Category Archives: HISTORY
Buganda Clanship and Public Healing
Buganda tomb
[Photo credit: Duke Human Rights Center]
Neil Kodesh.  Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda.  Charlottesville  University of Virginia Press, 2010.  Maps. xi + 264 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-2927-9.
Get a copy : Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda
Reviewed by Ed Steinhart (Texas Tech), Published on H-Africa (November, 2010), Commissioned by Brett L. Shadle
New Methods, Old Stories from Buganda
I looked forward to reading and reviewing this book with great enthusiasm. Not simply because I have respect for the previously published work of Neil Kodesh and his tools as a researcher, i.e., the application of historical linguistics and his close reading, á la Clifford Geertz, of the collected sources in rethinking the early history of Buganda. I had a personal reason. I was enthused by his hypothesis that spirit possession movements and their mediums (or ”public healing”) were at the heart of clan development and ideology, and, as he argues, of state formation in the genesis of the Ganda kingdom and the other centralized states of the Great Lakes region.
Let me state my biases up front. After a decade of thinking and writing about state formation in western Uganda, applying evolutionary and Marxist theory, based on conflict models, I came to the conclusion that the role of spirit possession movements, e.g., Bacwezi spirit veneration and their mediums, was essential to understanding the early state development in western Uganda. With the aid of archeological research directed by Peter Robertshaw, I was able to turn my attention to the collection of oral materials on the Cwezi in and around Munsa and Kasunga in Bunyoro. Untrained in historical linguistics and limited in time and “historical imagination,” I was stymied in my efforts to push my analysis back before the twentieth century. So my excitement at seeing Kodesh’s work published was palpable. Here at last was someone who would open the doors to understanding the early history of state formation in the Uganda kingdoms.
Is that what he has accomplished? Perhaps not, but I would say he has created nothing short of a paradigm shift in our understanding of the meaning of clanship; of spirit possession; and, although he might deny it, of the theories of state formation. This involved constructing a hugely complex and sometimes contentious argument and supporting it with evidence that a decade or two ago would have been considered either suspect or merely suggestive, never probative. I will try to condense and summarize the argument and discuss the evidence, but as in all such attempts it must prove less than fulsome or satisfactory to scholars who will need to read the work itself.
In the first chapter, Kodesh begins to outline his argument and define his terms. In fact, he needs to redefine terms that have rather different meanings and connotations even among members of the Africanist community. The first term is “clan,” a term that has been around since Roman times and has a hallowed tradition in the ethnological literature of the twentieth century. The author challenges the received knowledge about the genealogical nature of clanship, proposing instead to see it as an ideological device based on the emergence at the local level of spiritual specialists attached to local shrines that extend their healing powers to create and secure the well-being of the local community of adherents.
In the next two chapters, he documents this process of clan genesis, by reexamining the well-known foundational stories of Buganda kingship, the Kintu legends, through the lens of his innovative hypothesis. He argues that rather than a conquering hero, Kintu represents the collective of spirit mediums and local healers who, beginning on a small scale as local shrine figures, develop a broader following by what he terms the process of “spiritual portability.” By this, he means the ability of the spirit possession ceremonies to transcend their local limitations and develop into a “therapeutic network” capable of centralizing widespread allegiance on the shrine site and spiritual center of the nascent clans domain. In this Kodesh has benefited greatly from the advances made by Jan Jansen and Steven Feierman in refining our understanding of spiritual healing from a private and personal quest for health and physical well-being to what is termed “public healing,” or the quest for community and group well-being: health, wealth, and fertility. Although he is cautious in limiting his argument to the nature of clanship and spirit possession and mediumship to the area that was once taught at Makerere University as “Buganda and its Neighbours,” it is not difficult to see how these terms subvert the use of the terms wherever analogous experiences have been described.
For me, the argument is persuasive, given my predilection for seeing founding “ancestors” as spiritual entities and their earthly representatives as mediums. And the evidence, oral and written, in English and Luganda, has been meticulously, even exhaustively, researched over almost a decade by Kodesh. But the evidence presented is not without its shortcomings. In using the foundational stories of Ganda clans and kings, Kodesh recognizes that it is impossible to derive a fixed chronology, and thus to do this he turns to the newer, more “scientific” study of historical linguistics, subjecting the language of the stories to linguistic analysis. It is beyond my ability to judge the value and results of this analysis, but skeptics will surely call into question the chronologies based on this still novel approach despite decades of work by Christopher Ehret and David Schoenbrun. I am more concerned with the analysis of the stories themselves rather than their language in deriving chronological sequence, process, and events. One can easily be skeptical about any one of the many interpretations offered of the Kintu legend and, in later chapters, the Cwezi and Kibuuka legends and the Buddo rites. Kodesh sometimes extols these findings as resulting from “a precious glimpse” into Ganda ideology as revealed in the legends and his interpretations as the result of “historical imagination” (p. 145). These tend to raise questions about what is missing from the chance glimpse into a long process of historical change and whether another historian’s imagination might find an equally persuasive reading of the same text. Despite these limitations, Kodesh’s ability to string together from each of the “texts” he examines a coherent, unified, and consistent interpretation in keeping with what we know of “public healing” and the workings of clanship makes his argument persuasive if not probative. For that he would need to provide us with a narrative of events and human agency that his sources do not permit. Still, I am left to marvel at how much insight and thoughtful exposition of his paradigm shifting ideas Kodesh’s opus has provided for scholars of Buganda, Uganda, and beyond.
In chapter 4, Kodesh builds on his primary insights into clanship and public healing to argue his interpretation of the processes by which healers became political leaders. For this discussion, the stories of Buganda’s hero, Kimera, and the Cwezi heroes of western Uganda are put under his analytic and insightful eye. Central to his argument is the notion that spiritual mediumship contained the ability to authorize “morally legitimate violence” (p. 99). In their efforts to bring well-being to the community, now enlarged through the wide distribution of “therapeutic networks,” spirit mediums exercised military authority as well, violating the supposed monopoly of physical force possessed by secular political leadership. He sees this moral authority as perhaps laying a foundation for the attainment of physical, secular, and political powers for the ”priesthood” of spirit mediums. In chapter 5, Kodesh pushes this argument, using the analysis of the royal rites at Buddo and the stories of the emergence of the Ganda deity (lubaale), Kibuuka, as his evidence for the reconciliation and transformation of Ganda clan ideology of public healing into the expansionist ideology of the Ganda state. The image that emerges in my mind of the spirit medium as a kind of “crusader knight” goes against everything I have seen or read on the workings of practitioners of spirit possession ceremonies. Although it is a fascinating exercise of historical imagination, it is one that I think ultimately fails. Perhaps I can suggest why?
Early in his exposition, Kodesh derides an earlier scholarship that focused on the process of state formation in the Great Lakes area to the exclusion of what he sees as more fruitful hypotheses. He sees this as coming from a naive and now discarded evolutionary theorizing about “the formation of the state” in meta-historical terms. Having disposed of it, when he encounters political violence, territorial aggrandizement, and the centralizing efforts of the Ganda dynasty, he feels compelled to link that to the processes of public healing, clan ideological development, and the peaceful growth of community that he demonstrated in the early chapters. I think this causes him to miss a more convincing interpretation: that secular authorities capitalized on the growing sense of a wider community created by the portability of public healing to enhance their own power and authority over land and people. I think that spirit mediums were not themselves military leaders, but were subordinated to royalist ambitions becoming something more like army chaplains than crusader knights. There is considerable testimony and scholarship that claims that many local practitioners of the healing arts remained hostile and opposed to secular authorities at the same time as the central shrine and clan leaders became minions of the state. This would allow us to retain the kernel of truth in seeing spirit possession as a counterweight to official statist ideology while recognizing the process by which the Bacwezi spirits and the lubaale deities became part of the Ganda state religion, a somewhat subterranean faith beneath the acceptance of Christianity and to a lesser extent Islam as religious orthodoxy in the colonial and postcolonial eras. This view would also add to Kodesh’s achievement a contribution to those passé discussions of state formation. Instead of having to choose between a strictly conflict model of state formation in which one group is able to impose its authority on the mass of the population through conquest or class, ethnic, or material advantage on the one hand, and a functionalist interpretation of the state as a system that develops out of the perceived advantages of submitting to the authority of rulers due to their the ability to provide safety, security, and well-being on the other, Kodesh has (inadvertently?) shown us that the two processes of conquest and territorial aggrandizement and of the functional provision of a sense of security and well-being can go hand in hand in the overall process of creating centralized political authority and the state.
A few minor points before I close. The book is carefully edited and well presented by the publishers. One case of some laxity can be found in the maps on page 4 and page 72 which I found misleading. They show Buganda at its largest extent as claimed by the royal and colonial authorities during most of the twentieth century. It includes the so-called “lost counties” of Bungangaizi and Buyaga, lost to Bunyoro in the cataclysmic war that the kingdom fought against British and Baganda invaders in the last decade of the nineteenth century and only returned to Bunyoro sub-sovereignty by the Museveni regime in recent years. In addition, the map on page 28, the only one to show the various Ssaza or county boundaries, shows the enlarged counties of Ssingo, Bulemezi, Gomba, and Buddu, and the new ones of Bwera and Buwekula (Mubende district, also a “lost county” but unreturned to Bunyoro), annexed by Buganda from its western neighbors by the 1900 Uganda Agreement. Yet these maps purport to describe the early and the precolonial kingdom. Either Kodesh has been careless in using a colonial era outline and boundaries for his historical maps or he has been gulled by Ganda expansionist braggadocio into accepting this bloated image of Baganda’s precolonial extent and importance.
Finally, I want to draw the reader’s attention to Kodesh’s perceptive treatment of the problem of fertility in the healing practices of Ganda (and other) spirit possession adepts. Here building on works by Richard Reid and Steven Feierman, he offers us a compelling and insightful new understanding of “the social purposes of natality,” the process by which childbirth, fertility, and fecundity are not just individual concerns but serve the community as a way of recognizing the attainment of insider social status.[1] It is a particularly well-chosen example of how the personal is political and social and how private illness is also a focus of public healing. There are many other examples throughout the book of such “precious glimpses” into the talented and disciplined historical imagination of Kodesh.
Note
[1]. Steven Feierman, “Healing as Social Criticism in the Time of Colonial Conquest,” African Studies 54, no. 1 (1995): 73-88, quoted in Kodesh, 152.
Citation: Ed Steinhart. Review of Kodesh, Neil, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. November, 2010.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30971This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Suggested Books
- Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda
- Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (African Studies)
- Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Social History of Africa Series)
Other Africa Anthropology books
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism Call for Review Articles on the Impact of Colonial Legacies on Ethnic Violence in Africa
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism Call for Review Articles
The Impact of Colonial Legacies on Ethnic Violence in Africa
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism (SEN) is currently seeking authors to write a review on the current state of the literature about the impact of colonial legacies on ethnic violence in Africa. Possible review topics include questions such as:
1. Â Â How did colonial bureaucracies differ in their impact on inter-ethnic relationships?
2. Â Â Has colonialism altered long-term state-society relationships in Africa?
3. Â Â To what extent is the current economic and political development of African countries a direct outcome of colonial legacies?
4.   Which, if any, aspect of colonialism – such as institutional design, economic or cultural policies – can be said to have increased the risk of ethnic violence in particular?
The review is intended for publication in SEN, vol. 11, no. 1 (2011). Â The deadline for submission of finished review articles is 15 October 2010. As articles will be peer reviewed before editing and publication, early submission is greatly appreciated.
This call for submission is part of SEN’s initiative to broaden the scope of reviews carried in the journal. SEN invites scholars to submit review articles of 3,000-4,000 words, covering between three and five volumes related to a specific topic. The aim is to provide an overview of the present state of the literature concerning important issues covered by the journal.
Reviewers are free to choose the titles they think most suitable to the topic and the aims of the journal, though only reviews covering volumes published within the last ten years will be considered for publication.  Please forward suggestions for reviews along with any questions or queries to the SEN book review editors at sen.reviews@lse.ac.uk.
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism (SEN) is an interdisciplinary journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN). SEN is fully peer-reviewed and publishes three volumes per year on the themes of ethnicity, nationalism, and identity, and welcomes submissions from scholars at various stages of their academic careers, including post-docs and graduate students. More information about SEN is available at http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1473-8481 and http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/ASEN/sen.html.
Africa Arts : Benin1897.com Art and the Restitution Question
A colloquium and Exhibition
The colloquium and travelling art exhibition called Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question by Benin artist Peju Layiwola took place from 8th April-30th May 2010 in the main auditorium gallery of the University of Lagos in Nigeria. You will find the site http://www.benin1897.com of interest.
The artist-artist scholar, Peju Layiwola, a Lecturer in the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos will be showing her recent works in a solo exhibition entitled Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question at the Main auditorium gallery of the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Â The exhibition will be declared open by HRH, Prince Edun Akenzua, the Enogie of Obazuwa. Â Subsequently after this opening, the exhibition will travel from Lagos through, Ibadan, Abuja and Benin till the end of the year. The exhibition will hold in Ibadan from 19 August to 19 September at the Museum of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. Â The Edo State Government will be hosting the show later at the Benin Venue and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Abuja. This exhibition comes up to mark the 50th year anniversary of Nigeria.
Benin1897.com provokes you to step into a triple-layer of discursive event as seen through the exhibition of the artist, Peju Layiwola, a colloquium and publication by nine scholars drawn from across the globe on the vexed issue of art-stripping and the restitution question in relation to Benin. Benin1897.com refers to the British ‘Punitive’ Expedition and also presents an artist’s impression of this cultural rape of Benin. It seeks to recontextualise the event of the invasion, during which the nascent British imperialists sacked an ancient government and its monarch, Ovonramwen (ruled c.1888-1897), and looted its, largely bronze and ivory, art works over a schism that seems more orchestrated than real. Till date, families from the old kingdom still speak of their losses, in human and material terms, yet our world speaks tongue-in-cheek.
Over the years, Peju Layiwola has been experimenting with forms and media ranging from terracotta, copper, bronze and gold, among others. The current exhibition could as well be described as her most ambitious; at once affective and deeply contemplative, it arrives with a 244-page publication and catalogue with 154 colour illustrations. The pathos of the Omo N’Oba’s foreword in the catalogue is unmistakable: “The year 1897 means much to me and my people; it was the year the British invaded our land and forcefully removed thousands of our bronze and ivory works from my great grandfather, Oba Ovonramwen’s Palace.â€
Such rendering also runs through Peju Layiwola, herself a scion of the Benin kingdom; A granddaughter of Oba Akenzua II (1933-1979) and a daughter of the sculptress, Princess Elizabeth Olowu.  Early sneak reviews suggest that, besides its intellectual content, this effort could equally be read as an exercise in filial cultural intervention, something not just of a professional obligation but an anxiety to fill an autobiographical void. Through this cultural action for freedom, the past seems to be indicting the present, as one off-spring of a brutish encounter is beginning to throw barbs of indictment at past abuse of power. Speaking in a tone quite similar to HRM, Peju in relation to the stolen artefacts, remarks sharply that: “They who once enjoyed the splendour of the palace are now trapped behind glass wall in foreign lands.â€
The exhibition opens with a colloquium on the issue of restitution and the repatriation of cultural property to Nigeria. Â Speakers are Professor Folarin Shyllon, Former Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan and Professor Ademola Popoola, Â Dean, Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. Â The chair of the colloquium is Professor Akin Oyebode, Faculty of Law, University of Lagos
This historical exhibition is expected to run for about two months to enable as many primary and secondary schools organize study tours. Â Workbooks for students will be made available for free at the venue.
The accompanying publication features essays by
Kwame Opoku, Commentator on Cultural Affairs.
Folarin Shyllon, Former Dean of Law, University of Ibadan, Nigeria,
Professor Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA,
Professor Freida High, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA,
Mimi Wolford, Director, Mbari Institute for Contemporary African Art, Washington DC, USA ,
Professor  Mabel Evwierhoma, University of Abuja,  Nigeria,
Benson Eluma, Cambridge University, UK,
Akinwale Onipede, University of Lagos. Nigeria,
Dr Victor Osaro Edo, University of Ibadan, Nigeria,
Dr Peju Layiwola, University of Lagos, Nigeria,
Dr Sola Olorunyomi, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, co-editor and curator.
This project is supported by The Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), the Edo State Government, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Abuja, the University of Lagos and the University of Ibadan.
More Information
For more information, visit http://www.benin1897.com
Sola Olorunyomi (curator)
Suggested Books
Benin: Royal Arts of a West African Kingdom (Art Institute of Chicago)
Benin: Kings and Rituals
Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870-1960, Book Review
Central Africa Map 1925
[Photo credit: cod_gabriel]
The following H-Africa Book Review points to an interesting book which uses a very different way of looking at colonial history in the Congo.
About the book
Osumaka Likaka.  Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870-1960.  Madison  University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. xii + 220 pp.  $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-299-23364-8.
Reviewed by Curtis Keim (Moravian College), Published on H-Africa (July, 2010), Commissioned by Brett L. Shadle
How to get a copy
Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870-1960 (Africa and the Diaspora)
Review: Names as Sources of Colonial History
In this book, Osumaka Likaka proposes and demonstrates a method for exploring the ideas and actions of Congolese villagers during the colonial era. Historians have explored texts left by colonizers, but villagers did not leave texts. They did, however, leave mnemonics of their experiences in the names they gave to individual colonists. When analyzed carefully, such names as Mundele Nioka (White Man Who Is a Snake), Pole-Pole (Go Slow), and Sikoti (Whip) become commentaries on individual colonizers and on the colonial experience. Likaka has collected hundreds of Central African names for Europeans and has investigated their meanings through dictionaries, interviews, and texts. His book explores the meanings of names in three periods: the precolonial, early colonial, and high colonial eras.
In the precolonial period, names were more than simple markers of individuality. Rather, Congolese names usually derived from specific contexts, such as a family’s situation at the time of a birth (e.g., ”there is a God”), the circumstances of birth and qualities of a baby (e.g., “unripe” for a premature birth, a name signifying birth order, or a name to chase evil spirits), and historic names and events (e.g., the name of a powerful ancestor, family, or king). Not only did these names signify social individuality, but they also situated an individual within the social world. Thus names could also be used to help integrate foreigners into village life, often following an incorporation ritual, such as blood exchange. The violence of the colonial conquest and Free State period (to 1908) is reflected in the fact that names of this era tend to emphasize violent acts: Whip, Gun, Push, Push the Beasts, Defecator, and, of course, Breaker of Rocks (Bulla Matari) for Henry Stanley. A few names show respect, such as those for some Catholic missionaries, for hard workers, or fair administrators, but the majority signify extreme disruption and force.
Under Belgian rule after 1908, more administrators came to Congo and more Africans were in contact with Europeans. High taxes and fines forced Africans to participate in the colonial system while low and fluctuating prices for agricultural products bred economic insecurity. Names, says Likaka, provide better insight than scholarly analysis into both the resulting disruption of village life and the rural contestation of the colonial system. Names such as Rush-Rush, Big Troublemaker, Arbitrary Arrest, Witch, Cannibal, Red Pepper, and Venomous Snake are comments on the colonial situation and on how colonial administrators were understood. The meaning of names could change as circumstances changed so that a name could be interpreted in one way at first and come to mean something entirely different as a colonial career progressed. Moreover, names could carry purposefully ambiguous meanings. Likaka illustrates this possibility with Monganga na Mabele, a Lingala name given to a prospector. Taken one way the name would be Earth Doctor or Earth Healer, but taken another, it would be Earth Sorcerer or Earth Polluter. Thus the violence implied in names is sometimes revealed only by village-level investigation.
One particularly revealing section of the book deals with the treatment of women by government officials, including the practice of having a ménagère, a young African woman who ran the household and provided “services … beyond the call of such duties,” and that of chiefs providing women to agents who were traveling (p. 114). These types of customs promoted abuse of African women by agents and chiefs, and some names (e.g., Womanizer, Chaser of Women, and He Who Loves Mother) reflect such “predatory sexual conduct” (p. 118).
Likaka frequently emphasizes that names represent “surreptitious forms of protest” (e.g., p. 160). He notes that through naming ”Congolese kept some measure of cultural autonomy that accurately identified and gave face to their oppressors and exploiters” (p. 159). Yet names themselves were not always surreptitious; often villagers gave two names to Europeans, one surreptitious and one public. The public name, usually a praise name, often served as a tool of negotiation between villagers and individual administrators. It could, for example, show that villagers were willing to comply with colonial policies deemed to be fair and thus signal to an administrator that he ought to treat villagers well. For his part, an administrator might “mediate paternalistic dominance” (through appropriation of his praise name (p. 161). By trying to live up to his name he could emphasize the benefits of colonialism and cooperation. Thus investigation of praise names shows how villagers participated in the construction of the colonial world and explains ”how colonial officials negotiated the boundaries of the colonial world at the village level rather than unilaterally imposing them” (p. 145).
Other administrators used terror in their negotiations with villagers. They therefore embraced violent names in their efforts to collect taxes, recruit labor, expand cash crop farming, and destroy traditional religious symbols. Likaka gives the example of Tshoma-Tshoma (He Who Burns People), a tax collector of the 1930s whose name and reputation were coercive weapons that substituted for actual corporal punishment. Yet as time passed threats of violence and actual violence could not maintain the colonial order. Thus, Likaka concludes, “the expression of accusations of suffering through cultural forms not only sapped the authority and prestige of tax collectors, agricultural officers, and territorial administrators but also tormented their consciences” (p. 156).
Likaka’s work goes significantly beyond what we already know–that Africans were not passive victims of colonial exploitation–by providing many concrete examples of ways in which Congolese villagers negotiated the colonial experience. This book will be most helpful to those scholars who want deeper insight into the Central African colonial world and those who plan to explore naming practices as a research method. Undergraduate students and general readers will find the book challenging, but I especially recommend to them chapter 2, ”Colonialism and the Village World,” which provides an excellent overview of the impact of colonialism on Central African village life.
Citation: Curtis Keim. Review of Likaka, Osumaka, _Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870-1960_.
H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. July, 2010.
URL:Â http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=26350
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa
On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa
This interesting book gives a significant contribution to the literature on North and West Africa and deserves to be widely read, not only by historians but also by anthropologists, students of religion, art historians, and others.
Ghislaine Lydon. On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2009. xxviii + 468 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-88724-3.
On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western AfricaReviewed by Amanda Rogers (Emory University)
Reconsidering the Sahara: An Argument for the Contact Zone Approach
Ghislaine Lydon’s On Trans-Saharan Trails not only fills a gap in knowledge of premodern Saharan economic history, but also bridges the cultural and historical terrains of the region in a manner relevant to a variety of disciplines. Chapter 1 introduces the central argument, presents the methodological premises, and deconstructs predominant myths plaguing the study of Saharan history. Lydon posits that Arabic literacy and Muslim religious institutional frameworks enabled the success of trans-Saharan trade despite the lack of shared currency and unified state systems, allowing for the cultivation of trust-based relationships between Muslims and Jews in a “paper economy of faith” that facilitated commercial transfers across wide distances (p. 3). The text focuses on nineteenth-century Wad Nun, a regional network of traders whose caravans circulated throughout the areas of northern and western Africa, today encompassing Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Morocco.
The author creates a historical portrait of the region in chapter 2 that challenges long-standing myths of the Sahara as a barrier between North and South. Here the author documents the impact of climate patterns on trans-Saharan trade and human geographies. The once densely populated and fertile Sahara allowed for multidirectional migration prior to progressive desertification–a process that created salt deposits later responsible for fueling long-distance trade. She also overturns the idea that Arabic sources are foreign to the continent, drawing attention to centuries-old institutions of Islamic learning scattered throughout western Africa. She further deconstructs stereotypical historiographies that artificially divide the region on the basis of race and religion, demonstrating that the Sahara served as a contact zone in which long-standing historical exchange stimulated the dissemination of culture at a rate unrecognized by most scholars.
Among the watershed moments of Saharan history were the introduction of the camel after the first century AD and the eighth-century arrival of Islam. The camel enabled the movement of goods more quickly and reliably than ever before. The religion spread the Arabic script and legal codes that would transform regional economies, settlement patterns, and culture. The formality of legal codes became particularly important in the tenth century as trade became increasingly complex. The eleventh-century Almoravid jihad spread Maliki doctrine (the most accommodating and flexible legal code) across western Africa, further facilitating commercial exchange.
Trans-Saharan commercial interaction in the eleventh through fifteenth centuries succeeded as a complex, international system of networks. Groups settled in such key market centers as Jenne and Timbuktu, passing down knowledge of caravan routes to successive generations. The desire for metal and leather, coupled with the spread of Maliki law and literacy, fueled the trade as routes gradually shifted eastward beginning in the eleventh century, leading to the establishment of permanent settlements–a trend that continued as long-distance commerce integrated the Saharan trade into a truly global economy by the nineteenth century.
The early nineteenth century witnessed an acceleration of trade along earlier Almoravid-era routes. Jihads, civil wars, and anticolonial struggles posed challenges to the trans-Saharan movement of information, yet facilitated commerce. The decline of Atlantic slave trading coincided with the importation of such new commodities as gunpowder, arms, cotton cloth, refined sugar, and green tea, even as trans-Saharan markets still demanded human cargo. Muslim jihad leaders financed their activities through caravan raids, ensuring the success of wartime economies. Civil unrest, such as Shaykh ‘Umar’s jihad, revealed the fraught relationship between Islamic legality’s idealism and the necessity of trading with “enemies” (i.e., non-Muslims). Traders and clerics justified compromises on the grounds of necessity, revealing the flexibility of Islamic legal structures.
Chapter 4 focuses on the market town of Guelmim and the Wad Nun regional trade network, located beyond the jurisdiction of the Moroccan empire, at the crossroads of North and West Africa. Caravan trade formed the basis of the local economy, both supported by and sustaining agricultural and irrigation systems. The Wad Nun region was famed not only for its location but also for its powerful local leader Shaykh Bayruk (followed by his son). Bayruk’s commercial acumen extended to dispatching envoysto African markets as well as European centers.
The market town grew exponentially under Bayruk’s protection. The demographic fabric of Guelmim was mixed, consisting of the Tikna, their sub-Saharan slaves, and political allies (Berber Jews and other Saharan partners). The Tikna defy ethnic labels; neither Berber nor Arab is an appropriate designation. Occupational diversity characterized Tikna society, although they were known above all as traders. To Lydon, the Tikna are best described not as a tribe but as a nation, with a shared territory, culture, and political system, that formed powerful diaspora communities throughout the continent.
Chapter 5 reconstructs the logistics of camel caravanning. Lydon unravels the complex mechanisms necessary to commercial success, focusing in particular on kinship connections, the importance of women’s labor, institutional trust, paper economies, market systems, and strategies negotiating the political climate. Large, trans-Saharan caravans consisted of multiple groups travelling as a fleet on an annual basis, splitting apart upon reaching the destination. Smaller caravans operated interregionally, trading subsistence goods. Extensive management of resources and preparation went into every caravan, and occupational stratification provided for a wage-based economy; shareholders (entire cities or family conglomerates) financed the journeys and members played multiple roles, from cleric/doctor and leader/sheriff to translator. Although the physical act of caravanning was undertaken by men, women’s work proved integral to commercial success. Wives managed the household and business affairs during their husbands’ long journeys. Women owned and sold property, knew their divorce rights (often using Islamic marital contracts to circumscribe polygamy), manufactured a majority of the necessary equipment, and sometimes financed the expeditions.
A paper economy underpinned the structure of caravan trade. Lydon describes the rise of literacy as a technological innovation allowing for legal transparency; debt enforcement and information flows through such written genres as letters, ledgers, and shopping lists. The influence of Islam on increasing trade is indisputable; the use of Arabic and Islamic law provided institutional mechanisms for recording and furthering trade across vast territories. Although a lack of common currency was problematic (as values and prices fluctuated), traders developed innovative strategies for negotiating fluid economic conditions. Among the most important forms of currency, Lydon records salt bars, gold and silver weights, cotton currency, cowry shells, minted currency, and paper money. Informal market rules included clan alliances, taxing, and tolls that attempted to control trade. Lydon closes with an apt comparison between premodern Saharan caravans and Indian ocean maritime trade, noting parallels in financial risk, trust-based economies, cultural interchange, the integral roles of the family, and female participation.
The economics of trust form the basis of chapter 6. Lydon argues that Islam was particularly important in ensuring social stability where political authority was not centralized. Islamic law regulated transactions where no other cohesive civil law code existed. Its principal limitation in terms of institutional development, according to the author, was the requirement of oral testimony accompanying a written document in order for it to be recognized as legitimate evidence. She also maintains that understanding trans-Saharan commerce is contingent on knowledge of regional Islamic practice and so draws from legal records to determine what constituted normative practice, mandated by Maliki law and local custom. The bulk of the chapter concerns itself with the relevance of religion to trading organization, the roles of legal service providers, legal recordings of business transactions, and contracts between financiers and their agents.
In chapter 7, Lydon paints a picture of nineteenth-century trading strategies of cost-reducing caravans operating in coalitions, facilitated in large part by transparent business transactions–themselves enabled by literacy and the paper economy of faith. She examines the limitations of trust using a legal dispute involving the death of BaghlÄ«l, a prominent Tikna trader, to illustrate the manner in which traders networked with their allies (in this case the Tikna with Awlad Bu al-Siba and Jews). According to the literature on trading networks, success was predicated on partners’ sharing the same values and free-flowing information. Lydon’s exploration of membership in the Maghribi networks indicates that regional identity was a factor along with kinship, religion, and ethnicity. Contractual documents between spouses and family members demonstrate that kinship was not sufficient to secure trust between trading partners. Religion, she argues, provided a much stronger foundation for solid business transactions since both Jews and Muslims used Maliki religious law to structure their commercial interactions.
The Wad Nun inheritance dispute vividly demonstrates what occurred when the system of collaborative long-distance trading broke down. The case itself concerns the deaths of four prominent Tikna traders, and the conflict over a weighty inheritance in gold. The high profile of the trader allowed for a uniquely comprehensive documentation of the situation; its text is, in fact, a compilation of several legal documents detailing credit transactions, currency fluctuation, and the risks involved with trading–in a single folio that contains four perspectives on a single case.
The final chapter reprises the contributions of the text and gives recommendations for future research. The study demonstrates the manner in which trade succeeded across long distances despite the lack of common currency and nation-state unity. European encroachment increased during the nineteenth century, and paper currency, new routes, and changing technology altered the face of centuries-old caravanning patterns. Lydon argues against the essentialist treatment of trade networks as static and detached from host societies, documenting the exchange of artistic goods, technologies, clothing, architecture, food, music, language, and populations in both directions across the Sahara. In terms of future research, she indicates that there are still critical discoveries to be made in sources on Maghribi Jews that “remain to be mined” (p. 385). The tension between Jewish-Muslim cooperation and anti-Jewish pogroms and expulsions is not resolved in this volume, despite the argument that Jews and Muslims cooperated in a situation of mutual trust because of the legal structures of their respective religions and because of a shared culture as “People of the Book” (p. 392). The independence of Saharan women in relation to their Muslim sisters is another topic worthy of exploration, as her example of Masna women who not only accompanied trader husbands on occasion but also conducted short-term journeys alone suggests.
However, Lydon’s work extends far beyond the historical reconstruction of trading patterns. Indeed, her research methodology may be one of the book’s most significant contributions. Following Jan Vansina (Oral Tradition as History [1985]), she argues for the equal importance of various sources, aiming to resolve the disciplinary tension between the anthropologist’s emphasis on orality and the historian’s privileging of text. She uses both types of sources effectively herself, conducting Hasaniya, French, Arabic, Wolof, Songhay, and Fulfulde interviews with retired caravanners, soliciting family histories and migration stories, to clarify text-based information on currency fluctuations and archaic terminology. She also makes an extensive review of written records–legal documents, pilgrim travelogues, tradesmen’s accounts, and personal letters from African sources; and from European ones, white slave narratives, abolitionist travelogues, and commercial records. The author’s methodological depth, reconstruction of Jewish history in Africa, comments on the Berber-Arab relationship, and deconstruction of the Sahara-as-barrier myth are particularly impressive aspects of this study. Additionally, Lydon’s lucid writing renders highly complex history enjoyable reading. The appendices, maps, and glossary are helpful and well organized–further revealing the depth of the author’s knowledge. The text is a significant contribution to the literature on North and West Africa and deserves to be widely read, not only by historians but also by anthropologists, students of religion, art historians, and others.
Citation: Amanda Rogers. Review of Lydon, Ghislaine, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa. H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews. July, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29643This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
H-AfrArts
H-Net Network for African Expressive Culture
E -Mail: H-AFRARTS@H-NET.MSU.EDUhttp://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~artsweb/
Suggested Books
- On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa
- Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community (African Studies)
Related articles
- Trans-Saharan Trade in Africa (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
CFP : Elite Formation, Consumption and Urban Spaces – Cultural Perspectives on African Decolonization
This is a Call for Papers for the conference on Elite Formation, Consumption and Urban Spaces – Cultural Perspectives on African Decolonization. Please note the deadline for abstracts 7 July 2010. There appears to be funding available for participants, so you need to get your abstracts in quickly to be considered.
Please see the website for further details or contact the organisers (see the end of the advert).
http://www.sfb-repraesentationen.de/veranstaltungen/tagungen-und-workshops/elite-formation/
Collaborative Research Centre 640 “Representations of Changing Social Ordersâ€Â Subproject African Modernity Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Berlin, Germany, 26th/27th November 2010
Venue: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, International Research Centre ”Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History”, Georgenstrasse 23, 10117 Berlin
Organizers: Regina Finsterhölzl and Daniel Tödt
Introduction: Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckert
Keynote address: Dr. Sean Nixon
Senior Discussants: N.N. // N.N.
Deadline: 7th July 2010
During the second half of the twentieth century the African continent was shaped not only by political but also by social and cultural change and crisis. In the rapidly growing cities, new social spaces and groups emerged. These actors often portrayed themselves as ‘modern’, and their emerging social practice not only mirrored this change but also played an active part in moving the boundaries of social distinction in colonial societies – between new elites, traditional elites, urban middle classes and workers as well as Europeans. This transcending of boundaries can be explored in many different ways. New marketing strategies for consumer products and luxury goods, promising a career, success, and high social status, aimed at urban elites and middle classes. Political imaginations were debated in the press; in clubs and associations an emerging collective identity could be negotiated. New cultural codes in language, clothing, behavior, leisure time and sociability evolved, at times challenging the colonial order.
Focusing on the practice and discourse of African actors, the workshop looks at decolonization not only as a political but also as a profoundly cultural process, and seeks connections between both approaches. Possible topics include advertising messages of marketing experts; the local appropriation of European consumer goods; social spaces of the urban elite and middle classes; places of sociability in the cities and debates about cultural developments and political events.
In discussions about their ongoing research projects, participants seek to explore how to analytically associate medial discourse with social practices. What are ways of handling the category ‘modernity’ in Africa – does emphasizing the view of the actors offer a prolific approach? Does it change our view of political processes in Twentieth Century Africa to follow those questions across historical caesuras like the Second World War or political independence into the history of the young postcolonial states? Does an approach like that emphasize political breaks, or does it blur the lines between them?
We welcome contributions from scholars of all disciplines working on late colonial and postcolonial Africa.
Possible topics include:
- Consumer behavior and politics of consumption in (post-)colonial settings
- Advertising and marketing in African societies
- Press and (popular) media: newspapers, magazines, radio, cinema
- New elites: cultures, discourses, places of sociability and social life; construction of gender roles, identity formation and visions of life
- Urban places/spaces of public life and emerging urban popular culture: associations, leisure activities, clubs, cinema, sports
The workshop takes the form of an extensive discussion based on papers which will be sent by the organizers to all participants beforehand. The speakers – organized in panels – will present their paper’s central points in a 10-minutes lecture followed up by a commentary and a discussion.
We invite scholars interested in presenting a paper at the workshop to send a 300-word abstract and a short biographical sketch to
african.modernity@sfb-repraesentationen.de
by 7th July 2010. Papers for the presentation must be submitted to the same email address by 31st October 2010.
The workshop will be held in English and French; however, we ask for abstracts to be in English only.
There are funds available to cover transport and accommodation for most participants. We seek to secure additional funding.
Contact information:
Regina Finsterhölzl / Daniel Tödt
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Sonderforschungsbereich 640 / Teilprojekt B2
Unter den Linden 6
D-10099 Berlin
Germanyregina.finsterhoelzl@staff.hu-berlin.de
daniel.toedt@staff.hu-berlin.deTel: +49-(0)30-2093-4984
Fax: +49-(0)30-2093-4893URL:
http://www.sfb-repraesentationen.de/veranstaltungen/tagungen-und-workshops/elite-formation/
Conference: Camel Cultures – Historical traditions, present threats and future prospects
The Camel Mini-Conference
May 26, 2010, 1:30-5:00pm
Khalili Theatre
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
As part of the preparations for the conference “Camel Cultures: Historical traditions, present threats and future prospects†there
will be a half-day mini-conference at SOAS next month, on the afternoon of Wednesday 26 May. This will give a general introduction
to camel cultures worldwide. It will also focus on specific areas of problems – for instance the survival of Wild Bactrians in Mongolia.
And it will present a summary of the Country Situation Reports which our colleagues in camel research have kindly sent to us.
Members of the public are very welcome to attend this conference. You can reserve a place by sending an e-mail to
camelconference@soas.ac.uk
www.youtube.com/soascamelconference
JOHN HARE [Wild Camel Protection Foundation]: The Wild Bactrian Camel: A critically endangered species; STEFAN SPERL [SOAS]: Images of the Camel in Arabic Poetry
SALLY WREN [ZSL]: London Zoos Edge Project
ADEL AULAQI [SOAS]: Remembering Camels
ED EMERY [SOAS]: A Documentation of World Camel Cultures: Country situation reports
Introduced by William Gervase Clarence-Smith [SOAS]
Book: Mathematics in African History and Cultures
I first discovered Paulus Gerdes’ writing through his book Drawings from Angola: Living Mathematics. I’d like now to introduce you to another book of his (written together with Ahmed Djebbar) Mathematics in African History and Cultures: An annotated Bibliography.
About Paulus Gerdes
Paulus Gerdes and Ahmed Djebbar are the chairman and secretary of the African Mathematical Union Commission on the History of Mathematics in Africa (AMUCHMA). Both are fellows of the International Academy for the History of Science.
About Mathematics in African History and Cultures
This volume constitutes an updated and extended version of the bibliography published under the same name in 2004 by the African Mathematical Union. The African Studies Association attributed the original edition a special mention in the 2006 Conover-Porter Award competition.
The book contains over 1600 bibliographic entries.
The appendices contain additional bibliographic information on
(1) mathematicians of the Diaspora,
(2) publications by Africans on the history of mathematics outside Africa,
(3) time-reckoning and astronomy in African history and cultures,
(4) string figures in Africa,
(5) examples of books published by African mathematicians,
(6) board games in Africa,
(7) research inspired by geometric aspects of the Osona tradition.
The book concludes with several indices (subject, country, region, author, ethnographic and linguistic, journal, mathematicians).
Professor Jan Persens of the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and president of the African Mathematical Union (AMU, 2000-2004) wrote the preface.
How to get a copy
Paulus Gerdes & Ahmed Djebbar: <Mathematics in African History and Cultures: An Annotated Bibliography
(430 pp., ISBN 978-1-4303-1537-7).
The book is available (both in print and as download) from www.lulu.com by searching Paulus Gerdes or by going to Gerdes’ Lulu storefront, http://stores.lulu.com/pgerdes. (It is cheaper there than at Amazon – see the link below or above for the book on Amazon.com)
Suggested Books (US)
- Drawings from Angola: Living Mathematics
- Mathematics in African History and Cultures: An Annotated Bibliography
Mapping Africa from the 9th to the 19th Century
American view of Africa 1839
[Photo credit: Edu-Tourist]
I am currently reading Mary Kingsleys book Travels in West Africa
I was interested therefore to find this call for papers for a conference on mapping Africa in the period prior to Mary Kingley’s explorations.
There is a Call for Papers for a conference will be held on ‘Mapping Africa from the 9th to the 19th Century: Construction, Transmission and Circulaton of Cartogaphic Knowledge about Europe, Arab World and Africa’, Paris – December 2nd & 3rd 2010
Co-sponsored by the CEMAf http://www.cemaf.cnrs.fr/, the National Library of France (BNF http://www.bnf.fr/) and the French comittee of Cartographyhttp://www.lecfc.fr/
Introduction
Colonial mapping of Africa during 20th century has received much insightful attention but recent research invites us to overlook the western bias by considering knowledge construction in a global and interconnected perspective while re-inserting the chronology of the colonial moment in the longue durée. We will seek to develop a history of geographical and cartographic knowledge encompassing simultaneously European, Islamic and African productions and highlighting circulation of knowledge and practices between these different spaces. Rejecting the idea of westernization of the world undertaken through maps we wish to question knowledge and discourses about the representation of African spaces. The adopted timeframe makes a voluntary break with the institutional and political eras in order to understand African cartography as a process which would neither be restricted to the ancient cartographic image of a virgin continent inhabited by lions, nor limited to the image of a vacuum that colonial cartography would eventually fill.
Medieval Western scholars inherited the concept of Africa from ancient authorities who considered it as the third part of the oikoumenÄ“, lying in dreamt and dreaded horizons. Thus, our familiar notion of the African continent proceeds from a progressive intellectual construction stemming from the Middle-Ages. However, this story shall not be reduced to a positivist construction where linear progress originating from medieval cartography would ineluctably lead to an assumingly more scientific representation of space. Although African cartography evolved through empirical discoveries as the Portuguese navigations or through epistemological breakthrough as the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s “Geographyâ€, it was also burdened by centuries-old scholarly traditions which proved difficult to re-consider in the light of experience. At the end of the nineteenth century, growing imperial cartography emptied African territories,
allowing the Europeans to divide the continent in the name of a globally homogeneous space. Indeed, we seek to reveal these different graphic representations of the African continent oscillating between discovery and oblivion and between
revelation and myth. Numerous authors, following the footsteps of J.B. Harley, analysed maps as instruments of power and stressed the symbolic dimension of mapping. Beyond this aspect, it seems epistemologically fundamental not to forget the material aspect of maps. We would like papers which will question mapping processes and which analyse techniques, knowledge and practices at the base of maps. One of the main aims of this conference will be to analyse in depth the construction and circulation of geographical knowledge between the different cultural areas. We invite paper submissions on transfers and circulation of cartographic practices and on the origin of geographical knowledge. We are interested in hearing from scholars who would study the heterogeneity of cartographic knowledge in maps originating from one or numerous cartographic traditions. We welcome papers, not only on the representation of the continent and transcontinental exchanges, but also on local or regional microhistory.
Suggested Book
- The Rediscovery of Africa, 1400-1900: Antique Maps & Illustrations
- Travels in West Africa - Mary Kingley. Kindle free book
New Africa Journal CFP : Notes and Records, An International Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies
Call for papers
The Southern Interdisciplinary Roundtable on African Studies (SIRAS), Kentucky State University, and the Editors, announces the launching of a new peer-reviewed journal titled Notes and Records: An International Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies published by Kentucky State University on a bi-annual basis.
The journal is primarily devoted to publishing original studies related to the linkages and relationships between Africans and the African Diaspora. The journal aims to focus on the varied webs of connections between the Africans and the African Diaspora in an interdisciplinary approach. Studies related to history, politics, culture, literature, gender, music/dance, globalization, war, resistance, and civil rights movements that illuminate the varied experiences of Diasporic people are welcome.
Submission and review process
Notes and Records is solely a peer-reviewed journal. Manuscripts should be prepared double-spaced, using font size 12 Times New Roman. Our in-house referencing and citation style is the Chicago Manual format.
Article submissions on topic related to African Studies should be sent to electronically to:
Raphael Chijioke Njoku
Department of History/Dept. of Pan-African Studies
University of Louisville
Louisville Kentucky, USA
Email:Â rc.njoku@louisville.edu
Article submissions on topic related to African Diaspora Studies should be sent to:
Matt Childs
Department of History
University of South Carolina, USA
Columbia, SC 29208
Email:Â childsmd@mailbox.sc.edu
All book reviews and review articles should be sent to:
Tiffany F. Jones
Department of History
California State University, San Bernardino
5500 University Parkway, SB335
San Bernardino, CA Â 92407-2397, USA
Email:Â tjones@csusb.edu
All correspondence should be addressed to:
Notes and Records
Managing Editor
Division of Behavioral Sciences and Social Sciences
Kentucky State University
Frankfort, KY
Email:Â egbunam.amadife@kysu.edu
Please visit the website which is still under construction at:
www.kysu.edu/NotesAndRecordsJournal
Book Nigeria : A History of the Yoruba People by S. Adebanji Akintoye
Yoruba panel
[Photo credit : zug55]
Yoruba Book Review
A History of the Yoruba People, S. Adebanji Akintoye, Amalion Publishing, Februrary 2010
ISBN 978-2-35926-005-2 (Hard Back), Size: 234 x 156 mm, Extent: 512 pp, photographs, maps
A History of the Yoruba People is an audacious comprehensive exploration of the founding and growth of one of the most influential groups in Africa. With a population of nearly 40 million spread across Western Africa and diaspora communities in Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America and North America, the Yoruba are one of the most researched groups emanating from Africa. Yet, to date, very few attempts have tried to grapple fully with the historical foundations and development of a group that has contributed to shaping the way African communities are analysed from prehistoric to modern times.
In this commendable book, S. Adebanji Akintoye deploys four decades of historiography research with current interpretation and analyses to present the most complete and authoritative volume since Johnson’s work of the early twentieth century. The author traces the origins of the Yoruba from the legendary mythical beginnings, development of early Yoruba society, the revolution and primacy of Ife from the tenth to fifteen centuries, the founding of Yoruba kingdoms and the power of frontiers, and the rise and fall of Oyo empire. With this intelligible narrative backdrop, Akintoye then takes the reader through agencies of change in the nineteenth century and the rise of new kingdoms, and the emergence of transcontinental diaspora communities, down to the colonial and post-colonial political histories of the twentieth century and the socio economic and political transformations of the present day.
This exceptionally lucid account gathers and imparts a wealth of research and discourses on Yoruba studies for a wider group of readership than ever before.
About the Author
Professor S. Adebanji Akintoye has been in the front line of African and Yoruba history studies for four decades and was former Director of the Institute of African Studies at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Akintoye has taught in universities in Nigeria and the United States, has written three books, chapters in many joint books, and several articles in scholarly journals. He served on the Nigerian Senate from 1979 to 1983.
How to get a copy
A History of the Yoruba People
AFRICA
http://www.amalion.net/orderinfo_en/
For more information, www.amalion.net
Suggested Books (US)
Yoruba Culture: A Philosophical Account (Yoruba Culture in Context)
The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts
Colloquial Yoruba: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)
Yoruba-English/English-Yoruba Modern Practical Dictionary
Africa Book Review : Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana
Carola Lentz.  Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana. Edinburgh  Edinburgh University Press, 2006.  xii + 346 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7486-2401-0.
Available from US Amazon Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana (International African Library S.)
Reviewed by Benjamin Talton (Temple University). Published on H-Africa (January, 2010). Commissioned by Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia
Citation: Benjamin Talton. Review of Lentz, Carola, Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. January, 2010.
URL:Â http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25685
Local approaches to the study of identity and power in Africa
This book provides one of the most significant contributions in recent years to understanding the intersection of notions of belonging and conceptions of power common among Africans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the experiences of the residents of Nandom in northwest Ghana, Lentz explicates the myriad and dynamic factors that shaped local ideas about power and belonging and the equally dynamic forces that led individuals and groups to embrace them. The book’s actor-oriented perspective of African history and politics provides a fuller understanding of African experiences in colonial and postcolonial Africa than the more common top-down approaches. Lentz explains that she has taken as her point of departure “the ‘non-self-evident nature’ of the formation of power and domination in the colonial state” (p. 9). African responses to colonial regimes had profound consequences for the concrete workings of colonial rule. Rather than singular identities, individuals and groups constructed, embraced, and utilized ethnicities, which changed over time.
The book is divided into two major parts. The first part discusses political organization in the northwest on the eve of European
colonization. Lentz describes the administrative structures and chiefdoms that the British established, as well as the strategies that British officials employed to legitimate these new institutions and incorporate Africans into them. Indirect rule laid the foundation
for the political primacy of chieftaincy and the social significance of tribal loyalty within local society. This period, from roughly 1930 to 1951, produced a Western-educated leadership that appropriated the colonial lexicon of power and belonging, but redefined them in ways that served their interests. The book’s second part explores the various ways in which chiefs, Western-educated elites, and labor migrants revised colonial ethnic and political boundaries after World War II.Research for this book involved over fifteen years of sifting through colonial and postcolonial archival documents, formal and informal group discussions, oral interviews, and local observations, among other methods. Pulling these different techniques together in a truly multidisciplinary manner enabled Lentz to capture the seemingly minor details within events and processes that ultimately proved to be critical to achieve a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social and political transformations of local society in Nandom. In addition, devoting such a long period to a single society inevitably fostered close relationships between Lentz and her informants in Ghana and, as she describes, with Ghanaian immigrants from Nandom in Germany. This intimacy enabled her to capture highly informative discussions among these groups about the categories they employ to identify who they are, and the characteristics that define these categories at different times and in different contexts.
Most studies of identity politics in Africa, particularly ethnicity, focus on colonial officials, missionaries, and Western-educated political elites. One of the signal strengths of this book is that Lentz not only presents the significance of these groups in shaping notions of power and belonging, but also skillfully brings the non-elite actors to the fore by highlighting the control they maintained over the construction and assertion of ethnic and regional affiliations. As she argues, “ethnicity” is a term that belongs “not only to the theoretical repertoire of social scientists but also to the vocabulary of chiefs, politicians, local intellectuals, labor migrants and social movements” (p. 3).
Lentz uses this multiplicity of perspectives to effectively demonstrate how the various regions, groups, sources of power, and aesthetics with which Africans identified themselves and around which they forged relationships reveal the weakness of the state, particularly the colonial state, in matters of identity politics. Africans successfully maintained autonomous domains throughout the colonial period and managed to influence the colonial discourse on power. African informants who collaborated with colonial officials deliberately and thoughtfully attempted to shape administrative practice, often with amazing success. By presenting the African colonial experience in this way, Lentz contributes to the effort among a small group of scholars to rethink Africans’ position within the colonial power structure and the meaning of power and African agency in the colonial context.
Her discussion of the different ways in which chieftaincy and labor migration served as catalysts for locally oriented change is particularly illuminating. Both were firmly established by British colonial rule, yet Africans molded them into tools for gaining access to resources, social status, and for marking group identity, in ways that the British did not anticipate. She highlights this local agency without understating the significance of European influence. She acknowledges, for example, that chieftaincy was “one of the most momentous innovations” that came out of colonial rule, for the ways in which it, “gradually re-ordered, or at least overlaid, older local concepts of belonging and authority” (p. 2). Yet part of her goal is to demonstrate that local societies did not blindly accept these changes. Rather, in ways similar to precolonial contests over power, chieftaincy was an institution that Africans continually challenged. Some contested its legitimacy, while they competed to occupy its office. Similarly, individual chiefs used a variety of means to gain greater control over economic and political resources. As the British administration transformed and expanded chieftaincy in Nandom, chiefslegitimated their claims to authority by reinterpreting oral traditions and appropriating the British “tribal” discourse. Therefore, just as British officials selectively employed historical memory as a tool to define chiefly power and mark tribal boundaries, it was also a tool that Africans used to legitimate political claims and control over resources.
Similarly, Lentz shows that migrant workers from Nandom were a major force behind the spread of Western aesthetics in northwest Ghana. Although Africans have always traveled to new areas out of economic necessity, the patterns and motivations behind labor migration changed under British colonial rule. During this time, decisive changes came to the nature of labor migration and the ways in which it intersected with ethnic categories. Ethnic affiliations became critical for organizing away from home. Ethnicity was often critical to the “idioms of solidarity” that young migrants fashioned. While this process evolved, beginning in the early 1920s, migrants who traveled to the southern Gold Coast (present-day southern Ghana) to work in the mines, railway construction, and on cocoa plantations used some of the money they earned to satisfy their changing ideas of what was considered beautiful and what constituted consumer goods. In cities and mining towns they were introduced to a new world filled with a sense of autonomy and goods not accessible in their villages. They were, as Lentz describes, “‘civilizing’ themselves, and, by sharing their experiences and views, they were also civilizing their brothers back home” (p. 138). Western consumer goods became a means to demonstrate migrants’ social and economic independence and served as proof of having traveled away from their home region. Through narratives and an analysis of these experiences Lentz helps to make clear that ethnicity was constructed both from “above” and “below.” These examples of locally driven social and political change reflect the overall weakness of the colonial state as an agent of change.
Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana is essential reading for understanding power and belonging in African society. Lentz exposes the pitfalls of neglecting the local in scholarship on the encounter between Europeans and Africans and among Africans themselves. She counteracts scholars’ tendency to place undue emphasis on the British capacity to shape the regional landscape. This is an important book that will not only influence the ways in which scholars discuss and examine power and categories of belonging in African societies, but approaches to field work as well.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.