Feedback As a “Problem” in Oral History: An Example from Bonde

Abstract

Feedback—the process by which written versions of history influence subsequent presentations of oral history—is now a well-documented process. In writing on African history, Henige in particular has emphasized the importance of feedback in oral history, and has suggested that feedback from written sources is a process of contamination which has affected oral history all over the continent.Some aspects of the oral history of Bonde, the area around the town of Muheza in northeastern Tanzania, would seem to present a counterexample to this thesis of written history as a contaminant of hitherto pure oral history: oral histories of at least two important nineteenth-century events in this area are at variance with fairly widely-available published sources. Evidence from Bonde suggests that, here at least, feedback from written sources is not a particular and unique influence on the making of oral history.