Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T20:17:46.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Problems of African Chronology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Extract

This paper reports the S.O.A.S. conference on African chronology of July 1966. The poor quality of much of the published work in this field posed serious problems. An analysis of the data assembled indicates 13 years as the most probable value for an average length of reign, and 30 for an average dynastic generation. The conference was, however, impressed by the limitations of this method, and emphasized the need for a many-sided approach. Chronological reconstruction is best attempted on a wide regional base to make the fullest use of both cross-traditional tie-ups and dates fixed by documentary evidence.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Person, Y., ‘Tradition orale et chronologie’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, II, no. 7 (1962), 463.Google Scholar

2 Vansina, J., Mauny, R. and Thomas, L. V., The Historian in Tropical Africa (London, 1964), ‘Introductory summary’Google ScholarMcCall, D. F., Africa in Time-Perspective (Boston, 1964), chap. 8, 120–30.Google ScholarCornevin, R., ‘The problems and character of African history’, in Ranger, T. O. (ed.), Emerging Themes of African History (Nairobi, 1968), 7494;Google ScholarAlagoa, E. J., ‘Dating oral tradition’, African Notes (Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan), IV, no. 1 (10 1966), 610;Google ScholarLevtzion, N., Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa, (London, 1968), 194203.Google Scholar

3 Examples are Wade, A., ‘Chronique du Wâlo Sénégalais’, in Monteil, V., Esquisses sénégalaises (Dakar, 1966), 37–8;Google Scholar‘The Kano Chronicle’ (ed. Palmer, H. R.), Sudanese Memoirs, III (Lagos, 1928);Google ScholarEgharevba, J., A Short History of Benin (Ibadan, 1960), gives precise lengths for most reigns after 1600.Google Scholar

4 ‘Sauf preuve du contraire, je tiens donc pour nulles et non avenues les durées de régnes provenant des traditions orales’ (‘Tradition orale’, 467).

5 See especially, Boulegue, J., ‘Contribution à la chronologie du royaume du Saloum’, Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, sér. B, XXVIII, nos. 3–4 (1966), 657–62.Google Scholar

6 Meyerowitz, E. L. R., Akan Traditions of Origin (London, 1952), 2933. There are obvious difficulties about this account. Mrs Meyerowitz did not herself see the kuduo or brass vessels in question, and does not attempt to explain how these relics, the earliest of which would date back to the fourteenth century, survived the destruction of the old Bono state and its capital at the beginning of the eighteenth century. See Cohn Flight's artide below, and also Levtzion, Muslims and Chiefs.Google Scholar

7 See pp. 573–6 below.

8 Cornevin, , ‘The Problems’, 92.Google Scholar

9 A rather arbitrary exception here was made in the case of the Askia dynasty of Songhai, since it possesses the only reliably dated pre-nineteenth-century chronology from the Western Sudan.

10 This can perhaps best be illustrated by an example—the Ovimbundu chiefdom of Viye. Counting from 1901, the average of the last 12 reigns is firmly based upon contemporary documentation, and gives us an average of only 5·8 years. An average for the last 14, on Dr Childs' dating, would give 8°8. An average for all the 20 known reigns, necessarily rather more speculative, would give 10. One was torn between the advantage of using the first of these averages as being certainly true for the period concerned, or one of the others as being, almost equally certainly, nearer the truth for the whole history of the dynasty. In this case I chose 8·8, thus influencing my final result towards what I anticipated as reasonable.

11 By the ‘most probable’ value I mean what mathematicians properly call the mode, a term I thought it best to avoid in this context for fear of possible confusion with ‘mode of succession’.

12 Perhaps it would be more realistic to say that a calculation based on an average of 7 years per reign gives one a secure minimum figure for the time covered by a given list, and one based on 24 an almost equally secure maximum. Without anything else to go on, a list of 25 names could represent a period as short as 155 or as long as 500 years.

13 E.g. Benin, Dahomey, nineteenth-century Buganda. I make the average length of reign in the major European dynasties to be 21 years.

14 Such as the Mossi chronologies of Delafosse, M. (Haut-Sénégal–Niger, Paris, 1912), 124–47, the early part of Egharevba's Benin chronology (Short History) and some of those suggested for the Yoruba statesGoogle Scholar (Smith, R. S., Kingdoms of the Yoruba, 102).Google Scholar

15 Trautmann, T. R., ‘Length of Generation and Reign in Ancient India’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89, no. 3 (1969), 564–77. Dr Trautmann kindly allowed me to consult this article before publication.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Roland, Oliver, ‘Ancient capital sites of Ankole’, Uganda Journal, XXIII, no. 2 (1959).Google Scholar

17 Basham, A. L. estimates 27 years for a generation in ‘The average length of generation and reign in ancient India’, Studies in Indian History and Culture (Calcutta, 1964); Dr Trautmann finds a similar average for dated generations in medieval India.Google Scholar

18 The mathematicians who have tried to explain this to me include Dr Erwin Kronheimer of Birkbeck College and Dr Hilton Miller of Imperial College, University of London.

19 I have since noticed that Mr R. S. Smith has made similar experiments with the same results (Smith, , Kingdoms of the Yoruba, 103).Google Scholar

20 I owe this point to Mr D. P. Henige of the University of Wisconsin.

21 Bradbury, R. E., ‘Chronological problems in the study of Benin history’, Journal of the Nigerian Historical Society, I, no. 4 (1959), 263–87;Google ScholarFage, J. D., ‘Reflections on the early history of the Mossi-Dagomba group of states’, in The Historian in Tropical Africa, 177–89;Google ScholarVansina, J., Geschiedenis van de Kuba (Tervuren, 1963).Google Scholar

22 Gray, R., ‘Eclipse maps’, J. Afr. Hist. VI (1965), 251–62; ‘Annular eclipse maps,’CrossRefGoogle ScholarJ. Afr. Hist. IX (1968), 147–57;Google ScholarSchove, D. J., ‘Eclipses, comets and the spectrum of time in Africa’, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, LXXVIII, no. 2 (1968), 91–8.Google Scholar

23 Hubbard, J. W., The Sobo of the Niger Delta (Zaria, c. 1948).Google Scholar

24 Hamilton, R. A. (ed.), History and Archaeology in Africa: Report of a Conference held in July 1953 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (S.O.A.S. London, 1955), 36–7.Google Scholar

25 Ogot, B. A., History of the Southern Luo, vol. I, Migrations and Settlement 1500–1900 (Nairobi, 1967).Google Scholar

26 Ogot, B. A., ‘Oral tradition and the historian’, in Posnansky, M. (ed.), Prelude to East African History (London, 1966), 148.Google Scholar

27 See below, pp. 177–201.

28 Rodney, A. W., A History of the Upper Guinea Coast (London, 1969);Google ScholarWilks, I., The Northern Factor in Ashanti History (Legon, 1961), and ‘The rise of the Akwamu empire, 1650–1710’,Google ScholarTransactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, III, no. 2 (1957), 99136;Google ScholarAkinjogbin, I. A., Dahomey and Its Neighbours, 1708–1818 (Cambridge, 1967);Google ScholarBirmingham, D., Trade and Conflict in Angola (Oxford, 1966);Google ScholarVansina, J. M., Kingdoms of the Savanna (London, 1966);Google ScholarAlpers, E. A., ‘Malawi and Yao responses to external economic forces, 1505–1798’, forthcoming in Chittick, H. N. and Rotberg, R. I. (eds.), East Africa and the Orient: Problems of Cultural Synthesis in Pre-Colonial Times (Cambridge, Mass.).Google Scholar

29 Levtzion, N., ‘Reflections on Muslim historiography in Africa’, in Ranger, T. O. (ed.) Emerging Themes of African History (Nairobi, 1968), 23–7;Google ScholarBivar, A. D. H. and Hiskett, M., ‘The Arabic literature of Nigeria to 1804: a provisional account’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XXV (1962), 104–38;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKensdale, W. E. N., A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts preserved in the University Library, Ibadan, Nigeria (Ibadan, 19551958);Google ScholarSmith, H. F. C., ‘Source material for the history of the Western Sudan’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, I, no. 3 (1958), 238-48;Google ScholarHodgkin, T., ‘The Islamic literary tradition in Ghana’, in Lewis, I. M. (ed.), Islam in Tropical Africa (London, 1966).Google Scholar