History and Legitimacy: Aspects of the Use of the Past in Precolonial Dahomey

1988 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 431-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Major Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Subject

The kingdom of Dahomey (or Fon) was probably founded during the first half of the seventheenth century, but emerged clearly as a major power only in the early eighteenth century when its king Agaja (ca. 1716–40) conquered its southern neighbours Allada (1724) and Whydah (1727), thereby establishing direct contact with the European slave-traders at the coast. Dahomey then remained the dominant power in the area until it was itself conquered by the French in the 1892–94. The kingdom ceased to exist as a political entity when its last king was deposed by the French in 1900, but a degree of institutional continuity has been maintained through the performance of rituals at the royal palace (now a museum) in the capital city Abomey. The history of Dahomey from the 1720s onwards is relatively well documented from contemporary European sources, enjoying in particular the unique distinction of being made the subject already in the eighteenth century of a published book—Archibald Dalzel's History of Dahomy (1793). There is also a rich and coherent corpus of narrative traditions relating to the kingdom's history, best known in the classic recension published in 1911 by the French colonial official Le Herissé, which is in fact merely a translation (and in some measure an abridgement, omitting some detailed material) of the account given to him by a single Dahomian informant, Agbidinukun, the chef de canton of the cercle of Abomey under French colonial rule and a brother of the last independent king of Dahomey, Behanzin (1889–94).

The Earlier Historiography of Colonial Africa

1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 153-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.D. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Rule ◽  
African History ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Cocoa Farmers ◽  
White Farmers

Work on volume 7 of the Cambridge History of Africa, covering the years 1905-1940, has obliged me to reflect on the nature of the literature for this period in African history. The past twenty years or so have of course seen some notable research on the subject, and much of this is now published. A common theme in this work, as in the study of earlier African history, has been an emphasis on African initiative and enterprise, whether among clerks and teachers, cocoa farmers or mineworkers. More recently, there has been a renewal of interest (often related to theories about “underdevelopment”) in the external forces which set limits to the scope and success of African initiatives. It has once again become acceptable in Africanist circles to study white farmers, trading companies, mine corporations, finance houses, administrative hierarchies, legislative councils, or mission headquarters. Thus the Cambridge History should now be able to achieve a more balanced appraisal of both local and alien factors in the colonial order than would have been possible even five years ago.The question I want to raise here is whether, for the purposes of such a volume, it is enough to think in terms of synthesizing the work of professional historians of Africa over the past two decades, or whether recent shifts of emphasis have exposed topics and questions on which we must still look for guidance to works written when colonial rule was still a living reality and African history, as an academic subject, had not yet been invented.

Appropriation and Its Consequences: Archaeology under Colonial Rule in Egypt and India

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Shereen Ratnagar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Abstract The beginnings of archaeology in Egypt and in India are the subject of this paper. In both countries, antiquities were carried away by the powerful. Moreover, the hubris of the colonial powers ruling both countries made it inevitable that not only antiquities, but knowledge about the past, were appropriated in different ways. For modern Egyptians, the Pharaonic past was remote in culture and distant in time. The people themselves were until fairly recently prevented from learning the Pharaonic writing, once it was deciphered, by various ways and means. In contrast, in India the colonial administration relied on Indian scholars to teach British personnel the ancient languages, texts, and religion. In neither country was the history of the ancient period taught in schools until the foreign rulers had left. But Indian archaeology became involved in Indian identity and in the framing of the nation as Hindu, and thereby acquired an ugly twist. Self-identification in Egypt in the earlier twentieth century, on the other hand, was possibly more with the Arab world than with the pyramid builders.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

scholarly journals The History of the Walled (Formal) Garden at Benmore Botanic Garden

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-236
Author(s):  
David Gray
Keyword(s):  
Retrospective Study ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The 2.02 ha site containing the Category B listed Walled Garden at Benmore is currently the subject of a major redesign proposal and active fundraising programme. The purpose of this article is to raise the profile of the project by investigating and highlighting the historical development of the site. This retrospective study is also intended as a support to contemporary redevelopment plans and as a demonstration of how the past underpins and informs the future.I am frankly and absolutely for a formal garden … It is a small piece of ground enclosed by walls … There is not the least attempt to imitate natural scenery (Phillpotts, 1906, p. 54).

scholarly journals Is history of economic thought a "serious" subject?

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
Textual Exegesis ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of research methods in the history of economic thought. In reviewing the "techniques" which are involved in the discipline, four broader categories are identified: a) textual exegesis; b) "rational reconstructions"; c) "contextual analysis"; and d) "historical narrative". After examining these different styles of doing history of economic thought, the paper addresses the question of its appraisal, namely what is good history of economic thought. Moreover, it is argued that there is a distinction to be made between doing economics and doing history of economic thought. The latter requires the greatest possible respect for contexts and texts, both published and unpublished; the former entails constructing a theoretical framework that is in some respects freer, not bound by derivation, from the authors. Finally, the paper draws upon Econlit records to assess what has been done in the subject in the last two decades in order to frame some considerations on how the past may impinge on the future.

scholarly journals History and Historiography in Early Christian Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (33) ◽  
pp. 197-227
Author(s):  
Dominique Santos
Keyword(s):  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Bilingual Literacy

Despite modern writers noticing the importance of Premodern historiographical phenomena for a deeper comprehension of both Theory of History and History of Historiography, the Irish contribution to the subject is often left aside. Topics such as the Seanchas Tradition and Medieval Irish Classicism are not well integrated into such historiographical narrative. The Seanchaidh, the Irish Artifex of the Past, for example, is broadly mentioned as not a historian, but a chronicler, antiquary, genealogist, hagiographer or pedigree systematizer. This article addresses these issues and, more specifically, we focus on two Irish narratives produced in 7th century by Muirchú and Tírechán. Since they belong to the world of orality and bilingual literacy of Early Christian Ireland, perhaps their works could be understood as bounded by the Seanchas Tradition and Medieval Irish Classicism, hence, both could be considered as great examples of the producers of History and Historiography at the time.

Idealists and Realists: British Views of Germany,1864–1939

1975 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Form ◽  
Past Century ◽  
General Survey ◽  
Small Segment ◽  
The Past ◽  
British Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
Sheer Number

Yet another survey of the much-traversed field of Anglo-German relations will seem to many historians of modern Europe to border on the realm of superfluity; probably no two countries have had their relationship to each other so frequently examined in the past century as Britain and Germany. Moreover, even if one restricted such a study to the British side alone, the sheer number of publications upon this topic, or upon only a section of it like the age of ‘appeasement’, is simply too great to allow a compression of existing knowledge into a narrative form that would be anything other than crude and sketchy. The following contribution therefore seeks neither to provide such a general survey, nor, by use of new and detailed archival materials, to concentrate upon a small segment of the history of British policy towards Germany in the period 1864–1939; but instead to consider throughout all these years a particular aspect, namely, the respective arguments of Germanophiles and Germanophobes in Britain and the connection between this dialogue and the more general ideological standpoints of both sides. In so doing, the author has produced a survey which remains embarrassingly summary in detail but does at least attempt to offer a fresh approach to the subject.

scholarly journals Comparative analysis of the works published in periodicals and as part of the books, with major texts of A. E. Kulakovsky

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Pavlovich Nogovitsyn
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Unpublished Works

This article examines the works of A. E. Kulakovsky based on theoretical positions of D. S. Likhachev and practical data from commentaries to the volume II of A. E. Kulakovsky (author P. V. Maksimov), as well as conducts comparative analysis of the early versions with major texts of A. E. Kulakovsky. The subject of this research is the comparative analysis of A. E. Kulakovsky's early publications with major texts. The goal consists in determination and description of the authorial editing and revisions, which allows substantiating their motives for, as well as tracing the evolution of author’s thought. The discrepancies between the texts of early period and major text are viewed as improvements: addition of lines, substitution of separate words, rearrangement lines and stanzas. The novelty of this study consists in substantiation of early publications of A. E. Kulakovsky and lifetime edition as the subject of textological research. From this perspective, early publications of the works of A. E. Kulakovsky's are attributed to as research materials of cross-disciplinary nature: as the testimonies of the stage of establishment of Yakut literature as a whole, and as the variants of writer's major texts that reveal the history of his works in particular. The relevance is defined by the fact that special textological studies of poet’s separate works, including profound examination of historiographical part of his literary heritage, are currently of special significance. Over the past decade, a sizeable corpus of new documents related to A. E. Kulakovsky’s biography, including the unpublished works and scientific writings, has been revealed; this gives a new perspective on the already familiar materials in the context of analysis of his evolution as a writer and the history of publication of his works in the XX century.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Quintin Colville ◽  
James Davey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Influences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Naval History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Many ◽  
Historical Profession

This introduction gives on overview of the sub-discipline of naval history since its emergence in the early eighteenth-century. It outlines the various social, cultural and political influences that have shaped the subject over the past three centuries, and discusses its relationship with the wider historical profession. The second half of the introduction sums up the current state of naval history, describing the many historiographies that now have a bearing on how the subject is conducted. Each contribution to the volume is introduced in this context, offering a precis of the chapters that follow.

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