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HIS295 Exam Prep Notes (2nd Half)
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HIS295 Exam Prep Notes (2nd Half) notes from January to April
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HIS295: ExamReview
Week 1: January 8 t h
Lecture: Sunjata I (Islam in West Africa)
Context: Islam (Traders Religion/West Africa and Syncretism)
Religious change in the Soudan (Jihadist states, Sokoto Caliphate, Mahdism)
Sunjata: Mythological founder of Mali Empire; 13th C – Trans-Saharan trade, Cultural and
religious ctr
Islam and Trade: Cosmopolitan religion founded by merchants
Muslim rulers maintained roads for trade, (Merchants, scholars and rulers meet to exchange
ideas and things)
Common religion, religion and Muslim law facilitated trade w/ dar al-Islam (at the heart of
Afro Eurasia)
Week 2: January 22 n d
Lecture: Sunjata II (Myth and Time)
Methodological Innovation: African pioneer use of oral sources
Problem w/ sources about Africa before WWII: Colonial, outside trader, oral usually by
anthropology
Power of Script: Historians (nothing but myth, full of magic, miracles, easy to manipulate)
Faith in Power of script: Objective and ‘Civilized’/ modern
Valuing Oral History Jan Vansina: De la Traditon orale: essai de method historique (contains
core truth and not just open to any change)
Thomas Spear: Three Levels (Origin myth, Middle: social order and Recent: literal)
Living Traditions: Professional Jeli/griot (knows about customs of today for African tribes)
Having Traditions to oral sources
Challenges of oral sources
o Ownership/exploitation (payments?)
o (Cultural) translation
o Privacy vs. Transparency
o Leading questions or telling you what you want to hear
o Problem of memory
o Feedback
Political Myth: More than just untrue story
Serves social function (Explain origins, justifies current order and social norms, Cultural
unifier)
Praise song: Poet to sing praise to chief/ruler
,Readings
NEO-TRADITIONALISM AND THE LIMITS OF INVENTION IN BRITISH COLONIAL
AFRICA (Thomas Spear)
Exploring a range of studies regarding the ‘invention of tradition’, the ‘making of customary
law’ and the ‘creation of tribalism’ since the 1980’s, this survey article argues that the case
for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African
institutions to establish hegemony
common emphasis on the social construction of tradition, law and ethnicity by colonial
authorities to preserve tradition and social order while subordinating African societies to
colonial rule.
Colonialism was not simply a unilateral political phenomenon, however. Colonial authorities
sought to incorporate preexisting polities, with their own structures of authority and political
processes, into colonial structures, themselves in the process of being developed in response
to local conditions. At the same time, colonial authorities were making new economic
demands on Africans to sacrifice their land to settlers, work away from home and produce
new crops, all of which dramatically affected the local lineage politics by which individuals
gained access to resources and economic security through strategic alliances with patrons and
one another
‘Tradition’ has been one of the most contentious words in African historiography, widely
condemned for conveying a timeless, unchanging past and the evil twin of modernity.
Traditions thus have their own histories, histories that can be recovered by careful excavation
of their successive representations
Cameron was right; it was critically important that they not invent chiefs lest they lose
whatever legitimacy local authorities were able to retain in negotiating the contradictions of
colonial rule. if the logic of indirect rule drew customary rulers into the colonial order, the
same logic drew the administration into the customary order. To protect African rulers as
keepers of the colonial peace, it had to buttress them as repositories of custom.
In the British colonial order, chiefs were the repositories, administrators and judges of
‘customary law’, the rules that governed colonial social, political and economic relations. But
in African societies, indigenous law was more a legal claim than a legal code. Colonial
authorities thus found many variants when they attempted to codify such practices. Colonial
authorities also dismissed customs they found ‘repugnant’ to civilized standards and added
their own laws, administrative rules and mission practices to the colonial code. Local
authorities were thus left responsible for a hodgepodge of indigenous, colonial and common
law, administrative regulations and Chris- tian injunctions that came to comprise customary
law.
The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa (Terence Ranger)
African tradition distinct from other continents
African and European systems of governance could only be made at monarchy level; (dozens
of rudimentary kings for colonizers)
British administrators set about inventing African traditions for Africans
2 ways Europeans sought to make use of their invented traditions to transform and modernize
African thought and conduct
o Acceptance of the idea some Africans could become members of the governing class
of colonial Africa - extending neo-traditional context
o European invented traditions changed the relationship between leader and the lead
Real modernizing would be because of African subordination to European commanders
Eg. Tradition of subordination South African mines had black men employed as domestic
servants than mine workers.
2
, European tradition allowed for Africans a series of clearly defined points of entry in the
colonial world but in subordinate relationship
Invented tradition was introduced as governance and not production
Colonial tradition put the hierarchies of elders over young and men over women in writing
Week 3: January 29 t h
Lecture: Indirect Rule and Traditionalism
Africa’s Crises: Economic, humanitarian, civil wars, political, corruption, Health, ‘bad’ men
Popular discourse:
o Tribalism and tradition – essential and timeless
o Helpless: need for ‘White Savior’
o ‘Poverty porn’
o Primitivization and exotizing: sexuality, no restraint
o Arguments Made: maybe colonialism wasn’t that bad or either fault of Africa or they
are passive victims
Early Colonial Contact
o 1824: Francisco Ferreira Gomes arrester in Bengula – mixed race, former slave and
exile from Brazil (One of the biggest slave trader city’s and Accused of taking over
Portuguese power)
Weakness of colonial power
Little control over local officials
Important role of African and black Brazilian elites
Cosmopolitanism of Atlantic port cities
o West African coast: long-standing and intensive contact (not just slave trade)
o Portuguese Advantage: Maritime tech and knowledge of winds, became intra-African
traders
Problem of Rule
o Conquest is not control (day to day job of ruling, courts, police customs)
o Limited resources from Europe and need to develop export economy
o Justification: “White Man’s Burden”
Selflessly toiling to advance “backward” races
Fight slavery, bring Christianity, education, technology, progress
Charter Companies
o Minimal public investment, minimal oversight
Prone to abuse, Brutality, often in need of military ‘bail outs’, uninterested in
building administrations
Direct Rule and Assimilation
o Ruled by European-style admirations
Staffed at Top: Europeans
At bottom: Western-trained Africans - become nationalists
Advantages for colonial power: Centralization of political power, uniformity
of rules
o French main proponents of rule
Assimilate to French culture and can become citizens
Aristocracy and religious authority travels to African rulers and chiefs
Tension btw civilizing mission and scientific racism
Indirect Rule
o Rule through chiefs, kings, etc.
3
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