Some Perceptions on the Writing of African History: 1948-1992

Itinerario ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
Local History ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
University College ◽  
The University ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Colonial Office

African history was really born on a specific date and its parent was Prof. Phillips, then heading the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), in London. It began when the learned Collins and Asquith commissions advocated the upgrading of schools in four different parts of the continent (Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan and Uganda) to University College status whereupon the Colonial Office looked for a university in Great Britain to guarantee programming and quality and passed that job unto the University of London which in turn promptly passed much of the burden unto SOAS. Although no funds were attached to this Phillips accepted and eventually did get funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, to the greater glory of SOAS. Meanwhile however he had visited East Africa and he had been struck there in 1947 by the absence of ‘native histories’ such as one finds so thickly on the ground in his usual playing ground India. He decided to hire an historian of Africa who would both supervise the development of history departments in the new colleges and work to remedy this lack of local history.

The SOAS School of African History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shobana Shankar
Keyword(s):  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Bachelor Of Arts ◽  
International Standing ◽  
The University

Founded in 1916, the School of African Studies at the University of London provided training in African, Asian, and Middle Eastern languages and history to colonial officers. Over more than a century, the transformation of African history at the SOAS from an imperial discipline to one centered on African experiences reveals challenges in the creation, use, and dissemination of ideas, or the politics of knowledge. The school, as the only institution of higher learning in Europe focused on Africa, Asia, and Middle East, has had to perform a balancing act between scholars’ motivation to challenge academic skeptics and racists who dismissed Africa and British governmental, political, and economic priorities that valued “practical education.” In 1948, the University of London took steps to create an international standing by affiliating several institutions in Africa. Over several decades, many historians preferred to teach in Africa because the climate in Britain was far less open to African history. SOAS convened international conferences in 1953, 1957, and 1961 that established the reputation of African history at the SOAS. Research presented at these meetings were published in the first volume of the Journal of African History with a subsidy from the Rockefeller Foundation. The first volumes of the journal were focused on oral history, historical linguistics, archaeology, and political developments in precolonial Africa, topics covered extensively at SOAS. SOAS grew considerably up until 1975, when area studies all over Britain underwent a period of contraction. Despite economic and personnel cuts, SOAS continued research and teaching especially on precolonial Africa, which has periodically been feared to be subsumed by modern history and not fitting into visions for “practical” courses. In the late 1980s, the school introduced an interdisciplinary bachelor of arts degree in African studies that requires African language study because so many students were specializing in Africa without it. This measure reveals the lasting commitment to engaging African voices. African history at the SOAS has also continued to be a humanistic enterprise, and in 2002, it was reorganized into the School of Religion, History, and Philosophies. It remains to be seen how Brexit might affect higher education. While cuts in education could hurt African studies more than other area studies as they often have, strained relations between Britain and continental Europe might make African countries more important to Britain in the coming years.

Building an African Department of History at Makerere, 1950–1972

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 253-282
Author(s):  
Carol Sicherman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
World War ◽  
Technical School ◽  
The World ◽  
University College ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
New Generation

Once upon a time, in the euphoric 1960s, a new generation of historians of Africa undertook to write the history of Africa and Africans through the ages, overturning previous Western suppositions that Africa had no precolonial history worth investigating. As J.D. Hargreaves has written, they were “excited by the challenge to apply their craft to the continent which Hegel had judged ‘no historical part of the world’.” Among the explorers of the largely unmapped territories of prccoloniai history were members of the Makerere Department of History and their students, many of whom were to become professional historians. This essay sketches the construction of a modern Department of History at Makerere, a task requiring a new curriculum and a new staff.Makerere began in 1922 as a government technical school for Africans. Courses in medicine and teacher training soon replaced the original more “vocational” instruction in carpentry, surveying, mechanics, and the like. The next several decades saw an evolution into a “higher college,” preparing students from all over East Africa for examinations leading to university degrees. By the late 1930s, a top-level commission recommended fulfilment of an early forecast that Makerere would one day become a university college. In the meantime, as World War II put off any substantial changes, it loomed ever greater as the legendary “mountain” that only the best could ascend. In 1950, finally fulfilling the forecast, Makerere joined in a Special Relationship with the University of London to become the University College of East Africa.

University of East Africa Social Science Conference

1968 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-106
Author(s):  
John Lonsdale
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Full Advantage ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Dar Es Salaam ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Meeting Room ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Conference ◽  
The University

This year it was the turn of Dar es Salaam to act as host to the social scientists, now numbering nearly 200, from the three constituent colleges of the University of East Africa, together with visitors from the Universities of Malawi and Zambia, from Tanzanian government ministries, and places as widely separated as Kinshasa and Leeds. As at last year's conference (reported by Martin Lowenkopf in The Journal of Modern African Studies, IV, 4, 1966), the discussions were trans-disciplinary, even if the tight timetable of parallel disciplinary panels prevented delegates from taking full advantage of this. This reporter was unable to range far beyond the history meeting-room.

scholarly journals Recordings of African Popular Music: A Valuable Source for Historians of Africa

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 389-391
Author(s):  
Veit Arlt ◽  
Ernst Lichtenhahn
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Swiss Society ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Basel Mission ◽  
The University

In December 2002 the Swiss Society for Ethnomusicology (CH-EM), in cooperation with the Centre for African Studies of the University of Basel and with mission 21 (formerly Basel Mission), organized a symposium on the theme “Popular Music from Ghana: Historical Records as a Contribution to the Study of African History and Culture.” The conference concluded a week of lectures, workshops, and concerts with Ghanaian “palmwine” and Highlife music, a program which was realized in cooperation with the Basel Academy of Music and the two associations, Ghana Popular Music 1931-1957 and Scientific African e.V. The papers read at the symposium are, in our opinion, of interest to the readers of History in Africa, as they discuss a specific kind of source and the methodological issues pertaining to it, as well as offer insights into possible themes of research, giving some idea of the potential of the recordings as a source. We present the contributions here in a slightly revised form, and, in order to round off the discussion, we have invited the curators of two further sound collections of interest to scholars working on African history, to describe their archives.

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