Karamojong oral tradition provides several trickster characters such as the rabbit, the self-appointed moral guard. This rabbit pretends to defend the weak and the powerless, yet secretly steals from them, but in the end gets exposed for what it really is. Then there is the clever fox, which skilfully tricks people with its clever manipulations, convincing them that it is honest and upright, not unlike the rabbit, but then it too gets caught stealing. Napeikisina, the one-breasted villain trickster, the symbol of humanity's penchant for evil, masquerades her insatiable cannibalistic propensities and desire for recognition, but her penchant for evil eventually becomes apparent, thus frightening people, and like all the other tricksters she too gets caught.

Ben Knighton seems to possess some of the attributes of some of these tricksters. With amazing legerdemain, he skilfully manages to conjure up oral and written texts in an attempt to persuade people to believe that what they read is authentic, in order to offer himself as the paramount authority on all matters Karamoja. But he too ends up getting caught, like all the Karamojong tricksters.

In the 1992 volume of History in Africa, John D. Fage asked readers for possible additions to his landmark 1987 Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa Published in European Languages, as he was preparing a second edition. I responded with a list of suggested additions and corrections that I had been storing up. This started a fruitful correspondence that continued beyond the appearance of the second edition in 1994, in which he generously acknowledged my help. In my last letter I told him I was already keeping notes on my computer for a third edition of the Guide. On 2 October 1994 he replied that “[a]s things stand at the moment, I doubt whether I shall want to do a third edition. The effort required to try and keep abreast with the literature seems to be continually increasing! … But then I don't see why—in due course—you shouldn't blossom forth yourself as the author of an ‘Additions and Corrections to Fage's Guide’. Indeed, this might be the more proper course.”

One can imagine the effect this confidence expressed by a grand old man of African historiography had on the novice to the field that I was. For a dozen years (extending beyond Fage's death in 2002) I haphazardly gathered information suitable for a supplement to the second edition. I then approached David Henige about it, and he encouraged me to complete the project systematically. This took 18 more months.

The historiography of Cecil John Rhodes may be divided into two broad categories: chauvinistic approval or utter vilification. In the Introduction to Colossus of Southern Africa, Lockhart and Woodhouse wrote: “Those who hated [Rhodes] most were those who knew him least, and those most admired and loved him were those who knew him best.” The earlier works written soon after Rhodes death, and usually by his “intima[te]” friends, constitute the first group. Later works written by historians and journalists largely constitute the second group. Generally speaking, the category into which a particular biography or history is placed has a strong correlation to the time it was written. Chronologically, these two groups divide at about 1945, when the last of Rhodes's intimate companions died and the British Empire was beginning to be dismantled.

The earliest published biography of Cecil Rhodes was Cecil Rhodes: His Political Life and Speeches, 1881-1900 published just two years before his death. The work was published pseudonymously under the moniker “Vindex.” C.M. Woodhouse, in the “Notes on Sources” at the front of his book on Rhodes, identified Vindex as the Reverend F. Vershoyle.

There is never an end to stories.

“The art of composing oral narratives,” said Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, a Xhosa storyteller,

is something that was undertaken by the first people, long ago, during the time of the ancestors. When those of us in my generation awakened to earliest consciousness, we were born into a tradition that was already flourishing. Narratives were being performed by adults in a tradition that had been established long before we were born. And when we were born, those narratives were constructed for us by old people, who argued that the stories had initially been created in olden times, long ago. That time was ancient even to our fathers; it was ancient to our grandmothers, who said that the tales had been created years before by their grandmothers. We learned the narratives in that way, and every generation that has come into being has been born into the tradition. Members of every generation have grown up under the influence of these narratives.

In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, I made a number of research trips to southern Africa for the purpose of studying the oral traditions of the Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, and Ndebele peoples. The Xhosa and Zulu live in South Africa, the Swati in Swaziland, and the Ndebele in the southern part of Zimbabwe. During each of those trips many of the performances and discussions were taped. I witnessed thousands of performances.

In April 2007 David William Cohen and his graduate students held a symposium on the future of African Studies at the University of Michigan. David Cohen, two graduate students—Isabelle de Rezende and Clapperton Mavhunga—as well as five invited speakers with different disciplinary backgrounds—Pius Adesanmi, Tim Burke, Jennifer Cole, Paul Zeleza, and myself—contributed papers. The purpose of the conference, entitled “2020: Re-Envisioning African Studies,” was twofold. First, it appeared timely to reflect yet again on the state of African Studies in disciplinary-based and area studies departments. Second, David Cohen had the idea of 2020 representing both the utopia of ideal vision and the concrete question of what the field might look like when the graduate students participating might conceive their second book projects. What follows are the thoughts—not a list of solutions—by a historian who has studied in three academic contexts—Germany, Zimbabwe, Britain—who has taught in as many—Britain, Germany, USA—and who has gathered experience both in area and disciplinary-based departments.

Finding one's intellectual home in area studies is problematic for a range of reasons, not least for the exoticization and marginalization of non-western world regions in the global flows of ideas. At the same time, African Studies make for a comfortable sense of belonging. This is a community of scholars who provide a productive and engaging, if at times impassioned, conversation with colleagues across disciplinary boundaries, time periods, and the great diversity of African and diasporic societies and regions. The question is: what place does the historical discipline occupy within this field, and what is its future?

Ìkàl is one of the several dialects spoken by the Yorùbá of Nigeria (Adeoye 1979:5). The name also refers to the people who speak the dialect. This subgroup is made up of fourteen communities in the southwestern part of Ondo State of Nigeria. They share boundaries with the Ìlàjẹ, Ìj Àpì, and Ìj Àrògbò to the south; Òdígbó Local Government to the north; Edo State to the east; and Ògùn State to the west. Ìkàl communities include Ìkyà, Òde-Ìrèlè, mn, Igbódìgò, Àyèká, Ìdèpé (Òkìtìpupa), Òde-Aye, Erínjẹ, Òṣóòró and Ìgbìnsìn-Ọlt. Others are Àkótógbò, Àjàgbà, Ìyànsàn and Ijù-ṣun. These last four communities were formerly grouped under the Benin Confederation. Traces of Edo language and culture show very clearly in their ways of life. Òṣóòró is a conglomeration of Igbótako, Ìlútitun, Iju-Odò, Iju-Òkè, Erékìtì, and Òṣmtṣ towns. The Ìkál also have kindred communities in parts of Ògùn State, viz., Ayédé, Àyílà, Aràfn and Moblrundúró.

While some Ìkál communities claim direct descent from Ilé-If, others claim Benin, or Ugbò descent, and a few others elsewhere. Oral tradition confirms that there were migrations from If Oòyè before the Benin contact of the sixteenth century, which tend to link Ìkál dynasty to Ọba Esigie (Bajowa 1992:3). In an interview with Chief M.A. Fabunmi, he narrated the If version of the Ìkál migration from Ile-If.