African History Research Articles

A Report on the History of the Acheulean Industry of Mai Idon Toro in the Central-Region of Nigeria

The last time the Acheulean tools at Mai Idon Toro (NAFOK) were collected and studied scientifically by different archaeologists/historians for the purpose of national and international patronage was in the 1920s through the 1960s. After the 60s up-to-date, many writers have been writing about the Acheulean tools in NAFOK without having a physical contact with the tools or without having a direct understanding of the dilapidated state of the Acheulean site in NAFOK. More so, in the process of this study, I have not come across any single library material that deals specifically and wholly with the Acheulean industry in NAFOK, instead; the subject is casually or indirectly referenced as secondary. The information from the secondary sources I collected about NAFOK was peripheral and in distinct pieces seemingly because a specific author had not wholly dealt with the subject. This instigated the need to visit the Acheulean site in NAFOK in search of primary sources or information. This research is a study of the history of the researches done strictly about NAFOK and its Acheulean finds. The aims of this research are first, to give an update on the history of researches done about the Acheulean in NAFOK and second, to create further awareness on the need to encourage the patronage of public archaeology among Nigerians using the Acheulean site in NAFOK as a case study.
 Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The presence of fossils and bones of early humans found in Eastern, Northern and Southern Africa are often referred to as the “direct evidence” for the existence of early humans in these regions of Africa. This is so because there is a view among many archaeologists, anthropologists and paleontologists according to which bones are reliable evidence for the existence of early humans than stone tools. Bone tools or bone evidence for the existence of early humans in West Africa is scanty. Archaeologists rely on stone tools to explain the probable existence of early humans in West Africa and the stone tools are referred to as “indirect evidence.” It is likely that early humans might have lived in NAFOK not because direct evidence has been found but indirect evidence. This research is a study of the indirect evidence found in NAFOK for the existence of early humans. Historical archeologists and students of anthropology and West African history would find this research of great benefit because it discusses the contentious history of the view according to which early humans lived in NAFOK millions of years ago.

Sula’s Compromise: Toni Morrison and the Editorial Politics of Sensitivity

Abstract An accomplished editor in her own right, Toni Morrison made no secret of her dissatisfaction with the editing of Sula (1973), whose opening pages she critiqued as a regrettable concession to white publishers and white readers. Yet despite Morrison’s prominence in recent studies of African American book history, scholars have yet to fully explore how the contested revisions to Sula impact the novel and what they reveal about racially motivated editing practices in mainstream US publishing. This article situates Sula’s publication history as an exemplary archive of editorial conflict, one that illuminates shifting editorial approaches to race in American fiction amid the rise of US multiculturalism. Tracing Morrison’s responses to editorial disputes about Sula and Beloved (1987), this article argues that her career indexes the emergence of racial sensitivity as an editorial concern in contemporary publishing, anticipating contemporary conflicts over formal sensitivity editing as a specialized mode of manuscript review.

“Where Shall We Place Our Hope?”: COVID-19 and the Imperiled National Body in South Africa's “Lockdown Collection”

“Where Shall We Place Our Hope?”: COVID-19 and the Imperiled National Body in South Africa's “Lockdown Collection”

Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807–1896

Nearly 50 years since Robert Conrad's pathbreaking article on the emancipados of Brazil—published in this journal (volume 53, issue 1)—the history of the Africans liberated from slave ships as the result of measures for suppressing the slave trade has taken a global turn. Yet the scholarship produced as part of this trend has tended to focus on the Anglophone Atlantic.This collection of essays on liberated Africans organized by Richard Anderson and Henry Lovejoy, two historians of Africa and the African diaspora, brings together for the first time studies covering groups settled in territories of the British, Spanish, and Portuguese empires as well as independent Brazil and Liberia. Treated as a special and somewhat extraneous group in national histories until the early 2000s, liberated Africans gained renewed attention after the bicentennial of the British abolition of the slave trade in 2007. Then a number of conferences on the circumstances surrounding and conflicts over abolition in various regions counteracted the excessive focus on British actors and events and highlighted the importance of considering the continuation and transformations of the slave trade after 1807. As the unexpected byproduct of the trade's suppression, recaptive Africans settled or resettled in Sierra Leone, Cape Colony, Saint Helena, the British Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Martinique, Brazil, Angola, or Indian Ocean territories had similar statuses that stemmed from legislation or treaties aimed at abolishing the slave trade, which required them to serve for a certain period before attaining full emancipation. Liberated Africans stood out as the ideal category for comparing and evaluating the abolitionist campaign's effectiveness.The collection unites some longtime specialists on liberated Africans, many newcomers to the subfield, and others for whom the theme is marginal to their research agendas. The 19 chapters are divided into 6 sections organized according to a mix of chronological, geographical, and thematic approaches: “Origins of Liberated Africans,” “Sierra Leone,” “Caribbean,” “Lusophone Atlantic,” “Liberated Africans in Global Perspective,” and “Resettlements.” In the introduction, Anderson and Lovejoy set the collection within the context of the current debates on the British campaign for the slave trade's abolition and the growing importance of digital humanities initiatives for studying the African diaspora. To be sure, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (https://www.slavevoyages.org/), particularly its section on the liberated Africans' names, and the extensive digitization of the Sierra Leone archives have greatly affected recent scholarship. Anderson and Lovejoy estimate that 200,000 men, women, and children were “liberated” during the Atlantic and Indian Ocean phases of the suppression campaign, from 1808 to 1896; the coeditors present a fair overview of how many African recaptives were settled and resettled, where, and on what legal bases. In Latin America, the 11,000 africanos livres of Brazil and 27,000 emancipados of Cuba were included in the editors' count, but smaller groups in Puerto Rico and Martinique were not.British records have been fundamental for this collective endeavor, given the centrality and ubiquity of British institutions and bureaucracy, scattered all over the world, in the abolition campaign. The fairly regular series of documents allow for panoramic, comparative, and also microhistorical approaches. There is a mix of those in this volume, with essays covering the seizure and adjudication of ships in vice admiralty courts, mixed commission courts, or local legal venues as well as the disposal of the Africans for their compulsory terms of service, their daily lives amid slavery or postemancipation and also their resettlement, following intra- and interimperial policies. An integrated history of the slave trade's abolition is taking shape in which the people who were the campaign's object appear at the forefront, their collective experience becoming comparable and in turn giving a new perspective to policymaking and trends in labor, citizenship, migration, gender, international law, cultural transformations, and many other aspects of nineteenth-century history. The great reliance on British archives in this collection is both a strength and a weakness. The book includes chapters on recaptives in Liberia, Cuba, Brazil, Angola, and the Indian Ocean that draw from other documentary collections and reveal the imbalance: outside the British Empire, the continuation of the slave trade well into the 1850s and 1860s made for developments not sufficiently integrated into the narrative of abolition, which is still centered on the British Atlantic. The initiative to compile such a volume is to be praised; it is hoped that the debate will surpass the tunnel vision that frames it for now.This collection will be useful for scholars of the African diaspora, abolitionism, and global history, and a number of the essays will be of keen interest to those studying British diplomatic engagement in Latin America.

Introduction

AbstractThis special themed section examines the multilayered engagements between Africa and the Soviet Union as a central, if overlooked, global encounter of the mid-twentieth century. We call this worldview and the entanglements it generated the “African-Soviet Modern,” an asymmetrical combination of aspiration, materiality, and practice that was rooted in diverse African states and in the Soviet Union. As an analytical category, the African-Soviet Modern speaks to the gap between the grand rhetorical and ideological scope of the Cold War moment and the relatively discrete channels in which it materialized, which gave this mode of thinking a particular vitality and instability. African-Soviet entanglements unfolded in an expansive and uneven geography that incorporated diverse regions of Africa, the USSR, and beyond. Avoiding the temporal and spatial silos of either Soviet or African history, the four essays in this section focus on the spaces where African and Soviet students, politicians, and scientists interacted with one another, creating “connected chronologies” and complementary archives of evidence. Weaving together documentary and oral sources, these articles recover a global entanglement that was energized by unbounded political, economic, and technological aspiration, but that produced an uneven material footprint in newly independent African states.

Out of Empire into Socialist Modernity

AbstractIn this article the Soviet-African Modern is presented through an intellectual history of exchanges in a triangular geography, outspreading from Moscow to Paris to Port of Spain and Accra. In this geography, postcolonial conditions in Eastern Europe and Africa became interconnected. This shared postcolonial space extended from the Soviet South to Africa. The glue for the transregional imagination was an engagement with the topos of backwardness. For many of the participants in the debate, the Soviet past was the African present. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, three connected perspectives on the relationship between Soviet and African paths to modernity are presented: First, Soviet and Russian scholars interpreting the domestic (post)colonial condition; second, African academics revisiting the Soviet Union as a model for development; and finally, transatlantic intellectuals connecting postcolonial narratives with socialist ones. Drawing on Russian archives, the article furthermore demonstrates that Soviet repositories hold complementary records for African histories.

Reflections on North African History: Abdallah Laroui and his History of the Maghrib

When Joel Gordon, the editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, asked me to reexamine a notable classic book in my field of North African history, I immediately thought of one that I had reviewed favorably forty-one years ago, Abdallah Laroui's The History of the Maghrib. The book is a seminal work of historical synthesis, by one of the most eminent living Maghribi scholars. It remains relevant today.

أضواء على الأنشطة الاقتصادیة فی بلاد شنقیط (موریتانیا) من خلال النوازل الفقهیة دراسة لنوازل القرنین (12-13هـ/18-19م)

يرصد هذا البحث بعض الأنشطة الحرفية في بلاد شنقيط (موريتانيا) خلال القرنين الثامن عشر والتاسع عشر للميلاد، استنادا لما ورد في النوازل الفقهية من إشارات. وتبرز أهمية هذا الموضوع کونه يتعلق بالتأريخ للأنشطة الاقتصادية في إحدى المجتمعات الأفريقية إبان حقبة ما قبل الاستعمار من خلال مصادر محلية أصلية عاصرت الأحداث وعايشتها. ومن أسف أن رکز الباحثون في التاريخ الأفريقي الحديث والمعاصر اهتمامهم على التأريخ للمجتمعات الأفريقية منذ بداية عهد الاستعمار الأوروبي نتيجة وفرة الوثائق الأوروبية، ولم يتطرق أغلبهم للحديث عن الفترة التي سبقت الاستعمار إلا في إشارات عابرة لم تکن سوى مدخلا لدراسة العهد الاستعماري. ويعزو هذا إلى ندرة ما کتب عن تاريخ أفريقيا في تلک الحقبة واعتمدت تلک الکتابات بالأساس على الروايات الشفهية، والدراسات الأنثروبولوجية التي سعت سعيا مقصودا –خدمة للأهداف الإمبريالية- لعقد مقارنات بين وضعية المجتمع الأفريقي قبل الاستعمار وبعده، وبالتالي قدمت صورة موجهة وغير مکتملة، ولا يمکن الاطمئنان إليها في التأريخ للمجتمع الأفريقي قبل العهد الاستعماري. في ضوء ذلک تحاول هذه الدراسة إلقاء حجر في المياه الراکدة، وحث الباحثين في التاريخ الأفريقي الحديث على الرجوع إلى بعض المصادر المحلية المهمة رغم عدم انتمائها للحقل التاريخي، ألا وهي النوازل الفقهية ­­­التي أولاها الباحثون في التاريخ الإسلامي أهمية کبرى، ورصدوا من خلالها أوضاع المجتمع الأفريقي، بينما استبعدها الباحثون في التاريخ الحديث والمعاصر کمصدر تاريخي يمکن الاستفادة منه، ظنا من البعض أن النوازل تشتمل فقط على معلومات فقهية. وتکمن الإشکالية هنا في الخلط بين مفهومي الفتوى والنازلة، فالنازلة عبارة عن قضية تعرض على الفقهاء، وتعبر عن واقع معيش بالفعل، ومن ثم فهي أضبط في التعبير من الفتوى التي تشمل سؤال الناس عن الأحکام الشرعية، سواء حدثت أم لم تحدث. وفيما يتعلق ببلاد شنقيط نموذج هذه الدراسة، فقد أوردت النوازل عددا من الإشارات المهمة التي يمکن من خلالها رصد بعض الحرف والأنشطة الاقتصادية، وکذلک أبرز المشاکل التي عانى منها الحرفيون، وهو ما ستبرزه هذه الدراسة. Lights on Economic Activities in Chinguetti (Mauritania) Accordint to Nawazil Fiqhiya A study of the Nawazil of the two centuries (12-13 AH / 18-19 AD) Eman Ragab Zaki Tammam Department of Modern and Contemporary History , Faculty of Arts, Beni-Suef University , Egypt . E-mail : Emanra@art.bsu.edu.eg Abstract : This research examines some craft activities in the Chinguetti Countries (Mauritania) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries AD, based on the references mentioned in the Nawazil Fiqhiya. The importance of this topic is highlighted as it relates to the history of economic activities in one of the African societies during the pre-colonial era through indigenous local sources who lived through the events. Unfortunately, researchers in modern and contemporary African history have focused their attention on the history of African societies since the beginning of the European colonial era as a result of the abundance of European documents, and most of them did not address the pre-colonial period except in passing references that were only an introduction to the study of the colonial era. This is attributed to the scarcity of books on the history of Africa in that era, and those writings relied mainly on oral narratives and anthropological studies that sought intentional pursuit - in service of imperialist goals - to draw comparisons between the situation of African society before and after colonialism, and thus presented a directed and incomplete picture. The reassurance of it in the history of African society before the colonial era. In light of this, this study tries to throw a stone into the stagnant waters, and urged researchers in modern African history to refer to some important local sources despite their lack of belonging to the historical field, namely the Nawazil Fiqhiya which researchers in Islamic history gave great importance, and through which they monitored The conditions of African society, while researchers excluded them in modern and contemporary history as a historical source that can be used, thinking that some of the Nawazil include only jurisprudential information. The problem here lies in the confusion between the concepts of the fatwa and the Nazilah, for the catastrophe is a case presented to the jurists, and it expresses the reality of actually living, and then it is more precise in expression than the fatwa that includes asking people about the legal rulings, whether they happen or not. With regard to the Chinguetti countries, the model of this study, the Nawazil cited a number of important signs through which some crafts and economic activities could be monitored, as well as the most prominent problems that craftsmen suffered from, which will be highlighted in this study.

Hayes, Patricia et Minkley, Gary (ed.). Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History

La publication collective du recueil d’essais Ambivalent : Photography and Visibility in African History coincide avec la parution de plusieurs ouvrages dedies a la photographie africaine et a sa diaspora. Ces derniers se situent neanmoins majoritairement du cote du « beau livre » en se focalisant plutot sur la scene artistique contemporaine. On peut mentionner a titre d’exemples Africa 21e siecle. Photographie contemporaine africaine de Ekow Eshun1, le catalogue dirige par Mark Sealy, African Cosmologies : Photography Time and the Other2, ou encore The New Black Vanguard : Photography between Art and Fashion d’Antwaun Sargent3. L’etude de Jennifer Bajorek, Unfixed. Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa4, synthese des recherches que l’auteure mene depuis plusieurs annees, participe de cette profusion mais se veut plus universitaire. A ce titre, Ambivalent deploie la meme demarche de relecture historique et problematisee de la place du medium sur le continent africain. A l’initiative de cette publication, Patricia Hayes et Gary Minkley sont professeurs en Afrique du Sud, respectivement a l’universite du Cap-Occidental (chaire d’histoire et de theories visuelles) et a l’universite de Fort-Hare (departement histoire). Issus du champ des etudes en histoire africaine, les deux chercheurs ont developpe tout au long de leur carriere une approche tournee vers la culture visuelle ainsi que les representations de genre et de race dans le contexte specifique des institut

From Google Doodles to Facebook: Nostalgia and Visual Reconstructions of the Past in Nigeria

AbstractIn June 2019, Google announced plans to connect Africa to Europe through an undersea internet cable project named Equiano. As a techno-commercial platform, Google’s gesture warrants scrutiny and propels this essay’s analyses of the political connections of Internet spaces that also enable a visual turn in the scholarship of African history. Using the Google search engine and Facebook, Yékú and Ojebode stress the embeddedness of digital technologies in cultural meanings that include visual narratives that visibilize government’s ahistoricism. They conclude by foregrounding the digital labors of Nigerian digital subjects who deploy historical photographs on Facebook as expressions of performative nostalgia.

Extraordinary People: Hero Movies for African American History Month

Two movies about Black protest movement leaders in the 1960s are playing on home screens during African American History Month during the COVID-19 pandemic. The movies are made by African American moviemakers and are focused on Black protest movements. One Night in Miami and Judas and the Black Messiah present the lives and activities of Black leaders as seen through their personal lives and through their political careers. These leaders were involved in dilemmas of opposition to the American political system and cooperation with that system and were forced to suffer the injustices and humiliations often imposed by Whites. The outcomes of their discussions are shown as well as the fatal consequences for their activism. The focus is on the internal affairs of Black movements and the disappointment with White responses.

Ships on the Wall: Retracing African Trade Routes from Marseille, France

With this essay on decolonizing ways of knowing, I seek to understand the phantom histories of my father’s French family. Filling in silences in written family accounts with scholarship on Marseille’s maritime commerce, African history, African Diaspora studies, and my own archival research, I seek to reconnect European, African, and Caribbean threads of my family story. Travelling from New Orleans to Marseille, Zanzibar, Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Martinique and Guadeloupe, this research at the intersections of personal and collective heritage links critical genealogies to colonial processes that structured the Atlantic world. Through an exploration of family documents, literature, and art, I travel the trade routes of la Maison Régis.

Building counter-archives: Oral history programmes of the Sinomlando Centre and Memory Work in Africa and the South African History Archive

Counter-archives, including those aligned to universities, have grown and developed as alternatives to the conventional and traditional mainstream archives. The purpose of this paper is to look into how such counter-archives are building and using their holdings. The study is based on two purposively selected counter-archives, which are the Sinomlando Centre and Memory Work in Africa and South African History Archive. The data were collected through interviews and document analysis, especially of the respective websites. One of the conclusions drawn from the paper is that counter-archives are here to stay as the general public is losing confidence in established traditional institutions.

The Historical Role of African Churches in the Healing Systems in Mbeya Region from the 1980s to the Present

Abstract This paper presents a historical analysis of health care services through African churches in Mbeya Region, Tanzania from the 1980s to the present. In particular, it examines the influence of African churches in healing diseases spiritually. It analyses the changes in health care services in Mbeya Region, and the dominance of African churches in health services. It also shows how health care services are provided, and the successes and challenges related to health care services in African churches. Methodologically, the paper is based on a careful analysis of oral interviews, archival documents and secondary data. It argues that African churches emerged in Mbeya in the 1920s in response to the historical churches that operated in the region from the 1890s. The paper notes that diseases have been a significant factor throughout African history. Controlling disease was an important aspect of change in different historical periods. Unfortunately, historians have rarely paid attention to the involvement of African churches in health care services. This paper covers the strategies used by African churches in health care services, such as preaching on healing methods from the Bible. Through healing services, leaders of African churches are able to transform their own lives, but not all individuals are healed. This paper makes a contribution to the historiography of Africa by identifying the role of African churches in healing systems.

Human Rights to Water Access in South Africa: Challenges and Critical Concerns

Many scholars have written on the challenges of ensuring access to water in South Africa, and much research has been done on the national water policy of the South African Government, yet major challenges facing the water sector persist. This study presents a human rights approach as a theoretical foundation for investigating the basic right to water access, with a specific focus on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the three tiers of governance. Existing literature on the history of water access was explored regarding the global as well as the South African history of water rights. The main focus of this study was SDG no. 6, which is related to issues regarding water access in South Africa. The study concluded that the human right of having access to water is a crucial issue to be treated with caution by the government in order for the poor to have basic infrastructure.

Agricultural diversification in West Africa: an archaeobotanical study of the site of Sadia (Dogon Country, Mali)

While narratives of the spread of agriculture are central to interpretation of African history, hard evidence of past crops and cultivation practices are still few. This research aims at filling this gap and better understanding the evolution of agriculture and foodways in West Africa. It reports evidence from systematic flotation samples taken at the settlement mounds of Sadia (Mali), dating from 4 phases (phase 0=before first–third century AD; phase 1=mid eighth–tenth c. AD; phase 2=tenth–eleventh c. AD; phase 3=twelfth–late thirteenth c. AD). Flotation of 2200 l of soil provided plant macro-remains from 146 archaeological samples. As on most West African sites, the most dominant plant is pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum). But from the tenth century AD, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and African rice (Oryza glaberrima) appear in small quantities, and fonio (Digitaria exilis) and barnyard millet/hungry rice (Echinochloa sp.), sometimes considered weeds rather than staple crops, are found in large quantities. Some samples also show remains of tree fruits from savannah parklands, such as baobab (Adansonia digitata), marula (Sclerocarya birrea), jujube (Ziziphus sp.), shea butter (Vittelaria paradoxa) and African grapes (Lannea microcarpa). Fonio and Echinochloa sp. cultivation appears here to be a later addition that helped to diversify agriculture and buffer against failures that might affect the monoculture of pearl millet. This diversification at the end of the 1st millennium AD matches with other evidence found in West Africa.

Human-woodland interactions during the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods in northeastern Tigray, Ethiopia: insights from the wood charcoal analyses from Mezber and Ona Adi

The Tigray region in Ethiopia witnessed the rise and fall of the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite communities between the mid 2nd millennium BCE and the late 1st millennium CE. Despite the importance of these entities in recent African prehistory, the issue of how they interacted with their surrounding environment has only been addressed very recently. Here, we present the first systematic anthracological analysis from the region. Wood charcoal samples from two archaeological sites were analysed, the Pre-Aksumite rural site of Mezber (ca. 1600 BCE-1 CE) and Ona Adi (ca. 600 BCE-700 CE), an urban centre occupied continuously from the Late Pre-Aksumite period to the fall of the Aksumite kingdom. A total of 2,708 charcoal fragments from 25 samples and nine archaeological phases were analysed and 19 plant taxa associated with at least three different vegetation types were identified. The results demonstrate rather stable environmental conditions at a local level, with no major or abrupt environmental changes. They also evidence a process of landscape degradation as a result of human activity during the early to mid 1st millennium BCE, as well as a subsequent recovery that occurred gradually during the next ca. 1,500 years. Finally, differences in firewood use were identified in relation to the rural or urban nature of each settlement, showing an evolution in wood selection, management and strategies of use which indicates that both Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite peoples had a significant degree of resilience and adaptive capacity.

EXILE, NARRATIVE, AND MIGRATION IN AFRICAN HISTORY - Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law and Identity. Edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Nathan Riley Carpenter. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018. Pp. 384. $35.00, paperback (ISBN: 9780253038081); $85.00, hardcover (ISBN: 9780253038074).

EXILE, NARRATIVE, AND MIGRATION IN AFRICAN HISTORY - Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law and Identity. Edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Nathan Riley Carpenter. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018. Pp. 384. 85.00, hardcover (ISBN: 9780253038074). - Volume 62 Issue 1

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Collecting to the Core — Primary Sources in African History

Collecting to the Core — Primary Sources in African History