Select bibliography

69 Pages·2015·6.08 MB·English

Select bibliography
Chapter 1
For the standard British Africanist analysis, see Roland Oliver
and John Fage, A Short History of Africa (Penguin, 1st
edn., 1962, 5th edn., 1975); John Fage, History of Afn'ca
(Hutchinson, 1978) and the new multi-volume Cambridge
History of Africa, edited by Oliver and Fage. The American
style is epitomised in Curtin, Feierman, Thompson and
Vansina, African History (Longman, 1978), although the
last two authors are originally from South Africa and Belgium
respectively. Africans are largely responsible for the UNESCO
History of Africa that has begun to be published.
Pre-Africanist views that may be noted with profit are
W.E.B. DuBois, The World and Africa (International Pub
lishers, 1965), reflecting a specific Afro-American tradition
and Samuel Johnson's History of the Yorubas (Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1966 reprint), a typical but distinguishedexample
of the kind of written histories Africans were producing
during the colonial period.
Consensus and criticism within the field can be better
understood by a progressive examination of Vansina, Mauny
and Thomas, Ranger and Fyfe, the three collections discussed
in the text and cited in the notes. On method and oral
tradition, see its foremost champion, Jan Vansina, Oral
Tradition (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), but also his
remarks on its abuse: 'Comment: Traditions of Genesis',
JAH, XV (1974). A collection presenting a critical view of
anthropology is Talal Asad, ed., Anthropology and the
Colonial Encounter (Ithaca Press, 1973). A brilliant portrait
of one of the most influential anthropologists of the colonial
290 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
era has been penned by Richard Brown: 'Passages in the Life
of a White Anthropologist: Max Gluckman in N orthern
Rhodesia',jAH, XX (1979).
Some of the earliest criticisms of Africanist history by
Wrigley, Saul and Ochieng are cited in the text. The under
developmentalist hypothesis is raised in E.A. Alpers, 'Re
thinking African Economic History', KHR, I (1973) and
Samir Amin, 'Underdevelopment and Dependen';e in Black
Africa - Origin and Contemporary Forms',jMAS, X (1972).
See also Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
(Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
Arguably the finest work in the South African liberal
tradition is C.W. DeKiewiet, A History of South Africa:
Social and Economic (Oxford University Press, 1940). The
tradition was extended under Africanist influence with
Leonard Thompson and Monica Wilson, eds, Oxford History
of South Africa (Oxford University Press, 1969-71). Among
the landmarks of the new historiography of southern Africa
are: Frederick J ohnstone, Class, Race and Gold (Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1976); Charles van Onselen, Chibaro (Pluto
Press, 1976) and Shula Marks and Anthony Atmore, eds,
Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa (Long
man, 1980). Drawing on underdevelopmentalist and Marxist
thought is the major collection by Neil Parsons and Robin
Palmer, The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern
Africa (Heinemann, 1977).
A notion of the critieal ideas of some of the established
African historians emerges from J.F .A. Ajayi's essay in the
Ranger collection cited earlier, E.A. Ayandele, 'How Truly
Nigerian is Nigerian History?' in his Nigerian Historical
Studies (Frank Cass, 1979) and Bethwell A. Ogot, 'Towards
a History of Kenya', KHR, IV (1976). An interestingsynthesis
that has moved fairly far from the Africanist paradigm is
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Henri Mouniot, L 'Afrique
a
noire de 1800 nos jours (Presses Universitaires de France,
1974). Ailsa Auchnie, 'African Historical Research in the Paris
Region', AA, LXXX (1981) usefully surveys the situation of
African historiographie work in contemporary France.
Three recent works have particularly influenced the writing
of this chapter, the writings cited in the notes by Said,
Swai and Bernstein & Depelchin. F or an expanded version of
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 291
Swai's hypothesis, see A.J. Temu and B. Swai, Historians and
Africanist History: a Critique (Zed Press, 1981).
Chapter 2
Marx 's scattered writings on pre-capitalist society have been
collected in a number of editions, including one with a
distinguished introduction by Maurice Godelier in French.
A convenient English version was edited by Eric Hobsbawm,
Pre-capitalist Economic Formations (International Publishers,
1964). The one Marxist classic on related material is Friedrich
Engels' The Origin o[ the Family, Private Property and the
State (Pathfinder Press, 1972). The serious student should
also consult Lawrence Krader's edition of Marx's Ethnological
Notebooks (Van Gorcum, 1974).
The modes of production debate was inaugurated in France
in the 1960s. Many of the early articles are collected in
Sur le 'mode de production' asiatique, introduced by J ean
Suret-Canale (Editions Sociales, 1974). Catherine Coquery
Vidrovitch's seminal article, 'Research on an African Mode
of Production' is translated in Martin Klein and G. Wesley
J ohnson, eds, Perspectives on the African Past (Little, Brown,
1972). Many relevant articles have been published in the
London journal Critiques o[ Anthropology. Others are avail
able in three important collections, M. Bloch, ed., Marxist
Analysis and Social Anthropology (Random House, 1975),
David Seddon, ed., Relatz'ons o[ Production (Frank Cass,
1978) and Harold Wolpe, ed., The Articulation o[ Mo des o[
Production (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). Some of the
most distinguished French Marxist anthropologists contrib
uted short selections of their latest considerations in a special
issue of Dialectiques (21, 1977). Claude Meillassoux has
provided a provocative exposition of his concept of lineage
society in Maidens, Meal and Money (Cambridge University
Press, 1980). Studies specifically inspired by these issues
include Marc Auge, Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mort (Flam
marion, 1977);J.P. Olivier de Sardan, Le Systemederelations
economiques et sociales chez les Wogo, (Musee de I'Homme,
1969); Pierre-Philippe Rey, Colonialisme, neo-colonialisme
et la transition au capitalisme (Maspero, 1971) and Eric
292 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pollet and Grace Winter, 'L'organisation sodale du travail
agricole des Soninke', Cahiers d'etudes africaines, VIII
(1968). Recent American considerations of the debate with
some interesting case studies are edited by Donald Crummey
and Charles Stewart, Modes of Production in Africa (Sage,
1981).
Meillassoux has also edited a wide-ranging and major
collection on slavery in Africa, L 'esclavage en Afrique pre
coloniale, (Maspero, 1975). This and other work is critically
surveyed by Frederick Cooper, 'The Problem of Slavery in
African Studies',JAH, XIX (1979).
These pages cannot embrace the vast literature of specialist
interest on pre-colonial Africa. This selection is based on
those works that cover major areas or have some wider
import. For more detailed references, the multi-volume
Cambridge History of Africa is a good starting point. The
Ca m bridge Encyclopaedia of Archaeology (Cambridge
University Press, 1980) provides a convenient, brief overview
of recent provenance. ] .E.G. Sutton, 'The Aquatic Age in
Africa', JAH, XV (1974) is arecent provocative discussion
of one facet of the transition to agriculture in Africa. See also
] .D. Fage and Roland Oliver, eds, Papers in African Prehtstory
(Cambridge University Press, 1970); ].R. HarIan et al., eds,
Origins of African Plant Domestication (University of Chicago
Press, 1976); L. Krzyzaniak, 'New Light on Early Food
Production in the Central Sudan',JAH, XIX (1978). Hunting
and gathering communities in Africa are the subject of ].
Woodburn, Hunters and Gatherers: Material Culture of the
Nomadic Hadza (The British Museum Trustees, 1970) and
Richard Lee, The !Kung San; Men, Women and Work t'n a
Foraging Society (Cambridge University Press, 1979) which
addresses issues from a materialist perspective.
The West African past is surveyed in the compendium,
].F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder, History ofWest Africa
(Columbia University Press, 1976). Some of the most interest
ing thinking on the ancient states of the upper Niger Basin
has been done by East Europeans. These include Marian
Malowist, 'Social and Economic Stability of the Western
Sudan', Past and Present, XXXllI (1966, with a rejoinder by
A.G. Hopkins, XXXVII, 1967); Michel Tymowski, 'Economie
et societedans le bassin du Moyen-Niger, fin du XVI-
SELEeT BIBLIOGRAPHY 293
XVIIIe siede', AB, XXXVIII (1973) and 'Les domaines des
princes du Songhay', Annales, XXV (1970) and L.E'. Kubbel,
Songhaiskaya Derzhava (Nauk, Moscow, 1974).
A representative state further to the west is considered in
Boubacar Barry, Le Royaume de Waalo (Maspero, 1972) and
the economy of early Senegambia sulVeyed in Philip Curtin,
Economic Change in Pre-colonial Africa (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1975). Both emphasise contact with the
West. On the Mossi-Volta section of the savanna (Upper
Volta-Ghana), see Nehemiah Levtzion, Muslims and Chiefs
in West Africa (Clarendon Press, 1968) and Michel Izard,
a
Introduction l'histoire du royaume mossi (Centre National
des Recherches Scientifiques, 2 vols, 1970). On the central
savanna, H.F.C. Smith, 'The Beginnings of Hausa Society' in
Jan Vansina, Raymond Mauny and L.V. Thomas, eds, The
Historian in Tropical Africa (Oxford University Press, 1964)
contains elements of a materialist analysis. So does Nicole
Echard, L 'Experience du passe; ethno-histoire de l'Ader
haoussa (Paris, 1972). The best introduction to the most
famous jihad state is Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate
(Longman, 1967). See also his 'Administration and Dissent
in Hausaland', Africa, XL (1970); Marilyn Waldman, 'The
Fulani Jihad: a Reassessment',IAH, VI (1965); M.G. Smith,
Government in Zazzau, 1800-1950 (Oxford University
Press, 1960); Michael Mason, 'Captive and CHent Labour
and the Economy of Bida Emirate, 1857-1901', IAN,
XIV (1973).
On post-jihad society in western West Africa, there are
several stimulating artic1es: Y oussouf Gueye, 'Essai sur
les causes et les consequences de la micropropriete au Fouta
Toro', Bulletin de l'Institut Fran~ais de l'Afrique Noire,
serie B, XIX (1957); Walter Rodney, jihad and Social
Revolution in the Eighteenth Century Futa DjaIlon',IHSN,
IV (1968); Marion Johnson, 'The Economic Foundations
of an Islamic Theocracy - the Case of Masina', IAH, XVII
(1976) and Richard Roberts, 'Production and Reproduction
of Warrior States: Segu Bambara and Segu Tukolor',IIANS,
XIII (1980).
Standard treatments of major states in the forest and
adjacent West African forest inc1ude Ivor Wilks, Asante in
the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1975)
294 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
and Robin Law, The Oyo Empire, c.1600-1836 (Clarendon
Press, 1977). On Yoruba culture see Frank Willett, Ife in the
History of West African Art (McGraw-Hill, 1967). Raymond
Dumett, 'Precolonial Mining and the State in the Akan
Region' considers the Terray thesis empirically in George
Dalton, ed., Research in Economic Anthropology (2), 1979.
On West African states generally there is an interesting if
technicist hypothesis in Jack Goody, Technology, Tradition
and the State (Oxford University Press, 1971).
The most vigorous debate about forest sodeties has
centred on the state of Dahomey. Much of the discussion
focusses on aperiod when the Atlantic slave trade is already
of great significance, yet it is relevant to this chapter. See
Melville Herskovits, Dahomey O.J. Augustin, 1938); Karl
Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade (University of
Washington Press, 1966); I. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its
Neighbours (Cambridge University Press, 1967); Honorat
Aguessy, 'Le Dan-Horne de XIXe siede: etait-il une societe
esdavagiste?', Revue fran~aise d'etudes politiques africaines,
L (1970); Georg Elwert. Wirtschaft und Herrschaft von
'Daxome' (Dahomey) in 18. Jahrhundert, (Renner, Munich,
1973); Robin Law, 'Royal Monopoly and Private Enterprise
in the Atlantic Trade: the Case of Dahomey', JAH, XVI
(1975) and K. Moseley, 'The Political Economy of Dahomey'
in George Dalton, ed., Research in Economic Anthropology
(2), 1979. The same can be said of Robin Horton, 'From
Fishing-Village to City-State: A Sodal History of New
Calabar' in Mary Douglas and Phyllis Kaberry, eds., Man in
Africa (Tavistock, 1969).
The main lines of early Ethiopian history are traced in
Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia 1270-1527
(Clarendon Press, 1972) and, for an earlier period yet, Yurii
Kobishchanov, Axum (Pennsylvania State University Press,
1979). Greater balance on the region is the main strength
of Donald Levine, Greater Ethiopia (University of Chicago
Press, 1974). A feel for dass society in Ethiopia emerges
from Richard Caulk, 'Armies as Predators: Soldiers and
Peasants in Ethiopia, c. 1850-1935', IJAHS, XI (1978).
Allen Hoben, Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia
(University of Chicago Press, 1973), is a useful contemporary
study of economic and social relations in the Ethiopian
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 295
highlands. R.S. O'Fahey and J.L. Spaulding, Kingdoms of
the Sudan (Methuen, 1974), provide an introduction to
Sennar and Dar Fur, states in the modem Sudan Republic.
Jan Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1966), is an introduction to the southern
savanna states. The most useful monographs on the history
of this area include: Georges Balandier, Daily Life in the
Kingdomof the Kongo (George Allen & Unwin, 1968);
a
W.G.L. Randles, L 'ancien royaume du Congo des origines
la fin du X/Xe siecle (Mouton, 1968); Joseph Miller, Kings
and Kinsmen (Clarendon Press, 1976); Andrew Roberts,
History of the Bemba (Longman, 1973); Mutumba Mainga,
Bulozi under the Luyana Kings (Longman, 1973) and Thomas
Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings; a History of the Luba
Empire to 1891 (University of California Press, 1981). More
penetrating than any of these is W.G. Clarence-Smith, 'Slaves,
Commoners and Landlords in Bulozi, 1875-1906', JAH,
XX (1979). For the states south of the Zambesi, the reader
turns to D.N. Beach, The Shona and Zimbabwe, 900-1850
(Africana, 1980).
The first essays in Shula Marks and Anthony Atmore,
eds, Economy and Society in Pre-/ndustrial South Africa
(Longman, 1980) consider pre-conquest South Africa. The
standard history of the Mfecane, now badly in need of re
interpretation, is J. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath
(Longman, 1965). For one Mfecane state, see J. Cobbing,
'Evolution of the Ndebele amabutho', JAH, XV (1974).
One contributor to Marks and Atmore, Jeff Guy, has also
considered Zulu society in a full-Iength book, The Destruction
of the Zulu Kingdom (Longman, 1979). For foraging and
especially pastoral communities, Richard Elphick, Kraal and
Castle (Yale University Press, 1977) is valuable.
An early attempt to synthesise pre-colonial East African
history is made in Gervase Matthewand Roland Oliver, eds,
History of East Africa, I (Clarendon Press, 1963). Two
continually cited studies of inter-Iacustrine states are Semakula
Kiwanuka, A History of Buganda (Longman, 1971) and S.R.
Karugire, History of Nkore in Western Uganda to 1891
(Clarendon, 1971). Other treatments of East African states
are Steven Feierman, The Shambaa Kingdom (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1974) and R.G. Willis, AState in the Making
296 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
(Indiana University Press, 1980). Rwanda has been assessed
by many writers; some of the most interesting pages on it are
to be fQund in a special issue of the Cahiers d'etudes africaines
(henceforth CEA) XIV (1974). This indudes the dass analysis
of Claudine Vidal, 'Economie de la societe feodalerwandaise'.
Some of the more successful attempts to recreate the history
of peoples without state institutions have been made in East
Afriea. These indude B.A. Ogot's path-breaking History o[
the Southern Luo (East African Publishing House, henceforth
EAPH, 1967); Godfrey Muriuki, History o[ the Kikuyu
1500-1900 (Oxford University Press, 1974) and John
Lamphear, Traditional History o[ the Jie (Oxford University
Press, 1976). Descriptions of early trade within eastem,
southem and south-central Africa are to be found in Riehard
Gray and David Birmingham, eds, Precolonial African Trade
(Macmillan, 1970).
Chapter 3
The slave trade has inspired a large literature, much of it
coneemed with quantitative analysis only. Basil Davidson,
Black Mother (Little, Brown, 1961) is a moving introduetion;
a more reeent survey is M. Craton, Sinews o[ Empire (Double
day Anchor Books, 1974). Philip Curtin has drawn an effee
tive, short picture based on the history of the sugar industry
in his ehapter in Ajayi and Crowder, History ofWest Africa,
I, already cited; Walter Rodney provided a strong, "brief sum
mary in a pamphlet published by the Historical Association
of Tanzania in 1967 entitled West Africa and the Atlantic
Slave Trade. Curtin's slave-counting exercise, The Atlantic
Slave Trade: A Census (University of Wisconsin Press, 1969)
is most valuable for its demonstration of the ebb and flow
of the trade and the relative importance in it of different
parts of Africa. More recent research is collected in, among
other places, the special issue of the Revue franfiaise d 'histoire
d'outre-mer, LXn (1975); Roger Anstey and P.E.H. Hair,eds,
Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition (Historie
Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1976) andHenryGemery
and Jan Hogendom, eds, The Uncommon Market, (Academic
Press, 1979).
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 297
On chartered slave trade companies, see Abdoulaye Ly, La
compagnie du Senegal (Presence Africaine, 1958) and K.G.
Davies, The Royal African Company (Longman, 1957).
Other aspects of the trade are discussed in Walter Rodney,
'Gold and Slaves on the Gold Coast', Transactions 0/ the
Historical Society 0/ Ghana, X (1969) and Marion Johnson,
'The Ounce in Eighteenth Century West African Trade',
JAH, VII (1966). The new American crops introduced during
this period are surveyed in William O. Jones, Manz'oc in Africa
(Stanford University Press, 1959) and Marvin Miracle, Maize
in Tropical Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1966).
Michael Mason, 'Population Density and "Slave Raiding" -
the Case of the Middle Belt',JAH, X (1969) contains a strong
argument on the demography of the slave trade era.
A large and important literature on the slave trade, slavery
and the rise of industrial capitalism was born with Eric
Williams' classic, Capitalism and Slavery; this does not really
belong to the sphere of African history, however. On the
general impact of slaving in Africa see J .D. Fage, 'Slavery and
the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History',
JAH, X (1969), the important rejoinder by C.C. Wrigley,
'Historicism in Africa: Slavery and Slave Formation', AA,
LXX (1971) and Walter Rodney, 'African Slavery and other
F orms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the
Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade',JAH, VII (1966).
Standard histories of French involvement in the Senegambia
are Andre Delcourt, La France et les etablissements francais
au Senegal entre 1713 et 1763 (Institut Fran~ais de l'Afrique
Noire, Memoire 17, 1952) and Leonce J ore, 'Les etablisse
a
ments francrais sur la co te occidentale d'Afrique 1758 1803',
Revue fran~aise d'histoire d'outre-mer, LI (1964). The impact
on African society receives attention in Philip Curtin, Econ
omic Change in Pre-colonial A[rica and Boubacar Barry, Le
royaume de Waalo, both cited for Chapter 2. The region
between the Gambia and present-day Liberia is the subject
of Walter Rodney, A History o[ the Upper Guinea Coast,
1545-1800 (Clarendon Press, 1970). For the Gold Coast,
there is J ohn Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast
(University of Georgia Press, 1979), Kwame Daaku, Trade
and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720 (Clarendon
Press, 1970) and Ray Kea, Settlements, Trade and Politics
298 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
in the Seventeenth-century Gold Coast Oohn Hopkins Press,
1982).
Most of the books cited in the last chapter on the forest
states of West Africa treat the slave trade. See as well: A.F.C.
Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (Longman,
1969); James Graham, 'Slave Trade, Depopulation and
Human Sacrifice in Benin History', CEA, V (1965); P.
Morton-Williams, 'The Oyo Yoruba and the Atlantic Trade',
IHSN, III (1964); Kwame Arhin, 'The Financing of Ashanti
Expansion, 1700-1820', Africa, XXXVII (1967) and Pierre
Verger, Trade Relations Between the Bight of Benin and
Bahia 17th-19th Centuries, (Ibadan University Press, 1976).
On the impact of the slave trade in the Niger delta, the most
important work is contained in E.J. Alagoa, 'Long Distance
Trade and States in the Niger Delta', IAH, XI (1970); David
Northrup, 'The Growth of Trade among the Igbo Before
1800', IAH, XIII (1972) and A.J.H. Latham, Old Calabar,
1600-1891 (Clarendon Press, 1971).
Angola is a neglected subject in English and French, but
the main historical events are covered in David Birmingham,
Trade and Conflict in Angola (Clarendon Press, 1966).Joseph
Miller, 'Lineages, Ideology and the History of Slavery in
Western Central Africa' in Paul Lovejoy, ed., Ideolog,:es of
Slavery in Africa (Sage, 1982) is most suggestive. Standard
histories of Kongo cited previously are by Georges Balandier
and W.G.L. Randles. The work of revision and reinvestigation
has begun with J ohn Thornton, 'Demography and History
in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550-1750',IAH, XVIII (1977).
For the region north of the River Zaire, see Phyllis Martin,
The External Trade of the Loango Coast, 1576-1870,
(Clarendon Press, 1972).
F or the Zambesi and the region to the north of it, the
most important studies are: M.D.D. Newitt, Portuguese
Settlement on the Zambesi (Longman, 1973); Allen Isaacman,
Mozambique; the Africanization of a European Institution
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1972) and Edward Alpers,
Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (Heinemann, 1975).
On South Africa under the Dutch the most recent research
is recapitulated in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee,
eds, The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1820
(Longman, Penguin, 1979). The question of race is assessed