Pre-colonial Society Research Articles

What did Bernier actually say? Profiling the Mughal empire

Bernier's text Travels in the Mughal Empire; A.D. 1656-1708 was a primary source for certain European writers from Montesquieu to Marx for their representation and characterisation of oriental despotism. The distinctive features of oriental despotism in their eyes were absolutist and tyrannical monarchs who ruled over polities that lacked a hereditary nobility and private property in land. In this paper I have attempted to demonstrate that, when read closely, Bernier's text discloses particulars that can be shown to yield a quite different patterning. The Mughal empire of the 17th and 18th centuries, the period I am discussing, was characterised by a devolutionary distribution of authority among multiple lesser sovereignties, by a complex hierarchy of land tenure and appropriation of product, by a developed system of commerce, and by a tolerance and coexistence of pluralistic subcultures. The contours of the empire seem to conform to a model of what I have previously conceptualised in my writings as the 'galactic polity'. The current trend in theorising about post-colonial societies is that the representation of pre-colonial societies at the time of contact as oriental despotisms was a proto-colonial and colonial construction which served as a reason and justification for political intervention, conquest and exploitation. That was so. But I want to emphasise that the stereotypical image of oriental despotism also importantly served as a polemic for an internal political debate and advocacy in France as a warning against and attack on the alleged absolutist ambitions of French monarchy and a defense of feudal nobility as a break on such tendencies. Montesquieu in particular exemplifies this posture. Bernier's formulaic gloss on the Mughal empire, despite what he actually reports, is one kind of tendentious representation. My own reading of Bernier's text is no doubt informed by my present day intellectual and political concerns.

ETHNICITY, PATRONAGE AND THE AFRICAN STATE: THE POLITICS OF UNCIVIL NATIONALISM

Recent research has revealed that modern African ethnicity is a social construction of the colonial period through the reactions of pre-colonial societies to the social, economic, cultural and political forces of colonialism. Ethnicity is the product of a continuing historical process, always simultaneously old and new, grounded in the past and perpetually in creation. Colonial states were grounded in the alliances with local ‘Big Men’, incorporating ethnically-defined administrative units linked to the local population by incorporation of pre-colonial patron-client relations. This was reinforced by European assumptions of neatly bounded and culturally homogeneous ‘tribes’ and a bureaucratic preoccupation with demarcating, classifying and counting subject populations, as well as by the activities of missionaries and anthropologists. African ethnic invention emerged through internal struggles over moral economy and political legitimacy tied to the definition of ethnic communities—moral ethnicity; and external conflicts over differential access to the resources of modernity and economic accumulation—political tribalism. Ethnicities were, in particular, the creations of elites seeking the basis for a conservative modernization. The colonial legacy of bureaucratic authoritarianism, pervasive patron-client relations, and a complex ethnic dialectic of assimilation, fragmentation and competition has persisted in post-colonial societies. Patron-client networks remain the fundamental state-society linkage in circumstances of social crisis and uncertainty and have extended to the very centre of the state. This accounts for the personalistic, materialistic and opportunistic character of African politics. Such networks also penetrate institutions of civil society and liberal democracy, undermining programmes of socio-economic and political reform.

Women and Education in Eritrea: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis

In this article, Asgedet Stefanos examines women and education in the east African nation of Eritrea. She tackles as her central questions whether, and to what extent, Eritrean women have been achieving emancipation; and, if so, what role education has played in that process. Stefanos begins by providing a historical overview that delineates Eritrean women's general social condition and access to education in pre-colonial traditional society and during the eras of Italian and British colonialism. She then evaluates developments during Eritrea's protracted national liberation struggle against Ethiopia and the four years since independence. Stefanos documents significant advances in the emancipation of women and highlights education as a vital arena for change. She observes shortcomings in the Eritrean political leadership's strategy to establish effective educational equity for women, as well as disparities between the goals and assessments of policymakers and the aspirations and experiences of women. Her discussion of contemporary Eritrea is informed by policies and commentary of political leaders and interviews with a diverse sample of Eritrean women. Stefanos concludes by asserting that the current situation confronting an independent Eritrea promotes new obstacles and challenges to a vigorous pursuit of female rights and gender equality, and that the prospects for expanding women's gains in education are very much in the balance.

L'Emancipation des Femmes Madare: L'impact du projet administratif et missionnaire sur une societe africaine, 1900-1960

The fruit of extensive research in the historical archives, this work deals with the project to emancipate Madarepsilon women, which was undertaken by the civil authorities and missionaries between 1900 and 1960. It deals with women's living conditions in the pre-colonial society, the methods and means used to bring about change, their impact and their limitations.

French Cinema's Other First Wave: Political and Racial Economies of "Cinema colonial," 1918 to 1934

The French colonial lobby took an early interest in film and grasped its efficacy as a means of stimulating popular support for the Empire. Documentary travelogues gave way to narrative film in the 1920s; the stunning box office success of L'Atlantide (1921), made filming in exotic locales de rigueur for ambitious directors. In the popular imagination, Morocco and the Sahara, l'extreme Sud d'Alg6rie, remained wild, insecure, and untamed. In fact, marechal Hubert Lyautey's residency in the Protectorate of Morocco and the Foreign Legion headquarters in western Algeria helped filmmakers overcome most logistical problems. Directors acknowledged their debt to colonial administrators and expressed their gratitude to Lyautey in particular. Film companies of the 1920s preferred to work in Morocco. Its locales, architecture, and folkways gave them low-cost settings and labor for movie extras that enabled them to compete with Hollywood spectaculars. The precolonial society had remained intact, because Lyautey had won support for his policy of indirect rule through sophisticated campaigns to manipulate French and Moroccan opinion, not leastways through film. This symbiosis exercised a subtle yet powerful influence on film themes and narrative content. Documentaries made in Africa and fictional films made in North Africa con-

New perspectives for the study of pre-colonial societies in Central Western Brazil: the spatial analysis of Guará 1 Site (GO-NI-IOO), Goiás.

Este artigo apresenta os primeiros resultados da análise espacial do sítio Guará 1 (GO-NI-IOO), um sítio a céu aberto, filiado à tradição Uru que* se situa no Centro-Sul do Estado de Goiás. Os testes estatísticos multivariados evidenciaram diferenças significativas da cultura material nos diversos espaços do assentamento. As variações dos artefatos cerâmicos e líticos nas áreas residenciais são interpretadas em termos de uma hierarquia interna relacionada a aspectos da organização social e econômica, tais como produção e distribuição de implementos e o processamento e consumo de alimentos. Esta análise intra-sítio, embora predominantemente baseada na coleta sistemática total de superfície, evidencia o potencial desta abordagem para futuros estudos relativos à dinâmica interna e externa de grupos ceramistas agricultores do Brasil Central.

Sociology of “primitive societies,” evolutionism, and Africa

Sociology of “primitive societies” has revised its earlier views about “kinship,” lineage, or lineage mode of production. It attempts now to show that lineage did not pervade African precolonial societies and that other relations, such as capitalist and class relations, were also present. This article seeks to reestablish, contrary to the revisionist view, the centrality of lineage in African precolonial societies to allow for a paradigmatic shift that repudiates evolutionism and brings precolonial societies back to the center of the African debate. Because in such a reoriented debate Africa ceases to be marginalized and on the fringes of other historical experiences, the shift allows, paradoxically, the integration of scholarship on Africa into universal social theory.

A Note on the <i>Sittans</i> of Hanthawadi Province

This paper examines the form of the sittans, inquest records of the early Konbaung period and seeks to present a regional characterization of the Hanthawadi province.The sittans ate the statements made by the myothugyis, hereditary headmen in charge of local jurisdictions called myo, in response to the king's interrogations. A sittan contains various information about local administration such as hereditary claim of the myothugyi, the boundary and population of the myo, and the customary revenues and services. Although the sittans have been treated as one of the important sources to reveal the administrative and economic aspects of precolonial society, there is little research which has focused on investigating the form and contents of the sources in detail. For further research relating to the sittans, a study based on the extensive use of these sources with exhaustive scrutiny will be required.Having been ordered an inquiry into the situation of myos and villages by King Badon (Bawdawhpaya, r. 1782-1819), the local headmen submitted the sittans in the years of 1783-84 and 1802-03 respectively. “Sittan of Hanthawaddy thirty-two towns, B. E. -45, -64”, which are preserved in the National Library, Yangon and are available on microfilm from the Toyo Bunko, contains twenty six sittans of twenty two myos of Hanthawadi province in southern Burma. In order to arrange and compare the statements of each sittan, a table which consists of broad nine items was made. The items are A) date and headman's name; B) hereditary claim of the headmen; C) boundary of the myo; D) sources of revenue; E) judicial fees; F) population of the myo; G) history of Hanthawadi thirty two myos; H) situation of Rangoon port; and I) situation of Ranmawadi myoThe form of the Hanthawadi sittans came to be classified largely into two types. One is the sittan whose statements are limited to such items as the date and the headman's name, the headman's claim to office and the boundary and population of the myo. This type of sittan was submitted by fourteen myos which were situated along the river of the Pegu, the Ngamoyeik, or the Hlaing. Also, five of these sittans report that the myos were reorganized with the appointment of the headmen. The other is the sittan which gives details of reckoning the taxes and the additional charges which are the perquisite of the local officials. They also mention that the taxes collected are delivered to Toungoo where the crown granary was placed. This type of sittan was submitted together seven myos which were located near Toungoo in the Sittaung basin. The other five sittans could not be classified clearly into specific types, but among them it has been shown that Hanthawadi myoma (Pegu) and Ranmawadi myo (Arakan) had the role of provincial centers in the region respectively.Supposing that we regard the inquest as the ruler's policy of asserting effective control over the resources of the country, it is found that the myos which were situated along the river of the Pegu, the Ngamoyeik, or the Hlaing had been made little contribution, except manpower, to the financial resources of the state. Reorganizing myos seems to reflect the fact that these myos had been in the process of restoration from the devastation brought by the war preceding the rise of Konbaung Dynasty. On the other, the myos which were located in the Sittaung basin had more contact with Toungoo rather that with Hanthawadi myoma.They may have been little damaged by the war, for their sittans retain detailed descriptions about assessing the customary revenue and additional charges.

Bigger than men? Gender relations and their changing meaning in Kipsigis society, Kenya

AbstractThis article examines why Kipsigis women today appear strong and determined although colonisation and commoditisation have led to an increase in their subordination. Inspired by studies that link cultural ideas about gender with actual social relations, I investigate how Kipsigis ideas about female and male interact with production relations. I argue that gender relations and meanings attributed to gender have altered radically during this century, and that changed economic and political circumstances have led to new struggles over the meaning and interpretation of gender ideologies. The article demonstrates how Kipsigis women manage to negotiate control over household resources by referring to and manipulating customary ideas about status and rights within the house property complex practised in pre-colonial society.

Temples, Donors, and Gifts: Patterns of Patronage in Thirteenth-Century South India

The common model of the Hindu temple of South India has stressed its significance as the main integrative factor binding the disparate elements of precolonial society into one social fabric. As a focal point for economic redistribution, the South Indian temple was the conduit through which exchange occurred: material goods were transformed into the symbols of prestige and influence known as temple honors (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976). The legitimacy of the medieval South Indian ruler rested on his role as the donor par excellence, and his sovereignty had a ritual basis that was far stronger than his more mundane methods of control (Stein 1980: 45–46). The foremost reason South Indian temples were able to perform this integrative function was their wide appeal in the society—their ability to incorporate members of different communities into one community of worship. By providing employment to artisans, peasants and shepherds and by lending money to agriculturalists in their vicinities, South Indian temples also redistributed the property of the wealthy to other segments of society (Spencer 1968:292). The widespread approval accorded to patrons of temples meant that, during the later Vijayanagara age, religious gifting could be used as a strategy by outside warriors for creating allegiances on the local level in Tamil Nadu (Appadurai 1977:55–59).

Four Years in Asante: One Source or Several?

Since its publication in 1874-1875 the account by the Basel missionaries Friedrich (‘Fritz’) August Ramseyer (1842-1902) and Johannes Kühne (1840-1915) of their captivity in Asante, Vier Jahre in Asante, has constituted one of the major written sources on the nature of precolonial society in what is now southern Ghana. Stationed at Anum, near the east bank of the lower Volta, Ramseyer and Kühne were captured together with Ramseyer's wife and infant son in June 1869 by an Asante force which had invaded Ewe territory. They were taken to Asante and eventually, after a seven-month stay in a hamlet which they christened Ebenezer, to Kumase, where they were held hostage from December 1870 until the approach of a British military expedition in January 1874. Apart from the independent French trader Joseph-Marie Bonnat, who was captured in the same month and shared many of their experiences, Ramseyer and Kühne spent longer in Asante than any other author before the twentieth century. Moreover, as prisoners they were able to observe African society from an unusual perspective: “these men saw all from below; the white man was the slave, the negro the master.”While the importance of this source is generally recognized, it has escaped the notice of most commentators that what Ramseyer and Kühne left us was not one source but at least five—a manuscript, two German editions, and an English and a French translation, all written within a relatively short period of time as part of what has been called “the scramble for Gold Coast Africana.” In this paper I shall explore some of the relationships among these different sources.

The question of Ritualised homosexuality among the Kiwai of South New Guinea∗

Gilbert Herdt to designate institutionalised sexual practices among men docu mented in a range of pre-colonial Melanesian societies. These homosexual customs were typically implemented through initiation rites, constrained by broad cultural rules and social roles, and had great religious and cosmological significance. The notion that ritualised homosexuality was generally practised among the indigenous Kiwai of south New Guinea has been elaborated by Herdt as part of his ethnographic review and has been widely accepted among Melanesianists.1 Ritualised homosexuality is known to have been absent among the Purari and Elema language families to the east of the Kiwai, but present among the Trans Fly, Marind, and Kolopom peoples to their west (see Map 1 ).2 In terms of cultural geography, the absence of ritualised homosexuality among the large Kiwai lan guage family would significantly reduce the generality of this custom in south New Guinea.

Trypanosomiasis Control in African History: An Evaded Issue?

Social control of trypanosomiasis in African history deserves further study. The pioneering work in this field is John Ford's respected but neglectedThe Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology(1971). While Ford's arguments have received support from recent findings in immunological, epidemiological and epizootiological research, they have rarely met with evaluation or engagement, either in historical or scientific literature. Historians have tended to describe trypanosomiasis control as a matter of avoiding contact with tsetse fly. In so doing they have implicitly rejected the position of Ford, who regarded infrequent contacts between tsetse and mammalian hosts as necessary for the maintenance of host resistance. Ford believed that host resistance, rather than avoidance of tsetse, was the basis of trypanosomiasis control. The historical nature of Ford's work requires that a satisfactory evaluation ofThe Role of the Trypanosomiasesmake use of historical, as well as scientific, data. The evidence of trypanosomiasis and cattle-keeping from one region of north-eastern Tanzania supports Ford and suggests that other explanations of trypanosomiasis control are inadequate. The Tanzanian evidence shows that precolonial societies coexisted with, but could not avoid, tsetse. They could not eradicate tsetse because scarcity of water prevented permanent occupation of large areas. Tsetse and trypanosomiasis did not prevent cattle-keeping, but helped to keep the region's cattle population low and confined it to relatively densely settled neighbourhoods. Social control of trypanosomiasis collapsed during the pre-Second World War period of colonial rule. Economic and political developments were primarily responsible for a series of famines between 1894 and 1934. Famine-induced depopulation allowed steady spread of tsetse and wildlife reservoirs of trypanosomes into formerly cultivated areas which had been free of tsetse before the colonial period.

The Origins of African Population Growth

This collection of seventeen essays, like most collections, is uneven and sometimes unsatisfactory, but it merits more than a routine notice because at several points it touches on the most important problem in modern African history. Most of the essays, it is true, do not. Among the connections between capitalism and demography which the book treats, the most popular with contributors is migration, which is described in Senegal, Burkina, Niger, French Equatorial Africa, Zaire, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, and South Africa (with reference to Johannesburg's population history). Although several of these essays are useful (that on the Ovimbundu especially raises interesting questions), they cover a wellworked subject which is important but not critical to Africa's demographic history. The same might be said of Myron Echenberg's essay on the population estimates made by the French military in West Africa. Patrick Manning's attempt to simulate the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on different regions of West Africa touches on more central issues. Martin Klein argues for a slave mode of production in the Western Soudan during the late nineteenth century, while Abdullahi Mahadi and J. E. Inikori contribute a provocative suggestion that the general underpopulation of West Africa so limited the market as to prevent the growth of capitalism even in the region's most developed area around Kano, although I suspect that this neglects the fact that the sheer size of the market was no guarantee of capitalist production, as the histories of India and China suggest.' Yet these chapters are not what makes the book important. It is important because it is the first collective attack on what might be called the natalist interpretation of African history. Natalism as the editors (who do not use the word) explain in their excellent introduction sees Africa in the framework of demographic transition theory. It argues that precolonial African societies had very high fertility rates because they were needed to counteract equally high mortality rates caused by disease, famine, violence, and isolation. Even so, precolonial Africa remained severely underpopulated. With the coming of European medicine, peace, and famine relief, mortality declined while fertility at first remained high. The result was the accelerating population growth which perhaps first became apparent on a continental scale between the wars and is likely to dominate African history for several generations to come. The next stage of demographic transition the decline of fertility is as yet apparent south of the Sahara only in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa.2 Natalism, then, sees the roots of Africa's present population problem in the high fertility of precolonial societies and the positive

Male daughters, female husbands: gender and sex in an African society

Challenging the received orthodoxies of social anthropology, Ifi Amadiume argues that in precolonial society, sex and gender did not necessarily coincide. Examining the structures that enabled women to achieve power, she shows that roles were neither rigidly masculinized nor feminized. Economic changes in colonial times undermined women's status and reduced their political role and Dr Amadiume maintains, patriarchal tendencies introduced by colonialism persist today, to the detriment of women. Critical of the chauvinist stereotypes established by colonial anthropology, the author stresses the importance of recognizing women's economic activities as as essential basis of their power. She is also critical of those western feminists who, when relating to African women, tend to accept the same outmoded projections.

‘Soft’ Believers and ‘Hard’ Unbelievers in the Xhosa Cattle-Killing

A substantial minority, perhaps 15 per cent of all Xhosa, refused to obey the prophetess Nongqawuse's orders to kill their cattle and destory their cornl. This divided Xhosaland into two parties, the amathamba (‘soft’ ones, or believers) and the amagogotya (‘hard’ ones, or unbelievers). The affiliation of individuals was partly determined by a number of factors – lungsickness in cattle, political attitude towards the Cape Colony, religious beliefs, kinship, age and gender – but a systematic analysis of each of these factors in turn suggests that none of them was sufficiently important to constitute the basis of either party.The key to understanding the division lies in an analysis of the indigenous Xhosa terms ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. ‘Softness’ in Xhosa denotes the submissiveness of the individual to the common will of the community, whereas ‘hardness’ denotes the determination of the individual to pursue his own ends, even at communal expense. Translated into social terms, the ‘soft’ believers were those who remained committed to the mutual aid ethic of the declining precolonial society, whereas the ‘hard’ unbelievers were those who sought to seize advantage of the new opportunities offered by the colonial presence to increase their wealth and social prominence. The conflict between the social and personal imperatives was well expressed by Chief Smith Mhala, the unbelieving son of a believing father, when he said, ‘They say I am killing my father – so I would kill him before I would kill my cattle.’ Certainly, the division between amathamba and amagogotya ran much deeper than the division between belief and unbelief, and the Xhosa, in conferring these names, seem to have recognized the fact.

Trade, accumulation and impoverishment: mercantile capital and the economic transformation of Lesotho and the conquered territory, 1870–1920

Much of the early revisionist work on nineteenth century black economic history tended to concentrate on the spread of trade, without investigating relationships and processes of production. Individual commercial initiative 'peasantisation' was commonly seen as the essential element in the integration of black communities into the colonial economy. This emphasis on market responsiveness and market integration was in part a reaction to the tacit assumption in much earlier work of stasis and stagnation in the black rural economy, and in part an outgrowth of the prevailing preoccupation with underdevelopment theory as expounded in the work of A. G. Frank. 1 More recent work concerned with specific chiefdoms has concentrated rather more on the institutional, political and social dimensions of and constraints on economic behaviour. The result is that a more credible picture of the black rural economy has begun to emerge.2 A more dynamic view of trade has become possible too. Trade was not a deus ex machina, calling peasants forth out of the mesh of pre-colonial society into the light of history. It was a multi-faceted and changing field of human enterprise. Which groups of people (black and white) benefited from the growth of trading opportunities? What role did trading and transporting activities play in capital accumulation and class formation? What were the social consequences of the concentration of trade and transport in the hands of powerful firms, and the resulting decline of more decentralised commercial activities? The study of trading enterprise and of mercantile capital needs to be invested with some local historical specificity. On a political level, trading interests played a major role in the promotion of black commercial production and the protection of African-controlled resources in the

Descent groups, chiefdoms and South African historiography

A number of impressive historical studies by a group of young South African scholars has recently appeared, seeking to apply new insights in tracing the effects of the imposition of colonial rule over the indigenous peoples of the sub-continent. 1 Some of these authors, notably Slater, Hedges, Guy, Bonner, Hamilton and Wright, seek, as a starting point of their analyses, to establish the nature of the 'mutation' to chieftainship that must have occurred from a previous period in which there were no chiefs. These works focus mainly on the Nguni, especially the incorporative states of Zulu and Swazi; others, like those of Peires on the Xhosa and Delius on the Pedi, tend to assume chieftainship as given and take their analyses from there. The difficulty of reconstructing a process that occurred before written records were available has driven these writers to the work of anthropologists and there is no doubt that their studies have gained a useful cutting edge thereby. This is particularly so in their realisation of the pervasive importance of kinship in these pre-colonial societies especially the way in which marriage can be used to create and maintain alliances that may have a more political referent. But anthropological concepts are tricky things to handle; a full appreciation of the social reality 'on the ground' would seem to be a sine qua non for real insights into the dynamics of social life (something historians lack through no fault of their own) and some of the attempts to apply ethnographic models to their data have been flawed, however anthropologically sophisticated they may appear. This paper addresses itself to the crucial problem of the development of chieftainship among South African Bantu-speaking peoples from a hypothesised earlier stage and to the subsequent role of 'kinship' in the centralized polities. It does not purport to provide a definitive answer to these problems but

Societal Organization in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Cambodia

Lucien Hanks titled this symposium a “quest” into the nature of Southeast Asian societal organization prior to the eighteenth century. This paper represents such a quest in the sense of a journey of inquiry into post-Angkorean Cambodia of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to explore the basic problem posed by Hanks: whether pre-colonial society was organized into horizontal castes/classesorvertical “entourages/circles”. My attention will be directed primarily to sociopolitical organization, while David Chandler focuses more on norms and ideology.

Conscience religieuse et conscience politique en Amérique Centrale

The theoretical framework of this article is constituted by two main axes: the place of religion in the construction of the representations and its effects on social practices and the role of ideas in the social transitions. It is applied in Central America, first by an analysis of the pre-colonial societies. The place and role of religion is studied in the various types of social organizations: lineage-based societies and tributary kingdoms. The social trans formations were accompanied by new religious elements. The Spanish colonization brought a new religious system which became dominant.