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Editing and Publishing the John Philip Papers: Practical Considerations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Roger B. Beck
Roger B. Beck*
Affiliation:
Eastern Illinois University
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Extract

There is a long tradition in South Africa of publishing private and public documents, beginning with Donald Moodie's The Record, which first appeared in 1838. At the turn of the century the seemingly indefatigable Geroge McCall Theal published a number of collections that have become standard references for South African historians: Belangrijke Historische Dokumenten verzameld in de Kaap Kolonie en Elders (3 vols.); Basutoland Records (3 vols.); Records of South Eastern Africa (9 vols.); and the massive thirty-six-volume edition of the Records of the Cape Colony. The Van Riebeeck Society has just published the seventieth volume in its series of edited diaries, journals, and letters.3 And every student of contemporary South Africa has referred to the four-volume collection of African political documents edited by Gwendolen Carter and Thomas Karis.

In this essay I want to discuss the evolution of my own work with the papers of the South African missionary John Philip. I do not intend to delve into the intricacies of transcribing these papers but rather to discuss them in the broader context of documentary editing and the publication of multi-volume editions. The recently organized Association for the Publication of African Historical Sources has rightly identified the need for a coordinated effort to make African historical documents and source materials more readily available to the scholarly community. If the first of these sources to be published is an indication of what may be expected from this series, then all Africanists should join together to give the association their full support.5 But documentary editing is not a simple or inexpensive undertaking, as I hope to show in this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 39 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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References

Notes

1. Moodie, Donald, ed., The Record; or, A Series of Official Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Tribes of South Africa (Cape Town, 1838).Google Scholar

2. For an in-depth discussion of Theal's collection and editing of these documents see Smith, Ken, The Changing Past. Trends in South African Historiographical Writing (Athens, 1988), 31–44.Google Scholar

3. Nash, M.D., ed., The Last Voyage of the Guardian, Lieutenant Riou, Commander 1789-1791 (Cape Town, 1990).Google Scholar

4. Carter, Gwendolen M. and Karis, Thomas, eds., From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964 (4 vols.: Stanford, 1972–1977).Google Scholar

5. Spaulding, Jay and Salim, Muhammad Ibrahim Abu, Public Documents from Sinnar (East Lansing, 1990).Google Scholar

6. W.M. Macmillan had been given two boxes of papers by the Philip family to use in his research on nineteenth-century Cape history, which he deposited in the library for safekeeping. The contents of the boxes and the fire are described in his My South African Years: An Autobiography (Cape Town, 1975), 162-68, 218.Google Scholar See also W. M. Macmillan to LMS, Johannesburg, 9 March 1932, CWM Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies, Univeristy of London, Box 3, Folder 6.

7. Ross, Andrew, John Philip (1775-1851). Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa (Aberdeen, 1986).Google Scholar

8. de Kiewiet, C.W., A History of South Africa. Social and Economic (London, 1941), 44.Google Scholar

9. Lacour-Gayet, Robert, A History of South Africa (New York, 1978), 59.Google Scholar

10. Philip, John, Researches in South Africa (2 vols.: London, 1828).Google Scholar

11. Macmillan, William, Bantu, Boer and Briton (rev. and enl. ed.: Oxford, 1963), 10.Google Scholar

12. Beck, Roger B., “The Legalization and Development of Trade on the Cape Frontier, 1817-1830” (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1987).Google Scholar

13. I now have over one thousand documents listed on the calendar and would not be surprised if the eventual number of documents is more than 2000.

14. Cape Archives Depot, Cape Town, Accessions, A1487. I am currently preparing these letters for publication.

15. For a discussion of this material, as well as Philip's work with the American Board, see Kotzé, D. J., ed., Letters of the American Missionaries 1835-1838 (Cape Town, 1950), 6-13, 19–20.Google Scholar Three Philip letters, nos. 1, 2, and 16, as well as a letter to his wife, no. 9, are included in this volume.

16. Philip, John, “A Letter from the Rev. John Philip, D.D., Superintendent of the Missions of the London Society at the Cape of Good Hope, &c. to the Society of Inquiry on Missions, in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey” (Princeton, 1833).Google Scholar

17. “Letter from Dr. Philip,” Cincinnati Journal and Western Luminary, 27 July 1837, p.1.Google Scholar

18. Nor is this situation unique. E.g., in 1858 a fire destroyed the William Henry Harrison papers. Douglas E. Clanin describes the Harrison Papers Project's efforts to reconstruct a body of documents and their publication of a microfilm edition of the transcripts in “A Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: The William Henry Harrison Papers Project,” Documentary Editing, 10 (June, 1988), 6–10.Google Scholar

19. For information about membership in the ADE write to Celeste Walker, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215. Documentary Editing, published four times a year, is included with membership.

20. For more information about this institute and application forms, write to: Editing Institute, NHPRC, Room 300, National Archives Building, Washington, DC 20408.

21. McClure, James, “The Neglected Calendar,” Documentary Editing, 10 (September, 1988), 18–21.Google Scholar

22. For a complete discussion of the various options available in the organization of documentary editions, including microform supplements, see Kline, Mary-Jo, A Guide to Documentary Editing (Baltimore, 1987), chapter 3.Google Scholar

23. The selective microfilming of the Thomas A. Edison Papers is described in an interesting review article by Rothenberg, Marc, “Documenting Technology: The Selective Microfilm Edition of the Thomas A. Edison Papers,” Documentary Editing, 12 (September, 199), 53–55.Google Scholar

24. Schapera, Issac, ed., David Livingstone. Family Letters, 1841-1856 (2 vols.: London, 1959)Google Scholar; Livingstone's Missionary Correspondence, 1841-1856 (London, 1961)Google Scholar; and Livingstone's African Journal, 1853-1856 (London, 1963).Google Scholar

25. For discussions of single-editing see Oberg, Barbara, “Interpretation in Editing: The Gallatin Papers,” Newsletter of the Association for Documentary Editing, 4 (Mary, 1982), 7–9Google Scholar; and Johnston, Carol, “Single-Editor Editions from Manuscript: The Journals of Theodore Parker,” Newsletter of the Association for Documentary Editing, 5 (May, 1983), 4–5.Google Scholar

26. Mary-Jo Kline has noted that “few editors claim that theirs is a truly comprehensive edition.” My projected edition would contain all the Philip documents I could locate, rather than a selection of these documents, as would be the case in option one. Kline offers an interesting discussion of the meaning and use of the terms “selective” and “comprehensive,” as well as “definitive” and “authoritative,” in Kline, , Guide, 67–70.Google Scholar

27. This is not inconceivable if one considers that the staff s salaries are paid out of the project's funding, shared by the university and the outside funding agency, aid that this cost alone could total between $75,000 and $100,000 a year.

28. See Idzerda, Stanley J., “The Editor's Training and Status in the Historical Profession” in The Publication of American Historical Manuscripts, ed. Dunlap, Leslie W. and Shelley, Fred (Iowa City, 1976), 11–29Google Scholar; Bowers, Fredson, “The Education of Editors,” Newsletter of the Association for Documentary Editing, 2 (December, 1980), 1–4Google Scholar; and Taylor, Robert J., “One Historian's Education,” William and Mary Quarterly, 41 (1984), 478-86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. See Cullen, Charles T., “Some Reflections on the Soft Money Generation,” Newsletter of the Association for Documentary Editing, 5 (December, 1983), 1–4.Google Scholar

30. Two useful introductions to documentary editing are Kline, Guide, and Luey, Beth, Editing Documents and Texts: An Annotated Bibliography (Madison, WI, 1990).Google Scholar