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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
In the initial paragraph of a set of book reviews dealing with a sixteenth-century relation and a map by Ptolemy, Michel Doortmont informs us casually that:
The ancient and early modern [sic] history of Africa is no longer a very popular topic with mainstream [sic] African historians. Sources are scarce, often difficult to interpret and in many cases the results of research are disappointing [sic]: no wonder that most serious scholars [sic] leave the earlier periods alone. This is unfortunate, however, as the lack of serious and methodical scholarship [sic] on these periods gives fuel to the view of Africa as a mysterious and highly exotic continent still held by many outside the academic community.
Quite a statement! How arrogant and how gratuitously insulting to all those who do study “ancient and early modern history.” If Doortmont were alone in his views, one might just as well ignore this as an example of regretable idiosyncrasy. But the cavalier way in which he delivers his opinion suggests that he merely voices a truism, i.e., an opinion that he thinks is shared by most of his colleagues. Moreover, such a statement will surely frighten budding scholars away, which in itself is a good reason not to let such a sweeping condemnation of the study of earlier African history pass without comment.
Four main claims are made here: (a) a dichotomy and a contrast exists between those who who study the more remote past and those who study the recent past; (b) the first group is small and out of the mainstream; (c) its research yields disappointing results; (d) its scholarship lacks seriousness and method—with (b) and (c) of course in implicit contrast to the second group.
1. Doortmont, M. R., “Texts without Context,” JAH 37 (1996), 490–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This reviews three works by W.G.F. Lacroix.
2. See the comments in “An Interview with Henri Brunschwig” in Pilgrims to the Past, ed. Blussé, P.et al. (Leiden, 1996), 51–52Google Scholar, on the value of “premature books,” written before all the available evidence could be consulted.
3. In their hurry many of the earliest academic historians built up a history of Africa that took whatever printed material they could find at face value with sorry results. See Vansina, Jan, Living with Africa (Madison, 1994), 134–36.Google Scholar Cavalier attitudes towards written sources are still all too common.
4. E.g., The journal Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika from 1979; Schoenbrun, David L., “We are What We Eat: Ancient Agriculture Between the Great Lakes,” JAH 34 (1993), 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar on words and things; Bühnen, Stephan, “Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction With Examples from Southern Senegambia and Germany,” HA 19 (1992), 45–101Google Scholar; Ehret, Christopher and Posnansky, Merrick, eds., The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History (Berkeley, 1982)Google Scholar; Schmidt, Peter R., Historical Archaeology (Westport, 1978).Google Scholar
5. Edited by Beatrix Heintze and Adam Jones and published as volume 33 (1987) of Paideuma.
6. Vansina, Jan, “Quilombos on São Tomé, or In Search of Original Sources,” HA 23 (1996), 453–59.Google Scholar
7. A discussion of the most notable specific advances would be too long and out of place here. Some sense of recent advances can already be gained by a look at recent one-volume textbooks such as Iliffe, John, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar, or Curtin, P.D.et al.African History (2d. ed.: New York, 1995)Google Scholar, compared with the first edition published in 1978.
8. Lacroix, W.G.F., Beschrijving van het Koninkrijk Kongo en van de omliggende gebieden (Delft, 1992).Google Scholar
9. Burssens, A., “De Beschryvinghe van't Groot ende Vermaert Coninckrijck van Congo (1596),” Kongo Overzee 2 (1941/1942), 1-86, 113–203.Google Scholar
10. He was influenced especially by Bal, Willy, Description du Royaume de Congo et des Contrées Environnantes (2d. ed.: Louvain, 1965).Google Scholar
11. Ibid., xx, xxxiv, note 62.
12. Book 1: IX, paragraph 4. In Lacroix's edition, p. 57.
13. Lacroix, , Het binnenland van Afrika in de zestiende eeuw: Een historisch-geografische analyse van Duarte Lopes kaart van Afrika (Delft, 1992).Google Scholar
14. Lacroix, , Afrika in de oudheid (Delft, 1993).Google Scholar
15. Ibid., 11. According to his notes Lacroix used the text of Stevenson, E.L., Geography of Claudius Ptolemy (New York 1932).Google Scholar
16. The recent translation by G.W.B. Huntingford for the Hakluyt Society (London, 1980), does not allow one to check the original. Hence Africanists should use Casson, Lionel, ed. and trans., The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Princeton 1989).Google Scholar
17. The guide for West Africa, Fage, J.D., Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa Published in European Languages (2d. ed.: Madison, 1994)Google Scholar, is invaluable in this regard.
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