J.D. Fage 1921–2002

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
Executive Council ◽  
European Continent ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The University

In John Fage's company one never felt subject to demands that his eminence be ritually acknowledged. Somehow he did not require this kind of reassurance and managed to be utterly free of pomp. Though he was the founder of our Birmingham Centre of West African Studies, he did not expect the rest of us to see its headship as his natural preserve. In the 1970s he unsuccessfully tried to modify the conditions of his university appointment so as to pass on the directorship to each of his CWAS colleagues in rotation, independent of rank. He was a man of elegant deportment and refined manners, cultivating what now seems an old-worldly reticence about his feelings and achievements. (At the time that oh so very British style could already induce some amusement in barbarians from, say, the European continent, South Africa, or South America. But some other styles that have become current since make one remember the old dispensation with nostalgic fondness).All he did was done effortlessly, or so his behavior seemed to suggest: running CWAS, being a family man, co-founding (1960) and co-editing (up to 1973) with Roland Oliver the Journal of African History, co-editing (also with Oliver) the Cambridge History of Africa, authoring successful and much reprinted books, supervising theses, teaching undergraduates, helping to launch and edit the UNESCO General History of Africa, serving as the first Honorary Secretary of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom, serving in the Executive Council of the International African Institute, fulfilling increasingly senior functions in the government of the University of Birmingham, and this is not a complete list.

Corrections

1966 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-168
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Local History ◽  
African History ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
National Archives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
City State ◽  
The University

Professor Philip D. Curtin of the University of Wisconsin has written to correct certain points made by Dr John E. Flint in his review of The Small Brave City State: A History of Nembe-Brass in the Niger Delta, by Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa (Journal, VI, 2(1965), 248). He points out that Mr Alagoa's book was a preliminary study in local history which was written in Nigeria while Mr Alagoa was in the service of the National Archives there. Since then, Dr Alagoa has completed a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Wisconsin, but it is not yet published. Dr Flint also accepts Professor Curtin's correction of his observation about ‘the difficulty of pursuing research in such a topic [of African history] from a base in the U.S.A.’ This would not, in any case, apply to the University of Wisconsin, since Wisconsin normally requires Ph.D. candidates in African history to conduct their research in Africa and in appropriate European archives.Dr Robert Rotberg of Harvard and Herr Hans-Jürgen Greschat of the Philipps-Universität, Marburg, have pointed out an inaccurate compression of events in my article on ‘Witnesses and Watchtower in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland’. As some of your readers may come to accept my chronology of the imprisonment of Elliott Kenani Kamwana Chirwa (p. 92, n.4), perhaps I should set matters straight. I said that he was arrested, deported to Mauritius in June 1909, released by March 1914 and re-deported around December 1916. In fact, Kamwana was given the choice of restriction to Nyasaland's Southern Province or removal to South Africa in 1909. He seems to have returned in 1910, was sent back to South Africa, which this time refused him entry, and next went to Chinde in Mozambique, where he stayed until the outbreak of war, when the Portuguese repatriated him. The British once more detained him in the Mlanje District and after the Chilembwe revolt sent Kamwana and others back to Mauritius for about a year and then to the Seychelles until 1937. These additional details concerning his peregrinations are interesting in themselves and I thank my two correspondents for supplying them.

Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-578
Author(s):  
John Fage
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Economic History ◽  
West African ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African History ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
The University ◽  
Assistant Lecturer ◽  
Full Operation

The Centre of West African Studies has been in full operation since October 1964. Its staff is as follows: J. D. Fage, M.A., Ph.D. (Director and Professor of African History); P. C. Lloyd, M.A., B.Sc., D.Phil. (Senior Lecturer in Sociology); D. Rimmer, B.A. (Lecturer in Economics); R. E. Bradbury, B.A., Ph.D. (Lecturer in Social Anthropology); K. W. J. Post, M.A. (Lecturer in Political Science); A. G. Hopkins, B.A., Ph.D. (Assistant Lecturer in Economic History). A number of other members of the University of Birmingham are closely associated with the work of the Centre, including D. W. J. Johnson, M.A., B.Litt. (History); R. E. Wraith, C.B.E., B.Com. (Local Government); W. B. Morgan, M.A., Ph.D., and R. P. Moss, B.Sc., Ph.D. (Geography); and R. H. F. Dalton, B.A. (Education).

Reflections on the Genesis of Anglophone African History After World War II

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 15-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Fage
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Review Article ◽  
African History ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Afrique Centrale ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

It is forty-five years ago since Roland Oliver was appointed to a lectureship in the “Tribal History of East Africa” at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). This was certainly the first appointment in African history in a university in the United Kingdom, and very likely the first such in a university anywhere in the world. In 1986 he retired from the Chair of African History, to which the University had advanced him in 1963 (an event which may very well have been another first), and he spent the first years of his retirement writing his book The African Experience: Major Themes in African History From Earliest Times to the Present.It was entirely appropriate that the International Journal of African Historical Studies should have asked Jan Vansina to review this book, for his activities in the field of African history go back almost as far as Oliver's; forty-one years have now passed since Vansina began his academic career as a researcher at the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale (sc. the then Belgian territories in Africa). The review article which Vansina has written begins by paying generous tribute to Oliver's pioneer achievements as a leading actor in virtually every activity needed for the understanding and the furtherance of African history—researcher, teacher, author, editor, and organizer. His first general conclusion (393) on The African Experience is that Oliver's book “lives up to its promise” as “‘a work of reflection’ on the substance of African history, the distillation of his experience of forty (sic) years.”

Religion & Theology with Gerhard van den Heever

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 25-26
Author(s):  
Gerhard Van den Heever
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Current Frame ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Discourse Formation ◽  
The University

Gerhard van den Heever presents the history of the journal Religion & Theology, from its start as an in-house theological journal for the University of South Africa to its current frame as an international publication for the transdisciplinary study of religion and theology as discourse formation. Van den Heever presents insights into the journal’s management and shares insights for those interested in submitting their research.

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.

Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu (1500-1700): A Critical Survey

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 245-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
West African ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early History ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
African History ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Original Information

The history of the Yoruba, as is well known, is very poorly documented from contemporary European sources prior to the nineteenth century, in comparison with their neighbors Benin to the east and the states of the ‘Slave Coast’ (Allada, Whydah, and Dahomey) to the west. There is, however, one Yoruba kingdom which features in contemporary European sources from quite early times, and for which at least intermittent documentation extends through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is the kingdom of Ijebu in southern Yorubaland. The availability of contemporary European documentation for the early history of Ijebu is especially valuable since the historical traditions of Ijebu itself do not appear to be very rich.Such, at least, is the impression given by published accounts of Ijebu history: although a large number of kings of Ijebu are recalled, thereby suggesting for the kingdom a considerable antiquity, and though there is some recollection locally of early contacts with the Portuguese, it does not seem that Ijebu traditions record much in the way of a detailed narrative of the kingdom's early history. At the same time, the European sources referring to Ijebu present considerable problems of interpretation, particularly with regard to establishing how far successive references to the kingdom constitute new original information rather than merely copying a limited range of early sources, and consideration of them helps to illuminate the character of early European sources for west African history in general. For these reasons, it seems a useful exercise to pull together all the available early European source material relating to Ijebu down to the late seventeenth century.

The First Women’s Studies Research Centre: A History of Women’s Studies and Its Progenitors

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-233
Author(s):  
Maithreyi Krishnaraj
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The University

The beginning of Women’s Studies has a special history in India. It owes its origin not only to some stalwarts but also to the historical times in which its birth took place. Its location in the SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai was at the initiative of Dr Neera Desai, a Professor of Sociology at that university. Her own work on women’s issues in her Master’s thesis and her involvement in the women’s movement gave her the background for envisaging that a women’s university should engage with analysis of women’s condition and not just teach women other academic disciplines. It was with this motive, that the Research Centre for Women’s Studies was set up in 1974, a year before the publication of the report Towards Equality of the Government of India. The university - originally begun at the initiative of the educationist Shri Dhondo Kheshav Karve received a handsome grant from the industrialist Shri Damodar Thackersey and got named after his mother Shrimathi Nathibai Damodar Thackersey hereafter SNDT Women’s University. The Centre with the involvement of able and farsighted administrators at this university spearheaded the development of this Centre, which became the torch bearer for raising women’s issues.

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.

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