The turbulent modern history of South Africa, which includes notable events such as the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the banning and exile of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), and the dramatic transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s, has drawn academics from a number of fields to studying the nation from a variety of angles. Two such topics which have attracted scholarly attention are the foreign policy of South Africa both during apartheid, and subsequently after its demise in 1994, and the multi faceted activities of the liberation movements fighting against it. When looking at the international relations of South Africa from the end of the Second World War, through until the present day, it is almost impossible to analyse this dimension of South Africa's past without examining the lasting effects that the political mindset of apartheid had upon foreign policy decision making, and the international community. Likewise, the history of the liberation movements such as the ANC and the PAC were shaped by their attempts to defeat apartheid and the eventual end to the struggle. The histories of the ANC and South African foreign policy are inextricably linked, demonstrating the importance of what has, and is occurring in the country, creating a complex, but truly intriguing area of research for academics.

Conducting archival research on these two areas of interest is relatively easy in South Africa, with on the whole, well stocked, largely deserted, and easy to use archives located across the country.

Throughout the entire period of the Zambezi expedition, the European members were accompanied and supported by Africans, either individually or in groups, and this essay is an attempt to list most of those who were with David Livingstone during his final three years in the Zambezi-Shire region. While the positive contributions made by Africans to the venture have been frequently overlooked, so has been the magnitude of Livingstone's problem training various African groups to carry out the tasks for which he hired them, with an end toward integrating them into the Expedition. The mere fact that circumstances caused him to turn to so many different groups of Africans in such a comparatively short period of time attests to the scope of Livingstone's difficulty. On the other hand, the problems faced by Africans in attempting to master new skills, many of which were “European” in nature, under the usually chaotic conditions in which the Expedition was immersed, can hardly be imagined. As will be indicated below, however, the African people usually served Livingstone and his men very well indeed.

Five groups of Africans will be considered: Krumen, Kololo, Sena men, “Johanna” men, and Shupanga men. In addition to delineating briefly their respective periods of service and mentioning in general terms the contributions each people made, an attempt will be made to list their personal names.

Archival research in the Equateur region of Zaire is a frustrating and often unsuccessful endeavor. Colonial documentation on a specific locality is seldom located in a central repository and items have been scattered throughout the region. What records are found are usually highly disorganized and partially decomposed. In many cases, significant sources have been lost or destroyed. With this bleak prospective, it is not surprising that historical research in this area has been very limited.

In contrast, a little known yet important source of historical and ethnographic material exists at the Missionnaires du Sacre-Coeur (M.S.C.) library at Bamanya, situated approximately ten kilometers from Mbandaka in the Equateur region. The library contains a wide range of both printed and archival material that has recently been organized and cataloged. Historians will find the archives to be of great interest and value, particularly for studies on the Nkundo-Mongo ethnic groups of the central forest region of Zaire.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Hausa migrants traveled to the Cameroon Grassfields where they established multiple settlements known as abakwa, a term referring to descendants of mixed marriages between Hausa men and local, mainly non-Muslim women. Previous historical studies on Hausa diaspora communities in West Africa have largely concentrated on the spread of commerce and Islam. By contrast, this article asks how gendered power asymmetries, together with the essential diaspora factors of distance and travel, influenced the marital relationships that made the diaspora possible. This approach to Hausa diaspora history emerges from Islamic court records dating from the late 1940s to the early 1960s in British mandated territory. The founding of the court resulted in the institutionalization of Islamic household patriarchy as well as debates over Hausa values, especially marriage as a primary site of belonging and patriarchal control. This article demonstrates that marital negotiations and distance interacted with colonial legal structures and community patriarchy in a manner that both intensified women’s vulnerability and provided opportunities to strategically forge new identities and relationships.

This article examines a previously overlooked publication titled The Indian Voice of British East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar. Printed in Nairobi between 1911 and 1913, the Indian Voice has been dismissed by some scholars as “insignificant” in the wider context of Kenya’s militant press. As an important tool for discovering, exploring and analyzing the nature of racial hierarchies, diasporic identity and belonging, this article argues that the Indian Voice can be used to understand how “new kinds of self-representation” both emerged and dissolved in early twentieth-century East Africa. By contextualizing the historical significance of the newspaper, it demonstrates how the Indian Voice offers an invaluable means of generating new insights into the complex cultural and political formulations of Indian identities in diaspora. In doing so, this article contributes to remapping the historical perspective of East African Indians within the early colonial period.

Before arriving in Canberra in 1950 as the foundation Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University, J.W. (Jim) Davidson (1915-1973) was an Oxbridge don and author of a small book on The Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council (1948). A New Zealander by birth and upbringing, Davidson arrived at Cambridge in late 1938 on a Strathcona Scholarship and embarked on a PhD dissertation at St John's College, becoming a Fellow in 1945 and from 1 January 1947, a University Lecturer in Colonial Studies. While the formal details are easily established, little of substance is known about Davidson's activities at Cambridge. As Davidson's biographer-to-be, I was fortunate to receive a letter from P.E.H. Hair, one of Davidson's undergraduate students at Cambridge, who learned of my work from a footnote in one of my journal articles. Hair put me in contact with a fellow Davidson student, George Shepperson, which led to another fruitful correspondence.

Davidson is well known as the founding father of modern Pacific Islands historiography, and perhaps even better known as a Constitutional Advisor and Consultant to various Pacific territories approaching independence or self-government. These aspects of his life have been amply documented, not least by Davidson himself. A largely unknown aspect of Davidson's career is his undergraduate teaching: after all, he spent most of his working life at an institution devoted to research and postgraduate supervision, unfettered by the demands of undergraduate teaching. With this in mind, and with their permission, it was decided to publish the recollections of Paul Hair and George Shepperson of Jim Davidson as their History tutor at John's.

This article studies the issue of inflation in precolonial West Africa. In a recent publication, it was argued that there was substantial inflation in West Africa as early as the seventeenth century. In this article, data from the Gold Coast is reported, in order to show that the prices of slaves, used in recent previous research to analyze inflation, is a poor proxy for the prices of other traded commodities. Contrasting the case of the Gold Coast to that of Dahomey, it is furthermore shown that different societies in West Africa experienced different trends around the same period of time, cautioning against generalizations about broader regions.

The use of photographs as research data is becoming of increasing interest to historians of Africa. The School of Oriental and African Studies' Workshop on “Photographs as sources for African history” is only the most recent example of this emerging concern. This paper is designed to discuss some of the conceptual problems one might meet when attempting to understand photographs as data. It also discusses making photographs as a systematic part of field research. Lastly, it provides a brief primer on the type of photographic equipment best suited for fieldwork.

Historians of Africa are used to thinking of themselves as dwelling at the very cutting edge of methodological and theoretical innovation, but in the use of visual data we lag behind our colleagues in ethnology, anthropology, and sociology. Fieldwork historians, virtually all of whom take photographs, have rarely accepted photography as an integral part of their field research data. Nor has readily available visual data been widely used by historians: compare the extensive historical use of conventional anthropological data with the almost total neglect of visual anthropology.

Although the eye is our most important information-gathering sense, we find it surprisingly difficult to agree about the meaning of images. Ironically, one of the attractions of the photograph, its apparent accessibility (and implied objectivity), dissolves into subjectivity when closely ‘read.’ Since we cannot readily agree about photography's meaning and content we tend to discard or marginalize its use as data. Obviously I am overstating the case somewhat. We have of course learned to ‘read’ photographs; this is the reason we can recognize a tree as a tree. But compared to the way we have learned to read text, we read images in haphazard and non-systematic ways. Outside art history and cinema courses, image reading is rarely taught systematically.

To researchers thinking of using the extremely decentralized archives of the Republic of Niger the task of locating documents may seem formidable indeed. As of 1972 little effort had been made to collect important documents in one location, so that the bulk of the records of Niger's colonial government–and a few valuable assessment reports and ethnographic studies as well–are scattered among the préfectures, sous-préfectures, government offices, and small libraries of the country. This decentralization necessitates travel but it also has advantages, expecially for those who combine archival and field research. By being able to do both at the same time it is possible to let one kind of data inform the other, with the result that the questions being asked of all of the various sources can continually be rethought.

Permission for all research to be undertaken in Niger must be obtained through the Centre Nigérien de Recherches en Sciences Humaines, B.P. 318, Niamey. The C.N.R.S.H. asks researchers to submit a detailed description of their project, a summary of their preparation in the languages in which the research is to be conducted, and a projected budget showing the sources and amounts of funding. In addition researchers are asked to agree to send a copy of any thesis or publication which results from their research in Niger and to contribute time to the training of Nigerian historians and social scientists.

Over a period of several months in mid-1994 I became aware, as if by chain-reaction accident, of four instances in which scholarly journals declined to accept critiques of articles that had previously appeared in them. Interestingly, in none of the four cases was the critique rejected on the grounds of inherent quality, and in all cases the critique was considerably shorter than the original article. In one case a social science journal rejected a submission simply as “too polemical.” Another critical response was declined on the grounds that the critique in question had a “style correspond(ing) to a section on ‘Commentary’ or Debate that [the journal in question] does not have.”

In a third instance, the editors of a journal rejected a criticism of an author's case on the grounds that the earlier article had already managed to “accommodate the sort of criticism” being offered, even though the latter was evidentiary rather than methodological. Finally, the editor of yet another journal solicited and received two opinions about a paper submitted to it that disputed the arguments and conclusions of an article that had appeared there a few years earlier. Both referees (I was one of them) recommended publication, and did so with detailed arguments and suggestions for revisions, which the author successfully undertook. Yet the revised paper was rejected on the grounds that it would be “incomprehensible” to most readers—even though it was less technically dense—and better written—than the published paper that it was refuting!

The struggle by the people of Zimbabwe to overthrow Ian Smith's Rhodesian regime in the 1970s won the support and gripped the imagination of democratic peoples around the world. As the struggle intensified, so it began to move away from nationalism towards liberation. Control of the state was no longer seen as an end in itself. For the vision of a socialist Zimbabwe to become reality, the state would have to be fundamentally restructured. The pace and direction of this historic movement has lain at the center of all subsequent encounters between the advanced capitalist countries and their local class allies on the one hand, and progressive elements inside ZANU on the other. While the former have busied themselves with reversing such progress as was made during the war, the latter have tried to avoid the snares and pitfalls which infest the pragmatic roads leading away from the compromise reached at Lancaster House.

Education no less than other state apparatuses has been a site of struggle between the forces of accommodation to the rule of capital and those of socialist transformation. By any measure, the expansion of Zimbabwe's educational infrastructure since independence in April 1980 has been phenomenal. Awarded some Z$408 million in 1982's Budget--a four-fold increase in little over three years--the Ministry of Education now caters for 1,903,917 primary school pupils, as opposed to 819,586 in 1979. Secondary school enrollment over the same period has climbed from 66,215 to 218,430. Equally impressive gains have been registered in the number of schools and schoolteachers.

In the spring of 1976 I returned from almost three months of research in archives in Lubumbashi, Zaire, the present-day capital of Shaba Region (ex-Katanga). My interest was in any and all records having to do with historical developments affecting Katanga's peoples from the late 19th century through the First World War. As some important changes concerning archival research seem to have taken place since Thomas Reefe's experiences in Shaba in 1972-73 (History in Africa, III, 1976, pp. 187-192) I thought it appropriate to mention some of them and include a few additional thoughts of my own.

Avelino Teixeira da Mota, who died on 1 April 1982 (obituary, The Times, 23 April 1982), was most widely renowned in international scholarship for his contributions to the history of maps and navigation during the period of the Portuguese “Discoveries.” But at the heart of his studies was Africa. His service in Guiné between 1945 and 1957, largely in a hydrographic survey, and in Lisbon as director of the Early Maps Unit from 1959, led him to issue a stream of publications on Africa--mainly west Africa and within that region mainly western Guinea--first through the Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa at Bissau, then through the Agrupamento (now Centro) de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga. As well as publishing copiously himself, Teixeira da Mota encouraged and edited the writings of many other Africanists. Aged only 61 when he died (suddenly, though after a long debilitating disorder that he thought he had overcome), and with more than 120 books and articles published, Teixeira da Mota had planned and announced many more publications. One list of proposed publications appeared in the apologia pro vita sua which he inserted at the start of his 1977 tri-lingual edition of Donelha's “Account of Sierra Leone.” Africanists, as they express deep respect and unbounded admiration for what this serving naval officer--a natural scholar with no university training— achieved, will understandably be wondering what now happens to the further publications he planned.

At the request of Admiral Teixeira da Mota's widow, Senhora Maria de Lourdes Teixeira da Mota, I visited Lisbon in June 1982; and I also discussed the future of the Africanist papers and documentation left by Teixeira da Mota, with Dr. Ignácio Guerreiro of the Centro de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga (in the absence overseas of the new director, Professor Luís de Albuquerque) and with Commandante António Estácio dos Reis of the Navy Museum.

Some of the earliest books written by Gold Coast writers were about then-own family histories and stool institutions. These writers took advantage of the established oral tradition and the authorized stool histories. Such works represent a form of written history that was designed to transcribe and incorporate systematically as much oral tradition as possible. It is only when the oral sources are deficient or are ambiguous that the early European traveler's accounts are used to check or verify the oral sources. There are many reasons why much of the first generation of indigenous literature is by and about a small group of Fante. One undoubted reason is that these early books combine an academic pursuit with a family responsibility to the position of Linguist or Okyiame.

The word Kyiame is commonly translated “linguist,” but this is unfortunate because it conveys the impression that the Kyiame is no more than an interpreter. In reality the Kyiame is the spokesman or mouthpiece of the Chief, who, being held sacred, must neither be addressed by, nor address another person directly. According to J. B. Danquah, the word means “He who makes it perfect for me”: the Kyiame repeats and perfects what the Chief, who cannot always be an eloquent speaker, may have to say in public. He is a confidential officer whose place is at the Chiefs right hand; in the Council and Court of Judicature it is he who sums up and declares the Chiefs will. He preserves in his memory and passes on the tradition of the Stool. Deeply versed in the etiquette of the court, he instructs a newly appointed Chief. He can often turn the scales of war and peace since the issue of dispute between contending tribes may depend on whether he presents his Chiefs case in a bellicose manner. When he rises to speak in public he leans upon the gold cane or staff of his office, or a subordinate holds it in front of him. He may be sent by the Chief as a plenipotentiary or legate. What he says binds his Chief. There are two of the office. The superior grade is hereditary and is termed Omankyiame, i.e. the Kyiame of the whole Oman or Council.

The Beschryvinghe appeared in 1602 in Amsterdam under the title Beschrybinge ende historische verhael vant Gout koninckrijck van Gunea, anders de Gout-custe de Mina genaemt, liggende in het veel van Africa… The aim here is to ascertain whether the copperplates have ethnohistorical value as source material, i.e., whether they can be employed as source material relating to the history of Ghana at the beginning of the seventeenthth century, or whether their importance is restricted merely to their contribution to the history of ideas. The background necessary for the examination, description, and interpretation of the copperplates involves study of the genesis of the Beschryvinghe. The following discussion of the author, publisher, and printer, and copperplate techniques also points to questions of the intention, function, and reception—both of the Beschryvinghe and of the pictures.

Drawing a distinction between picture and illustration seems to me to be of little use. Even if every picture is not an illustration, every illustration is certainly a picture. In what follows I therefore consider the illustrative picture as a medium which, even if of a different quality, is comparable to the medium of language. This means that pictures, like texts, have to be read carefully. The method is thus one of precise and detailed examination and analysis of the content of the images. However, the comparability of language and image also implies that the pictures must be subjected to a rigorous critique of their status as source material, just as is the case with texts. In this context I have followed the “different stages Of ethno-historical source critique” developed by Miklós Szalay.

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 field

2. the creation of a primary souce with the pubhcation of the raw materials

3. the analysis of this raw material

4. the creation of a secondary source with the publication of the results of this analysis and interpretation

These 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.

The Gaawar Nuer recall a battle called Mut Roal which Deng Laka, the prophet of the divinity DIU, fought against the Twic Dinka and their “Arab” allies. In this battle the Dinka and the Arabs failed to coordinate their movements, were attacked, and were defeated singly. Deng Laka himself is said to have personally killed the “Arab” commander. A number of rifles were captured and placed in a hut at the Dinka shrine of Luang Deng, in recognition of the help received from both the divinity DENG and the Rut Dinka caretakers of the shrine (a number of Rut Dinka fought alongside the Gaawar in this, as in other battles). The battle was of a recent enough date to be recounted in some detail by Nuer and Dinka participants to those British officials who visited the Zeraf valley in the first three decades of this century. Though the name of the “Arab” leader involved was remembered and given, the British were uncertain about the date of the battle and the identity of the opponents, and frequently assumed that they were “slavers” from the days of the Turkiyya, the Turco-Egyptian period (1840-85).

This seems to be confirmed by contemporary reports given by Casati and Emin Bey, who each recorded the annihilation of an Egyptian army patrol on the Bahr el-Zeraf (the Giraffe River) in 1885. There are some difficulties in reconciling this date with other evidence concerning floods and the opening of age-sets also mentioned by Gaawar and Dinka oral sources. In this paper I will examine the evidence contained in various orally based accounts collected between 1904 and 1982 and compare them with the few contemporary written accounts we have of battles near the Bahr el-Zeraf in the late nineteenth century. I conclude that the battle of Mut Roal was probably fought against the Mahdists in 1896, rather than against “slavers” in 1885. This conclusion in itself has further implications for our understanding of Arab-Nuer relations, and even Nuer-Dinka relations in the late nineteenth century.

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.

Before departing for Mali, researchers should write a formal request for permit to conduct research to: Ministre de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique, Bamako. A second letter should be sent to M. Mamadou Sarr, Chef de la Division de Recherche Scientifique, B.P. 159, Bamako, advising him that the first letter has been written and stating both the research topic and the anticipated duration of the research trip.

Once in Bamako (if permission is granted), the “Autorisation de Recherche” can be obtained from M. Sarr, whose office is in the Ministry of Education Building on the Place de la Liberté. If this can be done within the first few days after arrival and before expiration of the temporary visa, the research authorization can simplify the visa renewal process at the Direction des Services de Sécurité. Authorization for access to the Archives Nationales du Mali requires a separate application, which also is issued by M. Sarr and can be applied for at the same time as the general authorization.

Every researcher is required to work under the aegis of the Institut des Sciences Humaines, of which M. Sarr is director. Those intending to do field work are assigned an I.S.H.M. “technician” who may have some background in the subject and can also be helpful in contacting informants. In principle, the technician is supposed to accompany the investigator on all field trips, and the investigator is expected to pay the technician's transportation costs, food, and lodging, as well as 2,000 Malien francs (about $5.00) per diem.

The archives of two Roman Catholic congregations of French origin which have missionaries in Gabon are located in Rome: the Sisters of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of Castres (commonly called the Blue Sisters) and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel of Saint Laurent-sur Sèvres. The Blue Sisters were founded by Emilie de Villeneuve in 1836 to improve the condition of women, in particular by educating poor and orphaned girls. The Brothers of Saint Gabriel were organized by Louis Grignion de Montfort in 1715 to provide a primary education for poor boys and were reorganized in 1821 by Gabriel Deshayes. Initially both congregations worked only in France. They entered Gabon at the request of the Holy Ghost Fathers-the sisters in 1849 and the brothers in 1900. The sisters had communities at most of the mission stations--in the Estuary at first and from the 1880s along the Ogooué river and other points in the interior. The brothers operated schools at Libreville and Lambaréné, and after the Second World War at Port-Gentil and Oyem as well. During the past century both congregations became primarily missionary bodies, with the sisters active in Africa and South America and the brothers in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. These international activities led to the transfer of their headquarters to Rome in the 1950s.

The sisters who worked in Gabon prior to the Second World War included many with intelligence but few with much formal education beyond the primary grades. They spent their time in social service, health care, and elementary education. The latter included French as well as religion and the domestic arts. The sisters had much less contact with the government or the colonial administration than did the Holy Ghost Fathers, who were their ecclesiastical superiors. Though some sisters toured to provide medical aid to persons away from the mission stations, most of their contacts with Africans took place in or near the stations.