This paper is a study of the methods and concerns of anthropology and history in central-south Nigeria in the period since about 1900, and of the changes which they have had to undergo in response to changing times and demands. To highlight the response of either discipline to the differing needs of different times, we shall take 1970, the date of publication of Thurstan Shaw's Igbo–Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria, as our critical dividing line. Beyond doing that, however, we shall treat the years 1900 to 1970 as failing into sub-periods, with ca. 1900 to 1951 representing the high-noon, and 1951 to 1970 the twilight, of colonialism for the practice of either of these disciplines under consideration.

It is perhaps necessary to emphasize that for our first sub-period, 1900-1951, we shall be dealing mainly with the methods and concerns of anthropology, rather than also with history strictly speaking. It was a period marked by the unchallenged dominance of anthropology and anthropologists as far as the study of society was concerned. What passed for history, and therefore what, for the period, will be treated as historiography, concerns the speculations of anthropologists about the past of the peoples of central-south Nigeria, and with the work of one or two inspired indigenous amateurs such as Jacob Egharevba. By and large I agree with the view of Bill Freund, supported by Toyin Falola, to the effect that “the colonial period produced very little by way of overtly historical publication. The dominant colonial science was anthropology.” Thus this paper is on the idiosyncratic waywardness of colonial anthropology, the impact of this waywardness on the emergent historiography of central-south Nigeria from 1951 to 1970, the efforts of post-1970 anthropologists and historians to shake off this waywardness, and the part played by Shaw's Igbo-Ukwu in this struggle to end the baneful influence of that “dominant colonial science.”

The early history of the Mali empire is known to us from two sources: Mande oral literature (epic and praise poetry) recorded over the last 100 years and Ibn Khaldun's Kitab al-ʿIbar (Book of Exemplars) written in the late four-teenth century. The list of Mali kings presented by Ibn Khaldun is precise, detailed, entirely plausible, and recorded not too long after the events it purports to describe. For scholars attempting to reconstruct an account of this West African empire, no other medieval Arab chronicler or, indeed, any Mande oral traditions provide comparable information for its formative period.

There is, however, reason to question the historical reliability of Ibn Khaldun's account precisely on the grounds of its narrative richness. When read in relation to the general model of political development and decay which Ibn Khaldun worked out in the more theoretical Muqaddimah (“Prolegomena”) of Kitab al-ʿIbar, as well as the larger context of the work in which it is imbedded, the Mali kinglist takes on some characteristics of an instructive illustration rather than a fully empirical account of the past. Indeed Ibn Khaldun himself, in his contemplation of the basis for asabiyah (group solidarity) among bedouin peoples, cautions us against literal interpretation of genealogical accounts:

Ibn Khaldun is certainly not as ideologically engaged in constructing the royal genealogy of Mali as a bedouin spokesman might be in reciting the list of his own ancestors. Nevertheless, this great Arab thinker has something at stake in this story which needs to be given serious attention by all scholars concerned with either the events of the medieval western Sudan or the process by which they have been incorporated into more recent narratives.

In the late eighteenth century Imerina was checkered with a myriad of tiny principalities, each ruled from hilltop fortresses. In just fifty years from 1780 to 1830, it was unified under a single ruler, drawing Merina into increasingly wider systems of obedience and creating a vast imperium that held sway over most of the island of Madagascar, a landmass the size of France, Belgium, and Holland combined.

And yet, the half century of tumultuous change that characterized the empire's rise brought no revolution in the Merina's own understanding of the world of power, a view which I have termed hasina ideology. Merina saw historical reality as the product not of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence, hasina, which flowed downwards on obedient Merina from long—of dead ancestors in a sacred stream that connected all living Merina. For obedient Merina, politics consisted in nothing more and nothing less than the lifelong quest to position oneself favorably in that sacred stream as close as possible to ancestors and then to reap the material benefits of that cherished association. Ancestors made their pleasure known by bestowing blessings, “superior” hasina, on those who honored them.

Aujourd'hui il n'est plus polémique reconnaître l'importance des textes européens pour l'étude des societes africaines qui ont établi des contacts avec les marchants, les missionaires, les prêtres, les aventuriers venus d'Europe en passant, ou même pour s'établir en Afrique. Aussi, ont-ils reçu des échos d'autres gens plus lointains, échos qui, parfois se révèlent des informations précieuses. Mais, en même temps, on a actuellement une vive conscience des problèmes d'interprétation et des doutes de crédibilité qui subissent les chercheurs à qui les textes européens puissent être utiles. Il serait presque inutile de rappeler que ces problèmes-là ne sont pas un exclusif de la manipulation des sources européennes mais se posent aussi, en ce qui concerne l'histoire de l'Afrique Occidentale, pour les sources arabes d'origine extérieure aux sociétés étudiées.

Les textes véhiculent des représentations: leurs données sur les sociétés africaines sont une construction mentale d'une réalité extérieure perçue, (re)construction qui implique la mobilisation des schémas mentaux intériorisés et d'existence préalable et autonome envers cette réalité extérieure. Des représentations qui se bornent aux limites d'un observateur ou rédacteur dont la pensée est ordonnée par des catégories européennes, exogènes à l'object de connaissance et qui, de façon plus élargie, sont relatives aux conditions de production du texte en cause.

Ce sont précisement les représentations qui font l'object de recherche auquel cet étude se situe: un object de charnière entre l'histoire européenne et l'histoire de l'Afrique. Il demande un double positionement et approche soit des sociétés européennes (qui produisent un discours anthropologique sur l'Africain), soit des sociétés africaines (object dinamique de ces représentations).

For the reconstruction of the history of the aftermath of the Mali empire, that is, the period 1500-1800, oral traditions are the only source of information. The history of this period has been reconstructed by Person and Niane. Their work has gained widespread acceptance. In this paper I will argue that these scholars made significant methodological errors—in particular, in interpreting chronology in genealogies, and their reading of stories about invasions and the seizure of power by younger brothers.

My reading of the oral tradition raises questions about the nature of both sixteenth- and nineteenth-century Mande (that is the triangle Bamako-Kita-Kankan (see map), the region where the ‘Malinke’ live), and the medieval Mali empire, because I think that Mande royal genealogies have wrongly been considered to represent claims to the imperial throne of the Mali empire. In contrast, my reading of oral tradition suggests in retrospect that the organizational structure of the Mali empire may have been segmentary, and not centralized, ranking between segments under discussion, each group thereby creating a hierarchical image.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Mali empire collapsed/disintegrated in the period from 1500 and 1800. As Person put it:

Dans le triangle malinké, on ne trouvera plus au XIX siècle que des kafu, ces petites unités étatiques qui forment les cellules politiques fondamentales du monde mandingue. Certains d'entre eux savaient faire reconnaître leur hégémonie à leurs voisins, mais aucune structure politique permante n'existait à un niveau supérieur. Beaucoup d'entre eux, dont les plus puissants et les plus peuplés, seront alors commandées par des lignées Kééta qui se réclament avec quelque vraisemblance des empereurs du Mali médiéval.

Jan Jansen has substantially advanced our understanding of the “status discourse” between polities, in Mande and far beyond, through a new approach to one of the more common types of historical evidence: genealogy. At the core of his paper is an analysis of genealogical metaphors used in status discourse, combined with an awareness of the principles of lineage segmentation; he uncovered a nexus of ideology and social structure. The quintessential observation made by Jansen is that “the status of recent immigration and the position of the youngest brother is very prestigious” and that both ultimately emanate from the “principles of patrilocal settlement and patrilineal descent.”

Once this is accepted, everything falls into line: the unexpected claim for the status of ‘younger brother,’ as well as the contradictory genealogies of ‘related’ lineages. His observation has escaped the attention of previous research (including my own) because it contravenes our expectation that younger age, factual or figurative, always signifies subordination under ‘older’ authority. Oral traditions from different ethnic groups in Senegambia confirm Jansen and attest to Kangaba's historical prestige.

Jansen's paper should be read in conjunction with his “The Younger Brother and the Stranger,” in which he studies the social basis of status discourse in more detail and also touches on the symbolism employed. He has overcome a crucial error in a long tradition of historical writing on the western Sudan: the taking of genealogy at face value, whereas genealogy reflects the recent state of relationship between persons or groups rather than factual ancestry.

Stephan Bühnen has applied some of my ideas to a wider region than southwestern Mali, and shown that the principles of Mande status discourse make possible new interpretations on sources and political processes in the entire West African Sudan. Inspired by Bühnen's analysis, I am convinced that the principles of Mande status discourse may shed light on various processes, varying from political struggles between families to the construction of contemporary ethnic identities. I hope that this reply will not be the end of the discussion on West African genealogies, and that others will join us.

Although Bühnen ideas are fruitful, there are also points to contest. Lack of space forces me to focus on three points of Bühnen's critique: the way I elaborate the term “segmentary;” his remarks that I overlook a “bulk of testimony recorded in medieval Arabic sources;” and his complaint of my “inadequate understanding of historical polities.”

Since Bühnen accepts my analysis of the Mande genealogies and their relation to nineteenth-century society, I will take this as my point of departure. I will argue that we cannot deduce the “historical reality of polities” for the available material without being misled by our own prejudices and fallacies. The ‘old’ sources are not as one-dimensional as Bühnen thinks: a status claim does not necessarily represent an irreversible hierarchy in a relationship. Bühnen ignores the context, overlooks the dynamics of Mande status discourse, and presupposes his model of chiefdoms.

I admit that I am vague about the way I operationalize the term “segmentary,” but a definition of “segmentary” is not necessary to my argument since I focus on a discourse which shows that any relation in Mande is hierarchical as well as based on a dichotomy—for instance, ‘older-younger’ or ‘founder-stranger.’

A vast store of untapped primary sources for African history sits waiting to be exploited in museum collections around the world—the products made by African hands, or, if you will, African “material culture.” Within this general category I include not only the masterpieces of African artists and manufacturers, but also the more humble and mundane products used as everyday objects or as items of trade or currency, and everything in between. Although selected numbers of these works have been targeted for study by some anthropologists and art historians, historians of Africa rarely include such objects as sources in their research.

This situation is not peculiar to African history—historians in general seem reluctant to interrogate sources other than those of the printed word. What, after all, does one do with objects? Not entirely ignored, historians of various schools have examined them with mixed results. Some historians have treated certain objects as the embodiments of more general, dynamic intellectual or cultural forces set in motion by elites. Other historians, especially those associated with the Annales school, see material objects occupying layers of culture more slow to change, representing the culture of commoners and the ‘structures of thought’ that shaped their mental universe. Perhaps more familiar are the studies that view certain objects as indicators of various aspects of modern industrial history—mass production and advertisement, consumer culture, and the social meanings of things in capitalist societies. Nevertheless, such studies as these are far from the norm in history, and in them objects serve primarily as illustrations of historical trends and events already sketched out to some degree. Moreover, they imply that the material evidence in objects is most useful simply for providing additional texture and detail to our views of the past. Historians seldom consider objects as sources that can show us anything new.

Les Sissé étaient un clan royal établi au Ghana dont le règne s'étendait au moins jusqu'à l'époque almoravide. La plupart des historiens partagent en effet la conviction que l'empire du Ghana des auteurs arabes correspond au Wagadou de la tradition soninké et de ce fait ils estiment que les Sissé connus par la tradition furent les rois du Ghana. Mais, malgré ces identifications plausibles il est évident que la reconstruction de l'histoire du plus ancien empire ds l'Afrique occidentale qui en ressort est fondée sur des bases fragiles. La fragilité de cette reconstruction devient éclatante quand on se tourne vers la question de la dislocation du Ghana.

Jusqu'à une date récente l'opinion prévalait que le Ghana fut l'objet d'une conquête par les Almoravides à la suite de laquelle sa vitalité fut brisée. D. Conrad et H. Fisher ont pris le contre-pied de cette opinion en soutenant que ni les textes écrits, ni les traditions orales ne portaient trace d'une telle conquête. Ils contestent l'existence d'une rupture dynastique correspondante et ils nient que le Ghana fut affaibli par l'intermède almoravide. D'autres voix se sont levées qui mettent en évidence les dangers d'une approche trop littéraliste. Mais malgré les efforts déployés une quasi-certitude ne fut jamais mise en question: l'emplacement de l'empire du Ghana. Pour les auteurs concernés l'identité entre le Ghana et le Wagadou constituait un problème, mais la solution de ce problème fut toujours cherchée dans la convergence des différentes indications sur Koumbi Saleh en tant que capitale de l'empire des Sissé et donc des Soninké.

Along the West African coast and in the immediate hinterland from the Gambia River to Sierra Leone in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, a region of extensive long-distance trade, the buildings people lived in, as well as the physical layout of their communities, served as important elements in the articulation of their cultural identity. At the same time, architecture reflected contact between the various populations of the region. These groups included a small number of Portuguese and a somewhat larger population of several thousand Luso-Africans, whose commercial role as traders, declining by the late eighteenth century, was limited essentially to the navigable lower reaches of coastal rivers and waterways.

These Luso-Africans, faced by Europeans who contested their efforts to define themselves as a group, were gradually marginalized and ultimately subsumed into the neighboring coastal populations, leaving only traces of their distinctive culture. Among the elements that comprised the Luso-African cultural legacy were houses built in “Portuguese” style: rectangular structures with whitewashed exteriors and a vestibule or a porch. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, these houses helped to define the Luso-African community.

The local African populations of West Atlantic-speakers (Floups, Bagnuns, Bijogos, and Papels) and, further down the coast, Susus, Temnes and Bulloms, were for the most part organized into small-scale, decentralized societies. Mande-speaking peoples inhabited the small states of the lower Gambia and the more important state of Kaabu in Guinea-Bissau; they, together with ‘juula’ merchants, comprised the western outriders of the Mande diaspora. Further east, in the newly-established Islamic state of Fuuta Jaloo (Futa Jalon), lived the Fulbe.

The Almoravid conquest of ancient Ghana in 1076 AD is certainly among the most dramatic and controversial single events in the historiography of West Africa. It has been regarded as a crucial turning point, as the battle of Hastings was for England, not only for the existence of Ghana, but also for the destiny of the entire area, opening the gates to a triumphant Islam in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet the conquest and destruction of Ghana by Almoravid invaders constitute one of the myths which still populate African historiography, like the wonderful voyage of Hanno to the Bight of Biafra, which was carried over from classical Greco-Roman texts into modern European literature as early as 1533. Since then the story of Hanno has been used for various purposes by western Africanists, for instance, to explain the diffusion of iron technology into sub-Saharan Africa. Just the same, no definite evidence has yet been found for any Carthaginian sailings along the West African coast, except the Periplus of Hanno itself, which seems to be a literary composition drawn from earlier classical sources. A reason for the popularity of Hanno, and other such stories in African historiography, has been that many modern writers have been content with using the previous secondary literature, instead of examining carefully all the available primary sources. Consequently, many subjective and hypothetical assumptions created by previous scholars, working on the basis of even less evidence, have been transferred bodily from one corpus of research to the next. Finally, their origin forgotten, stories like the voyage of Hanno have become established historical facts through constant repetition in the authorized literature.

In 1729 a book entitled Madagascar: or Robert Drury's Journal During Fifteen Years Captivity on that Island was published in London. It describes the shipwreck of an East Indiaman on the south coast of Madagascar, the enforced stay of the crew at the royal capital of the Antandroy people, the crew's escape and massacre, the survival of the midshipmen, including Drury, as royal slaves, and Drury's eventual escape to the English colony of St. Augustine. It purports to be his authentic account, digested into order by a transcriber or editor and published at the request of his friends. A certification of its authenticity is provided at the front of the first edition by Captain William Mackett, the ship's captain who brought Drury back to England, and the author states that if anyone doubts the veracity of his tale or wishes for a further account, he is “to be found every day at Old Tom's Coffee-house in Birchin Lane, London.”

The tale bears many superficial resemblances to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Knox's An Historical Relation of Ceylon and the anonymous editor is at pains to state in the preface that the book was undoubtedly likely to be “…taken for such another romance as ‘Robinson Crusoe’…” whereas it was “…nothing else but a plain, honest narrative of matter of fact.” If this is the case, then Drury's account provides a fascinating insight into the world of an emergent Malagasy kingdom at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This was a crucial moment in Madagascar's history, when the European world of long-distance trade, slaving, and piracy was exerting a strong impact on the local people, culminating in colonization by France two centuries later.

Given its enduring association with “civilized Africa,” “urban Africa,” “rich Africa,” and “commercial Africa,” it is hardly surprising that the trans-Saharan salt-gold trade caught the imagination of Arab authors between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. We recall, for example, that al-Ya'qubi (872/73), the principal source on the Mande empire of Ghana before al-Bakri's Kitab al-masalik wa-'lmamalik (1067/68) first revealed “commercial Africa” to the Islamic world, drawing attention to the two major trans-Saharan routes leading south to the Sudan from Zawila in the east and Sijilmasa in the west, both roads eventually conjoining at the kingdom of Ghana, an ancient heartland of the Mande world. Or that Ibn Hawqal (988) astonished the Islamic world with accounts of “rich Africa” by thrice repeating (at least) his story of the promissory note for 42,000 dinars owed by one Muhammad b. Abi Sa'dun—a salt-gold trade from Awdaghost dealing with the Soninke of Ghana—to his counterpart(s) in Sijilmasa. Or that al-Bakri (1068) confirmed the stories of “urban Africa” with his account of Sijilmasa, the trading entrepot “built in the year 575-758,” and surrounded by “numerous suburbs with lofty mansions and other splendid buildings (where) there are also many gardens.” Or that traveling south from Sijilmasa to Mali—a later heartland of the Mande world—Ibn Battuta (1355), not in the least impressed with Taghaza (the western Sahara's major saline), nonetheless acknowledged as its only virtue the “qintar upon qintar of gold” arriving there from the Malian mines, which Taghaza's inhabitants (“slaves of the Masufa,” he sniffed) exchanged for salt.

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.

A few years ago I offered an assessment of the Pate “Chronicles” as a tradition-based source for the history of the East African coast. That paper drew on recensions and versions that were readily available at that time to researchers interested in their historiography. Reasons of length and scope, cited at the end of the paper, restricted discussion to Sultan Fumo Madi b. Abu Bakr and his predecessors (Sultan nos. 1-24), that is to say, up to the time of the Battle of Shela, ca. 1807-13. To reiterate, in that paper I established the following points:

(1) All recorded versions appear to have been based on an oral tradition that was extant in the mid- to late nineteenth century among Nabahani family members. The existence of a “Book of the Kings of Pate,” mentioned by Werner and Prins, is problematic (see 3 below).

(2) Despite the number of versions of the Pate “Chronicles,” they appear to have actually come from only two informants, Bwana Kitini and Mshamu bin Kombo, who was a relative or possibly, as Tolmacheva claims, Bw. Kitini's brother.

(3) Except for minor, though discernible, differences between the lists of the sultans given by both informants, most versions are consistent to a surprising degree. This seems attributable to the fact that there were only two informants, Kitini and Mshamu, who also were related, and who therefore themselves probably shared the same source(s). Given the differences of detail beyond the kinglists, if one of those earlier sources was a written one, such as an actual “Book of the Kings of Pate,” that source seems to have afforded the informants little beyond names and regnal dates.

In August 1993 and February 1994 I conducted two interviews with a woman in Buhweju, a county in southwestern Uganda. The interviews were part of a series concerning the social and political history of Buhweju, which is now part of Bushenyi District. In the precolonial period, Buhweju was a small autonomous polity ruled by an hereditary “king;” in the colonial period it was subsumed into the neighboring kingdom of Nkore, which became known as Ankole.

The first interview, like most of my interviews, focused on the history of the family of the interviewee, and she said that her paternal grandfather, whose name was Mpamizo, had been a Hima, or pastoralist. In Buhweju, and elsewhere in Ankole, this meant, and still means, very much more than simply being a keeper of cattle. The agriculturalist Iru and pastoralist Hima share the same language and much of the same culture, but speak and behave differently in a number of significant ways (diet and mode of subsistence being prominent among these), so that whether one is a pastoralist or an agriculturalist is very apparent to any other member of society. The woman to whom I was talking is very evidently an Iru, an agriculturalist, in her manner and in the way she lives, as is her husband, and so I was surprised to hear that her grandfather was a Hima, a pastoralist. It was partly for this reason that I went back to talk to her again: but on the second occasion, there was an important shift in her presentation of Mpamizo—a dissonance in her account of the past. Mpamizo, she now said, was an Iru. This dissonance is the subject of this paper, for it holds important lessons both about society in Buhweju and about the ways in which we interpret oral accounts of the past.

Since the first of its volumes appeared in 1976, the James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples has become well known to students of the precolonial history of southern Africa generally, and of the Natal-Zululand region in particular. The four volumes, edited by Colin Webb and myself, which were published by the University of Natal Press between 1976 and 1986, have become a major source of evidence for students of the history of African communities in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Although the various volumes have been reviewed in a number of international academic journals, the Stuart Archive is still, I suspect, little known outside the ranks of historians of southern Africa. The hiatus that has occurred in the process of publication since volume 4 came out has not helped in drawing the series to the attention of a wider circle of scholars. In writing this paper, one of my aims is to bring the existence of the Stuart Archive to the attention of Africanists at a time when work on the projected three volumes which still remain to be published is about to resume.

Another and more specific aim is to outline the nature of the processes by which the Stuart Archive was brought into existence, in order to underscore for users and potential users the need to use it critically as a source of evidence.

In June 1963 Daudi Dabaso Wawera, who at that time was District Commissioner of Isiolo, and Chief Hajji Galma Diida were killed in a Somali ambush near Mado Gashi, fifty kilometers from Garba Tulla, in the area surrounding the Waso Nyiro river in Eastern Kenya. While both of them were killed, their companions and escorts were not touched, in an ambush that was premeditated and calculated. It was a political assassination, insignificant for the processes leading to Kenya's independence later that year, but quite significant for the subsequent historical responses offered by the Boorana of the area, to their eventual integration into a newly-created independent African nation.

That integration was not at all easy; in particular, the time leading to Kenya's independence was a turbulent one for the Waso Boorana. They were part of a larger group of semi-nomadic pastoralists who made up most of the population of that colonial administrative segment of northern Kenya, known as the Northern Frontier District (N.F.D.) As a result they lived in a territory claimed by ethnic Somali to be part of the newly created Somali republic, and who still wanted the actual constitution of a Greater Somalia, a political and symbolic construction that would include all Somali living in northeast Africa.

While support for the Somali cause was not unified among the peoples of northern Kenya, the Muslim Boorana of the Waso area of the Isiolo District in particular showed an immediate support for the claims of secession expressed by their Muslim Somali brothers.

Biography is on its way to enjoying immense popularity in the teaching of African history. A number of reasons account for this optimism. First is the current impetus from the postmodernist challenge of universalist and essentialist categories—with their emphasis on the individual and their exhaustive exposition of power and language. Second is the existence of massive research projects presently underway, together with the success of already published monographs. And lastly is the popularity and success that African novels have enjoyed in the teaching field of African studies and African history in particular. All three combined make us more sanguine.

The popularity of African novels lies in their ability to convey to the reader how a society might have functioned with or without a state. Since most often a novelist tries to recreate a historical moment, a novel becomes a pedagogical tool of what Klein has called a “reasonable representation of what society may have been like.” In the most popularly utilized novels, an individual is cast at the center of the unfolding story. Most often, the African novel concerns itself with the impact of colonialism and the transition from traditional to contemporary African realities. This is frequently done with the aim of conveying to the reader the processes of adjustment and the pros and cons of this adjustment.

As a must, there is a stern, often cold, and not very understanding colonial agent or agents. He is not alone, but is paired with a sympathetic and liberal missionary (although generally one who imparts conservative Victorian values).

Explicitly or implicitly, biographies have dominated Ethiopian historiography. Until very recently, Ethiopian history has been almost exclusively the history of the elite. As such, the reconstruction of historical events has revolved around the careers of prominent individuals. The chronicles, which go back to the fourteenth century, illustrate this to a very high degree. They were conceived to document the reigns of kings and most of them adhered strictly to this rule, giving the reader a detailed and faithfully chronological account—often day by day—of the deeds of the protagonist.

This is not of course to say that other, non-biographical, information is not to be found in these documents. On the contrary, inasmuch as the chronicler takes it as his sacred duty to record whatever had taken place during the reign of a king, he is bound to give us a lot of useful information on such, strictly speaking, non-political issues as famine, pestilence, earthquakes, trade, and—invariably—religious affairs. But such information remains essentially incidental to the main objective, which is to document the life and career of the king. Interestingly such digressions from the main story are often prefaced by the phrase, “bazihem zaman” (“During this reign”, i.e., incidentally).