scholarly journals Examining Text Sediments–Commending a Pioneer Historian as an “African Herodotus”: On the Making of the New Annotated Edition of C.C. Reindorf's History of the Gold Coast and Asante

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 231-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz Hauser-Renner

In 1995 Paul Jenkins, the former Basel Mission archivist, called my attention to Carl Christian Reindorf's Ga manuscripts kept at the archives in Basel, knowing that I had lived and worked in Ghana in the 1980s and that I was able to speak, read, and write the Gã language of Accra and its neigborhood. Of course I already knew Reindorf and his monumental History of the Gold Coast and Asante published in 1895 in English, as I had written my M.A. thesis on late-nineteenth-century Asante history, and moreover I was very much interested in Gã history. Reindorf's massive, substantive, and systematic work about the people of modern southern Ghana may be considered a pioneering intellectual achievement because it was one of the first large-scale historical work about an African region written by an African, and it was highly innovative, including both written sources and oral historical narratives and new methods for the reconstruction of African history. The book has excited interest ever since it first appeared 110 years ago because it contains an unrivaled wealth of information on the history and culture of southern Ghana.A preliminary glimpse at the two heaps of folios wrapped with linen ropes at the archives showed that the manuscripts-none of them were dated–contained two different versions of the English History. That day, when I first laid my hands on the brownish, carefully folded papers, I was not aware that I was to embark on an intensive period of arduous transcribing and translating work (sometimes “lost in translation”), breathtaking archival investigations in Basel, London, and Accra, and of an exciting text/context research (unearthing sources, excavating informants, examining sediments/versions).

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Tiasa Basu Roy

For centuries, various denominations of Christian missionaries have contributed in a larger way towards the spread of Christianity among the people of Indian sub-continent. Each Church had its own principles of preaching the word of God and undertook welfare activities in and around the mission-stations. From establishing schools to providing medical aids, the Christian missionaries were involved in constant perseverance to improve the ‘indigenous’ societies not only in terms of amenities and opportunities, but also in spiritual aspects. Despite conversion being the prime motive, every Mission prepared ground on which their undertakings found meanings and made an impact over people’s lives. These endeavours, combining missiological and theological discourses, brought hope and success to the missionaries, and in our case study, the Basel Mission added to the history of the Christian Mission while operating in the coastal and hilly districts of Kerala during the 19th and the 20th centuries. Predominantly following the trait of Pietism, the Basel Mission emphasised practical matters more than doctrine, which was evident in the Mission activities among the Thiyyas and the Badagas of Malabar and Nilgiris, respectively. Along with addressing issues like the caste system and spreading education in the ‘backward’ regions, the most remarkable contribution of the Basel Mission established the ‘prototype’ of industries which was part of the ‘praxis practice’ model. It aimed at self-sufficiency and provided a livelihood for a number of people who otherwise had no honourable means of subsistence. Moreover, conversion in Kerala was a combination of ‘self-transformation’ and active participation which resulted in ‘enculturation’ and inception of ‘modernity’ in the region. Finally, this article shows that works of the Basel Mission weaved together its theological and missiological ideologies which determined its exclusivity as a Church denomination.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Henrik Örnebring

In the past decade, journalism scholars have started to pay more attention to what we could call the precarization of journalism: the large-scale job loss and downsizing in the news industry (at least in some countries) combined with a shift towards per-item payment and production rather than permanent, full-time contracts. In this essay, I sketch a history of precarious work in journalism and argue that unionization and other forms of collective action in journalism has been made difficult due to an occupational culture rooted in this history of journalism as precarious work. In the late nineteenth century, journalists in many countries opted to create a culture rather than to create unions, and this culture has both mythologized and naturalized precarity. In Australia, however, journalists unionized early. Besides the obvious structural factors behind this early unionization, the existence of the cultural figure of the larrikin and its role in journalistic culture likely also encouraged taking on a worker identity rather than seeking to emulate an upper-class writerly culture.


Author(s):  
Gerard P. Loughlin

This chapter considers how gay identities—and so gay affections—were formed in the course of the twentieth century, building on the late nineteenth-century invention of the ‘homosexual’. It also considers earlier construals of same-sex affections and the people who had them, the soft men and hard women of the first century and the sodomites of the eleventh. It thus sketches a history of continuities and discontinuities, of overlapping identities and emotional possibilities. The chapter resists the assumption that gay identity and experience can be reduced to anything less than the multitude of gay people, and that as Christians they have to give an account of themselves in a way that heterosexual Christians do not. The chapter warns against thinking gay identity undone in Christ.


1955 ◽  
Vol 35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aileen Fox

Bantham is a small hamlet in the parish of Thurlestone, South Devon, five miles west of the market town of Kingsbridge. During the summer of 1953, to celebrate the Coronation, the people of Bantham arranged an exhibition of material illustrating their village history. The organizer, Mrs. Clare Fox, asked me to help in identifying some ‘Roman’ pottery and other objects that had been collected from the sand-dunes at the mouth of the river Avon near by, by Mr. H. L. Jenkins of Clanacombe in the late nineteenth century. The finds had been presented subsequently to the Torquay Natural History Society's Museum by Mrs. M. Radcliffe, his daughter-in-law, and were lent by the museum for the Bantham exhibition. The finds were found to include fragments of imported amphorae of Dark Age date, similar to those found at Garranes and Tintage and therefore to merit wider recognition. I am much indebted to Mrs. Fox for guidance to the site and for the history of the discoveries; to the Council and Curator (Mr. A. G. Madden) of the Torquay Museum for the loan of the objects; to Miss Theo Brown for their illustration; to my husband Cyril Fox for help with the map (fig. 5); and to Mr. G. C. Dunning for his description and drawing of the medieval finds.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Andermann

Aspirin is a product of the late-nineteenth-century laboratory, pharmaceutical industry, and medical community. The prevailing scientific techniques, industrial approaches, and medical beliefs were instrumental in the development, promotion and reception of the drug. As a result, the present account does not extend further back than a few decades prior to the release of aspirin from the laboratories of Farbenfabriken vormals Friedrich Bayer & Co. in 1899. In contrast, much of the current literature on aspirin (2,3,4) attempts to trace the compound back to antiquity through the Ebers papyrus, the Hippocratic writings, and the works of Galen. Such histories tell a simple, linear tale of the numerous "discoveries" proposed to have led to the use of certain salicylate-containing plants, such as willow bark and wintergreen, or salicylate-related compounds, including salicilin and salicylic acid, as cures for a variety of ailments. Indeed, according to Mann and Plummer: Both [salicilin and salicylic acid] attacked fever and pain, and their partisans advocated the salicylates' use as antiseptics, mouthwashes, and water preservatives for ocean voyages; one important chemist further suggested (erroneously) that sodium salicylate, a chemical relative, would successfully treat scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, syphilis, cholera, rabies and anthrax (5). However, it is difficult to establish what effect, if any, these examples of the "historical" uses of "proto-aspirin" had on the impetus for and modes of developing and using the actual drug called aspirin. As a matter of course, aspirin is usually described as the natural descendant from these salicylate forefathers. However, the history of aspirin is not as straightforward a tale as conventional histories suggest, but rather is a complex narrative of the people and circumstances involved in transforming a simple chemical compound into a popular pharmaceutical product that has remained one of the most widely consumed drugs for almost a century.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Muhammad Iqbal Birsyada ◽  
Wasino Wasino ◽  
Suyahmo Suyahmo ◽  
Hermanu Joebagio

<p class="IIABSBARU">The history of economic development of Javanese community has experienced a very unique dynamic. In the XV and XVI centuries, trading tradition has been done by Javanese community along the north coastal of Java. But, the trading tradition getting dimmer in line with the strategy of economic centralization carried out by Sultan Agung prohibiting the people to trade in foreign countries. In the XIX century, that’s econdition is change, Mangkunegara IV restore the entrepreneurial tradition through various strategies. In addition, to restoring the entrepreneurial tradition of Javanese society, Mangkunegara IV also broke the old tradition of <em>kepriyayinan</em> (Javanese aristocrate) to want to do business, not just live in pleasure as breeds nobility or gentry class. Therefore, reviewing to the business strategy of Mangku­negaran IV becomes important, as part of the history of economic develop­ment Javanese community. By using the historical method and a multi­dimensional approach, through a variety of primary sources such as Mangku­negara IV literature, the study found that the Mangkunegaran IV’s business strategy conducted by building a centers of sugar cane farm and modernization of sugar factories on a large scale, so as to obtain additional revenue for the Mangkunegaran IV family. The successfull of his business, demonstrates to the Javanese nobility that he was a king who had a strong entrepreneurial spirit.</p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">***</p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Sejarah perkembangan ekonomi masyarakat Jawa mengalami dinamika yang sangat unik. Pada abad XV dan XVI, tradisi berdagang telah dilakukan oeh masyarakat Jawa di sepanjang pantai utara Jawa. Akan tetapi tradisi tersebut se­makin meredup seiring adanya strategi sentralisasi ekonomi yang dilakukan oleh Sultan Agung yang melarang rakyatnya berdagang ke manca negara. Pada abad XIX, Mangkunegara IV mengembalikan tradisi wirausahawan tersebut melalui berbagai strategi. Selain itu, Mangku­negara IV juga mendobrak tradisi “<em>kolot kepriyayinan</em>” Jawa agar mau melakukan bisnis, bukan hanya hidup dalam ke­senangan sebagai <em>trah</em> bangsawan. Karena itu, mengkaji strategi bisnis keluarga Mangkunegaran IV menjadi penting, sebagai bagian dari sejarah perkembangan ekonomi masyarakat Jawa. Dengan metode penelitian sejarah dan pendekatan multidi­mensional, melalui berbagai sumber primer seperti karya-karya sastra Mangkunegara IV, penelitian ini menemukan bahwa strategi bisnis keluarga Mangkunegaran IV dilakukan dengan membangun pusat-pusat perkebunan tebu dan modernisasi pabrik gula secara besar-besaran, sehingga memperoleh pen­dapatan tambahan bagi praja. Kesukses­an bisnis ini menunjukkan kepada para bangsawan Jawa bahwa dia adalah seorang raja yang memiliki jiwa <em>entrepreneur­ship </em>yang kuat.</p>


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 11-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry

In a recent book, El Dorado in West Africa, Raymond E. Dumett examines the history of gold-mining in Wassa Fiase in the Western Province of the Gold Coast during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Among other thematic preoccupations, Dumett argues that until the late 1890s the British colonial authorities did very little to encourage capitalist gold-mining in Wassa Fiase. Resurrecting the ghost of local crisis, he argues that the colonial intervention in Wassa Fiase was due to king Enimil Kwao's ineptitude, structural conflict inherent in chieftaincy, and problems of African rulers' territorial jurisdictions.Dumett also asserts that it was a forceful London-based antislavcry lobby and Governor George Strahan's tactlessness that drove the colonial state to intervene in Wassa Fiase. Although Britain was at the center stage of the unprecedented global commodification of gold in the late nineteenth century, Dumett evokes serendipity as the cause of the British colonial intervention in the gold-rich Wassa Fiase. Overall, his explication of the aims and processes of colonial rule in Wassa Fiase is couched in theses of an “unpredictable course” and “a government policy (more rather a nonpolicy) [sic] riddled with vacillation and half measures…”The first part of the present study reviews the literature, while the second section, based on new official sources and newspaper accounts, gives additional insights into Enimil Kwao's slave-dealing trial and his consequent exile to Lagos, hence reevaluates the objectives of the colonial state and the Colonial Office. The study complements the work of Francis Agbodeka and Paul Rosenblum, who have respectively argued that colonial rule in Wassa Fiase paved the way for capitalist gold-mining.


2001 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen H. Tamura

Asian Americans have lived in the United States for over one-and-a-half centuries: Chinese and Asian Indians since the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese since the late nineteenth century, and Koreans and Filipinos since the first decade of the twentieth century (an earlier group of Filipinos had settled near New Orleans in the late eighteenth century). Because of exclusion laws that culminated with the 1924 Immigration Act, however, the Asian American population was relatively miniscule before the mid-twentieth century. As late as 1940, for example, Asian immigrants and their descendants constituted considerably less than 1 percent (0.0019) of the United States population. In contrast, in Hawai'i, which was then a territory and therefore excluded from United States population figures, 58 percent of the people in 1940 were of Asian descent.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 139-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Shumway

AbstractThis essay argues that the history of southern Ghana exhibits far more continuity from the era of the slave trade to the time of British colonization in the late-nineteenth century than one can find in the existing historiography. Emphases on the expansion of the Asante kingdom and on the increased activity of European missionaries, capitalists, and bureaucrats have obscured the steady growth of indigenous cultural, political and social institutions which culminated in the formation of the Fante Confederation of 1868.


2021 ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Pavel Troshchinskiy

On January the 1st, 2021, the first Civil Code in the history of the People&apos;s Republic of China took effect. The process of codification of civil legislation began in the PRC back in the 1950s. However, due to various circumstances, the Code wasn&apos;t adopted during the 20th century. Only in virtue of the initiative of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, the work on the content of a largecodified act of civil law was successfully completed and the Chinese parliament approved the Code in May 2020. A kind of &quot;economic constitution&quot;, which is understood as the Civil Code, is designed to regulate a wide range of civil law relations, comprehensively protect the legal rights and interests of a wide range of participants. The emergence of the Civil Code in the legal system of China was a major event in the history of the country, it was carried out as a part of a large-scale campaign to strengthen the rule of law and rule the state on the basis of the law. The content of the Civil Code of the PRC is of significant theoretical and practical interest both for the Russian legal and sinological sciences, and for all compatriots working with China and in China. The research of the Code requires a deep immersion in the Chinese political and legal reality, an understanding of the foundations of public administration in a new era, and also an awareness of the specifics of legal culture, the legal consciousness of Chinese citizens and law enforcement practice.


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