There are two book length, English language, descriptions of precolonial life on the Gambia. The earlier, Richard Jobson's The Golden Trade of the Moors of 1620, is widely available, having been reprinted three times in this century. The other, Francis Moore's Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa of 1738 is equally valuable, but much rarer. Although Moore's book appeared in several editions in the eighteenth century, it has not been published in anything close to its entirety in almost two centuries. Moore stayed much longer on the Gambia than did Jobson and his more circumstantial account deserves greater accessibility for its contemporary influence as well as its source value. I am beginning the process of preparing a new edition of Moore and present this short bibliographical note as a first product of my research.

Francis Moore was hired as a writer, or clerk, by the Royal African Company in 1730 and spent almost four and a half years (November 1730 to May 1735), on the river Gambia, first as a writer and subsequently as Factor, at several of the Company's establishments. During his stay he apparently wrote a general journal for his own uses, as well as the “true and particular Journal of all his Proceedings relating to the Affairs of the…Company” (Moore 1738, Appendix 1:2-3) which his contract obliged him to keep. Subsequently, Moore added several other texts as well as amending and extending his journals to produce the book first published in 1738. I will discuss these additions, amendments, and extensions below.

Why yet another Africanist journal? the reader may ask. And, given the astonishin, increase in the number (now over 200) of journals devoted to Africa, the question is a fair one. Every new journal should seek to justify itself to the audience it addresses.

Despite the large number of African journals now available, not all aspects of the study of the African past are covered adequately. Because this study is so recent the emphasis, both in research itself and in the format of the journals, has been on the collection, use, and presentation of data. It cannot be denied that these procedures have been and will remain the chief concerns of historical enquiry, but they are not the only ones. The value of data obviously depends, first, on its validity, and, second, on its use. The assessment of these aspects in turn depends on the close and continued scrutiny of sources as well as on the quality of historical thought. We cannot agree with Livy, who wrote of his sources for early Roman history that “it is not worth the trouble either to affirm or to dispose of these matters [improbabilities] … we must abide by the tradition.”

The kingdom of Benin has the reputation of being one of the most important examples for a king-oriented state-formation in sub-Saharian Africa. In the past few decades much research has appeared on the early history of this kingdom, the origin of its kingship, and the time of the early Ogiso kings, who are considered by many historians as the autochthonous founders of Benin kingship around 900. These Ogiso rulers are assumed to have been replaced between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries by kings of the later Oba dynasty, which supposedly descends from the Yoruba town of Ife and which continues in office at the present.

The abundance of literature on the early history of the Benin kingdom often hides the fact that, apart from sporadic—and for the most part isolated—reports from travelers, a few archeological accounts, and some vaguely dated objects from Benin, the reconstruction of the early history of Benin is based almost exclusively on the data of the Bini local historian Jacob Egharevba, who published prolifically on Benin history and culture from 1930 to 1970. The most famous of his works is the Short History of Benin—a small publication, where the author deals with the history of the kingdom from its origins until the twentieth century.

One of the most curious aspects of Sudanese historiography is that it has almost completely ignored the ongoing attempts to apply the methods of historical criticism to oral tradition in reconstructing the African past. Though an awareness of these attempts on the part of Sudanese historians is not lacking, it has not gone beyond vague indications, casual remarks, and limited use of oral data. This paper investigates the apathy of Sudanese historiography with respect to oral traditions, drawing on articles on the writing of history in the Sudan, as well as on historical writings that have actually made use of oral traditions.

Sudanese historiography here means writings by Sudanese on history-writing in the Sudan; general histories of the Sudan; and local histories of the Northern Sudan. The history of the Southern Sudan is excluded because the contribution of oral tradition in reconstructing the history of this region has been markedly different. I also distinguish between traditional (biographers, genealogists, etc.) and amateur historians on the one hand and modern historians on the other. The modern historians, with whom this article will deal exclusively, are graduates of the Department of History in the University of Khartoum (or a similar university by extension), which was established in the late 1940s,and who have been exposed to the Western critical spirit and modern techniques of historical research and writing.2 Unlike the modern historians, traditional and amateur historians have always made use of both oral traditions and written sources.

The entry into the Zulu territory of Natal in 1837 of the Trekker leader Piet Retief; his meeting with the Zulu Chief Dingane; the resultant agreement (Retief recovers some stolen cattle in return for a concession to a part of Natal); the subsequent meeting of the two leaders; the untoward actions of Dingane (the killing in February 1838 of the unsuspecting Retief and his sixty-seven followers, and the mortifying and widespread attacks on all the Trekker encampments in Natal); the gathering of a new contingent of Trekkers; the defeat of Ding-ane's forces ten months later at ‘Blood River’; and, finally, the discovery in December 1838 (near the identifiable remains of Retief) of the agreement, the title deed to Natal--these events, tragic and dramatic, constitute a brief but special chapter of settler and, notably, of Afrikaner history.

The treaty's miraculous recovery, the eyewitness reports of its finding, the long line of historians crediting its authenticity, and the title deed's very genuineness all came under unexpected--and unwelcomed, suspicion, scrutiny and debate in the 1920s, however. To appreciate that debate it is necessary to begin at the beginning.

The French naturalist, traveler, and writer Louis A. Dele-gorgue, who was with the Trekkers during some of the time between 1838 and 1840, was probably one of the first to provide a connected published account--after the discovery of the treaty in December 1838--of the Retief-Dingane encounter. Thereafter Hendrik Cloete, who was sent by the Cape Government as a special commissioner to negotiate with the Volksraad of Natal in May 1843, set out a relatively full account of Retiefs misadventures in Natal.

By his own account, John Duncan was born in 1805 on a farm in southwest Scotland and enlisted in the Life Guards at the age of seventeen. He obtained his discharge in 1839 and was appointed master-at-arms to the Niger Expedition of 1841. In the course of this, while aiding his men at the Cape Verde Islands, he received a leg wound which became so serious that amputation was contemplated, and he was left with a permanent weakness in the leg. Despite this he offered his services to the Royal Geographical Society in 1844 to go to Africa and penetrate to the Kong Mountains. He was provided with instruments and funds for this purpose and given passage to Cape Coast on a warship.

Duncan's plans at this date seem to have been somewhat indefinite. The Royal Geographical Society was told in 1844 that Duncan, “full of zeal and activity though not professing to be very scientific,” was going to the west coast of Africa. It was not known, however, whether he would “follow the line between Loanda on the west and Mozambique on the east” or would “confine his explorations to the country of Koomassie [Asante] and the Kong Mountains, east of Cape Coast, and to an excursion to the new settlement at Abbe Accuta [Abeokuta] where the missionary Crowther is now established.” During his journey Duncan wrote several letters to the Society. One, dated at Anamabu in December 1844, explained that he had been refused permission by the Asantehene to go beyond Kumasi and so he was planning to ascend the Volta river instead. A second from Whydah written in April 1845 described his travels along the coast and on the lagoons. The last letter was written at Cape Coast in October 1845 and described his visit to the Dahomey capital. In addition, it contained an account of a journey he claimed to have made to “the town called Adofoodiah, at 13°6'N.” This last letter was written at a time when Duncan was entirely without resources, and he ended by saying that he wanted to go to Timbuktu “passing to the left of Ashanti.” A footnote to the letter, as published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, noted that “funds have since been sent to Mr Duncan to assist him in carrying out his views of visiting Timbuctoo and descending the Niger.” However, this expedition was never undertaken and Duncan returned to England shortly afterward.

The Association for the Publication of African Historical Sources (presently headquartered at the Department of History, Michigan State University) is now administering one umbrella National Endowment for the Humanities grant for editing, translating, and publishing significant African texts, and hopes to administer more in the future. In aid of this, the following guidelines, which should for the moment be considered to be in a draft stage, are offered in an effort both to bring uniformity to these editions and to stimulate thinking towards making the guidelines more thorough and enduring. Readers are urged to send suggestions for the latter to: David Henige, Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706, U.S.A. If all goes well, it might be possible to publish an improved set of guidelines in next year's HA.

As discussed briefly below, efficient mobilization of word processing programs should enable intending editors to achieve better results at less cost. Such word processing programs as are now available are probably not equally suitable and any readers who have used any programs extensively or who have developed variants of their own, with respect either to editing or to linguistic transcription, are also urged to submit brief statements (up to ca. 1000 words) as to their experiences, whether good or bad. These could then be published en ensemble, also (probably) in the 1991 HA.

It is generally recognized that during the period from ca. 1450 to 1900, when commercial relations between sub-Saharan Africa and the outside world were extended and strengthened, a wide range of systems and institutions for mobilizing labor were in use in different regions. I speak here of those operating beyond the primary locus of household and lineage. Such means of labor production and control ranged from chattel slavery to pawnship, corvées, various kinds of patronclient relations, bride service, cooperative labor, and also, in more and more contexts over time, wage labor. Slavery, of course, has received the attention of many scholars, as have some of the other categories. However the study of wage labor in precolonial times is still in its infancy.

For those wishing to pursue research on precolonial wage labor in Africa the lack of documentary sources has proved to be a significant barrier. The nature of proletarianized or semi-proletarianized wage labor in colonial societies or societies closely tied into the capitalist system usually demands of researchers that they look to sources of an official or institutional nature. For example, one can think of the records of companies, trade unions, benefit societies, colonial governments, courts, commissions of inquiry, and so on. But for precolonial Africa these types of documentary sources usually do not exist. This has led many scholars to say that the concept of wage labor is itself not useful when contemplating African labor systems before the onset of colonization. They point to the lack of a cash currency, continuing ties to the land, the temporary nature of much work, the absence of a bourgeoisie, apparent lack of worker consciousness, and so on. But there are other difficulties less related to such theoretical conceptions and generalizations about the supposed non-existence of wage labor which have severely taxed the most resolute historian, and help explain the dearth of written sources.

There is growing scholarly interest in the history of postcolonial Africa. However, this study entails several methodological challenges, including insufficient availability of archival materials. A multi-archival strategy offers one solution to the challenge of locating new documentary sources. In this paper, I suggest that nonconventional archives such as the National Archives of the United States should be explored in historical studies of postcolonial African countries, including smaller countries like Rwanda. Focusing on the political events that occurred in Rwanda in January 1961 that led to significant changes in the country, this paper demonstrates how American archival materials can enhance our understanding by shedding light on what existing colonial archives have not revealed.

Our primary concern in this essay is with reconstructing the history of material culture. As anyone who has ever looked into the material culture of Ethiopia quickly discovers, the travel accounts of early European visitors can be a rich and varied source for illuminating any number of such traditions, including those of metal-, leather-, basket-, and woodworking, as well as pottery, weaving, and painting. Dating from the first part of the sixteenth century, the descriptions of journeys and residences in Ethiopia became more prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when they also begin to include illustrations of more than the landscape. As sources for the reconstruction of a particular material tradition, these accounts can offer valuable insights into the nature of the objects and the people who produced and used them. Conversely, they can be frustrating to work with, since the pertinent data they contain most often come in the form of a sentence here or there. Rarely are there entire sections dedicated to descriptions of particular traditions or processes, unless one happened to be of special interest to the writer.

Among those scholars who have used travel accounts to great effect is Richard Pankhurst. For many decades, as even a cursory examination of his numerous publications illustrates, he has been mining this mother lode for the scattered sentences and tantalizing suggestions they offer. His most comprehensive writing on this subject is an often-cited 1964 article, “Old Time Handicrafts of Ethiopia.” Divided into sections, each dealing with a different tradition, Pankhurst cited various descriptive accounts that mentioned specific traditions. The basic approach taken in this and other publications that have followed is one perhaps best described, in keeping with the mining metaphor, as one of “prospecting” or in some cases mining “surface deposits.”

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.

This article uses Muslim court records from Fes, Morocco, to challenge the concept of “Islamic slavery.” Analysis of legal actions containing references to domestic slaves for nearly six decades (1913-1971) uncovers an era of emancipation without public historical watersheds but rather with a subtle, gradual accumulation of changes in social processes. After discussing the background on slavery in Morocco and the limitations of “Islamic slavery,” notarized family court records are examined to demonstrate that slavery did not end as a consequence of official changes to laws (French or Moroccan), nor through masters granting their slaves legal manumissions. Rather, it is argued that domestic slavery ended at a staggered pace amid social, familial and personal changes more observable through attention to the dynamics across households and generations than to administrative policies or external legal forces.

In this paper I review the evolution of a nineteenth-century travel diary from the original “remark books” to a polished fair copy version prepared for publication. The journals in question are those kept by Lieut. Hugh Clapperton RN while serving on the Borno Mission in 1822-25. The central issue is how best to reach into and interpret the raw material itself—the author's original observations and thoughts at the time. Each case will have its particularities—in the context of the period and the journey, in the character and interests of the writer, and in the writer's own attitude to the purpose of the journal he or she kept. While the Clapperton material is just one case among many, a review of its internal development—as it proceeded towards publication—allows us to draw some conclusions which may have wider application.

In a recent book, El Dorado in West Africa, Raymond E. Dumett examines the history of gold-mining in Wassa Fiase in the Western Province of the Gold Coast during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Among other thematic preoccupations, Dumett argues that until the late 1890s the British colonial authorities did very little to encourage capitalist gold-mining in Wassa Fiase. Resurrecting the ghost of local crisis, he argues that the colonial intervention in Wassa Fiase was due to king Enimil Kwao's ineptitude, structural conflict inherent in chieftaincy, and problems of African rulers' territorial jurisdictions.

Dumett also asserts that it was a forceful London-based antislavcry lobby and Governor George Strahan's tactlessness that drove the colonial state to intervene in Wassa Fiase. Although Britain was at the center stage of the unprecedented global commodification of gold in the late nineteenth century, Dumett evokes serendipity as the cause of the British colonial intervention in the gold-rich Wassa Fiase. Overall, his explication of the aims and processes of colonial rule in Wassa Fiase is couched in theses of an “unpredictable course” and “a government policy (more rather a nonpolicy) [sic] riddled with vacillation and half measures…”

The first part of the present study reviews the literature, while the second section, based on new official sources and newspaper accounts, gives additional insights into Enimil Kwao's slave-dealing trial and his consequent exile to Lagos, hence reevaluates the objectives of the colonial state and the Colonial Office. The study complements the work of Francis Agbodeka and Paul Rosenblum, who have respectively argued that colonial rule in Wassa Fiase paved the way for capitalist gold-mining.

When the leading European powers were scrambling for political dominion in Africa, the greatest rival of France was Britain. The French Catholics were working side by side with their government to ensure that they would triumph in Africa beyond the boundaries of the territories already annexed by their country. Thus, even when the British sovereignty claim on Nigeria was endorsed by Europe during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, the French Catholics did not concede defeat. They still hoped that in Nigeria they could supplant their religious rivals: the British Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the other Protestant missionary groups. While they allowed the British to exercise political power there, they took immediate actions to curtail the spread and dominion of Protestantism in the country. Thus some of their missionaries stationed in the key French territories of Africa—Senegal, Dahomey, and Gabon—were urgently dispatched to Nigeria to compete with their Protestant counterparts and to establish Catholicism in the country.

Two different French Catholic missions operated in Nigeria between 1860s and 1900s. The first was the Society of the African Missions (Société des Missions Africaines or SMA), whose members worked mainly among the Yoruba people of western Nigeria and the Igbos of western Igboland. The second were the Holy Ghost Fathers (Pères du Saint Esprit), also called Spiritans, who ministered specifically to the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria. The French Catholics, the SMA priests, and the Holy Ghost Fathers competed vehemently with the British Protestants, the CMS, for the conversion of African souls. Just as in the political sphere, the French and British governments competed ardently for annexation and colonization of African territories.

In this paper I take up the methodological issue of combining archived fieldwork notes and contemporary field data in the reconstruction of the recent history of Wolaitta, a former kingdom in southern Ethiopia. The old fieldwork data, archived and little known since the 1960s, consist of the notes of the German Ethiopianist ethnologist Eike Haberland (1924-1992), while the field data are based on my intermittent fieldwork in Wolaitta since 2001. In ongoing research on this subject, I intend to write an historical ethnography of Wolaitta, by combining a study of the methods and interpretive strategies of Haberland as ethnographer and product of his time, with new research. The effort may also allow us to see how his ‘facts’ and explanations fit with current concerns in anthropology and African studies. As the subject of this paper will eventually be elaborated into a book, I aim to be brief here and illustrate the value and challenge of such a reconstruction effort.

The study also is meant to contribute to understanding the dynamics of regional identity in today's Ethiopia, which has been struggling with a very problematic implementation of ethnicity-based federal policies since 1991. A study of a corpus of ethnography gathered in the heyday of German field ethnology (1950s-1960s), in conjunction with present-day research, may highlight processes of identity formation among the Wolaitta, who today in 2005 count some 1.5 million people, with perhaps an additional 80,000 living outside the Wolaitta borders elsewhere in Ethiopia, and having various shades of identification with their country and traditions of origin.

The African-American missionary, William Henry Sheppard Jr. (1865-1927), lived in the Kuba kingdom of central Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. A student of Virginia's Hampton (Normal) Institute in the early 1880s, Sheppard left the United States a decade later to preach in the Congo Free State, a colonial territory claimed by Belgian monarch Leopold II. This king's army, the Force Publique, and its local auxiliaries spawned suffering throughout the equatorial region. They pillaged villages in Kasai, the southern Congo area surrounding Sheppard's Presbyterian outposts, killing families and driving survivors into brigades that collected wild rubber for European concessionary companies. This rubber boom, in turn, generated profits that not only enriched Leopold II and his business allies, but also propelled a revolution in transportation that culminated in the mass production of tires for the bicycle and automobile. Sheppard is known for bearing witness to Congo atrocities, but his ground-breaking ethnological research remains unfamiliar to many Africanists. It is fortunate for these scholars that the college that nurtured Sheppard's fascination with folklore, Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), houses his papers, photographs, and artwork. This paper introduces and analyzes these sources.

For long Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I (1888-1931) has had a curious, almost unenviable reputation that is in many respects undeserving. His memory in both oral and written records is one that is inexorably linked to the British occupation and colonization of Asante and the concomitant exile which he suffered. In other words, Agyeman Prempe is remembered more for his failures—his inability to retain Asante sovereignty—than for his accomplishments. However, new evidence coming to light since the 1970s is increasingly enabling the historian of Asante to offer a more accurate assessment of Prempe I's career and accomplishments. It has now been demonstrated, for instance, that the Asantehene's arrest and exile in 1896 were a function of British duplicitous conduct and the failure of the Asantehene's supreme faith in diplomacy rather than his indifference and ineptitude; that the Asantehene did not remain indifferent to his long exile in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Seychelles (1896-1924) but fought repeatedly for his repatriation; that in the Seychelles he saw to the perpetuation of the Asante community under his care as well as the preservation of Asante values and practices; and that he accomplished significant achievements during his exile, including maintaining extensive records of both his personal correspondence and his compilation of a history of Asante.

The Garamantes first come to our notice with Herodotus' Survey of Libya. Hekataeus of Miletus traveled along the Libyan coast over half a century before Herodotus, but his work is preserved only in fragments. Hekataeus may have mentioned the Garamantes, but if so, that part of his work has not survived. The Histories of Herodotus (iv.174) lists the “Garamantes” among the peoples of eastern Libya, giving to each a brief description; and iv.183 refers to them in another list, this one a sequence of stopping places on a desert trail which includes “the country of the Garamantes.”

The earlier paragraph had fewer than half a dozen lines and the later one fewer than two dozen; not very much in total, but as Vansina has recently affirmed, the medievalist's axiom also applies to Africa: “the fewer the sources… the more they are treasured and scrutinized.”

The intent of this paper is to attempt to determine how the two references, four paragraphs apart, are related to each other; and thereby to prepare the way to extract as much as we can learn from these two references about the Garamantes in the time of Herodotus, the fifth century BC.

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.