Jan Vansina Research Articles

The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Place of Birth: Wodaabe Changing Histories of Origin

Two children came out of the water and they made a grass house (suurel) and stayed at that place. Later, some cows came out of the water and stayed during the evening with the children. And then the children migrated (gurgiisi, a short migration movement). The cows followed the children every place they went because the children had made them fire (Loose translation: tape transcript 1997).His voice is difficult to understand; he is an old man. Sitting on a mat placed on the sand beneath his chair, I listen carefully, even though I know that my tape recorder will later help me in reconstructing his speech. His narrative is not unfamiliar and in fact it is almost surprising to me the similarity to WoDaaBe origin narratives that I have seen on print.My discussion here focuses on WoDaaBe origin stories from the perspective of histories as being socially meaningful, integrated into political contexts. Ethnographic research among the WoDaaBe has reflected rather similar stories of origin as the one presented here, focusing on the WoDaaBe as originating in a mythical way, along with their cattle. My own research in the Tchin-Tabaraden area in Niger in 1996-98 indicated, however, that even though the narratives documented earlier by travelers and anthropologists are known, people were generally more interested in reciting and discussing stories strongly grounded in time and space. In my approach, I follow Jan Vansina's comment that “all messages have some intent which has to do with the present, otherwise they would not be told in the present” (Vansina 1985:92). Similarly, Ellen Basso has pointed out in relation to narratives, that it is not enough to ask, “what is a story about;”whyit was told must be questioned as well (Basso 1995:x). I also contribute from theorists that have emphasized history itself as a political phenomenon formulating relations between past and present (Popular Memory Group 1982:240), making how the past is understood relevant to the present political-cultural context, without reducing it to merely functional justification for the present (Werbner 1998:2). History and memory thus have a texture that is both social and historic (Bommes et al., 1982:256), intertwined with power and meaning.

Editors' Introduction

Editor's Introduction Peter Mark, Editor In the autumn of 2010, when Marty Klein wrote to offer me the editorship of Mande Studies, he urged me to view this as a three-year commitment. The three years have stretched to eight, encompassing ten issues of the journal. Ten is a nice, round number; these volumes now fill a substantial length of one bookshelf in my office. Editing has become increasingly comfortable. But with comfort comes the danger of complacency, along with a new challenge . . . preparing the editorial succession. With this issue, Rosa De Jorio joins me as Associate Editor. Next year, as she takes on a greater role in the process, she will be Co-Editor.1 And then, I shall pass the torch to a new generation. Ten issues; preparing for a new Editor; and, on a personal level, my retirement this summer from fulltime teaching; these factors lend themselves to introspection and to reflection on a career that spans 45 years. Why not, I thought, bring together the editing and the reflecting, by devoting this anniversary issue to memoirs of first fieldwork experiences? Our generation was, though we did not fully recognize the fact, a generation of optimism. We shared that spirit with our African hosts, as Mary Jo Arnoldi eloquently observes in her essay. Our teachers were among the founders of modern African Studies, or they had themselves studied with the seminal figures, notably with Jan Vansina and Yves Person. Fifty years later, however, it now feels that we (the authors of this volume, formerly students and professors) are all of the same generation. Many of us, although influenced both by the independence of the former African colonies and by the founding of the Peace Corps, were too young to serve in the initial cohort of volunteers. However, we shared the same spirit of optimism, a conviction that we could help to create a better world, a spirit so foreign to the cynicism and greed that pervade public life today. Alma Gottlieb addresses a related issue: the degree of naiveté that we also brought to our first encounters with Africa. Perhaps not all of us were unprepared for our fieldwork, but certainly she speaks for me. On the other hand, the more cosmopolitan our hosts, the less obvious were the inevitable cultural misinterpretations and miscommunication. Nevertheless, it is obvious that we—that I—at times committed terrible 'faux pas,' or made embarrassing [End Page 3] mistakes. We were there to learn. And if we cringe at some of the things we did then, perhaps this shows that we eventually did acquire greater intercultural sensitivity. September 1972: my first graduate seminar in African history, taught by a young Assistant Professor, David Robinson; the first reading he assigns is an article, "Recherches sur un mode de production africain," written by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch.2 Already an important figure in the field, the author immediately became an icon to this first-year grad student. How could I have guessed that, over the ensuing half century, Catherine would become my host at Université Paris-VII; a colleague; and a friend? One of the special qualities of African Studies is the fact that so many of us have developed lifelong friendships. Indeed, this issue of Mande Studies seems like a gathering of old friends. It is a wonderful privilege to include here, all three of these scholars who were so important to me as teachers and mentors. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Klein, and Robinson experienced North and West Africa during the last years of colonial rule or just as independence was becoming a reality. They arrived—in graduate school, in Africa—as the field of modern African Studies was being born. They were part of that period of a vanished optimism, and even idealism. We surely need a dose of that spirit, today. By the mid-1960s, under the inspiration of Yves Person and Jan Vansina, African historical studies were firmly influenced by a growing appreciation of oral tradition as historical source. Both Klein and Robinson, as they recount in their essays, incorporated oral interviews with their archival research; they also encouraged—or even required—their grad students to work in the field. Learning...

The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (review)

Bruce R. Smith is also the author of the interesting Ancient Scripts and Modern Experience on the English Stage, 1500-1700 (1988), but anyone who expects this book to be focused on the theatre is in for a surprise. There is a forty-page chapter on the theatre, dramatic entertainments of various kinds are discussed elsewhere in the book, and plays are a source for comments on many customs and behaviors. Yet this book, which might more clearly have been titled Aural Experience in Early Modern England, is of astonishing breadth. It is not just that there are chapters on Elizabethan concepts of writing and of speaking, on ballads, on village pastimes, and even on communications in New England between colonists and Indians, but also what Smith brings to writing on those topics. He draws on such varied writers as the linguist Dell Hymes; Jan Vansina, who writes on African oral traditions; Steven Feld, on what one hears in Papuan forests; and Hugh Murray Baillie on the planning of state apartments in baroque palaces. He also uses a multitude of printed and manuscript sources, including collections of music, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Smith seems to have a particular interest in music and prints a number of musical examples in the book.

Review article. Pioneering African studies: Jan Vansina and Roland Oliver

Review article. Pioneering African studies: Jan Vansina and Roland Oliver

Sibling Rivalry? The Intersection of Archeology and History

Communication between the practitioners of the two disciplines [history and archeology] is still often difficult.Five years ago Jan Vansina asked historians whether archeologists were their siblings. The question seems to have been rhetorical, since Vansina himself offered the opinion that, at least “when archaeologists offer specific reconstructions of history, as they often do in their site reports, they are historians.” However, he also admitted that archeology “is a discipline in its own right.” Since no historians were sufficiently riled by these assertions to offer a response to Vansina's article, we must assume that archeologists are accepted, though not necessarily with open arms, in the family of historians. But what did archeologists say about their adoption? Nothing it appears, though perhaps many archeological practitioners missed Vansina's article because it was published in an historical, not an archeological, journal. I stumbled across the article a couple of years ago and plunged in with both anticipation and trepidation. Which archaeologist could resist reading a critique of his discipline by a respected historian? My feelings turned out to be justified. I was both excited and a little dismayed by what I read, though I was relieved to find that my own archeological efforts in Uganda were favorably viewed by theeminence grise.

Africa, Asia and Australasia

Boks reviewed: Africans: The History of a Continent. By John Iliffe In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa. Edited by Carolyn Keyes Adenaike and Jan Vansina Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830–1914. By Bruce Vandervort The Moon is Dead! Give us our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900. By Keletso E. Atkins Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910. By Patrick Harries ‘We Spend our Years as a Tale that is Told’: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom. By Isabel Hofmeyr The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894–1985. By Charles van Onselen Liberals against Apartheid: A History of the Liberal Party of South Africa, 1953–1968. By Randolph Vigne From Obscurity to Bright Dawn—how Nyasaland became Malawi: An Insider's Account. By Henry Phillips Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in East African History. Edited by David M. Anderson and Douglas H. Johnson Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land and Agricultural Development in Arusha and Meru. By Thomas Spear Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria. Edited by Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, his Army and the Making of Modern Egypt. By Khaled Fahmy The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. By Justin McCarthy The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions. By James Turner Johnson The History of Saudi Arabia. By Alexei Vassilev The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. By Frederick F. Anscombe The Making of Iraq 1900–1963: Capital, Power and Ideology. By Samira Haj Great Britain, the United States, and the Security of the Middle East: The Formation of the Baghdad Pact. By Magnus Persson The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967. By Michael Dumper Palestine and the Palestinians. By Samih K. Farsoun with Christina E. Zacharia Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. By Rashid Khalidi Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and the Making of the Colonial Marketplace. By Sudipta Sen Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence. By Paul Brass Science and Power in Colonial Mauritius. By William Kelleher Storey Valour: A History of the Gurkhas. By E. D. Smith The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836–1889). By Gillian Bickley Sun Yat‐sen. By Marie‐Claire Bergère. Translated by J. Lloyd Passivity, Resistance and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937–45. By Poshek Fu Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History. By Bruce Cumings

In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa. Carolyn Keyes Adenaike , Jan Vansina

<i>In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa</i>. Carolyn Keyes Adenaike , Jan Vansina

An Interview with Anthony F. C. Wallace

Like Jan Vansina, the subject of the interview published in the spring 1995 issue of the journal, Anthony F. C. Wallace will need little introduction for readers of Ethnohistory. His list of publications reads like a primer for practitioners of the ethnohistorical craft. He is perhaps best known for his pathbreaking use of documentary evidence to reconstruct and explain the psychosocial dynamics of dreaming; the roles of religious, social, and economic innovators; and the structure and function of revitalization movements. A forceful advocate of fine-grained, small-scale intensive analyses, he continually called on anthropologists to direct attention to relationships between individuals and their cultures at a time when most of his colleagues confined themselves to larger-scale studies of cultural collectivities. Wallace's recognition of the importance of the interplay between individuals and society is already evident in his first published book, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, an ethnohistorical account of the life and times of a complex and controversial Indian leader. Initially published in i949, and long recognized as a classic in Delaware ethnohistory, it was reprinted in i99i. Enlarging on this perspective during the next two decades, Wallace produced influential articles analyzing the structure and function of revitalization movements and assessing the psychosocial dynamics of dreaming. During this time he also wrote the major theoretical works Culture and Personality (i96i; rev. ed. I970) and Religion: An Anthropological View (i966). He then applied the theoretical perspectives laid out in these works in a series of seminal ethnohistorical case studies, most notably The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (I970), Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revo-

The Congo. By RANDALL FEGLEY. (World Bibliographical Series, Vol. 162.) Oxford, Santa Barbara and Denver: Clio Press, 1993. Pp. 1 + 168. £30 (ISBN 1-85109-199-8).

Randall Fegley's bibliographical compilation is clearly not among the best of the World Bibliographical Series. The objective of the collection is to present a solid guide of the country to the non-specialist, and compared to other volumes in the series, Fegley's work lacks polish and perspective. The volume is marked by spelling errors. Accents in French names and titles are most often ignored. Important authors' names are misspelled: Gilles Sautter becomes ‘Giles’ in the text and ‘Sautte’ in the index; Jean-Claude Willame becomes ‘Willaure’. Ironically, the listing of the latter's book, Patrimonialism and Change in the Congo, a political science essay on Zaïre, illustrates the mistake Fegley denounces in his preface (p. xiii) : most English-speaking readers confuse Zaïre and Congo. The well-known collection of essays edited by P. Gifford and W. R. Louis is wrongly entitled by Fegley as Transfers of Power in Africa, and presented as a single volume (p. 68). Some titles are also poorly categorized, like René Gauze's The Politics of Congo-Brazzaville. Gauze's 150-page text is devoted to Congolese politics during the colonial period, with a 50-page supplement on the decade 1962 to 1972 written by Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff. It is nevertheless classified only under ‘Post-colonial politics’ (p. 71). Jan Vansina's Paths in the Rainforest, best classified in pre-colonial history, is listed just once under ‘Politics, General’.

Metalworking in Africa South of the Sahara: An Annotated Bibliography ed. by Ibironke O. Lawal

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 241 Metalworking in Africa South of the Sahara: An Annotated Bibliography. Edited by Ibironke O. Lawai. African Special Bibliographic Series, no. 19. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. Pp. 270; index. $79.50 (cloth). The study of technology in Africa falls under several academic rubrics, with so-called traditional or indigenous technical knowledge and craft traditions largely the domain of anthropology and archae­ ology, while some historians have investigated what cases there are ofmodern, Western-style technologies and industries. Even so, tech­ nology has been and remains relatively neglected in the field ofAfri­ can studies. So a book such as this one, a bibliography that might encourage more research in an underrepresented area, is most wel­ come. Sadly, it is also thoroughly bewildering and ultimately frus­ trating. Ibironke Lawai deserves thanks and praise for taking on a daunt­ ing task, bringing together 2,741 articles and books on (mostly ar­ tisanal) metalworking in sub-Saharan Africa. They are drawn from various literatures—archaeology, ethnology, art history, his­ tory, archaeometry, cultural anthropology—published in English, French, German, and the occasional Portuguese or Italian. And the topic, metalworking, is an important one. Why, then, put all these titles together into a book that is close to impossible to use? A bibli­ ography is an invaluable tool, but a tool must be helpful. This one is not. One would expect to find occasional errors ofone kind or another in any bibliography, especially when it covers a topic across disci­ plines and languages. But the problems here are major. First, there is the peculiar organizational structure of the book, which disorients the reader at the outset by using idiosyncratic geographical divisions for Africa. It makes no historical sense to leave out North Africa, especially in the case ofmetalworking; and categories such as ‘ ‘West­ ern Guinea Coast” and “Eastern Guinea Coast” are arbitrary and unfamiliar—one does not know which African countries they in­ clude. Second, the table of contents is next to useless. If the reader is looking for information on metalworking in a particular modern African country, she must do as I did and compose her own more complete table of contents, one that shows which countries come under which heading. When she does, she will see that this is really a bibliography focused on Nigeria, not the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, that some countries such as Congo-Brazzaville are entirely missing, and that other countries are oddly grouped geographically. I would never have expected to find Ivory Coast and Cameroon listed together as part of an “Eastern Guinea Coast.” And this is only the beginning. The index will lead even expert readers into traps and dead ends. I tried to find articles by certain well-known authors to test how they 242 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE were categorized geographically—but the entry numbers in the in­ dex hardly ever matched the ones in the text. Some I never did find. When I did, I found substantial errors. For example (to mention one of many),Jan Vansina’s works on western Bantu expansion and Bantu linguistics are listed under East Africa, where they obviously do not belong. Au experienced researcher will go crazy using this bibliography; a student or layperson will be seriously misled. Until these problems are corrected, the bibliography under review here will not replace the older standard resources in this area of study. Walter Cline’s Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa (Menasha, Wise.: George Banta, 1937) is outdated and has serious drawbacks, but it remains valid in many ways, not the least of which is the author’s technical expertise, which allowed him to expand on the data he collected, posing cogent questions and drawing historical inferences about production ofmetals and technology transfer. Den­ nis Spande’s bibliography, A Historical Perspective on Metallurgy in Af­ rica (Waltham, Mass.: Crossroads Press, 1977), is smaller, including 1,052 sources published before 1975. He begins it with a brief but very astute general introduction to the subject, explaining then the layout of the sections, and there is along with the table of contents a handy map that shows how the continent has been divided up into...

History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land by Rafael Frankel, et al

242 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE were categorized geographically—but the entry numbers in the in­ dex hardly ever matched the ones in the text. Some I never did find. When I did, I found substantial errors. For example (to mention one of many),Jan Vansina’s works on western Bantu expansion and Bantu linguistics are listed under East Africa, where they obviously do not belong. Au experienced researcher will go crazy using this bibliography; a student or layperson will be seriously misled. Until these problems are corrected, the bibliography under review here will not replace the older standard resources in this area of study. Walter Cline’s Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa (Menasha, Wise.: George Banta, 1937) is outdated and has serious drawbacks, but it remains valid in many ways, not the least of which is the author’s technical expertise, which allowed him to expand on the data he collected, posing cogent questions and drawing historical inferences about production ofmetals and technology transfer. Den­ nis Spande’s bibliography, A Historical Perspective on Metallurgy in Af­ rica (Waltham, Mass.: Crossroads Press, 1977), is smaller, including 1,052 sources published before 1975. He begins it with a brief but very astute general introduction to the subject, explaining then the layout of the sections, and there is along with the table of contents a handy map that shows how the continent has been divided up into geographical categories. It still passes the test: the reader glides through the finding aids and listings without getting lost or frus­ trated. Colleen E. Kriger Dr. Kriger teaches in the Department of History at the University of North Caro­ lina at Greensboro, and specializes in precolonial and early colonial African history, specifically the work of artisans. Her current research is on ironworkers in 19thcentury central Africa. History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land. By Rafael Frankel, Shmuel Avitsur, and Etan Ayalon; translated by Jay C. Jacobson. Arlington, Va., and Tel Aviv: Olearius Editions and Eretz Israel Museum, 1993. Pp. 208; illustrations, maps, figures, tables, bibliog­ raphy, index. $40.00 (cloth). (Available only by mail order from Olearius Editions, P.O. Box 906, Arlington, VA 22216, USA.) Food, cooking oil, cosmetic, medicine, trade and export item, temple offering, anointment of kings and priests, the olive fruit and its expressed oil have occupied a central place in Mediterranean life for centuries, and are the focus of this work by authorswith a century of collective research experience in olive oil and related technology. Compiled as a hybrid book that is neither singly authored nor a col­ lection of individual works, this well-written, authoritative book of­ fers a three-part olein anthology: ancient oil mills and presses (Fran­ kel), traditional to industrial olive oil production (Avitsur), and TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 243 traditional olive oil plants (Ayalon). Drawing on historical texts, ar­ chaeological evidence, and comparative ethnographic studies—in Israel and the surrounding Mediterranean region—the authors re­ construct the history of the growing of olives and the production of their oil, framed within the context of the paramount role which olive oil played in the economy, culture, and religion of their home­ land. And while the focus here is on this facet of life in Israel—the first book ever to deal comprehensively with this subject in Israel— it resounds with a broader appeal to Mediterranean-wide scholarship in related material culture. The first two chapters both begin with introductory information on the historic importance of olives and the olive industry in the Land of Israel, including descriptions of the growth, harvest, and uses of olives. The bulk of these two chapters (fully 90 percent), however, reports on the design, construction, and operation of crushing and pressing installations. Many of the details concerning mills and presses first presented by Frankel (“Ancient Oil Mills and Presses in the Land of Israel”) are repeated by Avitsur (“Olive Oil Production in the Land of Israel: Traditional to Industrial”) before he begins comparing traditional to mechanized and modern meth­ ods. Such repetition is a common problem in multiauthored works, especially those which deal with such a narrowly focused subject. In this case it is the result...

Jan Vansina: Living with Africa, xv, 312 pp. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, £36, $40 (paper £18, $19.95).

Jan Vansina: Living with Africa, xv, 312 pp. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, £36, $40 (paper £18, $19.95).

Carolyn Keyes Adenaike and Jan Vansina. Editors. In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa

Carolyn Keyes Adenaike and Jan Vansina. Editors. In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa

“Words and Things” and “Words and Beings”: Different Experiences, Different Visions of the Same Africa?

It is both fortuitous and serendipitous that Valentin Mudimbe and Jan Vansina both published memoirs in the same year, for they allow us to compare the ways that two important figures in the study of Africa have come to understand the continent. Their lives display remarkable parallels in fact. There are similarities, as well, in the way that they have chosen to write about their association with Africa that place in space and mind whose invention Mudimbe himself traced in an earlier book (1988). However, they come to terms in very different ways with that Africa to which each has devoted enormous energy, and which each has made the central focus of his life.

Paths toward the Past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina

Paths toward the Past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina

Paths toward the past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina

Paths toward the past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina

An Interview with Jan Vansina

For ethnohistorians, and especially students of Africa, Jan Vansina needs little introduction, but as he now attains emeritus status at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, it seems an appropriate moment to offer a more intimate insight into his thinking on the past forty years of anthropology and history. This interview does not include information on Professor Vansina's professional life or reflections on his eminent record of publication; he has just published an extensive memoir Living with Africa (I994) that offers considerable detail on just these topics. What follows therefore is an attempt to prompt commentary on the intellectual origins of the most critical issues that now confront ethnohistory, anthropology, and history. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, in September I929, Vansina studied history and law at the University of Leuven (Belgium) from 1946 to i95i and anthropology at the University of London from i95i to I952, gaining his doctorate in history from Leuven in 1957. After two years at the University Lovanium (Zaire) he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he has remained, except for 1973-75, when he held a position at the University of Leuven. He has also held visiting professorships at many universities, including Lovanium, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, the Froebenius Institute, the Sorbonne, and Leiden. Among his publications are some sixteen monographs and over two hundred articles. Vansina's professional career has also included extended fieldwork in Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo and has been acknowledged in prestigious awards such as the Herskovits Prize, the A. Von Humboldt Prize, the Distinguished Africanist Award, and the J. D. MacArthur Pro-

Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. JAN VANSINA

<i>Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa.</i> JAN VANSINA

Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. By Jan Vansina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. xx + 428 pp. Maps, figures, notes, works cited, index. Cloth $45.00, paper $17.50

<i>Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa.</i> By Jan Vansina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. xx + 428 pp. Maps, figures, notes, works cited, index. Cloth $45.00, paper $17.50