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Biographical Sources for Colonial History in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

D H Simpson
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Extract

Tony Kirk-Greene has described to you some of the separate biographies and autobiographies relating to Colonial Administrators in Africa, and also the Staff Lists, Blue Books and other works recording their careers. I would like to follow this by looking at the value of more general biographical reference works in this respect.

The most familiar of such works are the Dictionary of National Biography and Who's Who. The DNB, originally published in 63 volumes, containing 29,000 entries, between 1882 and 1900, supplemented in three further volumes and now brought up to date with ten year supplements, the latest of which brings it to 1970, concentrates on British biographies, but has also included what was originally called “Colonial achievement”, including administrators.

Type
Documentation
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 29 , 1982 , pp. 19 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1982

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References

Notes

1 Who Was Who: a cumulated index 1897-1980. Black, 1981. For some comments on this, see Royal Commonwealth Society Library Notes, No.249, June 1982.

2 F Boase, Modern English Biography, 6v. Privately printed, 1892-1921, reprinted, Cass, 1965.

3 W Johnston and others, Medical Officers in the British Army 1660-1960, 2v Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1968.

4 For examples see Simpson, D H, “Some British Sources for Overseas Biography”, Royal Commonwealth Society Library Notes, No.180, April 1972, pp.1–3Google Scholar.

5 East Africa and Uganda Diary, later Handbook for East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar later East African Red Book, Various publishers, irregular issues 1902-1930/31.

6 Playne, S and Gale, F H, British East Africa, Foreign and Colonial Compiling and Publishing Company, 1909Google Scholar. A Macmillan, Mauritius Illustrated, Collingridge, 1914, and Red Book of West Africa, Collingridge, 1920, reprinted Cass, 1968.

7 See Encyclopaedia Africana Information Reports, passim.

8 Dictionnaire de Bioqraphie Mauricienne/Dictionary of Mauritian Biography, 37 parts, Société de l'Histoire de l'lle Maurice, 1941-1981.

9 Jacobs, P M, Registers of the Universities, Colleges and Schools of Great Britain and Ireland, Athlone Press, 1964CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Details can be obtained from the Librarian, Royal Commonwealth Society, London, WC2.