Article contents
Ex Africa: an Africanist's Intellectual Autobiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Extract
Scholarly concern with Africa is of ancient origin. But modern African studies in departments at major universities date only from the aftermath of World War II. As I approach the age of seventy, I find myself a member of the diminishing group of scholars that helped to create this particular field, as well as also belonging to the last generation which, at one time, wished to serve the British Empire. An intellectual autobiography is not a confession. But this brief account does seek to delineate those forces which shaped my career as an Africanist during the last 40 years.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993
References
1 ‘Soviet Vulnerabilities: what if the battle for succession after Brezhnev's death leads to a breakdown of the Soviet communist party?’, in National Review (New York), 20 08 1982,Google Scholar and ‘Will the Soviet Union Stay Communist?’, in Intercollegiate Review (Bryn Mawr, PA), 20, 1, Spring–Summer 1984, both in collaboration with Mikhail S. Bernstam.Google Scholar
2 ‘The End of the Slave Trade in British Central Africa, 1989–1912’, in Rhodes-Livingstone Journal (Lusaka), 16, 1954, pp. 26–51.Google Scholar
3 The Birth of Plural Society: the development of Northern Rhodesia under the British South Africa Company, 1894–1914 (Manchester University Press, 1958).Google Scholar
4 A History of Northern Rhodesia: early days to 1953 (London, Chatto and Windus, 1964),Google Scholar and A History of Southern Rhodesia: early days to 1934 (London, Chatto and Windus, 1965), both reprinted by Humanities Press, New York.Google Scholar
5 The term ‘new Bourbons’ derives from Keatley, Patrick, The Politics of Partnership: the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1963).Google Scholar
6 ‘The White Settler: a changing image’, in Race (London), 2, 05 1961, pp. 28–40.Google Scholar
7 For the success of returning pieds noirs who rebuilt their fortunes in France, see Cohen, William B., ‘Legacy of Empire: the Algerian connexion’, in Journal of Contemporary History (London), 15, 1980, pp. 97–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Gann, L. H. and Gelfand, Michael, Huggins of Rhodesia: the man and his country (London, Allen and Unwin, 1964).Google Scholar
9 Carter, Gwendolen M. (ed.), African One-Party States (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1962), p. 9.Google Scholar
10 Grimond, John, ‘Socialism in Africa’, in The New York Times, 9 03 1975, p. 9.Google Scholar
11 Leys, Colin, ‘What is the Problem About Corruption?’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 3, 2, 06 1965, p. 215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Le Vine, Victor T., Political Corruption: the Ghana case (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1975), p. ix.Google Scholar
13 Duignan, Peter and Gann, L. H., ‘A Different View of United States Policy in Africa’, in The Western Political Quarterly (Salt Lake City), 12 1960, p. 11.Google Scholar
14 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, White Settlers in Tropical Africa (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1962).Google Scholar Also, ‘The Case for the White Man’, in The New Leader (New York), 2 01 1961, pp. 16–29.Google Scholar
15 Curtin, Philip D., ‘African History’, in Kammen, Michael (ed.), The Past Before Us: Contemporary historical writing in the United States (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 223–30.Google Scholar
16 The Hoover Institution was ranked highest in the world in ‘The Good Think Tank Guide’, published by The Economist (London), 3 January 1992, pp. 49–53.Google Scholar
17 In area and ethnic studies, for example, only two per cent of professors styled themselves conservatives–this in a country where just one-third of the general population did so. See The American Enterprise (Washington, DC), July–August 1991, pp. 86–7.Google Scholar
18 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter (eds.), Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press): Vol. I,Google ScholarThe History and Politics of Colonialism, 1870–1914 (1969), Vol. 2, 1914–1960 (1970), Vol. 3,Google ScholarTurner, Victor (ed.), Profiles of Change: African society and colonial rule (1971), Vol. 4,Google ScholarGann, and Duignan, (eds.), The Economics of Colonialism (1972), and Vol. 5, A Bibliographical Guide to Colonisation in Sub-Saharan Africa (1973).Google Scholar
19 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, The Rulers of German Africa, 1884–1914 (Stanford University Press, 1977),Google ScholarThe Rulers of British Africa, 1870–1914 (Stanford University Press, 1978),Google Scholar and The Rulers of Belgian Africa, 1884–1914 (Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar
20 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, African Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa (New York, The Free Press, 1978),Google Scholar and Germans in the Tropics: essays in German colonial history, co-edited with Knoll, Arthur J. (New York, Greenwood Press, 1987).Google Scholar
21 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, Burden of Empire: an appraisal of Western colonialism in Africa south of the Sahara (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), reprinted subsequently by Hoover Institution Press, 1971.Google Scholar
22 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, Africa and the World: an introduction to the history of sub-Saharan Africa from antiquity to 1830 (San Francisco, Chandler Publishing Company, 1972).Google Scholar
23 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, Why South Africa Will Survive (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1980),Google Scholar and Hope for South Africa? (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1991).Google Scholar
24 Duignan, Peter and Gann, L. H., The United States and Africa: a history (Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
25 Duignan, Peter and Jackson, Robert H. (eds.), Politics and Government in African States, 1960–1985 (London, Croom Helm, 1986).Google Scholar
26 Gann, L. H., Guerrillas in History (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1971).Google Scholar
27 Gann, L. H. and Henriksen, Thomas H., The Struggle for Zimbabwe: battle in the bush (New York, Praeger), (1982).Google Scholar
28 Galbraith, John Kenneth, A View from the Stands: on people, politics, military power and the arts (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Col, 1986), pp. 292–3.Google Scholar
29 Asiegbu, Johnson U. J., Nigeria and its British Invaders, 1851–1920: a thematic documentary history (New York, Nok Publishers International, 1984), p. xxix.Google Scholar
30 I first advanced these views in ‘Liberal Interpretations of South African History’, in RhodesLivingstone Journal, 25, 1959, 30–58.Google Scholar
31 Review of Hope for South Africa by Lijphart, Arend, in American Political Science Review (Washington, DC), 86, 2, 06 1992, pp. 560–1.Google Scholar
32 Although as many, if not more, people lost their lives during the 1970s and 1980s through violence in Uganda, Burundi, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and other African countries beset by ethnic strife, white South Africans were always considered to be more blameworthy than Tutsi or Sudanese.Google Scholar
33 See, for example, Duignan, Peter, ‘The USA, the Berlin Conference, and its Aftermath’, and Gann, Lewis H., ‘The Berlin Conference and the Humanitarian Conscience’, in Förster, Stig, Mommsen, Wolfgang J., and Robinson, Ronald (eds.), Bismarck, Europe, and Africa: the Berlin Africa Conference, 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition (Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 295–312 and 321–31, respectively.Google Scholar
34 For example, Southall, Aidan, ‘Gann's Struggle’, in Issue: a quarterly journal of opinion (Waltham, MA), 18, 1990, pp. 49–50.Google Scholar See also the contributions to this debate by Ann Seidman, Simon Ottenberg, Nzongola-Ntalaja, and myself, in ibid. pp. 44–55, and my article, ‘African Studies: a dissident's view’, in Academic Questions (New Brunswick, NJ), 2, 2, Spring 1989, pp. 80–90.
35 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, The Hispanics in the United States: a history (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1986).Google Scholar
36 Our pioneer study received several encouraging reviews, including friendly comments from Hispanic Americans such as Berry-Caban, Cristóbal S., in International Migration Review (Staten Island, NY), 22, 2, 1988, p. 312,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sowell, Thomas, the ethno-historian, in ‘Our Other Minority’, in Reason (Santa Barbara, CA), 01 1988.Google Scholar For choice examples of academic abuse, see Acuña, Rodolfo in Pacific Historical Review (Berkeley, CA), 05 1988,Google Scholar and Cortés, Carlos E. in Hispanic American Historical Review (Durham, NC), 69, 11 1989.Google Scholar
37 Duignan, Peter and Gann, L. H., The Rebirth of the West: the Americanization of the democratic world, 1945–1958 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, Basil Blackwell, 1992).Google Scholar I had earlier contributed to Dorfman, Gerald A. and Duignan, Peter (eds.), Politics in Western Europe (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1991).Google Scholar
- 16
- Cited by