Academic literature on the topic 'African historiography'

South Africa has had three periods of historiographical change. As South Africa has transitioned from colonialism, to apartheid, to democracy, historiography has been influenced by those in power. Post-1994 and with the onset of a democratic government, the Nation sought to create a new historiographical framework. However, as this attempt to build a National historiography developed questions could be raised as to whether this historiography was inclusive of a variety of sources? This dissertation looks at three areas regarding South African historiography. First, the current role of Churches in South Africa in fostering historiography. Second, the theological framework of "Ras, Volk en Nasie", the "Kairos Document", and the "Belhar Confession". Third, the depiction of South Africa by the Church of Scotland's National magazine "Life and Work" during 1975 – 1985. By looking at this time period, the thesis shows that as various strands of theology developed in South Africa, these changes had connotations within the Church of Scotland. Life and Work shows a distinct change in attitude towards the Dutch Reformed Church and the Black Consciousness movement. It argues that underrepresented stories about South Africa allow for a holistic historiography. Churches in South Africa have an opportunity to use their position within society to develop this holistic historiography and thus, historiography becomes a practical theological issue.<br>Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2017.<br>Church History and Church Policy<br>MTh<br>Unrestricted

The thesis has been divided into five chapters. The three central chapters reflect paradigmatic shifts in Nigerian historiography. During the colonial era, although a few texts written by Nigerians entered the published literature, most writing was produced by non-Africans, anthropologists and colonial administrators, for the purpose of social investigation and control. With the establishment of Nigerian universities in 1948, academic historians, fuelled by the desire for independence, reclaimed their discipline to write local and national political histories. Encouraged by the concerns of the North American feminist movement of the 1970s, women gained an increasing presence in research and literature.<br>Contrary to earlier arguments, categories for representations of women in history coexist in time. There are periods such as the nationalist era, in which women are almost invisible. When women are present in the literature, however, they are seen both in complementary power relationships with men in certain economic areas, such as trading, and in other areas, such as taxation, subject to male power. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis offers a comprehensive examination of the intellectual contributions of John Glover Jackson, an African American historian. Jackson, similiar to many other African American scholars, is self trained in the field of African history. This self training is a crucial element in this presentation for it is an attempt to present the autodidact's efforts and contributions as valid. This attempt reviews the archeological, anthropological, and cultural evidence presented by Jackson relating to his interpretations of man, God, and civilization. The methodology utilized in this research consists mainly of examining secondary data. Primary materials include interviews, video recordings, and recorded lectures. Critiques of the scholarly content of these materials are included in the assessment of Jackson's work. Iconographic, linguistic and ethnological evidence will be presented as interpreted by Jackson. The findings demonstrate that Jackson's contributions were virtually ignored. The reasons for this disregard are several. The dissenting nature of his presentation, his atheist reasoning and his lack of diplomacy contributed to his neglect. The results of this study carry wide reaching implications in the different fields of historical research. An Important finding, for example, is that formal university training is not an absolute prerequisite in the writing of history. Of greater significance is the evidence presented and the integrity of the historian's scholarship. The autodidact and the formally trained scholar have much to offer historiography. Neither can be ignored if honest scholastic advancements is intended. This exploring of the contributions of the self taught scholar, John G. Jackson, attempts to support such a conclusion.

The thesis examines the History Workshop at the University of the University of the Witwatersrand in the context of radical South African historical scholarship. Not only is the History Workshop shown to mirror developments in radical scholarship but it is seen to guide and stimulate particular directions of research. The history of the Workshop is traced and its academic as well as popularising activities are examined. The Marxist social history approach, which was encouraged by the Workshop, is considered with reference to the social and political environment in which it emerged, and the international and local historiographical context. The issues, themes and concepts reflective of that approach are unpacked and some thought is given to their impact on Marxist categories of analysis. The History Workshop is seen to reflect and to have some influence on the direction pursued in labour and urban as well as rural history. In labour history, it pursued concerns of the social history of labour. Labour history was to take two different paths in the 1980's due partially to the influence of the Workshop group. Urban history grew rapidly as a field in the 1980's. The triennial Workshops reflected that development while the Workshop group particularly encouraged social history concerns within that field. The development of Marxist social history is seen in the change from an economistic approach in some of the papers presented at the first History Workshops to a broader social history emphasis in many of the later papers. The themes and issues arising out of urban Marxist social history are considered, as is their impact on the understanding of South Africa's urban history in general. The Workshop reflected and encouraged social history themes in rural history studies, which was another expanding field of research in the 1980's. These themes incorporated Africanist insight as well as an emphasis on oral history and local history. The Marxist social history studies, which were presented at the triennial Workshops, produced new insights into the rural history of South Africa which challenged earlier theories. The History Workshop with its materialist social history approach acted as a forum and as such, a catalyst for a radical scholarship in South Africa. The triennial workshops reflected what was happening in the terrain of Marxist social history. These Workshops, which attracted a large gathering of local, as well as foreign academics, legitimised that research and gave the Marxist social history scholars a certain standing within the local academic community. Although the study of South Africa's past may have similar directions in the late 1970's and 1980's without the presence of the Workshop, that presence gave a coherence and an added impetus to those routes of Marxist social history.

One of the most obtrusive features of Yoruba studies has been its clear pattern of regional preferences and biases in its scholarship. This pattern is reflected in the present concentration of studies on the southwest, the northwest, the central subgroups of Ife, Owo, Ijesha, Egba, Ijebu, Oyo, and Ilorin on one hand, and the paucity of works on the northeast and southeast subgroups of the O-okun Yoruba, the Igbomina, the Ikale and the Ilaje on the other. There is no other subgroup where this particularistic trend in Yoruba studies and especially, art historiography can better be observed than with the scholarly neglect of the O-okun peoples, the most northeasterly of the Yoruba subgroups. An important goal of this thesis is to foreground the multi-culturalistic tendencies among the Yoruba and underscore the necessity to provide comparable scholarly attention to neglected subgroups, the O-okun peoples in particular.

An exploration of South African historiography through the prism of representations of activist writer Ruth First (1925-1982) forms the focus of this thesis. Ignored in South African canonical histories during the apartheid era, Ruth First is frequently portrayed as an icon of the struggle in current accounts about the past. The dissertation is ordered by five central discussions: gender, political activism, Jewishness, maternal behaviour and the role of the individual in the community. With reference to her non-fiction writing, autobiographical accounts by her daughters and her contemporaries, photographic exhibitions and transcriptions of amnesty hearings to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (amongst other works), I trace Ruth First's presentation of identity through communications of dress, posture and language. I examine too the production of her image across time in South African culture. Imprisoned under the infamous Ninety-Day law in 1963, Ruth First subsequently wrote a memoir titled 117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation under South African Ninety-Day Detention Law (1965), which became known as a classic of the genre. Caught between her commitments to racial equality and a life of social privilege, between the demands of motherhood and her sociological research work in Africa, between performances of a white femininity and the suppressed ramifications of a difficult ethnic past, Ruth First shuttles between unsatisfactory subject positions. I propose here that Ruth First strains against the representative mantle which she is made to wear in post-apartheid tributes to the past, and which she herself sometimes donned as a lifetime member of the South African Communist Party, and later the African National Congress. As the daughter of poor Yiddish-speaking Jews from Lithuania, I propose that Ruth First is marked by a history of dislocation, immigration and revolutionary activity which she refused to acknowledge. I undertake my own historiographical exercise through which I re-situate Ruth First within an alternate heritage of Jewish activist women. An understanding of the historiographical process as a series of continuous adjustments of the past to politicized positions in the present underlies my examination. Includes bibliographical references (p. 308-326).

This study is an exploration of the making of Xhosa historiography from the end of the eighteenth century to the close of the nineteenth century. Continuity and change are key features that are identifiable in the writing of Xhosa history over the period. Selected documents provide evidence on how different writers built on the works of their predecessors. At the same time, over a period of hundred years, due to changing socio-political contexts, new ideas and perceptions crept into Xhosa history. European writers, who dominated the writing of Xhosa history, were made up of colonial officials, missionaries, and travellers. Sharing a common European Christian background these writers brought along their particular understanding of history, and held assumptions about the indigenous people and their past. However such assumptions were always in a state of flux. South-east Africans were also major contributors to the making of Xhosa history. Their oral traditions were important sources from which Xhosa history was produced. The African and European encounter in the making of Xhosa history meanHhat historioracy and historiography came together in the production of Xhosa history. At the end of the eighteenth century there were a handful of European travellers who explored the interior of southern Africa and recorded their observations of indigenous communities. These observations of south-east Africans, whom they divided into three racial groups, formed the basis of later writings about the indigenous communiti~s. The beginning of the nineteenth century brought the establishment of British rule at the C,ppe. This introduced new players into the African-European drama that was being acted out on the frontier. Colonial officials set out to inform themselves about the indigenous people, and this meant writing up their history. From the 1820s missionaries were a main source of information on amaXhosa. Xhosa history produced under the missionary influence included works by African converts, among whom Noyi was the most noteworthy. As British imperialism gained ground from the middle of the nineteenth century, history was increasingly used by British officials as a tool to justify their colonial expansion. Under Governor Grey there was a deliberate production of a Xhosa history that depicted amaXhosa as having a barbaric past and in need of civilisation. Theal who consulted Dutch and British archives as well as oral tradition made a major contribution to the writing of Xhosa history. But Theal later began to select evidence to show that amaXhosa were recent immigrants into southeast Africa. During the last quarter ofthe nineteenth century a band of literate Africans, using newspapers like Isigidimi and later Imvo Zabantsundu, embarked on writing African history. This study highlights the development of certain themes in Xhosa history, themes which remained central in later years. The royal theme became pivotal and in the process displaced other histories in African communities, like clan histories. This study has also traced the roots of some historical myths. For example claims by early travellers about an empty land fed into the migration theme which sought to explain amaXhosa as recent immigrants into south-east Africa. Xhosa historiography, just like its European counterpart, marginalised ordinary people, especially women, and became primarily an account of the lives and activities of ruling men.