as an example of the hypersensitivity that sometimes veils healthy and direct colloquy It would certainly be more unkind to shower criticisms at large, a kind of barrage bombing designed as much to intimidate a larger populace as to aim at limited but relevant targets. Moreover, it would be to offer an argument that was so diffuse and anonymous that it would be as meaningless as it was unfocused. One purpose of the present paper is to encourage ways to expand, but also to focus, colloquial arguments.

The kingdom of Dahomey (in the modern Republic of Bénin) was one of the African states best known to Europeans in the precolonial period, from its prominent role as a supplier of slaves for the trans-Atlantic trade. In the late eighteenth century it was said that the road from Ouidah, the coastal port of Dahomey, to Abomey, its royal capital 100 kilometers inland, was “perhaps the most beaten track, by Europeans, of any in Africa.” Beyond Abomey, however, European knowledge of the interior was limited, and prior to the nineteenth century based only upon hearsay. This reflected in part the deliberate policy of Dahomey, which normally sought to bar direct access to the interior, in defense of its position as middleman in the supply of slaves to the coast. Archibald Dalzel, who served as Governor of the British fort at Ouidah in 1767-70, opined that “to pass from [Abomey] towards the northern country was next to impracticable … from the extreme jealousy of the Dahomans and their government.” It was known, however, that the immediate northern neighbors of Dahomey, against whom it fought a series of wars during the eighteenth century, were the Mahi (commonly “Mahees” in contemporary sources). There were also vaguer reports of another people further inland, the Bariba (“Barrabas,” “Barbar” etc.) of Borgu, from whom, as well as from the Mahi, slaves were brought for sale at the coast.

For a vegetation geographer and an anthropologist to come together to write on the settlement histories of segmentary societies in the West African savanna is unusual or at least rare. A few words on the origin of this cooperation therefore seem appropriate. For over ten years, in the context of an interdisciplinary research program at the Universität Frankfurt am Main, archeologists, anthropologists, linguists, botanists and geographers have been working together on the history of cultures, languages, and natural environment of the West African savanna, especially the interaction between human activity and the natural environment. That one should actually be speaking in many cases of a culturally mediated “landscape” rather than a “natural environment” is one of the outcomes of the research projects, which have focused mainly on different regions of Burkina Faso (in the sahel and Sudanese zone) and the Lake Chad area of northeast Nigeria.

The present paper has emerged from a botanical and an anthropological-historical project on the history of vegetation and of settlement in south and southwest Burkina Faso. This history has been shaped by the great expansion of the Dagara-speaking population. In the last two hundred years (possibly longer), small groups of Dagara patrilineages, related and allied to one another, have migrated north and northwest, probably from the region around Wa in present-day Ghana, and have founded numerous new settlements—a process of land appropriation that is still going on today, though with changed circumstances regarding land rights (see map 1).

For scholars of southeastern Africa interested in the early history of the region, the pen of the Portuguese was indeed mightier than the sword. Although most of the first Portuguese arrivals carried either the sword or the cross, they put these down to wield the pen and leave a written record of their triumphs and travails. The documents left by Portuguese soldiers, religious men, and others in the service of the crown provide details that are relative not only to the Portuguese experience but also to African life. This paper focuses on Portuguese writings that describe the area around the port of Sofala and its hinterland, home to the Shona who live south of the Zambezi river on the central Mozambican coastal plain and the Zimbabwe plateau. Both around Sofala and further west in the interior the inhabitants speak Ndau, a dialect of the Shona language. The wealth of evidence left by the Portuguese since the sixteenth century sheds light on changes and continuities in Ndau history.

The materials that have survived are amazingly detailed and informative despite their inherent biases. Historians have long recognized the prejudices of the colonizer either creeping into the documents or jumping off the page in a more blatant manner. The examples provided here are no different. The Portuguese, like other Europeans, had certain notions stemming from a Eurocentric mentality that was an integral part of their worldview. In these records, we see how the quest for gold and a ‘civilizing’ mission coalesced into systematic exploitation.

Most precolonial African states were characterized by a manifest disparity of control between center and periphery. This was certainly true of the kingdom of Kazembe, founded as a result of the collapse of the Ruund colony on the Mukulweji River towards the end of the seventeenth century and the subsequent eastward migration of an heterogeneous group of “Lundaized” titleholders. A set of flexible institutions and symbols of power helped the rulers of the emerging kingdom to maintain a degree of influence over much of southern Katanga and the westernmost reaches of the plateau to the east of the Luapula river. But in the lower Luapula valley, the heartland of the polity from about the mid-eighteenth century, eastern Lunda rule impinged more profoundly on the prerogatives of autochthonous communities and hence called for the elaboration of legitimizing devices of a special kind. In this latter context, the production and diffusion of an account of the prestigious beginnings of the Mwata Kazembes dynasty, its early dealings with the original inhabitants of the area, and later evolution served the dual purpose of fostering a dominant and discrete Lunda identity and cementing the links of subordination between foreign conquerors and local lineage or sub-clan leaders. This paper is an extended commentary on Ifikolwe Fyandi na Bantu Bandi, a mid-twentieth century offshoot of this royal tradition and a fine example of vernacular “literate ethnohistory.”

Nowadays, Ifikolwe Fyandi is first and foremost the “tribal bible” that shapes the ethnic consciousness of eastern Lunda royals and aristocrats and stifles the emergence of alternative historical discourses. Ifikolwe Fyandi, however, is more than yet another manifestation of the “ubiquity” of “feedback,” for its local hegemony is mirrored by its pervasiveness within the historiography of the eastern savanna of central Africa.

This paper is an assessment of the local historical model of sociopolitical development and settlement history in Ìlàrè community, southwest Nigeria. Ìlàrè was at the nucleus of an early sociopolitical formation in Ìjèsàland. The formation, known as Éka Òsun, held sway over the area of northern Ìjèsàland between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The study forms part of the ongoing archeological and historical investigations on the settlement history and regional interactions in central Yorùbàland.

The episodes of settlement cycling are the hallmarks around which the historical experiences of Ìlàrè are organized. In other words, the trajectories of Ìlàrè's historical experience parallel the shifts in its settlement location (habitus). Moreover, the oral traditions stress intersocietal conflict and intergroup alliance as the important factors in the earliest sociopolitical transformations in northern Ìjèsàland. The traditions also highlight how factional competitions resulted in the continuous shift in the settlement of Ìlàrè within an area of about eight kilometers in diameter over an 800-year period. The oral historical narratives not only draw on kinship idioms in the construction of hierarchical social relations, but the narratives also emphasize intercommunity relations as the plot of historical experience and social actions.

The attempt here is to outline the historical trajectories of events that heralded Ìlàrè as the political center and that characterized its transformations to a political periphery in northern Ìjèsàland. This study also historicizes the long-term patterns of relationship between factional competition and regional inter-community relations on the one hand and sociopolitical development and settlement cycling on the other.

History is not the past: it is a consciousness of the past used for present purposes. (Greg Dening)
After empire, it was clear the history of the colonised needed repair. (Elleke Boehmer)

This paper identifies history as a major site for identity-formation in the postcolonial world. It draws attention to some strategies of historical reconstruction in African drama by focusing on Ngugi and Mugo's The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, an influential Kenyan play which has also come to be seen as providing a paradigm for the African historical play. Particular attention is drawn to the fact that the play is rooted in the counterdiscourse which authorizes revisionist histories in the postcolonial world. The creation of this play is seen as motivated by the desire of the playwrights to interrogate misconceptions and distortions in official Kenyan history, which marginalizes the popular struggle that culminated in the nation's independence. The writing of the play therefore enables the playwrights to celebrate Dedan Kimathi, who personifies the collective aspirations of the Kenyan people, but is demonized in earlier versions of their history. The essay underlines the fact that this version of history is basically conditioned by the materialist vision of the writers.

In the 1960s a host of African nations discovered their independence and, with it, rediscovered the pleasure and the pain of the past. States such as Nigeria and Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda, using both local and expatriate scholars, embarked on the reconstruction of “national histories,” with an enthusiasm which, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, seems enviable. From an academic point of view, this period witnessed the rejection of the colonial distortion of Africa's past—i.e., the idea that basically the continent had none worth talking about—and the historiographical offensive which was thus launched may be seen to have been ultimately successful.

In terms of African politics, history was seen in many new states as a means of nation-building and the fostering of national identity. In Tanzania, for example, precolonial leaders such as Mirambo and Nyungu-ya-Mawe, the relative linguistic unity provided by Swahili, and the anticolonial Maji Maji uprising were used, both consciously and subliminally, to encourage the idea that Tanzanians had shared historical experiences which straddled both the precolonial and the colonial eras.

It must be conceded that history did not always prove as reliable an ally to African politicians as to scholars of Africa. Penetration into the Nigerian past served, indirectly at least, to magnify the regionalism which had already troubled the decolonization process in that territory, and underlined the distinct historical experiences of, for example, the Yoruba in the south and the Hausa-Fulani in the north.

A powerful community of royal slaves emerged in Kano Emirate in the wake of Usman dan Fodio's jihad (1804-08), which established the Sokoto Caliphate. These elite slaves held administrative and military positions of great power, and over the course of the nineteenth century played an increasing prominent role in the political, economic, and social life of Kano. However, the individuals who occupied slave offices have largely been rendered silent by the extant historical record. They seldom appear in written sources from the period, and then usually only in passing. Likewise, certain officials and offices are mentioned in official sources from the colonial period, but only in the context of broader colonial concerns and policies, usually related to issues about taxation and the proper structure of indirect rule.

As the following interview demonstrates, the collection and interpretation of oral sources can help to fill these silences. By listening to the words and histories of the descendents of royal slaves, as well as current royal slave titleholders, we can begin to reconstruct the social history of nineteenth-century royal slave society, including the nature of slave labor and work, the organization the vast plantation system that surrounded Kano, and the ideology and culture of royal slaves themselves.

The interview is but one example of a series of interviews conducted with current and past members of this royal slave hierarchy by Yusufu Yunusa. As discussed below, Sallama Dako belonged to the royal slave palace community in Kano. By royal slave, we mean highly privileged and powerful slaves who were owned by the emir, known in Hausa as bayin sarki (slaves of the emir or king).

During the era of the slave trade, Aného (in modern Togo), which was known to Europeans as “Little Popo” or simply “Popo,” was normally marginal to English commercial interest on the west African coast. This lack of interest is reflected in the sources that exist in British archives today. Documentary material for trade at Aného is scarce, and references to the town rarely go beyond the mentioning of a ship going there to complement its cargo of slaves. However, there is a major exception: the papers of Thomas Miles, which document the activity of the “Popo Factory” of the English firm of Messrs Miles & Weuves in the 1790s. These papers, which are kept in the Public Record Office in London (PRO), comprise a large body of material, including accounts, inventories and commercial and private correspondence. Full of detail, they offer a unique glimpse of Aného and its external trade at a time when the town was at the height of its economic power.

In spite of their great value for the history of Aného and the kingdom of Ge (Genyi/Guin), however, the Thomas Miles papers are virtually unknown to historians of the area. The object of this paper is therefore to draw attention to the existence of this material and make historians aware of the unparalleled wealth of information that it contains. The first part of this paper comprises an explanation of the background and a description of the documents, which is followed by a brief discussion of their special strengths and limitations. In the second part, I focus on one aspect, which is the African side of the trade. Here I look at the question of what these documents tell us about Popo society. I have compiled a list of the African traders that frequented the factory, whom I then tried to identify.

My first encounter with the late historian David Beach was a non-encounter. I spent most of 1990 and 1991 hoping not to meet him, and by careful planning, I cunningly succeeded in fulfilling this objective. (Albeit with the assistance of the Zimbabwean government, which helpfully closed the University of Zimbabwe during my time there.) It is not that I had heard anything in particular about Beach before arriving. In fact, I was woefully understudied in useful gossip about Zimbabwean scholars. My anxiety about Beach came first from the context of my own graduate studies and second from my anxiety about my own knowledge.

Without naming names, I can say that I had come into conflict early in my graduate work with one of the senior professors in my department. Without going into the gory details, it would be fair to say that the conflict was both regretable and inevitable, and as much about style as substance. However, one of the substantive issues on which I found myself perennially at loggerheads with this advisor concerned our fundamentally different sensibilities about the social and political obligations and character of the historical profession. Certainly my declared political sensibilities at that point were frequently loud, superficial, and swaggeringly self-righteous, but our disagreement went far deeper than a matter of different ideological loyalties.

This advisor was fond of declaring himself an objective empiricist who approached history without a politics, a scholar who believed that his central responsibility was to pursue intellectual inquiry without suborning that inquiry to any political agenda.

Cet article a trois objectifs. Premièrement, attirer l'attention sur quelques contributions de David Beach à l'historiographie de l'Afrique subsaharienne. Deuxièmement, faire reconnaître l'importance de quelques travaux portant sur l'Afrique subsaharienne inspirés par le féminisme et la théorie “queer”. Et troisièmement, démontrer une démarche d'historien qui promet de renforcer une analyse qui est généralement déjà solide. Je conclus avec quelques suggestions “beachiennes” pour faire augmenter l'intérêt chez les intellectuels et universitaires africains pour l'étude de l'histoire des femmes, de la différence sexuelle, et de la sexualité.

Commençons par une explication du mot “beachien.” David Beach était un des pionniers de l'étude de l'histoire des Shona du Zimbabwe et, plus récemment, de la province du Zambèze au Mozambique. Il était moderniste jusqu'au bout des ongles. Il croyait en la valeur et la possibilité de la quête de la vérité. Ce n'était pas une croyance naïve en une vérité immuable. Il avait plutôt conscience du fait que certaines assertions sont moins véridiques que d'autres. Selon David c'est la vocation de l'historie(ne) de lutter contre les distorsions, les erreurs et la démagogie autant des politiciens que des autres historien(ne)s. Alors, quand j'utilise le terme “critique beachienne”, je parle de méfiance envers les métanarrations simplistes et de l'histoire efficace (ou “usable” comme on dit en anglais). Ce parti pris implique la résolution—voire un fanatisme—pour vérifier chaque mot (et chaque chiffre) des données sans exception. Enfin, l'exemple de Beach évoque une loyauté profonde envers l'Afrique et une foi en l'apport positif du travail sérieux et honnête des historiens et historiennes au peuple du continent et pour leur bien.

In the beginning of 1999 Professor David Beach died in Harare, only about three months after an unexpected illness which proved to be brain cancer had cut short his academic activities. His early death after more than thirty years of intensive research on the precolonial history of Zimbabwe and Mozambique motivated some of his friends and colleagues to plan a panel on his work in the 2000 CAAS conference in Edmonton, Canada. This paper was originally written for this Conference which I did not manage to attend. Not only his figure as historian and friend but also the context he was working in interested me, including the problem of local production of knowledge in Africa in the colonial and postcolonial environment. In this paper I shall present some biographical data on David Beach, outline the sequence of his research and writing, cover his concept and contribution to history, the reception of his work in Mozambique, ending with some comments regarding the problems of local production of scientific knowledge in African countries. The coverage is in places somewhat sketchy and some subjects like the reception of his studies in Zimbabwe have only been referenced briefly, and that in North America omitted.

The sections of the paper which deal with the sequence of his research, method, etc. and focus on sociological aspects of his production are based mainly on indications in Beach's own published work. Additional information came from his correspondence, hints he gave in casual conversation during my four visits to Harare in 1971 and 1982-1995, and during his six visits to Maputo in 1987, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994 and 1997, as well as some observations.