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Feedback As a “Problem” in Oral History: An Example from Bonde1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Justin Willis
Justin Willis*
Affiliation:
British Institute in East Africa Nairobi
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Extract

Feedback—the process by which written versions of history influence subsequent presentations of oral history—is now a well-documented process. In writing on African history, Henige in particular has emphasized the importance of feedback in oral history, and has suggested that feedback from written sources is a process of contamination which has affected oral history all over the continent.

Some aspects of the oral history of Bonde, the area around the town of Muheza in northeastern Tanzania, would seem to present a counterexample to this thesis of written history as a contaminant of hitherto pure oral history: oral histories of at least two important nineteenth-century events in this area are at variance with fairly widely-available published sources. Evidence from Bonde suggests that, here at least, feedback from written sources is not a particular and unique influence on the making of oral history.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 20 , 1993 , pp. 353 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1993

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Footnotes

1.

References in the form “B94a” are to interviews I carried out in Bonde in 1990/91, as part of a British Institute project in the area. The number identifies the informant, while the letter signifies to which of the series of interviews with that informant reference is being made. Thus “Int B7c” is the third interview with informant 7, while “Int B75a” is the first interview with informant 75. Tapes and transcripts of interviews are stored at the British Institute in East Africa. I would like to thank John Sutton and David Henige for their advice on earlier versions of this paper. I should explain that I use the term “oral history” to cover both what others would call oral history and oral tradition. The elimination of this distinction is intentional, as it seems to me that in the hinterlands of Tanga and Mombasa, the only areas in which I have worked as a historian, no useful analytical distinction can be made between oral accounts of the recent and the more distant past. Informants' accounts of their own or their parents' lives are structured, the product of negotiation, just as are their accounts of the more distant past.

References

Notes

2. Henige, David P., “The Problem of Feedback in Oral Tradition: Four Examples From the Fante Coastlands,” JAH 14 (1973): 223–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest foraChimera (Oxford, 1974), 95-117.

3. Willis, Justin, “The Makings of a Tribe: Bondei Identities and Histories,” JAH 33 (1992): 191–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Feierman, Steven, The Shambaa Kingdom: a History (Madison, 1974), 145–84.Google Scholar Bondei identity is discussed at length in Willis, “Makings.”

5. Anderson-Moreshead, A. E. M., The History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (3 vols.: London, 1955 [1897]), 1: 41–44, 52–56, 71–73.Google Scholar

6. Willis, “Makings.”

7. Anderson-Moreshead, , History, 1:148–80.Google Scholar

8. Missions elsewhere in East Africa labored for years without attracting any converts at all: see Beidelman, T. O., Colonial Evangelism: a Sociohistorical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington, 1982), 57.Google Scholar

9. Int B94a; Int B56b; Anderson-Moreshead, , History, 1:167.Google Scholar

10. Int B 117a; Int B56b.

11. See, for example, the Magila mission logbook in the Tanzanian National Archives (TNA), entry for 1 September 1889; Int B109a.

12. Magila logbook, 10 March 1889, 14 June 1889, 28 April 1890.

13. Elg., Iliffe, John, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 318–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Willis, “Makings;” Iliffe, , Modern History, 333–34.Google Scholar

15. Central Africa (the UMCA journal), August 1884; Magila logbook, 17 July 1896, 6 August 1899, 29 November 1916.

16. “The Bondeis” to Governor, 4 October 1934, TNA, SMP 26162.

17. “Wazee wa nchi, Wabondei” to Governor, 22 October 1934, TNA, SMP 26162; Int B13c; Int B56b; Int B 116a.

18. Ibid.

19. Willis, “Makings.” The dominant role of Anglicans in the agitation is noted in DO i/c Muheza to DO Tanga, 10 January 1955, TNA 4/6/1/II. The extent of the grudge felt against the mission hierarchy by the man who was eventually elected is revealed in his autobiography: Mang'enya, E. A. M, Discipline and Tears (Dar es Salaam, 1984), 21–40, 207–08.Google Scholar

20. Int B6c; Int B13c; Int B37a; Int B94a.

21. Int B37a.

22. Int B37a.

23. Int B37a.

24. First published at Magila mission in three parts between 1894 and 1904. Reprinted in Nairobi in 1962, and in English as The Kilindi (Nairobi, 1962).Google Scholar

25. Abdullah, , Habari za Wakilindi, 204–30Google Scholar; Feierman, , Shambaa Kingdom, 159–64Google Scholar; Iliffe, , Modern History, 65–66.Google Scholar

26. Abdullah, , Habari za Wakilindi, 178Google Scholar; Petro Richard bin Hadj; “Vumbukano la asili ya kabila la Wabondei,” typescript in University of Dar es Salaam Swahili manuscript collection, 20-23.

27. Int B6a; Int B11a; Int B64a. This is discussed at more length in Willis, Justin, “‘And So They called a Kiva:’ Histories of a War,” Azania 25 (1990): 79–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Ewald, Janet, “Speaking, Writing, and Authority: Explorations in and From the Kingdom of Taqali,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1988): 199–224.Google Scholar

29. Henige, , Chronology, 158–59.Google Scholar

30. Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985), 152.Google Scholar

31. Feierman, Steven, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison, 1990), 109–10Google Scholar: Henige is clearly influenced by Goody in his analysis of the influence of literacy on oral history; see Henige, , Chronology, 100.Google Scholar

32. Henige, , “Problem,” 233.Google Scholar

33. Henige, , Chronology, 114–17.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 95.

35. Ibid., 103.

36. Henige, , Chronology, 95–96Google Scholar; idem., “Problem,” 235.