In recent years anthropologists and literary critics, most importantly George Stocking Jr. (1983), James Clifford and George E. Marcus (1986), and Clifford Geertz (1987), have led the way to a closer reading of the writings of early anthropologists and a fuller exploration of the intellectual climates in which they were working. As the founder of African studies in this country, Melville J. Herskovits is of considerable importance in terms of related scholarship in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Although an anthropologist by training, Herskovits had a major impact on the development of African scholarship in many other disciplines—from the history of art to folklore to political and economic history. Herskovits' field research methodologies and orientations thus potentially are of considerable significance. Despite Herskovits' critical role in African studies, there has been relatively little scholarly interest to date in his African research methodologies.

Herskovits' unpublished field notes of his Dahomey research provide us with an inside look at the principal field strategies and orientations of this important African scholar. These field materials today are housed in the archives of three different research institutions: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City; the library of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; and the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The largest grouping of Herskovits' Dahomey field materials (journals, financial records, artifact collection, photographs, correspondence) are at the Schomburg Center. At Northwestern University are found various diary extracts, song transcriptions, and the bulk of Herskovits' early and later correspondence. Recordings that Herskovits made in the course of the Dahomey research are located at Indiana University.

In this paper I discuss known and probable migrations and areas of settlement of proto-Mande and Mande-speaking groups during eight climate periods spanning the past eight millennia. Recent scholarship concerning west African climate patterns in past times has made feasible provisional periodizations of west African history that are independent of European-derived chronologies. Concomitantly, these historical periodizations offer provocative insights regarding such long-term processes as human migrations and settlement patterns; the diffusion of cultigens and domestic animals; the development of long- distance trade routes; and the use of horse cavalry in warfare.

The provisional historical schema comprising eight climate periods and Map 1 depicting ecological zones are principally derived from the pioneering studies of Sharon E. Nicholson and of Susan and Roderick McIntosh, and from the analyses I have presented elsewhere: (1) The Atlantic Wet Phase which extended from ca. 5500 to ca. 2500 B.C., was succeeded by (2) a two-and-a-half millennia-long period of desiccation. (3) There was a six centuries-long transiton period between ca. 300 B.C. and ca. 300 A.D., during the latter part of which ecological conditions improved sufficiently to permit the development of intra- and trans- Saharan commerce. (4) Four centuries of moderate rainfall ca. 300-ca. 700, and (5) four centuries of abundant rainfall ca. 700-ca. 1100, were followed by (6) a four centuries long dry period extending from ca. 1100 to ca. 1500. (7) A brief wet period, ca. 1500-ca. 1630, preceded (8) a two centuries-long dry period lasting until ca. 1860.

“An only son must never die in war until the end of the world.”

(Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila,” 1:396)

Discussing the significance of Kande Kamara's oral history of West African experiences in the First World War, Joe Harris Lunn observes that, although historians have begun to examine the effects of that war on west Africa, their studies are mostly based on written sources, “and therefore shed little light on the lived reality of the war for the African masses whose perceptions of their experiences were never recorded.” Of particular value then, is the oral history provided by the Guinean veteran Kande Kamara, offering as it does an opportunity for assessing the European war's impact on west Africans. Lunn finds, however, that west African soldiers who served in France during the First World War have left very few records of either their wartime experiences or its effects on their later lives. The text by the late Malian hunters' singer Seydou Camara that is presented here helps to redress this lamentable deficiency because, although it is a step or two removed from the sort of firsthand eyewitness account offered by Kande Kamara, it provides valuable support for and confirmation of certain elements of Kande Kamara's testimony. Composed and sung by Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila” provides us with an oral traditional counterpart to Kande Kamara's firsthand account.

Tandis qu'hommes et femmes de statut libre rivalisent pour la maîtrise des traditions orales relatives à leur histoire, les informations d'origine servile restent un domaine féminin par excellence. Ces données orales méritent une attention particuliére puisqu'elles concernent directement ou non une part importante de la population. D'aprés le Rapport sur l'esclavage dans le cercle du Sénégal-Niger (1904), les esclaves représentaient 40% de la population du cercle de Nioro (Klein, 1983:52) et 50% de celle de Gunbu (Meillassoux 1975:225), deux circonscriptions administratives au coeur du royaume de Jaara. Comment dans la société patrilinéaire soninke, ceux qui, habituellement considérés comme dépourvus de famillle, d'ancêtres et d'enfants, socialement parlant, produisentils, conservent-ils et transmettent-ils leurs propres documents d'histoire? En se limitant au cas des femmes, quel est leur impact sur ce document et le rapport de celui-ci avec l'appareil idéologique des dominants? La réponse à ces questions requiert une réflexion préalable sur: le probléme de la documentation, le cadre chronologique, le cadre spatial et le lieu social en questions.

La bibliographie concernant les femmes africaines en tant que source de l'histoire de leur société est d'une pauvreté désarmante. La mode des études féminines des années 1970 n'est pas passée par là. Sosne dans son étude consacrée aux Shi, une société patrilinéaire de l'est du Zaïre (Sosne 1979:225), démontre clairement ce qu'elle appelle la vision androgyne du monde grâce à une étude des structures politiques du pays. Perrot (1982:8,11) insiste sur le rôle des femmes en tant qu'érudites dans le domaine des traditions orales du Ndenye de Côte d'Ivoire. A propos du Bénin, Palau-Marti affirme que “les traditions les plus secrètes se transmettaient par les femmes dont quelques unes étaient les vraies historiennes du Dahomey” (Palau-Marti 1964:139). Barber souligne le rôle des femmes âgées dans la conservation des oríkì (textes à la fois littéraires et historiques) chez les Yoruba du Nigéria (Barber 1987:5). Selon l'auteur, ces personnages sont de loin plus compétentes que les hommes. Strobel (1983:119) insiste sur le rôle des femmes esclaves dans la transmission de l'idéologie qui soutend l'organisation de la société à Mombasa. A propos des généalogies “de maître en élève” (“academic genealogy”) des intellectuels de Sokoto, Boyd et Last (1985:298) constatent que lorsqu'il s'agit des hommes, on cite rarement les femmes dont ils tiennent leurs connaissances.

In the following commentary on three Hausa poems presented in Part I of this essay, I attempt to analyze each poem, paying greatest attention to Wakar Talauci da Wadata. First I take up the matter of the dating of the poem from internal evidence and follow that with some general observations on the problems and methods involved in the analysis. The detailed commentary on Wakar Talauci da Wadata follows, divided into four sections: an examination of the objective conditions of poverty and wealth as they are presented in the poem; a discussion of the subjective evaluation of the condition of poverty and the condition of wealth, as Darho observed it among the Hausa; an examination of the way in which women are represented in the poem; and a discussion of the proposition that there are contradictions in the poem itself and in the social position of the poet. After discussing Wakar Madugu Yahaya and Wakar Abinda, I try to place Wakar Talauci da Wadata in the comparative context of several Western European literary products and one Arabic. The object of this excursus is to show that in the literature of other cultures, more or less distant in both time and space, there have been concerns and preoccupations that are essentially the same as those that occupied the mind of Darho.

Unlike the 1903 version of the poem used by Pilaszewicz and Tahir/Goody, the version from the Mischlich collection is undated, but there is internal evidence to suggest that the poem was composed no earlier than 1874/75 and probably between 1896 and 1910.

Construire l'histoire d'un pays quand on ne dispose que de la mémoire et des traditions orales est une situation familière à l'anthropologue. Y parvenir est une entreprise qui n'est pas toujours couronnée de succès. Le principal moyen de remonter dans le passé est fourni par les généalogies de personnes illustres qui ont été transmises de diverses façons. Puis de les comparer entre elles en les posant sur une même échelle temporelle. Les écueils sont nombreux. Plus le personnage est important, plus ses héritiers, ou ses détracteurs tendent à fournir des informations divergentes. Un exemple célèbre est la généalogie des rois du Dahomey qui est loin d'être entièrement claire.

L'histoire des Téké tsaayi intéresse une zone plus restreinte, un carré d'environ 100 kilomètres de côté situé à l'ouest des sources de l'Ogooué dans la forêt qui couvre les monts du Chaillu. Les autres groupes téké se trouvent dans les savanes situées à l'est de cette zone, à l'exception des Téké laali. Le travail de comparaison mené sur 13 généalogies a permis de remonter jusqu'aux débuts du 18e siècle et d'esquisser, sur près de trois siècles, un rythme temporel marqué d'abord par la métallurgie, puis par les guerres, puis par la traite et l'invention du masque Kidumu. Chacune des périodes a suscité un ou plusieurs héros dont le souvenir était diversement conservé en 1966-72. Parfois l'énumeration tourne court et cela renseigne aussi sur la faible profondeur de la mémoire. Ces généalogies constituent des documents exceptionnels qui contrastent avec l'épaisseur bien mince du passé dans une société ol'on arrive généralement aux temps immobiles dès que l'on dépasse la 3e génération, comme je le montre aussi dans ce travail.

“Les mentalités, une histoire ambiguë,” tel est le titre d'un article de Jacques Le Goff (1974), qui constituera le point de départ d'une réflexion sur la profondeur et la dimension historiques des sources qui peuvent faire déceler des attitudes et des mentalités, à travers des témoignages, récits autobiographiques, ou encore des interviews. Si la perception d'un changement de mentalites ou d'attitudes profondes peut paraître “ambiguë”--parce que faiblement perceptible--, certains faits cependant traduisent des signes de changement dans la mentalité d'un groupe social, voire d'une société globalement soumise à une contrainte externe, comme par exemple lors de la colonisation au XXe siècle en Afrique noire.

Aujourd'hui, nous nous intéressons à l'histoire du dedans, à l'histoire vécue par les acteurs eux-mêmes. En confrontant ces diverses historiographies, arriverons-nous à mieux comprendre ce que doit être l'Histoire par rapport à ce que l'on nous apprend à l'école (Ferro 1981/1983), à ce que l'on ressent en temps qu'historien et à ce qui est réellement vécu (Feltz 1987)? Peut-être que la perception du fait colonial par ceux qui l'ont vécu du de-dans permettra de mieux cerner les effets de ce temps de l'histoire, la recherche de techniques quant à la collecte des sources est certes utile, elle l'est moins quand on cherche à déceler une dialectique irréversible à travers certaines données conjecturelles (Verhaegen 1986; Cannel/ Kahn 1974).

It is well known that indigenous contemporary written documentation exists for the precolonial and early colonial history of some of the coastal societies of South-Eastern Nigeria. The best known example is Old Calabar, for which there exists most notably the diary of Antera Duke, covering the years 1785-88, a document brought from Old Calabar to Britain already during the nineteenth century. More recently John Latham has discovered additional material of a similar character still preserved locally in Old Calabar, principally the Black Davis House Book (containing material dating from the 1830s onwards), the papers of Coco Bassey (including diaries covering the years 1878-89), and the papers of E. O. Offiong (comprising trade ledgers, court records, and letter books relating to the period 1885-1907). In the Niger Delta S. J. S. Cookey, for his biography of King Jaja of Opobo, was able to use contemporary documents in Jaja's own papers, including correspondence from the late 1860s onwards. In the case of the neighboring community of Bonny (from which Jaja seceded to found Opobo after a civil war in 1869), while earlier historians have alluded to the existence of indigenous written documentation, they have done so only in very general terms and without any indication of the quantity or nature of this material.

Photographs are attracting growing interest among Africanists. A bibliographical essay in the Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 7, drew attention to the value and availability of photographs of colonial Africa. The critical use of such documents has been discussed in this journal by Christraud Geary, and historical photographs have been a prominent feature of several recent publications. In May 1988 an international workshop at SOAS considered the problems and possibilities of using photographs as sources for African history. It is hoped that a larger conference on photographs and Africa will be convened in the near future. Meanwhile, the papers for the SOAS meeting have been distributed to interested scholars, librarians, and archivists. A version of the present paper forms part of this collection; since there is as yet no recommendable history of photography in Africa, it seemed worthwhile to republish this modest sketch of the more important developments in the practice and uses of photography in Africa. We conclude with the Second World War, since to have pursued the subject further would have asked too much of the authors' knowledge and readers' patience.

It may be helpful to begin with a reminder of the major technical developments in photography during the nineteenth century. The daguerreotype, introduced in 1839, yielded only a single image, on a sensitized metal plate. The calotype, introduced two years later, yielded multiple paper positives from a paper negative, but like the daguerreotype required exposures of one to three minutes.

Research on oral history tends to be concerned with two very different types of sources. I would refer to them as oral traditions and oral data. Oral traditions are formally preserved, not always as narratives, but in some fixed form. They can, for example, be passed on as songs, as drum names, or as proverbs. They are part of the collective memory of the group and get passed on from generation to generation. They serve a legitimating function and must of necessity be analyzed in terms of who and what they legitimate. There is also a large body of data at any time which individuals hold in memory, data about individual experience, data that consist essentially of things that people have seen and experienced. It is not preserved in any formal way because it is not deliberately structured for legitimation or communication. Popular writers in western countries have tapped this rather rich treasure trove in recent years to write about the Depression, two World Wars, and the Spanish Civil War among other things. Oral tradition is limited in what it passes on, and once the transition from generation to generation is made, the amount of data is forever circumscribed.

Oral data are largely concerned with people describing things they experienced. They are valid primarily during the lifetime of those being interrogated. They are absolutely essential for the reconstruction of the history of peoples without history, those low down in any social order who have little to legitimate.

The Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomy of Robert Norris, first published in 1789, is a history of the west African kingdom of Dahomey during the reign of Tegbesu (“Bossa”), dated by Norris to 1732-1774 (though the correct dates are now known to be 1740-1774). In addition to its separate publication in 1789, Norris' material was also included, in a revised form, in the more comprehensive History of Dahomy compiled by Archibald Dalzel, published in 1793. This second version incorporates numerous detailed alterations and elaborations, mainly stylistic but occasionally relating to matters of substance; according to the Editor of Dalzel's History, these revisions were the work of Norris himself, although he had died before the work was brought to publication. This incorporation of Norris' work into that of Dalzel has had the effect of diminishing his reputation and perceived importance, since his material has usually been cited through (and by implication attributed to) Dalzel, rather than directly under his own name. His Memoirs, however, clearly have immense historiographical significance, as the first serious attempt by a European to write the history of a west African state.

In addition to its purely historiographical interest, Norris' work remains an important source for the history of eighteenth-century Dahomey. Its value as a historical source, however, is problematical. On the one hand, Norris, as a slave trader who had operated in Dahomey for several years, had claims to be an exceptionally well-informed observer of Dahomian affairs.

English trade with Guinea in west Africa was regulated during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by royal letters patent. In 1631 Charles I issued a patent which entitled the Guinea Company, headed by Sir Nicholas Crispe, to the monopoly of trade from Cape Blanco to the Cape of Good Hope for a period of thirty-one years. The Guinea Company continued to operate during the Interregnum in spite of increased competition both from freelance merchants, known as interlopers, and from rival European powers. The Council of State in 1651 decided to allow the monopoly to run for a further fourteen years, but restricted the Company to an area lying between two points set twenty leagues to the north of Cormantine, its headquarters in Guinea, and twenty leagues south of the fort at Sierra Leone, leaving the remainder of the coast open to all English traders.

The East India Company was eager to gain a part in the Guinea trade because ships calling there on the way to India could exchange a cargo of European manufactured goods for a consignment of gold and ivory which was used to sustain operations at the factories in India. In this way the Company had less need to export large quantities of bullion from England to India, a practice which was both heavily criticized and formally restricted before 1660. In 1649 the East India Company reached an agreement with the Assada adventurers that the Guinea and East India trades should be united, but decided that this scheme could not be effected immediately.

In Paris 1931, the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme published the pamphlet, Un forfait colonial: l'esclavage en Mauritanie. Its author was a man best known in the context of radical Dahomean politics, Louis Hunkanrin, who had cause to know Mauritania better than he would have liked during ten years spent there in political exile. This exposé of slavery in Mauritania is a curious concoction -- general information damning the morals, values and work ethic of Moorish society; selected cases of injustice drawn from his personal experience; a lengthy report by a medical official despairing of Mauritania's poor food production and its relation to the slave situation; an eloquent letter to the Governor of Mauritania presenting a defense of his own actions; brutal attacks on particular French administrators; all with a large dose of French patriotism liberally sprinkled throughout. As stated in his preface, Hunkanrin's aim in exposing the crimes committed against the blacks in Mauritania was none other than “to illuminate the true face of France in this territory where the French flag flies—emblem of peace, liberty, and justice: the France of the Rights of Man, maternal France, good, generous and just,… It is well understood that I am only concerned to serve the interests of France and humanity.”

In a book in which he gave an account of the reign of Tegbesu (1740-1774), Robert Norris, the late eighteenth-century slave trader historian of Dahomey, included a brief sketch of the career of Tegbesu's father, Agaja (1718-1740), the conqueror of Allada and Whydah. Norris portrayed Agaja as a nation-builder who brought the Dahomeans and the people of Allada and Whydah, “the conquerors and the conquered,” to think of themselves as “one people.” The author claimed that Agaja saw to it after the conquest that “every part of his dominions became replenished with people.” He also argued that Agaja's new subjects were so pleased with his policy of reconciliation that they made no “efforts to regain their independence.”

Norris' account of Agaja has been very influential, especially since the 1960s when I. A. Akinjogbin not only endorsed it but added both that Dahomey was founded by a group of patriotic anti-slave trade Aja and that post-1740 Dahomey was a European-like nation state. Norris' argument, as embellished by Akinjogbin, was reproduced in a number of authoritative 1970s works and appears to have retained its appeal even though Akinjogbin's addenda have been shown to be at odds with the evidence. Norris' original thesis nevertheless is just as flawed as Akinjogbin's various supplementary claims. Agaja was far from having been a nation-builder; still less was he a far sighted statesman who saw to it that “every part of his dominions became replenished with people.”

The primary geographical focus for the historical study of Islam in west Africa, until recently, was the western and central Sudan. As the often-cited J. S. Trimingham wrote (1962:7) “The Guinea States in the south lie outside our sphere since they were not in contact with the Sudan states and were uninfluenced by Islam.” Trimingham's conclusion paralleled those of early twentieth-century French and English scholars who dealt with the issue of Islam in west Africa. Paul Marty's voluminous studies, dating from the second decade of this century, dealt with the Islamic and Muslim-influenced traditions of the various peoples of Francophone west Africa. H. R. Palmer, one of the early British writers of this century, concentrated on the northern territories of Nigeria, where Islam has enjoyed a long history.

Two factors explain the focus of these scholars on the western and central Sudan. First, the better known Islamic-influenced kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornu were all located in this region. Second, the Islamic states of the western and central Sudan, in particular, presented the greatest problem to both the French and the British during the early periods of the colonial era. Therefore, the focus on this area may have been motivated by the desire of these writers to understand the Islamic factor. Whatever the motivation of writers like Marty, Palmer, and their associates, Trimingham was wrong to conclude that the “the Guinea States” (i.e., the peoples living in the coastal forest belt) were “uninfluenced by Islam.”

Around 1850 the peoples of central Africa from Duala to the Kunene River and from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes shared a common view of the universe and a common political ideology. This included assumptions about roles, statuses, symbols, values, and indeed the very notion of legitimate authority. Among the plethora of symbols connected with these views were the leopard or the lion, the sun, the anvil, and the drum, symbolizing respectively the leader as predator, protector, forger of society, and the voice of all. Obviously, in each case the common political ideology was expressed in slightly different views, reflecting the impact of differential historical processes on different peoples. But the common core persisted. The gigantic extent of this phenomenon, encompassing an area equal to two-thirds of the continental United States, baffles the mind. How did it come about? Such a common tradition certainly did not arise independently in each of the hundreds of political communities that existed then. However absorbent and stable this mental political constellation was, it must have taken shape over a profound time depth. How and as a result of what did this happen? Is it even possible to answer such queries in a part of the world that did not generate written records until a few centuries ago or less?

This paper addresses this question: how can one trace the social construction of such a common constellation over great time depths and over great regional scale? All the peoples involved are agriculturalists and the political repertory with which we are concerned could not easily exist in its known form outside sedentary societies.

One of the prevalent theories in Malawian historiography is that primitive accumulation created a unified capitalist class which worked in concert with the colonial state and sowed the seeds of poverty by viciously exploiting the indigenous community. This proposition relies almost exclusively on official sources, and scholars have rarely looked for unofficial material to corroborate it. Such a lacuna is regrettable because unofficial data indicate that Malawi's colonial capitalists were often a badly fragmented class antagonistic to the colonial administration. Moreover, the capitalists' divisions paralyzed them politically and thus allowed the state to enact legislation which was often antithetical to capitalists' ambitions and prerequisites. As a result, the capitalists often found themselves economically imperiled. Few documents demonstrate this trend better than the colony's most important expatriate newspaper, The Nyasaland Times.

The Nyasaland Times first appeared in 1895. Published by R.S. Hynde at the Blantyre Mission press, it immediately declared that “we are devoted to the planting interests of the community—the interest, we venture to state, on which the commercial prosperity of B.C.A. [British Central Africa] depends.” That the planters needed a voice devoted to them can scarcely be denied. By 1895 both the administration and the missions had established papers which were often hostile to the planters. In particular, Sir Harry Johnston's British Central African Gazette reflected the Commissioner's almost feral antipathy towards the planters in its editorials.

As part of a projected series of edited early Portuguese texts on Guinea, in the early 1960s the late Vice-Admiral Avelino Teixeira da Mota began to assemble, partly from archives, documents for a volume he intended to call Jesuit Reports. As it happened, many of the documents, especially those from Jesuit sources, were published in 1968 by another Portuguese scholar, the late P. Antońio Brásio. But Teixeira da Mota did not abandon his project, partly because he considered that Brásio did not always take account of all copies of a document and all variant readings, and partly because Brásio was unable to accompany the documents with informed Africanist annotation. In the 1970s Teixeira da Mota sent me his own collection of documents to translate into English— and also so that I could ultimately contribute part of their annotation. My translations were completed just before Teixeira da Mota died in 1982, and I have since translated a number of other documents, all from Brásio, which help to round out the picture. Not all of the documents were written by the Jesuits themselves, but most were.

When it became clear that the publication of Teixeira da Mota's series would proceed at best very slowly, I began to publish those of the translations which were of material in the public domain, beginning with the material printed in the early seventeenth century by Guerreiro. Since much of the material related to Sierra Leone, I published in the Africana Research Bulletin of the Institute of African Studies at Freetown, and am much indebted to the organizers of the journal for providing an outlet.

This manuscript is a history of the family of Muhammad Buji, who led a migration from the town of Bunkari in Argungu (Sokoto State, Nigeria) to Wurno, sometime capital of the Sokoto Caliphate. It is important as an illustration of the ongoing historiographical tradition of Islamic west Africa in local languages, and as evidence of the strong historical sense and continuing production of historical documents by certain of the scholars of the area.

Wurno was constructed ca. 1830 by Muhammad Bello, Sultan of Sokoto and successor of Usuman dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate. Its primary purpose was to defend Sokoto from the northeast, and it replaced Magarya as the principal ribat (frontier fortification) and residence of Bello in that area. It also became the staging point for the annual dry season campaigns against the Gobirawa and other enemies of the Caliphate. When the Caliph himself was resident there, it became the capital of the state. Barth referred to it as such in his account of his travels. Wurno was the capital with more and more frequency as the nineteenth century wore on.