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One-Eyed Men in the Kingdom of the Blind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

David Henige
David Henige*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin—Madison, henige/[email protected]
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Extract

Like most kids of my age and time, I was a pack rat in my youth, collecting toy cars, trucks, and tanks; comic books; baseball cards; postage stamps, and … chronological tables. Unfortunately for my later financial well-being, I kept—and kept up with—only the last. I remember little specific about the primal urge to collect these lists, but I remember enough to recall that I was entirely naive at the beginning. I wanted exotic names, exotic places, and exotic dates. Most of all I wanted dates. It did not disturb me in the least when I found out that Arakan was founded in 2666 BC, and that a complete list of its rulers until 1784 A.D. had been preserved for my edification. A strictly successive treatment of the thirty dynasties of pharaonic Egypt was infinitely preferable to new-fangled efforts to reduce this chronology by over 2000 years by shortening reigns and insisting that more than one dynasty ruled at a time. It seemed only natural to me that scores of European bishoprics were able to trace their episcopal lines right back to immediately post-New Testament times. I must have seen historical time as an infinitely replicable vacuum that needed to be filled

This idyll did not last very long—a sea change was all too soon in arriving. It probably was not an epiphany, but a gradual realization that I was encountering other lists of the same offices that were replete with gaps, disagreements, and question marks rather than dates.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 28 , 2001 , pp. 395 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2001

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References

1 Mercati, Angelo, “The New List of Popes,” Medieval Studies 9(1947), 71–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Cambridge History of Japan (6 vols.: Cambridge, 1988–1990), 3:187, 456–57.Google Scholar

3 (Jefferson, NC, 1999)

4 Palmer, H.R., Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London, 1936), 112–79.Google Scholar After this point Palmer's and Stewart's information disagree. Palmer does not feature in Stewart's bibliography.

5 Stewart's lack of critical acumen is highlighted by his inclusion of a number of phantom entities, including the “Berauma Dynasty of Phazania” and “Petit Dieppe.”

6 Otherwise otherwise noted, here and elsewhere, italics and brackets are in the original.

7 Childs, G.M., Umbundu Kinship and Character (London, 1949), 225–31.Google Scholar

8 E.g., Izard, Françoise, Bouna (Bordeaux, 1958)Google Scholar; Izard, Michel, Introduction à l'histoire des royaumes mossi (2 vols.: Paris, 1970).Google Scholar

9 Beach, D.N., The Zimbabwean Past: Shona Dynastic Lists and Oral Traditions (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1994)Google Scholar; idem., The Shona and Their Neighbours (Oxford, 1994).

10 E.g., Mohammadou, Eldridge, Lamidats du Diamaré et du Mayo-Louti au XIXe siècle (Tokyo, 1988)Google Scholar; idem., Traditions historiques des peuples du Cameroun central (Tokyo, 1990)

11 E.g., Soga, J.H., Ama-Xosa: Life and Customs (Lovedale, 1931)Google Scholar;

12 Lewis, H.S., A Galla Monarchy (Madison, 1965)Google Scholar; Hassen, Mohammed, The Oromo of Ethiopia: a History, 1S70-1860 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; Huntingford, G.W.B., The Galla of Ethiopia: the Kingdoms of Kaffa and Janjero (London, 1969).Google Scholar

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15 From my own experience I know that McFarland prefers to publish books that are longer—and more expensive—than they need to be, larded with complex but largely worthless indexes.

16 Nor is it a pleasure to note that the author of the only review of this work to date (early 2001), an anonymous effort in Booklist (15 February 2000), 1132, finds no fault whatever with the work. He or she especially likes the index.

17 For the effects of this in one case see Miller, Joseph C., “Kings, Lists, and History in Kasanje,” HA 6(1979), 51–96.Google Scholar