On Using the White Fathers' Archives

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 319-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol W. Dickerman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Local People ◽  
Local Language ◽  
Treasure Trove ◽  
White Fathers ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
European Civilization

The Société des Missionnaires d'Afrique, more commonly known as the Pères Blancs or White Fathers, began its work of proselytizing in northern and sub-Saharan Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their archives, located in Rome, are a treasure trove for Africanists of all disciplines. In founding the order in 1868, Cardinal Lavigerie, archbishop of Algiers, charged its members to bring Christianity to Africa not by imposing European civilization on Africans but rather by converting the inner man while maintaining the external indigenous forms of dress, food, shelter, and especially language. Lavigerie wrote that it was thus indispensible for the fathers to learn the local language as rapidly as possible, and in areas where the language had not yet been studied, one member of the mission was to spend one or two hours each day compiling a dictionary. In addition, the superior of each post was to keep a daily journal in which he entered, among other matters, information gleaned from the local people about their history, geography, and customs. This journal, Lavigerie wrote, could easily become “une mine féconde.” Another obligation of the superior was to send a monthly letter to the Maison-Mère in Algiers describing the progress of the mission, the health of its members, and any extraordinary local events or activities by the authorities.These injunctions of Lavigerie have yielded a very valuable collection of material on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa that is housed in the White Fathers' headquarters in Rome. (The transfer from Algiers took place in 1952.)

Sura Headings and Subdivisions in Qur'an Manuscripts from Sub-Saharan Africa: Variations and Historical Implications

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-252
Author(s):  
Constant Hamès
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Sahelian Zone

Sura headings, and the information they convey, were formulated well after the Qur'anic revelation itself. Furthermore, they were not determined by authoritative, standardising decisions, as was the case for the Qur'anic text, which has come down to us ne varietur. Given the geographical extension attained by the Islamic world in the course of its history, and in the absence of normalisation due to the disappearance of a centralised power, local variations in sura headings are only to be expected. This is, in effect, the case for Africa. The sampling of Qur'an manuscripts considered here is compared to the standard Egyptian edition of 1923, and reveals differences not only in the titles of the suras but also in the other types of information associated with them, such as indications concerning the place of revelation and the number of verses in each sura. In addition, in some areas, headings are not usually committed to writing, whereas in other local traditions, they may be quite long and contain multiple elements of information. Though these variations may appear to be minor, they are of interest in a comparative perspective, taking into account different zones and eras – especially so if one seeks to discern local identities in the presentation of Qur'an manuscripts. The ones analysed here all come from the Saharo-Sahelian zone: Mauritania (2), Mali (1), Chad (2) and Somalia (1). They are dated to the nineteenth century, with the exception of one early twentieth-century manuscript.

Pre-Linnaean pictures of the secretarybird, Sagittarius serpentarius (J. F. )

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAGNAR K. KINZELBACH
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
The Family ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Sub Saharan

The secretarybird, the only species of the family Sagittariidae (Falconiformes), inhabits all of sub-Saharan Africa except the rain forests. Secretarybird, its vernacular name in many languages, may be derived from the Arabic “saqr at-tair”, “falcon of the hunt”, which found its way into French during the crusades. From the same period are two drawings of a “bistarda deserti” in a codex by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250). The original sketch obviously, together with other information on birds, came from the court of Sultan al-Kâmil (1180–1238) in Cairo. Careful examination led to an interpretation as Sagittarius serpentarius. Two archaeological sources and one nineteenth century observation strengthened the idea of a former occurrence of the secretarybird in the Egyptian Nile valley. André Thevet (1502–1590), a French cleric and reliable research traveller, described and depicted in 1558 a strange bird, named “Pa” in Persian language, from what he called Madagascar. The woodcut is identified as Sagittarius serpentarius. The text reveals East Africa as the real home of this bird, associated there among others with elephants. From there raises a connection to the tales of the fabulous roc, which feeds its offspring with elephants, ending up in the vernacular name of the extinct Madagascar ostrich as elephantbird.

Firearms in Southern Africa: A survey

1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shula Marks ◽  
Anthony Atmore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Settler Population ◽  
White Settlement

The relationships of the peoples of southern Africa after the establishment and expansion of the white settlement in the mid-seventeenth century can be seen in terms of both conflict and interdependence, both resistance and collaboration. The conflict often split over into warfare, not only between black and white, but also within both groups. As time passed, firearms came to be used by ever-widening circles of the combatants, often as much the result of the increased collaboration and interdependence between peoples as of the increased conflict. As Inez Sutton has pointed out, ‘in contrast to most of the rest of [sub-Saharan] Africa, the presence of a settler population ensured that the supply of arms was the most modern rather than the most obsolete’, and on the whole non-whites were acutely aware of changes in the manufacture of firearms in the nineteenth century.

Sultanism

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-76
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Sub Saharan

To facilitate a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of the concept of sultanism, this chapter provides a detailed theoretical and empirical literature review. Firstly, it considers the oriental origins of the concept, as applied by Max Weber and others to the Ottoman Empire and a number of South Asian examples. Secondly, it traces the emergence of ‘contemporary sultanism’, as applied by scholars to Latin American regimes from the mid-twentieth century and onwards. Thirdly, it explores the more recent concept of neo-sultanism and the development of a distinct international empirical category of autocratic-authoritarianism which includes: various Latin America regimes; some of the former communist republics of central Asia and Eastern Europe; and a number of regimes in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. Finally, it assesses the need to address the scholarly deficit in applying contemporary sultanism or neo-sultanism to the Middle East, and suggests that the present-day Saudi And UAE regimes may be strong examples.

Twentieth-Century Transformations in Notions of Gender, Parenthood, and Marriage in Southern Ghana: A Critique of the Hypothesis of “Retrograde Steps” for Akan Women

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 15-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Boni
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Economic Determinants ◽  
Feminist Anthropology ◽  
Labor Division ◽  
Sub Saharan

In the course of the 1970s, one of the principal focuses of the emerging feminist anthropology was the reassessment of issues of gender inequality. Drawing their inspiration from Marxist theory going back to Engels, some works historicized female oppression and analyzed its political and economic determinants. To demonstrate that gender inequality was the product of specific historical formations, the observable gender relations were, at times, opposed to a prior egalitarian social order in which value differentiation was not attached to the gendered labor division (e.g., Leacock 1981). The approach was criticized by those who believed that female subordination characterized present and past societies on which solid documentary evidence was available (e.g., Rosaldo 1974). The idea that gender realtions in some non-western societies were marked by parity prior to the degradation produced by colonization was not abandoned, however, and influenced neighboring disciplines.Recent studies concerned with the transformations of gender relations in sub-Saharan Africa over the twentieth century tend to stress the decline in social and economic position of women. Ethnographic, economic, and historical studies state that the traditional value attached to being female is threatened by the economic and political developments of the last century. Women are said increasingly to lose their previous independence, to have to cater for children and elderly by themselves, and to lose ground in productive activities (Robertson and Berger 1986; Mikell 1997a; Baerends 1998).

Urban planning, colonial doctrines and street naming in French Dakar and British Lagos, c. 1850–1930

Urban History ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
LIORA BIGON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Street Naming ◽  
Indirect Rule

ABSTRACT:The published literature that has thoroughly treated the history of European planning in sub-Saharan Africa is still rather scanty. This article examines French and British colonial policies for town planning and street naming in Dakar and Lagos, their chief lieux de colonisation in West Africa. It will trace the relationships between the physical and conceptual aspects of town planning and the colonial doctrines that produced these plans from the official establishment of these cities as colonial capitals in the mid-nineteenth century and up to the inter-war period. Whereas in Dakar these aspects reflected a Eurocentric meta-narrative that excluded African histories and identities, a glimpse at contemporary Lagos shows the opposite. This study is one of few that compares colonial doctrines of assimilation to doctrines of indirect rule as each affects urban planning.

scholarly journals The White Fathers' Archive in Zambia

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 439-445
Author(s):  
Marja Hinfelaar
Keyword(s):  
Steady Flow ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
African History ◽  
Treasure Trove ◽  
British Rule ◽  
White Fathers ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Sub Saharan

The archive of the Generalate of the White Fathers (WF) in Rome is a well-known “treasure trove for Africanists of all disciplines.” Owing partly to the availability of a series of published catalogues and guides, it attracts a steady flow of external researchers and features prominently in the bibliographies of numerous recent works on sub-Saharan African history. What many Africanists might not be aware of, however, is the existence of regional WF's archives, the holdings of which do not necessarily replicate—and in fact often complement—those of the central Roman deposit. It is to this latter, by and large neglected, category that the archive of the WF's headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia (WFA-Z), belongs. In the summer of 2001 Fr. Hugo Hinfelaar, longstanding missionary in Zambia, renowned scholar and part-time keeper of the WFA-Z, entrusted the authors with the task of updating the in-house catalog of the archive under his charge, in light of fresh acquisitions. This enriching experience provided the initial incentive for the preparation of this paper.Until not long ago, the WF were the largest missionary society to operate in Zambia. They were also one of the earliest to settle in the country, their first station among the Mambwe, in the Tanganyika-Malawi corridor, having been inaugurated in 1891, before the effective inception of British rule. The Mambwe themselves had long been harassed by the politically and linguistically dominant ethnic group in northern Zambia, the Bemba, towards whom the WF directed their subsequent efforts. The establishment of Chilubula mission by the bishop of the newly constituted Nyasa Vicariate, Joseph Dupont, in 1898 marked the beginning of the WF's colonization of Lubemba.

Anglican Mission in Twentieth-Century Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth E. Prevost
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Global Dynamics ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Sub Saharan

Anglican mission in Africa had the capacity to challenge and unseat social, political, and religious hierarchies and identities as much as to create and reinforce them. This chapter considers how twentieth-century movements in colonial statecraft, welfare and development, anti-colonial nationalism, and decolonization found expression in Anglican mission in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, it looks at how the Anglican missionary commitment to indigenization played out in government and society, education and knowledge production, ritual and spirituality, political dissent, and devolution—often in unexpected ways that thwarted the intent of mission establishments and reshaped the character of Anglicanism. Approaching missions as communities, structured by changing norms of authority and social cohesion, can reveal the complex interrelationships of local, regional, and global dynamics of Anglican ideology and practice.

Beyond the Marginalization Thesis: An Examination of the Motivations of Informal Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwame Adom
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Unified Approach ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
New Millennium

For years, informal entrepreneurs were largely classified as ‘marginalized’ and were perceived to be conducting marginalized ventures for survival. However, this perception gradually changed between the middle of the twentieth century and the start of the new millennium. In analysing the motivations of informal entrepreneurs from Ghana, based on face-to-face interviews with 150 respondents, the key findings were that the motivations of the entrepreneurs transcended the marginalization thesis and that informal entrepreneurs were often motivated not by necessity or opportunity, but rather by an amalgamation of the two. Although women constitute the majority of the necessity-driven informal entrepreneurs, in time some of them become opportunity-driven entrepreneurs. The implication is that there is a need for a shift from necessity–opportunity dualism to a unified approach, which depicts the motivations of informal entrepreneurs in more detail, and for broader research in other economic landscapes.

Persecution and Toleration in pre-colonial Africa: nineteenth-century Yorubaland

1984 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 357-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Iliffe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
And Control ◽  
London Missionary Society

When Christian missionaries penetrated sub-Saharan Africa during the nineteenth century, three main persecutions of their converts caught the attention of Europe. The earliest took place in Madagascar between 1837 and 1857, when several hundred converts attached to the London Missionary Society were killed. The last of the three occurred in the Buganda kingdom of East Africa and culminated on 3 June 1886 when some 26 Baganda Christians were burned on a single pyre. Both these persecutions took place in autocratic and expanding kingdoms whose modernising rulers had initially welcomed missionaries for their skills. In both kingdoms the missionaries converted younger members of the ruling class. In both, the deaths of the modernising rulers precipitated traditionalist reactions in which converts were killed more to discourage and control Christianity than to extirpate it. Both persecutions were bounded in time. Both failed, leading only to further Christian expansion, the capture of power by Christian modernisers, and their use of the authoritarian political institutions to create overtly Christian kingdoms.

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