In 1929 the American Antiquarian Society published an eighty-three-page manuscript that describes commercial transactions for slaves, ivory, and gold on the Gold and Slave Coasts from 1789 to 1792. George Plimpton owned this manuscript. As it includes a slave-trading ledger of the schooner Swallow, Plimpton entitled the manuscript “The Journal of an African Slaver.” The “journal” is one of the few published documents in the English language that specifies financial transactions for slaves between European and African traders on the coast of Africa during the late eighteenth century.

In his four-page introduction to the journal Plimpton stated that:

The name of the ship engaged in the traffic was the schooner ‘Swallow,’ Capt. John Johnston, 1790-1792. There is a reference to a previous voyage when ‘Captain Peacock had her,’ also some abstracts of accounts kept by Capt. David McEleheran in 1789 of trade in gold, slaves and ivory on the Gold Coast. None of these names can be identified as to locality, and there is, of course, the possibility, especially taking into consideration the English nature of the cargo bartered, that the vessel was an English slaver.

The journal was included with some mid-nineteenth century South Carolina plantation accounts when it was purchased at an auction in New York, thus suggesting to Plimpton that the journal's author was perhaps a “South Carolinian who made this trip to Africa.”

In this research note I will identify the various vessels and traders mentioned in this manuscript by referring to the data-set I have assembled from other sources concerning the slave trade during this period. We will seethat Plimpton's “journal” is a set of account books owned by the Gold Coast agents of London and Havre merchant William Collow. I then will discuss the importance of Collow as a merchant and shipowner in the late eighteenth-century British slave trade.

Jan Jansen has substantially advanced our understanding of the “status discourse” between polities, in Mande and far beyond, through a new approach to one of the more common types of historical evidence: genealogy. At the core of his paper is an analysis of genealogical metaphors used in status discourse, combined with an awareness of the principles of lineage segmentation; he uncovered a nexus of ideology and social structure. The quintessential observation made by Jansen is that “the status of recent immigration and the position of the youngest brother is very prestigious” and that both ultimately emanate from the “principles of patrilocal settlement and patrilineal descent.”

Once this is accepted, everything falls into line: the unexpected claim for the status of ‘younger brother,’ as well as the contradictory genealogies of ‘related’ lineages. His observation has escaped the attention of previous research (including my own) because it contravenes our expectation that younger age, factual or figurative, always signifies subordination under ‘older’ authority. Oral traditions from different ethnic groups in Senegambia confirm Jansen and attest to Kangaba's historical prestige.

Jansen's paper should be read in conjunction with his “The Younger Brother and the Stranger,” in which he studies the social basis of status discourse in more detail and also touches on the symbolism employed. He has overcome a crucial error in a long tradition of historical writing on the western Sudan: the taking of genealogy at face value, whereas genealogy reflects the recent state of relationship between persons or groups rather than factual ancestry.

Each of the following three papers is devoted to one or more aspect of conducting field research in Zambia. In this sense they form a complementary set, although this result was more fortuitous than planned. The intent had been to collect together several short papers which would address themselves to the manifold facets of fieldwork in African historical research. It is hoped that it will still be possible to do this, and it may be useful to discuss some (though by no means all) of the considerations that might merit attention in this regard:

1] With the increasing difficulties in securing research clearance in Africa, it is important -- perhaps even imperative -- that intending field workers develop viable back-up research proposals. The ways in which such alternatives can be applied could probably be illustrated best by one or two case experiences; for, if anything, it appears that the ability to pursue first intentions will diminish in the future.

2] Does Professor Kashoki's paper describe views which are representative of general opinion? Is there widespread disenchantment within Africa -- with the research attitudes and behavior of field researchers; with their commitments to the concerns of host countries; and with their care in assuring that the fruits of their labors are made easily available for local consumption? The views of other African historians, archivists, and librarians can help to reinforce or modify the arguments noted by Professor Kashoki, both by focusing on issues he has raised and by introducing new ones.

3] Graduate students (not to mention other researchers) cannot always function intellectually as freely as they might wish. They have always had to defer to the opinions and interests of their supervisors and their graduate faculty, as well as to the suspected attitudes of relevant funding agencies. Now it appears that the research priorities of host governments must be added to this litany, may even come to dominate it, as we begin to hear of “research brigades” and similar expedients. Whether this should be seen as good or bad will depend on a number of specific variables. In either instance, however, the short- and long-term ramifications of this new phenomenon need to be discussed.

In February of 1976 the American Historical Association published the first issue of Recently Published Articles. RPA is a current, comprehensive bibliography of scholarly historical articles in all fields, and replaces the bibliographical sections previously published in the American Historical Review under the same title. RPA is issued three times a year and, at present, lists nearly 15,000 citations annually, of which about one-eighth relate to Africa -- a number second only to that for the United States.

The creation of RPA resulted from the re-organization of the American Historical Association and its various services. A survey of American Historical Review subscribers revealed a desire by the majority for a more extensive and balanced book review section and most of the space left in the Review by the departure of the bibliography has in fact been filled by additional book reviews, including more in African history. Surprisingly -- and perhaps distressingly -- only a minority of those surveyed indicated that they consulted the bibliographical sections with any regularity. Because of this, and because the growth of the bibliographies during the 1970s (reflecting both increased output and better coverage) was adding steadily to the cost of producing the Review, it was decided to transfer these costs directly to the users -- a practice the reader will recognize as becoming more common. At the same time it was decided to intensify efforts at better and more extensive coverage, in particular to include more articles outside history proper which nevertheless have interest to historians.

It has been in the tradition of this journal to elaborate a methodological apparatus to scrutinize the evidence of older written sources on African history. However, for various reasons, we tend to apply a different standard to recent sources, apparently considering them reliable per se because they developed in the same enlightened context of Western intellectual life as our own. Book reviews, nearly the only refuge for Western self criticism, sometimes cannot achieve it, as I will show.

The source on which I would like to comment is a dissertation completed at Boston University in 1984. It is based on oral traditions and for this reason, strictly speaking, a written source itself, apart from a number of published as well as archival sources, whose way of quotation will be re-examined below at first. The interviews were conducted by the author in 1974/75 (Morrissey 1984:225) with north Cameroonian Wandala and Shuwa Arab informants, some of whom I became acquainted with during my own fieldwork in 1984.1 would argue, though, that the following comments are not solely of interest to scholars specializing in northern Cameroon.

It might seem to some rather heavy-handed to criticize so closely a doctoral dissertation, but American dissertations are freely available to interested parties in both photocopy and microfilm. As a result they are commonly cited in other works in much the same way as more formally published studies. This being the case, it seems reasonable to submit them to the same scrutiny as any other work in the public domain. I should point out that I conducted my own fieldwork in ignorance of Morrissey's work, becoming aware of the latter only after my return from the field in 1984.

Neither Chad (or Tchad) nor the Central African Republic (or République Centrafricaine) has been much studied by American scholars. Because of this the following report discusses more than merely the archival resources of the two countries; it is hoped that the more practical aspects of research there that are discussed will render it more useful.

The Institut Tchadien des Sciences Humaines (henceforth INTSH) supervises research projects in Chad which are concerned with the social sciences—as defined by French scholarship. Research authorization is granted by the Director of the Institut, Boîte Postale 503, N'Djaména. Anyone intending to pursue research in Chad should have a letter of authorization from the Institut before leaving the United States—if possible, even before applying for a Chadian visa, since this will expedite the granting of such a visa.

Most temporary accommodations in N'Djaména (like other African countries) tend to be expensive; the only inexpensive hostel is operated by the Peace Corps for its own members. Sometimes, though, researchers have been allowed temporary accommodation pending the location of other housing. Enquiries should be sent to: Corps de la Paix, Boîte Postale 260, N'Djaména. In addition, temporary housing may sometimes be had with researchers at the Organisation pour des recherches scientifiques et techniques d'Outre-Mer, or ORSTOM.

For a long stay it is wise to rent a house. While the Peace Corps or Embassy personnel may be of some assistance, Muslim merchants near the main market should be of more help in finding a house in the African part of the town. Rents in N'Djaména are high: a mud brick house with electricity and running water will run about $175 monthly.

Over twenty years ago, I started writing a doctoral dissertation on the history of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, an exercise that has had enduring professional and personal repercussions. Tuvalu is an atoll archipelago near the junction of the equator and the international date line, and is identified on older maps as the southern portion of a British dependency, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony—now the independent nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu respectively. The nine Tuvalu islands are tiny even by atoll standards, an aggregate 26km2 spread over 360 nautical miles. During the nineteenth century Tuvalu was incorporated into the world economy by a succession of European influences. The early explorers gave way in 1821 to whalers, who, in turn, were superseded by copra traders during the 1850s. From mid-century the pace of events quickened, with the traders being joined by the very occasional labor recruiter and, more to the point, by a concerted missionary drive.

Accomplished largely through the instrumentality of resident Samoan pastors, missionization was comprehensive in scope and repressive in character. From the 1870s the occasional naval vessel visited the group and a British protectorate was declared in 1892, interspersed by the occasional scientific expedition and a brief and disastrous interlude in 1863 when some of the atolls were caught in the final stages of the Peruvian slave trade. The dominant European influences were the familiar triad of commerce, the cross, and the flag, with the primacy of trade giving way to missionary supremacy which, in turn, was displaced in local importance by a British colonial administration.

Like most kids of my age and time, I was a pack rat in my youth, collecting toy cars, trucks, and tanks; comic books; baseball cards; postage stamps, and … chronological tables. Unfortunately for my later financial well-being, I kept—and kept up with—only the last. I remember little specific about the primal urge to collect these lists, but I remember enough to recall that I was entirely naive at the beginning. I wanted exotic names, exotic places, and exotic dates. Most of all I wanted dates. It did not disturb me in the least when I found out that Arakan was founded in 2666 BC, and that a complete list of its rulers until 1784 A.D. had been preserved for my edification. A strictly successive treatment of the thirty dynasties of pharaonic Egypt was infinitely preferable to new-fangled efforts to reduce this chronology by over 2000 years by shortening reigns and insisting that more than one dynasty ruled at a time. It seemed only natural to me that scores of European bishoprics were able to trace their episcopal lines right back to immediately post-New Testament times. I must have seen historical time as an infinitely replicable vacuum that needed to be filled

This idyll did not last very long—a sea change was all too soon in arriving. It probably was not an epiphany, but a gradual realization that I was encountering other lists of the same offices that were replete with gaps, disagreements, and question marks rather than dates.

The chronology of the history of the Benin kingdom is seen by many historians as clarified in the main back to the thirteenth century and even earlier. Apart from the reports of European travelers and missionaries and some information given by merchants, this chronology is based mainly on the Benin kinglist for the periods before 1897. This list names 38 kings (obas) of Benin and covers past centuries with seemingly great accuracy (see table 1).

In spite of the many names of former obas and the pretended accuracy of the list's time-frame, it would be problematic to take it as historically factual since it cannot be corroborated by any documentation before the mid-nineteenth century. The data concerning the period before this time are almost exclusively based on the writings of the Benin amateur historian Jacob Egharevba. In his work Egharevba reported on important events in the oral traditions of Benin and connected the reign of former kings with specific years. In doing so he forced his African oral material into a linear European time scheme and into the framework specified by European written sources.

Unfortunately, very few historians have as yet critically analyzed the chronological data for Benin. This is surprising, since the great Benin researcher Bradbury noted some time ago that Egharevba's “chronological conclusions have been accepted too uncritically, especially for the period up to the first European contact” (Bradbury 1959:285f) and have been seen as historical facts without any further consideration ever since. Neither the question of so-called “genealogical parasitism,” nor any of the other fundamental problems which arise when studying kinglists have been addressed.

Sangalan is located in northeast Guinea in the région of MaliYambering. It was a federation of groups of villages, consisting of three taane (kafo in Malinke, districts or groups of villages): Dombiya, Uyukha, and Djulabaya. To these three taane correspond three ethnic subgroups, the Dombiyanne, Uyukhanne, and Djulabayanne. The Dombiyanne were mostly the Keita families; the Uyukhanne the Camara; and the Djulabayanne the Nyakhasso. The people of Sangalan are Dialonka—those living in Sangalan are called the Sangalanka. They are originally all from Dialonkadougou, at first a province of the Soso empire founded and ruled by Sumanguru Kante, and later a province of the empire of Mali, created by Sundiata Keita in the thirteenth century. The Sangalanka call themselves “Sosoe Forine” (Old Sosoe), the Sosoe who lived on the high mountains (dialon) of both the Soso and Manden empires. They call the other Sosoe, living along the Guinean coast, Bani Sosone (Sosoe of the Coast, near the water). The Soso Forine and Bani Sosone lived in the Futa Jallon and were driven away by the Fulani invaders in the eighteenth century.

In 1983 a note in History in Africa described a survey of Portuguese archive documents on West Africa organized by Vice-Admiral Avelino Teixeira da Mota but left stranded by his untimely death in 1982. The task of continuing the project—by extending the survey, completing the transcription of the survey documents and other relevant material, and publishing the transcripts—has latterly been taken up by the present successor of Teixeira da Mota in the directorship of the same scholarly unit, Dr Maria Emilia Madeira Santos. The first two volumes of Portugaliae Monuments Africana appeared in 1993 and 1995, volume 3 has been at the press since 1997, and the material for at least two more volumes is in advanced preparation. As the title shows, the geographical range of the series is wider than that of the original survey. The documents appear in Portuguese (or occasionally Latin). But a brief summary of each document is supplied in French and English, as well as in Portuguese, making the contents to some extent accessible even to those African historians who do not read (late-medieval) Portuguese. Having translated into English some thousand or so of these document summaries, I now discuss some of my problems in translating, and hence certain problems for African historians in using this material.

PMA earns all those responsible the highest commendation for undertaking this difficult project; it is invaluable for that period of early African-European contacts it progressively covers; and it deserves the support of the scholarly community. The comments that follow are intended to make it better known and to explain some of its features, advantages and limitations.

The appeal of history to us all is in the last analysis poetic. But the poetry of history does not consist of imagination roaming at-large, but of imagination pursuing the fact and fastening upon it. That which compels the historian to “scorn delights and live laborious days” is the ardour of his own curiosity to know what really happened long ago in that land of mystery which we call the past.

This paper is about qualitative research methods, and thus more about hard labor than about poetry and imagination. But to those scholars to whom the above citation gives meaning there is a clear connection between hard labour, imagination and poetry. As scholars, we are looking for facts, and looking for facts can be hard work. As scholars, we also know that facts must be ascribed with meaning in order to become sources, a process of interpretation which demands both imagination and poetry.

I will present some of the challenges we face when doing anthropological historical research in Africa, and I will argue that the tools of qualitative methods will have to be sharpened and modified with this particular goal in mind. The main aim will be to discuss how we can acquire information in an African setting by analyzing the role of the interview as a communicative event. Other important topics to be treated are African oral tradition, the culture and tradition (the metacommunicative competence) of the respondents, and their use of metaphors to convey meaning.

The kingdom of Allada in the seventeenth century was an important supplier of slaves for the trans-Atlantic trade, and also an object of Christian missionary activity, but the earlier history of its interactions with Europeans is poorly documented. It has previously been assumed that the first direct Portuguese contact with the Allada area occurred in 1553. However, recently discovered documents in Portuguese archives correct this view. These comprise two petitions to the King of Portugal from an ambassador of the King of Allada currently in Lisbon: although undated, the content of one of them enables it to be dated to either 1544 or 1555, more probably the former; given the time which the ambassador had already spent in Portugal, his original dispatch from Allada occurred in 1540/1541 or 1551/1552. The petitions document the Allada king’s interest in the establishment of a Christian church in his realm, as well as commercial relations.

The introduction explores the ways in which Jan Vansina wrote Africa’s earlier history. It argues that he overturned paradigmatic knowledge in part through policing boundaries between disciplines, but always in search of new knowledge. The boundaries enclosed different kinds of labor in producing evidence about the past. Each kind of labor teaches the scholar something about place, responsibility, and imagination. These afterlives of working in Africa informed Vansina’s interdisciplinarian publishing strategies, shape-shifting them into the imaginative, and prompting new generations of scholars to chart their own paths.

My case study is taken from the northern Igbo of Nigeria and focuses on the village-group of Ihuwe, which name is today rendered as Ihube— thanks to its Anglicization during the period of colonial rule. This not-withstanding, the people still call themselves “Ihuwe,” the form I use in this paper. The Northern Igbo area, especially the area around Awka, Orlu, and Okigwe, is commonly regarded as the heartland of Igbo culture and civilization. Ihuwe, in that portion of old Okigwe Division known today as Okigwe Local Government Area (LGA), lies in a region of southern Nigeria that has been identified as having witnessed human activity from very early times, at least from the period of Acheulean culture. It also lies on the geographically and historically prominent Nsukka-Udi-Okigwe cuesta, which archeology tells us entered the Iron Age quite early in African history, no later than about the eighth century BCE. We are thus dealing with one of the areas of ancient human occupation, as well as an area known for its dense demographic profile. It is these features–early human settlement and occupation with its attendant consequence of severely attenuated oral history, dense demographic profile, and being the cradle land of Igbo culture—that help to define the Northern Igbo and mark them out from the Western, Eastern, Southern, and North-Eastern Igbo, believed to be relatively more recent descendants from them.

Perhaps another feature that calls for mention here is their political culture. Although, like their other Igbo kinsmen, they could boast of having evolved only micro-, and therefore weak, states (what social anthropologists of the colonial period refused to refer to as states), they had their own special model of these micro-states.