The evidence for the period separating the times of the two Benin dynasties, that of the ogiso and that of the oba, is extremely scanty and does not look very trustworthy. There are not even any direct indications as to the time when the events under consideration took place. However, an analysis of the Second dynasty's history allows to arrive at the conclusion that the events preceding its advent to power could date from the late twelth and early thirteenth centuries (Bondarenko 2001:160n64; 2003). There are no possibilities for giving a more concrete date, nor for the exact calculation of the respective periods' length. However, the scant information about it still permits an interpretation of the very events of that time (though it looks like none of the professional Benin students has ever attempted it). In fact, we have either to operate with the sources which are in our disposal, or abandon trying to reconstruct an important episode of the Benin kingdom's history and concede that we must categorically deny the very possibility of giving any credit to information provided mainly by oral tradition and ethnography.

Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (1903-72) was a man of immense ability and variety. Apart from his numerous activities in the fields of paleontology, archeology, and anthropology, he achieved prominence as a naturalist, historian, political analyst, handwriting expert, and administrator. His writings not only reflect these interests but also serve as an important focal point for future research about East Africa.

Especially valuable are Leakey's often overlooked contributions to newspapers such as The East African Standard (Nairobi), Kenya Weekly News (Nakuru), and The Times (London). In addition to expanding on the topics mentioned above these items, which included feature articles as well as letters to the editor, outlined Leakey's views on everything from the price of maize to the activities of Kenya's dalmation club.

Because of his intimate knowledge of the Kikuyu people, Leakey rendered useful service to the British colonial government during the Mau Mau revolt. His experiences were reflected in his Mau Mau and the Kikuyu (1952), Defeating Mau Mau (1954), First Lessons in Kikuyu (1959), and Kenya: Contrasts and Problems (1966). Related articles in the Manchester Guardian (Manchester) and The Observer (London) also provided essential material for understanding Leakey's attitude towards the emergency.

After Kenya gained its independence in 1963, Leakey continued to use newspapers as a forum for his political beliefs. In The East African Standard, for example, “Congratulations on Model Democracy” and “Controversial Report on Kenya Answered” defended the performance of the country's new government. His autobiography, By the Evidence: Memoirs, 1932-1951 also contained a great deal of information about Leakey's position toward Kenya's political and social evolution.

In “Donald Moodie and the Origins of South African Historiography,” Robert Ross provides an illuminating account of the political agenda which drove Moodie's impressive labor of archival research, transcription, and translation to produce The Record—a title which, abbreviated in this fashion as it normally is, neatly establishes the aura of neutrality which he intended for his compilation of documents. Sections of The Record appeared in print between 1838 and 1841. A decade earlier Moodie had begun to assume the mantle of historian, but his activities then are little known. It appears also that his motives were somewhat different from those behind the later crusade. At a time when the social sciences were embryonic, and Cape historiography was still undeveloped, Moodie's interest was engaged by the relations subsisting between the indigenes and colonists. As investigator he employed certain methods of the fieldworker, notably the oral interview.

Moodie has attracted a novelist, but not yet a biographer. In what has been published concerning him thus far, the man remains elusive. The entry in the Dictionary of South African Biography was prepared by the chief archivist of Natal and describes in a few short paragraphs his life before The Record and his transfer to that colony in 1845. Born in the Orkney Islands in 1794, Moodie entered the Royal Navy in 1808. A lieutenant at the time of his retirement on half pay in 1816, he left for India in 1820 but remained instead at the Cape, where his brothers Benjamin and John had settled. The next fifteen or so years, which the DSAB dispatches in a few lines, is the period which is of interest here. During that time he married Sophia Pigot and experienced bouts of insecurity respecting employment—aspects of his personal life with some relevance for the course of action he pursued.

Among the various sources of information about the Africa of the Slave Trade era, one of the more voluminous and detailed is the great series of English Customs records held at the Public Record Office in London under CUST 3 and CUST 17. Each year's records are contained in a gigantic ledger. Those up to 1780, in the CUST 3 series, are organized entirely under countries, of which the whole of Africa counts as one (though each West Indian island is separately listed, and most of the North American colonies, though New England is mercifully counted as a single unit, as is “Virginia and Maryland”). In the CUST 17 series, which overlaps with the CUST 3 series from 1772 and runs until 1808, the arrangement is somewhat different, and a second series of entries is arranged under commodities. From 1796, the Cape (newly occupied) is shown separately; Sierra Leone appears in 1798, and Morocco in 1807/08. A fire destroyed all the records for 1813, and export records for the previous years, as well as an unknown number of more detailed records for earlier years, and also the records of the East India trade, and of Prize goods, and odd other parts of the records for the years before the fire. So far as Africa is concerned, it is possible to construct continuous series for Imports into England, and for re-exports, with only 1813 missing, but the export records for 1809-11 inclusive are lost. The list of countries recognized continues to vary after 1809, and from 1827 to 1845 the records divide up the coast of Africa into stretches, of which only “Gold Coast and Cape Coast” bears any relation to later divisions.

[This continues the comparison of the texts of the Dutch and English versions of Bosman which was begun in History in Africa 2 (1975): 185-216, and which will be continued in future numbers. Procedural matters are discussed in the first installment, to which the reader is referred.]

Interdisciplinarity has become a sort of buzzword in academic circles. It is quite common to hear graduate students respond, in answer to a question as to what they are doing, that their work is “sort of interdisciplinary.” This answer might be construed as concealing some measure of confusion as to what exactly is being researched. But, on the other hand, there is little doubt that the most adventurous students are increasingly defining their areas of concern at the boundaries between disciplines. The matter seems to take on a particularly acute inflection in relation to Africanist research. This may be traced partly to the fact that from the very beginning of interest in African matters, much scholarly work on Africa in Western universities has been done under the rubric of “African studies.” Anthropology and history, arguably the disciplines most active in popularizing knowledge about Africa, have themselves always shared a common concern on the ways in which knowledge about Africa can be constituted. The monumental work of Jan Vansina and others in the 1960s in focusing on oral traditions and making them a respectable source for the construction of historical knowledge about Africa was thoroughly interdisciplinary in its own way.

Despite the implicit interdisciplinarity of African Studies, the theoretical implications of interdisciplinary study and the issues that it generates for questions about different types of knowledge does not seem to have engaged the attention of scholars. It is in this direction that I propose to go. I propose to engage with issues concering interdisciplinarity from the perspective of my own research on Nigerian literature. The issues that concern me relate to the question: what do specific configurations of disciplines within the interdisciplinary model have for the nature of the knowledge that is produced? But a series of subsidiary questions might be asked in relation to this major one, such as: are we being interdisciplinary when we borrow metaphors from other fields? or concepts? or whole paradigms? Or is it when we join different methods of analysis from two or more disciplines such that what finally emerges cannot be limited to any one of them?

Since China was initially the favorite field of activity of the C.I.C.M. founded at Scheut (a suburb of Brussels) in 1862, it is not surprising that the oldest documents in its archives refer to the China missions. In 1888, however, three years after the establishment of the Independent State of the Congo, the first C.I.C.M. missionaries were sent out there and their successors still continue their activities. Thus nowadays a very important part of the archives concerns the Congo, covering a period of nearly ninety years.

At first the Apostolic Vicariate entrusted to the C.I.C.M. missionaries covered the entire extent of the Congo except for parts of the Apostolic Vicariate of Tanganyika, created two years earlier and given to the White Fathers to administer. Gradually, however, other missionaries came to help the C.I.C.M. pioneers and were put in charge of various territories which had originally been part of the Apostolic Vicariate. Eventually the C.I.C.M. retained only Leopoldville and its surrounding area, and the regions of Lower Congo, Equator, Lake Leopold II, and Kasai which, from the religious point of view, gave rise to the present C.I.C.M. provinces of Kinshasa, Boma, Lisala, Budjala, Inongo, Kananga, and East Kasai. This dismemberment explains why the documents preserved in the archives become more and more concentrated on these regions.

A gradual transformation is taking place in Morocco in the ease with which it is possible to have access to archives. In a year and a half in Morocco my research in the archives both of Rabat and of the town of Essaouira was expedited by the administrators and ministries responsible in a way that approached what is current in England, for example. Those who have done archival research in Morocco will recognize the significance of such a change.

This report begins with a discussion of living accommodations in Morocco that may be of interest to those wishing to do research in the archives. Following this section I have tried to set out, first, the types of archives to be found, as well as their accessibility, and, second, the sorts of archival material likely to be found in each archive. Finally, I have appended a few suggestions about getting permission to do research in these archives. I can speak with accuracy for Rabat and Essaouira and, though it may be unwise to say they are representative of large and small towns, at least the two examples may be of some general significance.

Those who can afford to stay at the Rabat Hilton may skip this section because it is targeted to those who cannot or would prefer not to spend that much money. A fairly inexpensive hotel, yet one that a North American would feel comfortable in, is fairly easy to find in most of the major cities or towns of Morocco. These would run about $20 to $30 a night for two people. In Rabat two possibilities are: BELERE (33, Av. Moulay Youssef) and LES OUDAYAS (4, Rue Tobrouk). Both are within an easy walk of the Royal Archives and the Archives of the Bibliothèque Générale.

Les Téké tsaayi sont un rameau détaché du tronc téké il y a plusieurs siècles. Ayant quitté les savanes très claires qui bordent le Zaïre à la hauteur du Malebu pour fuir le pouvoir politique qui s'y était développé (“pour échapper au Makoko”), ils s'établirent en forêt sur les contreforts orientaux de ce qui est aujourd'hui les Monts du Chaillu et ils imposèrent à ses habitants leur système politique bicéphale.

En 1966 j'entrepris une étude qui, selon les règles anthropologiques du moment, devait se confiner à une observation exhaustive d'un village. Les 147 habitants de Vouka, sur la haute Louessé, affluent de la rive droite du Niari-Kouilou, furent donc soumis au dispositif en vigueur. Localisation spatiale, parenté et alliances, production (peu observée), rites religieux etc. …Les matériaux obtenus furent pauvres, très disparates, et fort lacunaires. Les généalogies étaient incomplètes à cause des morts de la guerre de l'impôt. La métallurgie du fer avait cessé pendant cette même guerre; il en était de même pour les rites. Les vieux se plaignaient que leurs enfants préféraient parler la langue nzabi, celle des voisins (et champ d'étude de Georges Dupré). Mon inexpérience n'était pas seule en cause. Une déculturation était évidente, conséquence d'une dévastation démographique. Face à cette situation, les bases mêmes de la recherche étaient à redéfinir. Et il fallait d'abord se tourner vers l'histoire de la colonisation et en évaluer l'impact.

More than sixty years ago, in his preface to Carl Russell Fish's excellent Guide to the Materials for American History in Roman and Other Archives, the General Editor, J. Franklin Jameson, wrote as follows.

Although these words were written decades ago, it still remains true that too little use is made of such archival materials, and not only by American historians. One of the microfilm additions to the collections at Saint Louis University includes precisely this type of material in a collection that runs to about 250,000 manuscript pages from the Archive of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide (for the propagation of the faith). The congregation was definitively established by Gregory XV (1621-1623) in his constitution Inscrutabili of June 22, 1622, although there had been some discussion about the formation of such a congregation for almost fifty years. This brief note description will be oriented toward the African materials only, but a general description of the indexes is necessary that the Africanist may be able to use them.

Some of the late nineteenth century success of Liberia coffee, sugar, and other commodities can be attributed to the leasing of plantations to enterprising foreigners, although a few leading politicians did own successful farms … For most Americo-Liberians, the role of dirt farmer was decidedly beneath their station.

Yet the reasons for this apathy among most Americo-Liberians for agriculture, which prevailed up to the early 1870s, were not far to seek. The majority of them being newly emancipated slaves, who had in servitude in America been used to being forced to work, erroneously equated their newly won freedom with abstinence from labour.

Both arguments are inaccurate, yet the authors made essential contributions to the writing of Liberian history. J. Gus Liebenow became renowned within Liberian academic circles for his earlier book, Liberia: the Evolution of Privilege. In that book he analyzed the policy that enabled the minority Americo-Liberians (descendants of free blacks from the United States who founded Liberia in 1822), to monopolize political and economic power to the exclusion of the majority indigenous Africans for more than a century. M. B. Akpan dissected Liberia's dubious political history and concluded that Americo-Liberian authority over the indigenous population, was identical to the discriminatory and oppressive policy practiced by European colonizers in Africa.

Semei Kakungulu enjoyed at least nine lives in the area of the Uganda Protectorate immediately before, during, and after the imposition of British protectorate rule there at the close of last century, in his successive roles as elephant hunter, guerrilla leader, Ganda chief, border warlord, British ally in military campaigns, “native collector,” colonial client-king, President of the Busoga Lukiko, and leader of the anti-medicine Bamalaki and Bayudaya separatist sects. The purpose of these notes, however, is not to provide more details about these successive phases in Kakungulu's extraordinary career, but rather to comment briefly on the nine major surviving vernacular accounts of his very full life.

John Rowe remarks that “it was natural that biographies, particularly of men of heroic proportions, should also [have been] mobilized in the struggle against moral decline” after the First World War by Ganda vernacular authors, along with works of moral admonition and military memoir once uncritical admiration for British Christianity gave way to a more guarded and wary respect for things British with the increased penetration of Buganda by both British rule and mercantile capitalism. Rowe may also be right in saying that the many biographies of Kakungulu in Luganda “may have reflected the particular attraction of a non-conforming heroic figure who turned his back on the ‘establishment,’ carved a kingdom for himself in the east and virtually thumbed his nose at Apolo Kagwa and the British.” Certainly, this is a major attraction as regards my biographical interest in the man! But, as I hope the following notes on his nine principal vernacular lives may indicate, there are also other explanations.

Typically—very typically—fledgling African historians launch their careers by engaging in a bout of fieldwork, sometimes in archives, but more often on location among a group of people whose activities have somehow captured their interest. Almost as typically, this work in the field then becomes the principal source for historians' future published work, which often never proceeds beyond the bounds set by the initial fieldwork.

In this process of course the data accumulated in the field—field notes—become, possibly over and over again, the primary sources for this subsequent work. In some ways this process is not particularly different from that undertaken by other historians who use printed sources more heavily. There are differences, though, not the least of which is that these orally derived field notes grow stale with the passing of time and cannot be revivified as easily as archival notes.

Moreover, of course, far more often than not, field notes are never allowed to escape into the public domain, whereas archival sources are usually already there when the historian sets about using them. What were once laboriously handwritten notebooks, and then audio tapes are now more likley to be 3.5″ diskettes, but otherwise they are as jealously guarded in the 1990s as they were in the 1950s. Indeed, perhaps moreso, in that the usable lifespan of a diskette is likely to be significantly less than that of the notebook, if not of the audio tape. In short, in perhaps twenty years posterity will find itself forced to rely on the published products—maybe yet in paper format?—rather than on the raw data which once underpinned them. In the circumstances, it might be worth considering once again the implications of this, with reference to a particular instance of respectable vintage.

In the 1820s, when Imerina expanded to control most of Madagascar, remarkably few Merina rose in organized opposition to the king's extensive plans to change basic social and political relations. Tradition conferred sacred legitimacy on innovative royal interpretations of ideology and secured public consent with little resort to force. Potential conflicts between the king and Merina elites were muted by negotiations that proceeded within the premises of traditional ideology. As the king managed to monopolize organized force, occasional acts of violence assured that royal views of ideology dominated all others.

King Radama occupied the central position in the stream of blessing that ran from Imerina's collective ancestors downwards through him to all living Merina. As the ultimate living representative of all long-dead ancestors, he had the power to dispense their good will in the form of “superior” hasina in exchange for his subjects' offerings of “inferior” hasina. As mediator between heaven and earth, Radama alone determined how Imerina's hasina ideology would apply to the vicissitudes of everyday life. Merina, however, saw the reality that he created not merely as the product of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence as well. Since opposition to royal will implied the rejection of ancestral beneficence, attempts within Imerina to challenge the monarch's authority or the ideology on which it rested were rare indeed. Yet such cases of opposition did arise, and they reveal the nature of royal authority as seen from below.

The hagiographic literature of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church may be divided into two major categories: the translated lives of the saints and martyrs of the early Christian church and the lives of local saints. The essentially foreign works, which constitute the first of these groups, will be of only peripheral concern in this paper. While books such as Barlaam and Joasaph, The Life of St. George, and The Conflict of Severus did serve as models for the traditions dealing with local saints, they are of little interest to the student of Ethiopian history.

The most interesting of these local hagiographies are those about saints who lived between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. These traditions, which recount the lives of some kings and many monastic leaders, are of great importance for the reconstruction of the history of medieval Ethiopia. As Conti Rossini has written,

However, while specialists in Ethiopian literature and history have long realized the potential value of these gadlāt (singular: gadl) as sources for the study of Ethiopian history, the tendency towards idealization displayed in these works, as well as their abundant miracles and anachronisms, have left historians uncertain as to how to extract reliable information from them.

Dans les représentations françaises du passé colonial, le général Louis Léon César Faidherbe (1818-1889), gouverneur du Sénégal de 1854 à 1861 et de 1863 à 1865, a une image bien ancrée (et dont l'analyse pourrait constituer une étude historique en soi) qui persiste jusqu'à maintenant. Une grande partie de la littérature existante au sujet de Faidherbe peut être divisée en ouvrages à caractère hagiographique et en écrits de l'époque postcoloniale qui le stigmatisent en tant que colonialiste. Cependant il faudrait se demander en quoi consiste l'apport particulier de Faidherbe dans les études des civilisations africaines et comment expliquer la durée de son “charisme” auprès de ses successeurs au XXe siècle.

Nous avons essayé de systématiser les écrits de Faidherbe du point de vue de la construction du portrait de l'ethnie peul dans son oeuvre. Nous supposons que l'intérêt tout particulier à l'égard des Peul de la part des ethnologues qui écrivaient après Faidherbe doit beaucoup à l'image qu'il a créée de ce peuple. Ce succès pourrait êire expliqué moins par la somme de savoir que recèle cette image, que par son organisation et par sa correspondance avec les modes philosophiques et esthétiques de la réflexion de son temps, notamment avec “l'esprit de la modernité.” Le lecteur attentif des oeuvres ethnologiques de Faidherbe aura la sensation de découvrir une écriture vivement marquée par. le style dit de la “modernité” qui lui rappellera peut être les passages lus chez Jules Verne et lui laissera le sentiment étrange d'être plutôt dans le domaine de la littérature.

When Caliph Attahiru of Sokoto chose flight over submission to the British in March 1903, it was left to the blind and aging Waziri, Muhammad al-Bukhari, to provide those who remained behind with an explanation of how they could remain good Muslims while accepting infidel rule. Citing a text of the caliphate's founder, Shehu ʿUthman Dan Fodio, he argued that one could befriend the British with the tongue, without befriending them with the heart. It remained for others to develop the vocabulary that their tongues would need for this task.

A particularly intriguing item in the vocabulary that emerged during the turbulent first decade of colonial rule was a new usage of zaman(time, era) that occurs in the records of the Emir of Kano's judicial council in such terms as hukm al-zaman (rule of the era) and ʿumur al-zaman (things of the era). It is worth noting that the judicial council did not keep written records before being instructed to do so by British Resident C.L. Temple in 1909, so the records might be seen as preserving what was essentially oral discourse—expressions of the tongue. These terms occur uniquely in relation to legal matters in which the British had intervened. Understanding them can shed new light on the religious and political adaptation of northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to life under British rule. To explore their meaning requires a threefold process of examining various usages and understandings of zaman in non-legal sources; describing how the judicial council used the word; and then analyzing how this usage may have been related to any of a number of influences, ranging from British officials to West African Islamic scholars to Western-educated North Africans passing through the region.

As part of a projected series of edited early Portuguese texts on Guinea, in the early 1960s the late Vice-Admiral Avelino Teixeira da Mota began to assemble, partly from archives, documents for a volume he intended to call Jesuit Reports. As it happened, many of the documents, especially those from Jesuit sources, were published in 1968 by another Portuguese scholar, the late P. Antońio Brásio. But Teixeira da Mota did not abandon his project, partly because he considered that Brásio did not always take account of all copies of a document and all variant readings, and partly because Brásio was unable to accompany the documents with informed Africanist annotation. In the 1970s Teixeira da Mota sent me his own collection of documents to translate into English— and also so that I could ultimately contribute part of their annotation. My translations were completed just before Teixeira da Mota died in 1982, and I have since translated a number of other documents, all from Brásio, which help to round out the picture. Not all of the documents were written by the Jesuits themselves, but most were.

When it became clear that the publication of Teixeira da Mota's series would proceed at best very slowly, I began to publish those of the translations which were of material in the public domain, beginning with the material printed in the early seventeenth century by Guerreiro. Since much of the material related to Sierra Leone, I published in the Africana Research Bulletin of the Institute of African Studies at Freetown, and am much indebted to the organizers of the journal for providing an outlet.

The technicians of historical methodology have usually emphasized that the relationship between historians and their facts is, or should be, dialectic. This supposed counsel of perfection, however, glosses over an important point whose neglect is usually, or indeed invariably, a source of serious distortion or error—that is, the fact that such a dialogue can only begin after the historian has already immersed himself in the available sources, and thus has in some way been taken captive by those sources. Indeed, if the historian can manipulate his facts, it appears that his sources can also manipulate him.

Thus the kind of history the historian writes depends all the time on the kind of sources available to him. The more the sources are narrow in focus and unidirectional in orientation, the narrower the range of the historian's work and the more such work is oriented in the direction from which the sources derive. The wider the range of the sources, and the more these are multidirectional, the more the competent and scientific historian is in a position to produce a work that does more justice to the many-faceted experiences of man in society—that is, the more the historian is in a position to take a meaningful aim at the Rankean goal of all historical effort.

This tendency for the historian to be taken captive by the provenance and the main interest of his sources has been, and continues to be, operative among the historians of Nigeria's peoples and polities.