scholarly journals “Africa for the Africans?” – Mapmaking, Lagos, and the Colonial Archive

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-296
Author(s):  
Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Population ◽  
African History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Digital Representations ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Colonial Archive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Story Maps ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Place And Identity

AbstractIn early colonial Lagos, struggles over race, place and identity were played out over ownership of land, and ended with the displacement of sections of the indigenous population. “Africa for the Africans” combines texts and maps to narrate the history of 1860s Lagos. This article demonstrates how, with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), European colonial maps can be used to analyze the significance of changing urban spatial relationships in 1860s Lagos. Though much of this analysis employs GIS, it also leans heavily on other tools for making timelines, story maps and vector diagrams. This process of creating digital representations of the past also has pedagogical applications, as these methods can be extended to the classroom for undergraduates learning about African history.

scholarly journals INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR RAFAEL SANZIO ARAÚJO DOS ANJOS – CIGA-UNB / PROJECT GEOAFRO TO NOVA ESCOLA REVIEW

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-96
Author(s):  
Rafael Sanzio Araújo dos Anjos
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Indigenous Population ◽  
The State ◽  
Brazilian Population ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rural Zone ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Colonial Brazil

The LDB (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases) of 1996 does not mention the Quilombolas Communities. We know that in some aspects the problems with the access to schools are similar to the problems faced in the riverine communities, in the rural zone, and in the indigenous population, for example. Both specified on the law. Which would be the followed orientation when we talk about quilombos?- It is important not to lose sight that exists in space and in the Brazilian population a large territory and people not part of the “Official Brazil”. In this context, we can insert the quilombolas populations, which were excluded secularly of the country and of the priority actions in the decision-making sector. Prejudice and exclusion mark the history of Africa in Brazil and the quilombos, which are considered “the past of Colonial Brazil”, had recently started to have attention of the State and one of them is in the Transitory Devices of the Federal Constituion of 1988. 

The History of Africanization and the Africanization of History

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 85-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esperanza Brizuela-García
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
American History ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Challenges

The idea of Africanization is arguably one of the most important and prevalent in African historiography and African studies. I first encountered this notion some eight years ago when I started graduate school. With a background in Mexican and Latin American history, I found it necessary to immerse myself in the historiography of Africa. It was in this process that I encountered the idea of Africanization. It was not always identified in this manner, but it was clear that historians were, in one way or another, articulating a concern about how “African” was African history.The objective of this paper is to examine the history of Africanization in African historiography. It departs from two basic premises. First, the issues that come with the idea of Africanization are more pronounced in the field of African history. When compared to other fields, such as Latin American history, this indigenizing of history is not given nearly so much attention. Second, the idea that African history needs to be Africanized has been taken for granted, and has not been critically examined. Here I will contend that the historical conditions that have framed the emergence and development of African historiography have made it necessary to emphasize the issue of Africanization. I will also argue that those conditions have changed in the past fifty years, and that the questions raised in the quest to Africanize history should be redefined in view of the new challenges for African history and of historiography at large.

scholarly journals Historians, are Archeologists Your Siblings?

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 369-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Relative Scarcity

The historian of pre-nineteenth century Africa…cannot get far without the aid of archaeology.Nevertheless, historians have good reason to be cautious about historical generalisations by archaeologists and about their own use of archaeological material…: it would be a rash historian who totally accepted the conclusions of Garlake and Huffman with the same simple-minded trust as I myself accepted the conclusions of Summers and Robinson.In the beginning, historians of Africa put great store by archeology. Was its great time depth not one of the distinctive features of the history of Africa, a condition that cannot be put aside without seriously distorting the flavor of all its history? Did not the relative scarcity and the foreign authorship of most precolonial written records render archeological sources all the more precious? Did not history and archeology both deal with the reconstruction of human societies in the past? Was the difference between them not merely the result of a division of labor based on sources, so that historical reconstruction follows in time and flows from archeological reconstruction? Such considerations explain why the Journal of African History has regularly published regional archeological surveys in order to keep historians up to date.

A Brief History of Singapore

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Tarulevicz
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides an account of Singapore's recent history, interwoven with key culinary and gastronomic developments. The conventional periodization of Singapore's history into the pre-colonial, Japanese occupation, merger, and independence eras highlights some of the forces that have shaped the nation, but it also privileges state actors. From the early colonial period onward, the ordering of space and place has been a priority that has been demonstrated at the bureaucratic, regulatory, and physical levels. In the past 200 years, Singapore has been radically remade; technological innovation has been one of the mechanisms by which order is achieved. Indeed, Singapore's engagement with the global economy—be that the economy of the British Empire or of the twenty-first-century world of food security fears—has been relentless, and food has been central to the process.

Oral Traditions: Whose History

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 165-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Spear
Keyword(s):  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Evolutionary Patterns ◽  
Initial Report ◽  
The Past ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Year ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Tradition Orale

Historians rarely pause to reflect on the history and theory of our own discipline, but it is a salutary exercise, particularly when the discipline is as young as African history. Twenty years ago a majority of African peoples emerged from colonial domination and acquired their independence. In that same year their history was also symbolically liberated from domination by the activities of Europeans in Africa through the inauguration of the Journal of African History. And one year later the new African history was given what was to become one of its dominant methodologies with the publication of Jan Vansina's De la tradition Orale.African history was to be the history of Africans, a history that had begun well before the European ‘discovery’ of Africa. The problem was sources. Western historiography was firmly based on written sources which could be arranged in sequence and analyzed to trace incremental changes and establish cause and effect relationships in evolutionary patterns of change. Unlike written documents which were recorded in the past and passed down unchanged into the present, oral traditions had to be remembered and retold through successive generations to reach the present. Their accuracy was thus subject to lapses in memory and falsification in the long chains of transmission from the initial report of the event in the past to the tradition told in the present. To overcome these problems Vansina established an elaborate and meticulous methodology by which traditions should be collected and transcribed, their chains of transmission traced and variants compared, and obvious biases and falsifications stripped off to produce primary documents suitable for writing history within the western genre.

Northern Rhodesia Tax Stamps as an Aid to Chronology

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 363-368
Author(s):  
Mwelwa C. Musambachime
Keyword(s):  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mnemonic Devices ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tax Payers

It is well known that historians studying preliterate societies, in which oral traditions are the main sources of data used in reconstructing the past, have experienced problems in ‘arranging’ events in their order of occurrence. To establish chronology, historians have used a number of aids such as mnemonic devices and occurrences of eclipses and droughts which are then correlated to the western calendar. This paper discusses an aid which, used together with oral traditions, can be very useful in reconstructing the early colonial history of Northern Rhodesia between 1910 and 1927. This aid is the tax stamp given to all tax payers during this period. To understand the importance of the tax stamps to chronology, perhaps it is best to begin with a description as to how events were recorded in the precolonial period.

scholarly journals Traces of the History of South Cisarua Plantation: Archives and Inscription of the Dutch Tomb in Kebon Jahe Cisarua-Bogor, Jawa Barat

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Lia Nuralia
Keyword(s):  
Historical Data ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Colonial Archives ◽  
Colonial Archive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Evidence

Makam Belanda (kerkhof) dengan inkripsi (prasasti) di Kebon Jahe merupakan sumber data arkeologis, menjadi petunjuk awal untuk penelusuran arsip kolonial sebagi sumber data sejarah. Sumber data sejarah dan arkeologis menjadi satu kolaborasi data yang saling melengkapi, yang dapat menjelaskan keberadaan perkebunan zaman Belanda yang sekarang sudah tidak ada. Apa dan bagaimana kedua sumber data tersebut menjadi bukti penting tentang keberadaan Perkebunan Cisarua Selatan di masa lalu, menjadi permasalahan dalam tulisan ini. Dengan demikian, tulisan ini bertujuan mengungkap jejak sejarah Perkebunan Cisarua Selatan berdasarkan arsip kolonial dan prasasti makam Belanda. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode penelitian arkeologi dengan pendekatan sejarah dan symbolic meaning, yang menerangkan tentang keberadaan Perkebunan Cisarua Selatan di masa lalu, melalui arti inskripsi dan ragam hias makam, serta identitas orang yang dimakamkan melalui sumber arsip Belanda. Hasil yang diperoleh adalah kepastian tentang keberadaan Perkebunan Cisarua Selatan di daerah Cisarua Bogor, dengan bukti fisik berupa tujuh Makam Belanda di Kampung Kebon Jahe, serta dokumen tertulis (rekaman sejarah) dalam Arsip Kolonial Indische Navorsher 1934 dan Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indie 1920 No. 72.The Dutch tomb (kerkhof) with the inscription in Kebon Jahe is the source of archaeological data, becoming the initial guidance for searching colonial archives as a source of historical data. The source of historical and archaeological data becomes a collaboration of complementary data, which could explain the existence of a now-defunct Dutch plantation. What and how these two sources of data become important evidence of the existence of South Cisarua Plantation in the past, is a problem in this paper. Thus, this paper aims to reveal traces of the history of South Cisarua Plantation based on colonial archives and inscription of the Dutch tomb. The method used archaeological research with historical approach and symbolic meaning, which explains about the existence of South Cisarua Plantation in the past, through the meaning of inscriptions and decorative graves of the tomb, as well as the identity of people buried through the source of the Dutch archives. The results obtained certainty about the existence of South Cisarua Plantation in Cisarua Bogor area, with physical evidence in the form of seven Dutch Tombs in Kampung Kebon Jahe, as well as written documents as historical record in Colonial Archive of Indische Navorsher 1934 and Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indie 1920 No. 72.

Radiocarbon Dates for Sub-Saharan Africa

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. M. Fagan
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African History ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Carbon 14 ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Absolute Dating ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Southern Rhodesia

In the belief that the results of this system of absolute dating are of considerable interest to historians and others concerned with the pre-colonial history of Africa, the Journal of African History has decided to publish from time to time lists of dates since c. 1000 B.C. which are being established for sub-Saharan Africa by the Radiocarbon (Carbon 14) method. (A description of this technique will be found in Professor F. E. Zeuner's Dating the Past.) The Rhodes-Livingstone Museum has kindly agreed to compile these lists for the Journal, and would be most grateful if those possessing relevant results could send a note of them to the Director, the Rhodes-Livingstone Museum, P.O. Box 124, Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia. The attention of readers is also drawn to the new dates for Southern Rhodesia published in the appendix to Mr Roger Summers'ps article in this number of the Journal.

The Myth of Racial Strife and Merina Kinglists: The Transformation of Texts

1977 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Berg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
African History ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Vision

Early history of the central highlands of Madagascar, called Imerina, must be written from oral literature. The first European account dates only to the late eighteenth century, long after the Merina monarchy arose, and it is not until the nineteenth century with the establishment of the London Missionary Society that detailed written sources appear. Moreover, unlike his colleagues in African history, the historian of Imerina cannot refer to archeology to test conclusions derived from oral sources since archeology in Imerina has only a few years of work behind it. Thus oral literature alone holds the key to questions about the foundations and growth of the Merina monarchy which by the mid-nineteenth century ruled all of Madagascar.In one respect, however, the historian of ancient Imerina is more fortunate. The Merina have produced perhaps the largest corpus of historical literature in any part of Africa. I intend first to describe this literature and to point out in very general terms the problems of using it. I will focus not only on the Malagasy milieu which gave rise to historical material, but also on two related aspects of European influence. First, I will show how European ideas of social evolution penetrated Merina thinking. Second, and perhaps more important because it has received such scant attention, is the effect of the introduction of writing and printing on Malagasy texts. I consider this the outstanding historiographical problem: how did writing, editing, and redacting change the Merina's own view of their distant past. Finally, to illustrate general points raised in the first section of this study, I will examine a particular historical problem, the founding of monarchy, and show how the transformation of Merina kinglists through years of editing created a new vision of the past. I see this transformation of Malagasy texts by writing as the most important European influence on the development of a Merina history.

scholarly journals Rethinking Diaspora

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjali Gera Roy
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Anglo Indian ◽  
Place And Identity

Diaspora, a term used to refer to the dispersal of Jewish people across the world, is now expanded to describe any deterritorialized or transnational population that lives in a land different from that of its origin and whose social, political and economic networks span the globe crossing national borders. Through comparing the Anglo-Indian, the Sikh and the IITian diasporas, this project proposes to deconstruct diaspora as a construct. How does the Anglo-Indian Diaspora formed by conquest and colonization compare with the Sikh diaspora created in the service of the Empire and the highly skilled IITian diaspora? What are the categories through which the three diasporas constitute themselves and how do they define the homeland? While the Anglo-Indian and the Sikh diasporas have a pre-national history originating in the Empire, the IITian diaspora is intertwined with the history of the Indian nation. The three display a wide divergence in their constitutive categories – race in Anglo-Indian, religion and ethnicity in Sikh and skills in IITian and also vary in their myths of origin. While the homeland is defined through the region and sacral place in Sikh diaspora, the IITian diaspora converges on the alma mater and nation. The constitution of the homeland is far more problematic in the case of the Anglo-Indian diaspora. While the Anglo-Indian and Sikh diasporic movements in the past were those of low-skilled workers characterized by traditional migration chain, the high-skilled IITian diaspora fits the open migration chain pattern. Yet the three diasporas intersect as communities formed through strong transnational networks that interrogate the link between space, place and identity in the imagined communities of the nation. I argue that both the mixed race Anglo-Indian narrative, the ‘pure’ discourse of the Sikh imaginary and the knowledge/skills based imagining of the IITian community compels us to rethink essential categories of belonging and identity such as race, nation, caste, ethnicity while intensifying or creating new boundaries that are mobilized in their self-fashioning.

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