CULTURE AND CHRONOLOGY IN AFRICAN HISTORY

Extract

Sources and methods in African history: spoken, written, unearthed. Edited by T. Falola and C. Jennings. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004. Pp. xxi+409. ISBN 1-58046-140-9. £50.00.

Honour in African history. By John Iliffe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xv+404. ISBN 0-521-54685-0. £16.99.

Black experience and the empire. Edited by P. Morgan and S. Hawkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xv+416. ISBN 0-19-926029-x. £39.00.

Muslim societies in African history. By D. Robinson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xx+220. ISBN 0-521-533566-x. £10.99.

The study of African culture stands in a uneasy relationship with the study of African history. Historians work by pegging people, places, and events to a place on time's ever-lengthening yardstick. For the historical discipline, time is a structure that stands behind and lends meaning to human events. Culture, by contrast, is often claimed to be timeless, the unique inheritance of a distinct group of people. Culture builders work by short-circuiting chronology. They poach events, names, clothing styles, and other inspirational elements from the past and marshal them as a tradition to be proud of. The study of cultural history enters into a field where the partitions between past and present are being trampled by the traffic of human imagination.