Past and presentism: The 'precolonial' and the foreshortening of African history

Journal of African History

Volumn 52, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 135-155

  Reid, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

colonial; historiography; postcolonial; precolonial

Indexed keywords

ETHNICITY; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; MARGINALIZATION; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

EID: 82555164891     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853711000223     Document Type: Review

References (151)

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39. Important articles by Lovejoy and Richardson are 'Trust, pawnship and Atlantic history: the institutional foundations of the Old Calabar slave trade', American Historical Review, 102 (1999), 332-55;
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41. and "'This horrid hole,": royal authority, commerce and credit at Bonny, 1690-1840', Journal of African History, 45:3 (2004), 363-92.
42. Several articles in Journal of African History, 42:1 (2001) dealt with the slave trade and 'decentralized' societies.
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50. G. Austin, 'The "reversal of fortune," thesis and the compression of history: perspectives from African and comparative history', Journal of International Development, 20 (2008), 996-1027.
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52. J.-G. Deutsch, Emancipation Without Abolition in German East Africa, c.1884-1914 (Oxford, 2006);
53. H. Médard and S. Doyle (eds.), Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (Oxford, 2007).
54. S. Rockel, Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-century East Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2006).
55. J. Miran, Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2009).
56. G. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks and Cross-cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-century Western Africa (Cambridge, 2009).
57. J.-F. Bayart, L'état en Afrique: la politique du ventre (Paris, 1989),
58. translated as The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London, 1993).
59. See also his 'Africa in the world: a history of extraversion', African Affairs, 99:395 (2000), 217-67.
60. H. Hanson, Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, NH, 2003).
61. H. Medard, Le Royaume du Buganda au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2007).
62. N. Kodesh, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda (Charlottesville, 2010).
63. R. J. Reid, Political Power in Pre-colonial Buganda: Economy, Society and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2002).
64. T. C. McCaskie, State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante (Cambridge, 1995).
65. I. Wilks, 'Asante state and society', Journal of African History, 37:1 (1996), 138-40.
66. See C. Hamilton (ed.), The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History (Johannesburg, 1995).
67. C. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cape Town, 1998).
68. D. Wylie, Myth of Iron: Shaka in History (Scottsville, 2006).
69. B. Carton, J. Laband and J. Sithole (eds.), Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present (Pietermaritzburg, 2008).
70. C. Hamilton%, B. K. Mbenga and R. Ross (eds.), The Cambridge History of South Africa, Vol. 1: From Early Times to 1885 (Cambridge, 2010).
71. J.-P. Chretien, L'Afrique des grands lacs: deux milles ans d'histoire (Paris, 2000),
72. translated as The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History (New York, 2003);
73. R. Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (Philadelphia, 2009).
74. D. Newbury, The Land Beyond the Mists: Essays on Identity and Authority in Pre-colonial Congo and Rwanda (Athens, OH, 2009);
75. J. Vansina, Le Rwanda ancien: le royaume nyiginya (Paris, 2001),
76. translated as Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom (Madison, 2004).
77. See D. Schoenbrun's review of Vansina, Antecedents, in Africa Today, 52:4 (2006), 146-9.
78. D. M. Anderson and R. Rathbone (eds.), Africa's Urban Past (Oxford, 2000);
79. A. Burton (ed.), The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa, c.1750-2000 (Nairobi, 2002).
80. See D. M. Anderson and R. Rathbone, 'Urban Africa: histories in the making', in Anderson and Rathbone, Africa's Urban Past, 1-17.
81. D. Crummey, Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia: From the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Oxford, 2000), 259.
82. J. C. McCann, People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia, 1800-1990 (Madison, 1995).
83. S. Doyle, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro: Population and Environment in Western Uganda 1860-1955 (Oxford, 2006).
84. see, for example, J. C. D. Clark, Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism and History (London, 2003), 5-9.
85. L. V. Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600-1900 (Philadelphia, 1982);
86. D. Nurse and T. Spear, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society 800-1500 (Philadelphia, 1985);
87. R. R. Atkinson, The Roots of Ethnicity: The Origins of the Acholi of Uganda Before 1800 (Philadelphia, 1994).
88. J.-P. Chretien and G. Prunier (eds.), Les ethnies ont une histoire (Paris, 1989).
89. J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 323.
90. See also C. Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven and London, 1994), 232ff.
91. T. Spear and R. Waller (eds.), Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa (Oxford, 1993).
92. J. Markakis, 'Ethnic conflict and the state in the Horn of Africa', in K. Fukui and J. Markakis (eds.), Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa (London, 1994), 217-37.
93. Young, African Colonial State, 234.
94. F. Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), 79-80.
95. T. Ranger, 'The invention of tradition in colonial Africa', in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 211-62.
96. T. Ranger, 'The invention of tradition revisited: the case of Africa', in T. Ranger and O. Vaughan (eds.), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-century Africa (London, 1993), 62-111.
97. M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, 1996), 185.
98. P. Chabal and J.-P. Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford, 1999), 57.
99. T. Spear, 'Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa', Journal of African History, 44:1 (2003), 16ff;
100. and again see Schoenbrun, 'Conjuring the modern'.
101. Lack of space prevents an extensive survey, but see A. Smith The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986);
102. and A. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford, 1999).
103. J. Lamphear (ed.), African Military History (Aldershot, 2007).
104. M. W. Daly, Darfur's Sorrow: A History of Destruction and Genocide (Cambridge, 2007);
105. R. O. Collins, A History of Modern Sudan (Cambridge, 2008).
106. J. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 (London, 1999), 3;
107. R. J. Reid, War in Pre-colonial Eastern Africa: The Patterns and Meanings of State-level Conflict in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2007), 9-10.
108. For example, J. F. Ade Ajayi and R. Smith, Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Ibadan and Cambridge, 1971);
109. B. A. Ogot (ed.), War and Society in Africa (London, 1972);
110. G. N. Uzoigwe, 'Pre-colonial military studies in Africa', Journal of Modern African Studies, 13:3 (1975), 469-81;
111. R. C. C. Law, 'Horses, firearms, and political power in pre-colonial West Africa', Past & Present, 72 (1976), 112-32;
112. A. A. Mazrui (ed.), The Warrior Tradition in Modern Africa (Leiden, 1977);
113. L. Kaba, 'Archers, musketeers, and mosquitoes: the Moroccan invasion of the Sudan and the Songhay resistance (1591-1612)', Journal of African History, 22:4 (1981), 457-75;
114. J. Thornton, 'The art of war in Angola, 1575-1680', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30 (1988), 360-78;
115. C. Hamilton, "The character and objects of Chaka": a reconsideration of the making of Shakaa as "Mfecane," motor', Journal of African History, 33:1 (1992), 37-63;
116. J. Lamphear, 'Brothers in arms: military aspects of East African age-class systems in historical perspective', in E. Kurimoto and S. Simonse (eds.), Conflict, Age and Power in North East Africa (Oxford, 1998), 79-97.
117. R. S. Smith, Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-colonial West Africa (London, 1989).
118. Thornton, Warfare; Reid, War; R. J. Reid, Frontiers of Violence in Northeast Africa: Genealogies of Conflict Since 1800 (Oxford, 2011).
119. See for example J. Keegan, A History of Warfare (London, 1993);
120. R. D. Kaplan, 'The coming anarchy', Atlantic Monthly, February 1994, 44-76.
121. A representative sample might include C. Clapham (ed.), African Guerrillas (Oxford, 1998);
122. W. Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, 1998);
123. M. Boas and K. C. Dunn (eds.), African Guerrillas: Raging Against the Machine (Boulder, 2007);
124. P. Richards (ed.), No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts (Oxford, 2005);
125. P. Kaarsholm (ed.), Violence, Political Culture and Development in Africa (Oxford, 2006);
126. B. Derman, R. Odgaard, and E. Sjaastad (eds.), Conflicts Over Land and Water in Africa (Oxford, 2007);
127. A. Nhema and P. Tiyambe Zeleza (eds.), The Roots of African Conflicts: The Causes and Costs (Oxford and Addis Ababa, 2008);
128. A. Nhema and P. Tiyambe Zeleza (eds.), The Resolution of African Conflicts: The Management of Conflict Resolution and Post-conflict Reconstruction (Oxford, 2008);
129. T. M. Ali and R. O. Matthews (eds.), Civil Wars in Africa: Roots and Resolution (Montreal and Kingston, 1999).
130. B. Barry, La Senegambie du XVe au XIXe siecle: traite négriére, Islam et conquete coloniale (Paris, 1988),
131. translated as Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1998);
132. P. M. Larson, Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora (Cambridge, 2009).
133. J. and J. Comaroff (eds.), Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago, 1993);
134. Schoenbrun, 'Conjuring the modern'.
135. see T. Falola and C. Jennings (eds.), Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies Across the Disciplines (New Brunswick, 2002);
136. Falola and Jennings, Sources and Methods; J. E. Philips (ed.), Writing African History (Rochester, 2005).
137. C. C. Wrigley, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (Cambridge, 1996);
138. B. Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2002);
139. D. Peterson and G. Macola (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, OH, 2009).
140. See the work of Molefi K. Asante, notably The History of Africa: The Quest for Harmony (London, 2007);
141. and, for a wide-ranging critique of the phenomenon, S. Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (London, 1998).
142. Recent examples of journalistic output include G. Arnold, Africa: A Modern History (London, 2005);
143. M. Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence (London, 2005);
144. R. Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (London, 2008).
145. P. Marsden, The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy (London, 2007).
146. S. David, Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 (London, 2004).
147. W. B. Bartlett, Zulu: Queen Victoria's Most Famous Little War (London, 2010);
148. M. Snook, How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed (London, 2010);
149. M. Snook, Like Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke's Drift (London, 2010);
150. I. Knight, Zulu Rising: The Epic Story of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift (London, 2010).
151. J. H. Plumb, The Death of the Past (London, 1973), 49.