Towards a Broader Southern African History: Backwards, Sideways, and Upside-Down
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 66; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02582473.2014.927195
ISSN1726-1686
Autores Tópico(s)South African History and Culture
ResumoAbstractThe first Southern African Historical Society meeting outside the Union or Republic of South Africa is an opportunity to look wider than national histories, and forward as well as back. This paper raises nine points for the production of public as well as scholarly history. The need for historical studies to burst out of national barriers. What is or has been Southern Africa as a region? The need for caution in using overly-fixed categories of identity such as ethnicity. The need to embrace and historicise the remote past of ‘prehistory’. The importance of Eastern African and Indian Ocean connections. The continuing salience of imperial as well as colonial history. The importance of ‘native agency’ in brokering mass Christianity and modern society. Seeing history as multiple-biography and even daring to write semi-fictionalised biography. The need for responsible use of entertainment media in publicising scholarship. Key words: Africasouthernhistoriographypublic history Notes1. This keynote address complements that given by Prof. Jane Carruthers at the 24th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Historical Society held at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, in July 2013, which had the theme ‘Leveraging National Interests with Regional Visions'.2. David Johannes Joubert De Villiers, New Junior Certificate History (Cape Town: Maskew Miller for Cape Department of Education, 1937 & reprints till 1962).3. Diamond Fields Advertiser, editorial Wednesday 27 December 1911, p. 5 col. 1.4. Terence Ranger ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle Over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (2004), 215–234; B.M. Tendi, ‘Patriotic History and Public Intellectuals Critical of Power’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 2 (2008), 379–396.5. Terence Osborn Ranger, introd. (sometimes cited as Eric Stokes & Richard Brown, eds), Historians in Tropical Africa: Proceedings of the [First] Inter-collegiate History Conference, held at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland September 1960 (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia: University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, for Leverhulme Trust, 1962).6. Thomas Tlou, Neil Parsons, and Willie Henderson, eds, with Epilogue by Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, Seretse Khama 1921–1980 (Gaborone: Botswana Society & Braamfontein, Johannesburg: Macmillan Boleswa, 1995), 318–320, 370–376, 387–388, and 396.7. Thomas N. Huffman, ‘Bantu Migrations in Southern Africa’, in Himla Soodyall, ed., The Prehistory of Africa (Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2006), 97–108.8. J.A. Barnes, Politics in a Changing Society: A Political History of the Fort Jameson Ngoni (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1954).9. W.C. Willoughby (University of Birmingham, Rev. W.C. Willoughby Papers, File 713 ‘Bantu Ideas of Omens, Luck, Curses, Oaths’) also suggests that since the right-hand is kwa godimo towards the rising of the sun and the left-hand is kwa tlhase towards the setting of the sun, the Bantu (southern hemisphere) map is therefore upside-down in Western (northern hemisphere) terms.10. David Cannadine, The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences (London: Allen Lane, 2013).11. Isaac Schapera, The Ethnic Composition of Tswana Tribes (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology No.11, 1952); Paul Stuart Landau, Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400 to 1948 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the fallacy of the mono-ethnic state see also ‘The Evolution of Modern Botswana: Historical Revisions’, in Louis Picard, ed., The Evolution of Modern Botswana (London: Rex Collings & Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 26–39.12. John Parkington, ‘The Neglected Alternative: Historical Narrative rather than Cultural Labelling’, South African Archaeological Bulletin, 48, 158 (December 1993), 94–97.13. Hermann Batibo, The Role of Language in the Discovery of Cultural History: Reconstructing Setswana-Speakers’ Cultural Past (Gaborone: University of Botswana Professorial Inaugural Lecture, March 1996)14. David Hammond-Tooke, ‘Southern Bantu Origins: Light from Kinship Terminology’, Southern African Humanities, 16 (2004), 71–78; Thomas N. Huffman, Handbook to the Iron Age: The Archaeology of Pre-Colonial Farming Societies in Southern Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2007); Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2002); Roger F.H. Summers, ‘Archaeological Distributions and a Tentative History of Tsetse Infestation in Rhodesia and the Northern Transvaal’, Arnoldia (National Museums & Monuments of Rhodesia), 3, 13 (1967), 1–18.15. Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 30 November 1913, p. 15; 21 December, p.13. For Chinese in Southern Africa see Karen L. Harris, ‘Chinese Merchants on the Rand, c.1850–1910’, South African Historical Journal, 33 (1995), 155–168; ‘The South African Chinese: A Community Record of a Neglected Minority’, South African Historical Journal, 36 (1997), 316–325; ‘Private and Confidential: The Chinese Mine Labourers and “Unnatural Crime”’, South African Historical Journal, 50 (2004), 115–133. 16. Charles van Onselen, New Babylon New Nineveh: Everyday Life on the Witwatersrand 1886–1914 (Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2001 [1st edn. Longman, 1982, 2 vols.]). 17. ‘Imperial History in the Ukay: The ‘South Africa 1895–1921: Test of Empire’ Conference at Oxford, March 1996’, South African Historical Journal, 34 (June 1996), 211–222. See esp. the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.18. Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, c.1700–c.1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). See also S. Gilley & Brian Stanley, eds, The Cambridge History of Christianity. Volume 8: World Christianities (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).19. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Volume One (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).20. Stephen C. Volz, African Teachers and the Colonial Frontier: Tswana Evangelists and their Communities during the Nineteenth Century, Bible & Theology in Africa series (New York & Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011); Part Themba Mgadla and Stephen C. Volz, transl. and eds, Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883–1896 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2nd series no. 37, 2006). See also Joel Cabrita, ‘Patriot and Prophet: John Dube’s 1936 Biography of the South African Churchman Isaiah Shembe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 38, 3 (September 2012), 433–450; Jo Davis, Seminar paper on Rev. Tiyo Soga delivered at University of London School of Advanced Studies, 29 May 2013; David Maxwell, ‘Freed Slaves, Missionaries, and Respectability: The Expansion of the Christian Frontier from Angola to the Belgian Congo’, Journal of African History, 54, 1 (2013), 79–102. Compare with Benjamin N. Lawrence, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts, eds, Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).21. Gabriel M. Setiloane, The Image of God Among the Sotho-Tswana (Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1976); Steffen Jensen, ‘Shosholoza: Political Culture in South Africa Between the Secular and the Occult’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 38, 1 (March 2012), 91–106.22. I owe these points to the Inaugural Lecture as William Robertson Professor of Commonwealth and American History given by Prof. George A. Shepperson at the University of Edinburgh.23. Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Protest and Patriotism in the First World War (London: Macmillan, 2010).24. [Herman] Max Gluckman, Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand (Lusaka: Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Rhodes-Livingstone Papers no. 28, 1958 [first published in three parts in Bantu Studies, 1940–1942]). See also Terence O. Ranger ‘The Ethiopian Episode in Barotseland’, Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, 37 (June 1965), 26–41; Jaap Van Velsen, ‘The Extended Case Method and Situational Analysis’, in A.L. Epstein, ed., The Craft of Anthropology (London: Tavistock, 1967), 129–149; J. Clyde Mitchell, ed., Social Networks in Urban Situations: Analyses of Personal Relationships in Central African Towns (Manchester: Manchester University Press for Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 1969); Hugh Macmillan, ‘Return to the Malungwane Drift: Max Gluckman, the Zulu Nation and the Common Society’, African Affairs, 94, 374 (1995), 39–65.25. Hilary Mantel is the winner of many literary prizes for her historical-biographical novels on Thomas Cromwell, of which Wolf Hall (London: Fourth Estate, 2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (London: Fourth Estate, 2012) have so far been published.26. Interview on BBC News 24 Hours TV channel, Monday 25 March 2013, approx. 21.45 GMT.27. Arthur Mervyn Keppel-Jones, When Smuts Goes: A History of South Africa from 1952 to 2010 (first published in 2015) (Cape Town: African Bookman & London: Victor Gollancz, 1947).28. Evening Standard (London), Tuesday 28 May 2013, p. 44; Wednesday 29 May 2013, p. 16.29. For imaginative use of archival film, from old British Pathe newsreels, see the filmlets titled ‘Making History’ by comedy writer David Quantick at .30. See my previous Southern African Historical Society paper calling for biography as ‘history from the side’, published as ‘Some Southern African Entry Points into Global History’, Journal for Interdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 5, 1 (July 2009), 1–8.31. Gillian Tett, ‘Welcome to the Virtual University’, and Clive Cookson, ‘Dealing with the Data Deluge’, FT Weekend Magazine (London), 2/3 February 2013, p. 62.32. Words spoken by Thomas a Becket, in Thomas Stearns Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (London: James Brodie, 1950), as quoted in The Complete Plays of T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), p. 43.
Referência(s)