The Benin Kinglist/s: Some Questions of Chronology

The chronology of the history of the Benin kingdom is seen by many historians as clarified in the main back to the thirteenth century and even earlier. Apart from the reports of European travelers and missionaries and some information given by merchants, this chronology is based mainly on the Benin kinglist for the periods before 1897. This list names 38 kings (obas) of Benin and covers past centuries with seemingly great accuracy (see table 1).In spite of the many names of former obas and the pretended accuracy of the list's time-frame, it would be problematic to take it as historically factual since it cannot be corroborated by any documentation before the mid-nineteenth century. The data concerning the period before this time are almost exclusively based on the writings of the Benin amateur historian Jacob Egharevba. In his work Egharevba reported on important events in the oral traditions of Benin and connected the reign of former kings with specific years. In doing so he forced his African oral material into a linear European time scheme and into the framework specified by European written sources.Unfortunately, very few historians have as yet critically analyzed the chronological data for Benin. This is surprising, since the great Benin researcher Bradbury noted some time ago that Egharevba's “chronological conclusions have been accepted too uncritically, especially for the period up to the first European contact” (Bradbury 1959:285f) and have been seen as historical facts without any further consideration ever since. Neither the question of so-called “genealogical parasitism,” nor any of the other fundamental problems which arise when studying kinglists have been addressed.

Afrika-Archiv: A New Series of the Frobenius Institute for the Purpose of Publishing Source Material

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3172045 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 437-439

Author(s):

Beatrix Heintze

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Great Difficulty ◽

Source Material ◽

The Other ◽

Oral Traditions ◽

African History ◽

Public And Private ◽

Self Confidence ◽

History Of ◽

“[D]as Wirkungsvolle wird gepflegt, die Gewissenhaftigkeit schwindet; an Stelle der Fähigkeit zu bergründen, der Kraft zu überzeugen, tritt die Sicherheìt im Behaupten.”[T]hat what impresses is cultivated, conscientiousness dwindles; the capability to explain, the power to convince are replaced by self-confidence in asserting.There is nothing more absurd—yet also nothing more common—than a scholarly lifetime of publishing based on materials to which no one else has access.The series “Afrika Archiv” (“Africa Archives”) was founded recently with the aim of publishing source material referring to the history and anthropology of Africa. In this connection the term “source material” shall be considered in a very broad sense. Thus, beside the usual library and other written sources, as well as written records of oral traditions, for instance, even editions of ethnographic collections or photographic documentation will be taken into consideration. African scholars will be able to publish material from their own countries to which we Europeans and Americans have only difficult access. Western scholars, on the other hand, could publish sources from public and private European or American archives, museums, or even widely dispersed articles in periodicals and newspapers on African history of the nineteenth century which are available only with great difficulty and expenditure of time. As a reviewer once commented, such source editions will still continue to be valued when contemporary interpretations have already long fallen into oblivion.Endeavors to record systematically varied sources on the history of the continent, the cultural and scientific history of Africa, and to make the essentials generally available to the scientific public still appear inadequate.

‘Carolina Hat’: Vona Groarke's Lament for Art O'Leary

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2013.0080 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 274-287 ◽

Author(s):

Margaret Mills Harper

Keyword(s):

North Carolina ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

Time Frame ◽

Domestic Space ◽

The Other ◽

Poetic Voice ◽

History Of ◽

The Many ◽

Oral Composition

Vona Groarke's 2008 version of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's famous keen for her husband, Chaoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, features a poetic voice overtly inflected by Irish, English, and American diction and usage. Groarke's poem emphasizes its status as a textual event in more than one time frame as well as another spatial setting. The other time is multiple, including the many translations and discussions of the lament from its eighteenth-century composition until now. The place is also multiple: it might be Dublin or Manchester, Boston or London, or Wake Forest, North Carolina, where Groarke spends part of every year. This new poem stresses the mobility of Eileen's passionate lament: in Groarke's hands, it becomes a poem of the particular place that manages also, intriguingly, to highlight transnational cultural and linguistic implications. This version, another chapter in the history of a work that begins in the fluidity of oral composition and is repeatedly reworked in translations, emphasizes domestic space as generative as well as excessive, the site of desire. Groarke's poem locates itself both inside and, crucially, outside, a place to which one comes ‘carrying nothing’ in order to find, in a seeming paradox, nonrestrictive structures.

The History of the Baga in Early Written Sources

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3172037 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 381-391 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

P.E.H. Hair

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Past History ◽

Oral Traditions ◽

Language Group ◽

Colonial State ◽

Post Colonial ◽

The Past ◽

History Of ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The extent of secure knowledge of the past of the groups of people known in scholarly literature as Baga is inconsiderable. This is in part because of the limited European interest in past times in the Baga homeland (on the coast of the post-colonial state of Guinée), and also in part because of limited scholarly investigations in recent times (the post-colonial state did not help by for long exiling or barring from access non-Marxist scholars).Ethnographic and linguistic investigations have been undertaken only since the mid-nineteenth century and still amount to very little, with even less in print. Archeological investigations have yet to begin, apart from the brave attempt of Fred Lamp to date certain artefacts stylistically. As a result, in the 1990s the connotation and exact range of application of the term “Baga” remain unclear and the precise linguistic relationship of “the Baga language” with those neighboring languages that appear to form a language group is known only in outline. What this means that it is impossible to sum up the earlier history of the Baga briefly. The reader who continues and bravely tackles the listing and discussion of sources that follows will, however, be able to assess how much of the history can be securely reconstructed.It is understandable that the desire to construct a history for the Baga has latterly turned on the interpretation of oral traditions. Such traditions now preferred by the Baga—or at least by certain sections, strata, or individuals—are patently of great interest to the anthropologist inasmuch as they depict what the present-day Baga, or some of them, wish to see as their past history and thus throw light on contemporary ideology and popular mindsets.

Hearing the Crimean War

10.1093/oso/9780190916749.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Sound Studies ◽

The Black Sea ◽

Crimean War ◽

National Unity ◽

Black Sea Region ◽

Academic Fields ◽

History Of ◽

The Many

This book addresses the sounds of the Crimean War, along with the many ways nineteenth-century wartime is aurally constructed. It examines wide-ranging experiences of listeners in Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Crimea, illustrating the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the modes by which wartime sound was archived and heard. This book covers topics including music in and around war zones, the mediation of wartime sound, the relationship between sound and violence, and the historiography of listening. Individual chapters concern sound in Leo Tolstoy’s wartime writings, and his place within cosmopolitan sensibilities; the role of the telegraph in constructing sonic imaginations in London and the Black Sea region; the absence of archives for the sounds of particular ethnic groups, and how songs preserve memories for both Crimean Tatars and Polish nationalists; the ways in which perceptions of voice rearranged the mental geographies of Baltic Russia, and undermined aspirations to national unity in Italy; Italian opera as a means of conditioning elite perceptions of Crimean battlefields; and historical frames through which to understand the diffusion of violent sounds amid everyday life. The volume engages the academic fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, history, literary studies, sound studies, and the history of the senses.

Meeting for the Co-ordination and Planning of the Collection of African Oral Traditions

The Journal of Modern African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022278x00017808 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 6 (4) ◽

pp. 563-564

Author(s):

Michel Izard

Keyword(s):

International Research ◽

Oral Traditions ◽

History Of ◽

The Government ◽

This meeting was organised jointly by the Government of Haute-Volta and by the Cultural Division of U.N.E.S.C.O., which had taken the initiative, as part of its preparation for a general History of Africa. In this context one must mention also the recent colloquia held at Niamey and at Timbuktu, the former concerned with oral, the second with written sources, ofAfrican history. This Ouagadougou meeting was essentially logistic in character; having established in principle that it is necessary to collect African oral traditions in order to fill out the outlines of history, the task was to list the problems of all kinds posed by the work of collection, and to consider possible solutions, especially in connection with both national and international research plans.

Indigenous Written Sources for the History of Bonny

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3171783 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 16 ◽

pp. 185-196

Author(s):

Susan M. Hargreaves

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Niger Delta ◽

Colonial History ◽

Additional Material ◽

Court Records ◽

General Terms ◽

Early Colonial ◽

History Of ◽

Similar Character ◽

It is well known that indigenous contemporary written documentation exists for the precolonial and early colonial history of some of the coastal societies of South-Eastern Nigeria. The best known example is Old Calabar, for which there exists most notably the diary of Antera Duke, covering the years 1785-88, a document brought from Old Calabar to Britain already during the nineteenth century. More recently John Latham has discovered additional material of a similar character still preserved locally in Old Calabar, principally the Black Davis House Book (containing material dating from the 1830s onwards), the papers of Coco Bassey (including diaries covering the years 1878-89), and the papers of E. O. Offiong (comprising trade ledgers, court records, and letter books relating to the period 1885-1907). In the Niger Delta S. J. S. Cookey, for his biography of King Jaja of Opobo, was able to use contemporary documents in Jaja's own papers, including correspondence from the late 1860s onwards. In the case of the neighboring community of Bonny (from which Jaja seceded to found Opobo after a civil war in 1869), while earlier historians have alluded to the existence of indigenous written documentation, they have done so only in very general terms and without any indication of the quantity or nature of this material.

The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3172119 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 325-337 ◽

Author(s):

Jay Spaulding

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

World War I ◽

Historical Record ◽

Economic Transformation ◽

Nile Valley ◽

Human Beings ◽

Old Kingdom ◽

History Of ◽

The Many ◽

Islamic Faith

Modern nationalisms first arose during the later eighteenth century around the wide periphery of the ancient heartland of western culture and gnawed their way inward during the course of the nineteenth century to the core, culminating in World War I, Each new nationalism generated an original “imagined community” of human beings, part of whose ideological cohesion derived from a sense of shared historical experience. Since the actual historical record would not necessarily satisfy this hunger, it was often found expedient to amend the past through acts of imagination aptly termed the “invention of tradition.”One of the many new “imagined communities” of the long nineteenth century took shape in the northern Nile-valley Sudan between the final disintegration of the old kingdom of Sinnar (irredeemable after the death of the strongman Muhammad Abu Likaylik in 1775) and the publication of Harold MacMichael's A History of the Arabs in the Sudan in 1922. The new national community born of the collapse of Sinnar, strongly committed to Arabic speech and Islamic faith, was tested by fire through foreign conquest and revolution, by profound socio-economic transformation, and by the challenges attendant on participation in an extended sub-imperialism that earned it hegemony—first cultural, and ultimately political—over all the diverse peoples of the modern Sudan.One important response of the nascent community to the trials of this difficult age was the invention of a new national historical tradition, according to which its members were descended via comparatively recent immigrants to the Sudan from eminent Arabs of Islamic antiquity.

THE NEW OTHER VICTORIANS: THE SUCCESS (AND FAILURE) OF QUEER THEORY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH STUDIES

Victorian Literature and Culture ◽

10.1017/s1060150314000291 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 755-771 ◽

Author(s):

Richard A. Kaye

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Queer Theory ◽

The Other ◽

History Of Sexuality ◽

Sexuality Studies ◽

Victorian Studies ◽

Critical Writing ◽

History Of

Much of the critical writingon Queer Theory and Sexuality Studies in a Victorian context over the last decade or so has been absorbing, exploring, complicating, and working under the burden of the influence of Michel Foucault's theoretical writings on erotic relations and identity. The first volume of Foucault'sThe History of Sexuality(1978), in fact, had begun with a gauntlet thrown down before Victorian Studies, a chapter-long critique of Steven Marcus'sThe Other Victorians(1966), a work that had offered an entirely new and at the time, quite bold avenue of exploring nineteenth-century culture – namely, through the pornographic imagination that Marcus taxonomized with precise, clinical flair as a “pornotopia” in which “all men . . . are always infinitely potent; all women fecundate with lust and flow inexhaustibly with sap or both. Everyone is always ready for everything” (276). In Foucault's telling, however, Marcus demonstrated a theoretically impoverished faith in Freudian models of “repression” in Marcus's examination of “underground” Victorian sexualities. It was Marcus's reliance on the “repressive fallacy,” his conviction that there existed a demarcated spatial and psychic Victorian counter-world thatThe History of Sexualityhad so forcefully undermined.

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character ◽

On the possible ellipticity of Saturn's ring

10.1098/rspa.1924.0086 ◽

1924 ◽

Vol 106 (739) ◽

pp. 526-552 ◽

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

The Other ◽

Gravitational Attraction ◽

History Of Astronomy ◽

Small Oscillations ◽

First Approximation ◽

Elliptical Ring ◽

Single Ring ◽

History Of ◽

Concentric Circles

Clerk Maxwell’s investigation into the constitution and stability of Saturn’s Ring was based upon the fundamental supposition that the rings were composed of particles arranged in concentric circles. Although the particles could perform small oscillations about their mean positions, it is evident that the outline of the ring would be to all appearances circular. A line in Clerke’s ‘Popular History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century’ (page 299) suggests that some observers have regarded the outline of the ring as elliptical. It is therefore of interest to enquire under what conditions an elliptical ring could exist. The ellipse is a more general form than a circle. If, therefore, it can be shown that an elliptic ring is possible, any explanation of the origin of the rings must take account of this fact. In this paper a single ring of particles is examined. The actual Ring of Saturn probably consists of numerous rings, one within the other. By their gravitational attraction, each will affect the motions of the others. As a first approximation, however, it is sufficient to consider the case of a single ring.

When a Daring Chemistry Meets a Boring Chemistry: The Reception of Mendeleev’s Periodic System in Sweden

Early Responses to the Periodic System ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190200077.003.0017 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Anders Lundgren

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Periodic System ◽

Initial Step ◽

The Other ◽

Experimental Science ◽

History Of Chemistry ◽

System P ◽

History Of ◽

Per Se

The reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system in Sweden was not a dramatic episode. The system was accepted almost without discussion, but at the same time with no exclamation marks or any other outbursts of enthusiasm. There are but a few weak short-lived critical remarks. That was all. I will argue that the acceptance of the system had no overwhelming effect on chemical practice in Sweden. At most, it strengthened its characteristics. It is actually possible to argue that chemistry in Sweden was more essential for the periodic system than the other way around. My results might therefore suggest that we perhaps have to reevaluate the role of Mendeleev’s system in the history of chemistry. Chemistry in Sweden at the end of the nineteenth century can be characterized as a classifying science, with chemists very skilled in analysis, and as mainly an atheoretical science, which treated theories at most only as hypothesis—the slogan of many chemists being “facts persist, theories vanish.” Thanks to these characteristics, by the end of the nineteenth century, chemistry in Sweden had developed into, it must be said, a rather boring chemistry. This is obviously not to say that it is boring to study such a chemistry. Rather, it gives us an example of how everyday science, a part of science too often neglected but a part that constitutes the bulk of all science done, is carried out. One purpose of this study is to see how a theory, considered to be important in the history of chemistry, influenced everyday science. One might ask what happened when a daring chemistry met a boring chemistry. What happened when a theory, which had been created by a chemist who has been described as “not a laboratory chemist,” met an atheoretical experimental science of hard laboratory work and, as was said, the establishment of facts? Furthermore, could we learn something about the role of the periodic system per se from the study of such a meeting? Mendeleev’s system has often been considered important for teaching, and his attempts to write a textbook are often taken as the initial step in the chain of thoughts that led to the periodic system.