Missionaries and the Intellectual History of Africa: A Historical Survey

Itinerario ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Etherington
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Canadian Journal ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Historical studies of Christian missionaries in Africa have not prospered in recent years. TheJournal of African History, which printed six articles on missionaries during the first ten years of its existence, has only printed two articles on the subject in the course of the last ten years. Only one book on missionaries has been published by a major university press in Britain or America since 1972. Very occasionally articles about missionaries appear in theInternational Journal of African Historical StudiesandAfrican Affairsbut never in theCanadian Journal of African Studiesor theJournal of Modern African Studies.

The Investment Policy of Life Assurance Offices.

1938 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Past History ◽  
Investment Policy ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
General Survey ◽  
Life Assurance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Towards the end of Mr. Brown's term of office as President I submitted to him the Table which appears in the appendix to this paper asking whether he thought it of sufficient interest for publication in our Transactions. Mr. Brown replied by inviting me to go further and write a paper for the Faculty on the subject of Investments using the Table as an illustration of past history. Later our present President supported this idea and the notes which I now have the honour to submit are the outcome. Apart from the fact that I dealt with the history of Life Offices' Investments at some length when addressing the Students' Society a few years ago, it seemed to me that something more than a historical survey was desirable. There are few papers in our Transactions dealing with Investment Policy and this was the subject on which I decided. I think that the correct prelude to a discussion of Investment Policy is its own history, and so I give in Part I of this paper a very short general survey of the years from 1871 to 1935. The Table in the appendix will give information additional to what is contained in my remarks to those who wish to go further.

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.

Materials for the Study of Labor and Working Class History in Italy

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kirkland
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject suggested in the title is so broad as to make it rather difficult to decide what boundaries to draw around the study of various resources available to the historian or other social scientist who sets out to study labor history, the social history of Italian workers and peasants, and the political and intellectual history of socialism and other radical movements. Keeping in mind that the following discussion is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather an indication of the necessary starting point to begin an investigation is probably the best way to understand this note.

War and Peace in International Rivalry. By Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 319p. $49.50.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-516
Author(s):  
John Vasquez
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
International Rivalry ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
The Way

When the intellectual history of international relations in- quiry is written for our time, War and Peace in International Rivalry may very well be seen as a seminal book. Along with Frank Wayman, Diehl and Goertz have been at the forefront of a major conceptual breakthrough in the way peace and war are studied. This book is their major statement of the subject and presents their most important findings.

Materials for the Study of Labor and Working Class History in Italy

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kirkland
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject suggested in the title is so broad as to make it rather difficult to decide what boundaries to draw around the study of various resources available to the historian or other social scientist who sets out to study labor history, the social history of Italian workers and peasants, and the political and intellectual history of socialism and other radical movements. Keeping in mind that the following discussion is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather an indication of the necessary starting point to begin an investigation is probably the best way to understand this note.

The Decolonization of North African History

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wansbrough
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
African History ◽  
North African ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Since independence the countries of North Africa have been occupied almost exclusively with the establishment of a new society. An important part of this activity has been directed towards a solution to the problem of symbols and values: the construction of an image of themselves for their own contemplation and for export to the world outside. One aspect of this general problem of acculturation is concerned with interpretations of history and the evaluation of one's own place in historical evolution. Starting from the premiss that North African history has largely been a monopoly of French scholarship since 1830, contemporary historical writers in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco have found it essential, before entering upon problems of historical interpretation, to rewrite their own history. Discovery of this first requisite has generated a spirit shared by all those writers preoccupied with this problem, however much they might disagree on solutions to it, which is best expressed by the phrase ‘décoloniser l'histoire’. The subject is vast, and I should like here only to indicate several of the problems, with their proposed solutions, so far treated by writers dealing with the history of Algeria.

scholarly journals Did the ancient Egyptians migrate to ancient Nigeria?

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jock M. Agai
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
West African ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
African History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Literatures concerning the history of West African peoples published from 1900 to 1970 debate�the possible migrations of the Egyptians into West Africa. Writers like Samuel Johnson and�Lucas Olumide believe that the ancient Egyptians penetrated through ancient Nigeria but Leo�Frobenius and Geoffrey Parrinder frowned at this opinion. Using the works of these early�20th century writers of West African history together with a Yoruba legend which teaches�about the origin of their earliest ancestor(s), this researcher investigates the theories that the�ancient Egyptians had contact with the ancient Nigerians and particularly with the Yorubas.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: There is an existing ideology�amongst the Yorubas and other writers of Yoruba history that the original ancestors of�the Yorubas originated in ancient Egypt hence there was migration between Egypt and�Yorubaland. This researcher contends that even if there was migration between Egypt and�Nigeria, such migration did not take place during the predynastic and dynastic period as�speculated by some scholars. The subject is open for further research.

Social Mentalities and the case of Medieval Scepticism

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Henry Adams ◽  
French Word ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The history of mentalities has now become so widely accepted that even British historians sometimes refer to it: one hardly needs to talk aboutmentalitésany more, though the French word still sounds more modish. But the subject goes back at least to Vico. AlthoughWeltanschauungandZeitgeistsound old hat by comparison withmentalitésthe words remind us that nineteenth-century German historians were interested in the different ways past societies may have viewed the world, while F. W. Maitland and Henry Adams are obvious examples of Anglophones who in their different ways tried to understand medieval ways of thought. In 1933 Jean Guitton, a Frenchman, it is true, but one who presumably came out of that older tradition of intellectual history against which Lucien Febvre set himself, wrote about the need to study thementalitéof an age and summed up what he meant by this as ‘the totality of those implicit assumptions which are imposed on us by our environment and which rule our judgements.

The Rozvi in Search of Their Past

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 13-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.N. Beach
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
African History ◽  
Great Zimbabwe ◽  
White Writers ◽  
Revival Movements ◽  
Proper Training ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
A Minor

In this paper I have three main objectives. One is to highlight and examine the work of Zimbabwean African historians under colonial rule up to the 1960s. Another is to examine the effect of the work of these historians on the traditions of the Changamire Rozvi, the rulers of the greatest state in Zimbabwe from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The third is to show how Rozvi revival movements arose in the 1950s as a minor feature of the period of African nationalism's mobilization.Although the first history of this country was published as early as 1900, it goes without saying that, in the colonial context, African history was played down and denigrated by most of the white writers on the subject for most of the colonial period. Although there was a strong local white tradition of writing on the minority Ndebele people, the majority Shona-speakers were largely ignored. Apart from a small group of local white antiquarians, whose work is only now undergoing re-evaluation, very little was published before 1960 on the history of the Shona. Yet, despite this general neglect, a small but devoted number of Africans were conscious of their lack of a written history and sought to remedy that lack. They found it a lonely and a difficult task. In a period when African education beyond certain limits was discouraged, they had neither access to proper training nor to primary sources other than traditions. If they were sometimes prone to trust unduly the missionary texts with which they grew up (so that one can read of “King Monomotapa” and “Queen Sheba” borrowing Solomon's Phoenician laborers to build Great Zimbabwe),” one can also read the work of two Duma historians who carefully cited Arabic, Portuguese, and archeological sources in secondary works.

scholarly journals Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
Amr G. Sabet
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Qur'anic Exegesis ◽  
Muslim Scholars

This book, an historical survey of the Islamic injunction to command rightand forbid wrong, a biographical exposé of Muslims who understood andpracticed this principle, and a bibliographical reference, is a welcome andtimely addition to the literature on Islamic thought. Detailed and extensive,yet not particularly difficult to read, it is equally accessible to all readers. Itsmain theme is the basic Islamic individual and communal duty to stop otherpeople from doing wrong. Cook contends that few cultures have paid suchmeticulous concern to this matter, despite the issue’s intelligibility in justabout any culture.As a central Islamic tenet, this principle could not be ignored, and yet itssociopolitical implications and consequences made it the focus of rigorousattention by Muslim scholars. The doctrine inexorably brings up the balancingand equally sacrosanct value of privacy, together with issues of knowledge,specialization, competence, and stability – the “how” of the whole matter.After all, the act of forbidding wrong was not supposed to undermine theprinciple by becoming an intrusive breach of privacy, an excursus into socialprying, or a potential justification for unmitigated rebellion against the state.The book consists of five parts comprising 20 chapters. Part I sets thedescriptive framework by elaborating the normative material found in theQur’an, Qur’anic exegesis, tradition, and biographical literature about earlyMuslims. Part II is dedicated to the Hanbali school ince its foundation byAhmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855) in Baghdad. The author traces its shiftinginfluences in Damascus and Najd, where the school continues to have a holdin the Saudi state to this day. Part III deals with the Mu‘tazilis and their Zaydiand Imami heirs, all of which, Cook contends, provide the richest documentationfor the intellectual history of forbidding wrong. The remaining Sunnischools of thought, the Khariji Ibadis, together with a chapter on al-Ghazali’stackling of the duty and another chapter pulling together the discussion ofclassical Islam, comprise Part IV. Finally, Part V surveys the duty’s saliencein modern Islamic thought and developments in both the Sunni and Imamischools and engages in a comparative exercise with this duty’s pre-Islamicantecedents and with non-Islamic cultures, including the modern West ...

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