Board of Trustees, Boston University Au Coeur de l'Ethnie: Ethnies, Tribalisme et Etat en Afrique by Jean-Loup Amselle; Elikia M'Bokolo; Les Barundi: Une Etude Ethnologique en Afrique Orientale by Hans Meyer; Francoise Willmann; Jean-Pierre Chretien Review by: Carol Dickerman The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1986), pp. 162-164 Published by: Boston University African Studies Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/218729 . Accessed: 08/05/2014 23:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. . Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 23:31:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=buafc http://www.jstor.org/stable/218729?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 162 BOOK REVIEWS 162 BOOK REVIEWS section, "The Slave Narratives as Literature," is the longest, over half the book. The editors of the book, as literary historians, are primarily interested in this section, which traces the influence of slave narratives on later black literature. It is one of the central theses of the book that slave narratives have been insufficiently recognized as proto-types of subsequent Afro-American fiction and non-fiction. The book focuses largely on slave autobiographies of American blacks between 1750 and 1861. The two exceptions are a chapter on African slaves, "Three West African Writers of the 1780s," by Paul Edwards, which highlights the lives of Ignatius Sancho, Oloudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, and two entries about Juan Francisco Manzano, a Cuban slave. The book is directed to the specialist in black literature and American slavery. This reader found the explanations for the non- specialist inadequate. For example, what does "trope of chiasmus" (p. xii) mean? There is a need for longer remarks at the beginning of each section to explain more about the significance of the essays and the scholarly controversies involved. There is a need for bibli- ographical information about the articles in the collection. Where were they first published? The reader would also like to have some biographical information about the contributing authors. The reader would appreciate a bibliography to detail scholarly works on the slave narratives in addition to the bibliography of slave narratives which concludes the book. For the Africanist, the essays on the pitfalls of using the WPA interviews of the ex-slaves have parallels to the difficulties with oral traditions. There is a rich historical discussion in Paul D. Escott's "The Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives," C. Vann Woodward's "History from Slave Sources," and John W. Blass- ingame's "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: "Approaches and Prob- lems." Robin W. Winks, "The Making of a Fugitive Slave Narrative: Josiah Henson and Uncle Tom - A Case Study" is a fascinating piece of historical research. The book provides the opportunity to glimpse the richness of a growing field of research in slave writings. The attempt to inte- grate history and literature falls somewhat short of realization, but it is a step in the right direction. The book will surely stim- ulate historical and literary research in slave writings. RINA OKONKWO University of Nigeria, Nsukka AU COEUR DE L'ETHNIE: ETHNIES, TRIBALISME ET ETAT EN AFRIQUE. Edited by Jean-Loup AmseZZe and EZikia M'BokoZo. Paris: Editions La Decouverte, 1985. Pp. 228. LES BARUNDI: UNE ETUDE ETHNOLOGIQUE EN AFRIQUE ORIENTALE. By Hans Meyer. Translated from the German by Franfoise WilZmann; intro- duced and annotated by Jean-Pierre Chr6tien. Paris: SociEte Franqaise d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, 1985. Pp. viii, 276. 220 Fr. These two books present an interesting contrast and tell us as much about Africanists' changing attitudes towards ethnicity as about the mutability of ethnic groups themselves. Au coeur de Z'ethnie is a section, "The Slave Narratives as Literature," is the longest, over half the book. The editors of the book, as literary historians, are primarily interested in this section, which traces the influence of slave narratives on later black literature. It is one of the central theses of the book that slave narratives have been insufficiently recognized as proto-types of subsequent Afro-American fiction and non-fiction. The book focuses largely on slave autobiographies of American blacks between 1750 and 1861. The two exceptions are a chapter on African slaves, "Three West African Writers of the 1780s," by Paul Edwards, which highlights the lives of Ignatius Sancho, Oloudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, and two entries about Juan Francisco Manzano, a Cuban slave. The book is directed to the specialist in black literature and American slavery. This reader found the explanations for the non- specialist inadequate. For example, what does "trope of chiasmus" (p. xii) mean? There is a need for longer remarks at the beginning of each section to explain more about the significance of the essays and the scholarly controversies involved. There is a need for bibli- ographical information about the articles in the collection. Where were they first published? The reader would also like to have some biographical information about the contributing authors. The reader would appreciate a bibliography to detail scholarly works on the slave narratives in addition to the bibliography of slave narratives which concludes the book. For the Africanist, the essays on the pitfalls of using the WPA interviews of the ex-slaves have parallels to the difficulties with oral traditions. There is a rich historical discussion in Paul D. Escott's "The Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives," C. Vann Woodward's "History from Slave Sources," and John W. Blass- ingame's "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: "Approaches and Prob- lems." Robin W. Winks, "The Making of a Fugitive Slave Narrative: Josiah Henson and Uncle Tom - A Case Study" is a fascinating piece of historical research. The book provides the opportunity to glimpse the richness of a growing field of research in slave writings. The attempt to inte- grate history and literature falls somewhat short of realization, but it is a step in the right direction. The book will surely stim- ulate historical and literary research in slave writings. RINA OKONKWO University of Nigeria, Nsukka AU COEUR DE L'ETHNIE: ETHNIES, TRIBALISME ET ETAT EN AFRIQUE. Edited by Jean-Loup AmseZZe and EZikia M'BokoZo. Paris: Editions La Decouverte, 1985. Pp. 228. LES BARUNDI: UNE ETUDE ETHNOLOGIQUE EN AFRIQUE ORIENTALE. By Hans Meyer. Translated from the German by Franfoise WilZmann; intro- duced and annotated by Jean-Pierre Chr6tien. Paris: SociEte Franqaise d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, 1985. Pp. viii, 276. 220 Fr. These two books present an interesting contrast and tell us as much about Africanists' changing attitudes towards ethnicity as about the mutability of ethnic groups themselves. Au coeur de Z'ethnie is a This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 23:31:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp BOOK REVIEWS 163 collection of six essays that treat changes in ethnic identities and categories. Its perspective is most emphatically that of the 1980s, while Hans Meyer's Les Barundi, originally published in 1916, is a product of a period when the Hamitic myth reigned unquestioned. The essays in Au coeur de 'ethnie analyze the creation of and increasing emphasis on ethnic identity among a variety of peoples in Francophone Africa in the twentieth century. Jean-Pierre Dozon fo- cuses on the Bete in the Ivory Coast, describing the political and economic changes that led to the group's distinguishing itself from others. Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi are the subjects of the pieces by Claudine Vidal and Jean-Pierre Chretien; Vidal discusses how the colonial regime in Rwanda solidified and extended the divi- sion between the two groups, while Chr6tien traces the application of Hamitic and Bantu stereotypes to Tutsi and Hutu in the period and discusses the more recent manifestations of this process. Belgian colonial attitudes and their repercussions are also the focus of Elikia M'Bokolo's essay on separatism in Katanga, and Jean Bazin's contribution, the most satisfying of the collection, describes how travelers, merchants, and officials have perceived and misperceived the Bambara over the centuries. Anthropologists, both professional and amateur, come in for a good deal of criticism in these essays as well as in the general consideration of ethnic identity provided by Jean-Loup Amselle. Their synchronic approach and emphasis on dis- crete groups of people, which neither overlap nor alter, have pro- vided the justification for colonial policies which understood eth- nic identity as fixed and central and whose effects bedevil inde- pendent countries decades after the end of the colonial era. The authors are quite right in their thesis that ethnic cate- gories are much more complex and elusive than they have often been assumed to be. Nor are they wrong in their contention that colonial regimes focused on ethnic identity in many of their policies. But the subject is perhaps too ambitious an undertaking for the format of an essay, which provides insufficient space to develop a convinc- ing discussion of the effects that colonialism had on ethnic devel- opment and competition. Inevitably, several authors fail to prove their cases sufficiently. Chretien, for example, devotes over half of his essay to an analysis of European perceptions of ethnic iden- tity in what was Ruanda-Urundi but then fails to tie this evidence to his all-too-brief discussions of Hutu-Tutsi conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi since the mid-1950s. Similarly, M'Bokolo, in his piece on Katangan separatism, does not adequately link Belgian colonial policies with the events of the past twenty-five years in the region. No such limitations of format were placed on Hans Meyer, who had an entire book in which to lay out what he had learned about the Barundi. Based on his own travels in Burundi in 1911 as well as on accounts of other Europeans, Les Barundi is an interesting mixture of what the German geographer Meyer and others saw. It also affords a clear view of anthropological and imperial attitudes current at the time. As Jean-Pierre Chretien points out in his introduction, Meyer accepted the contrast between noble, Hamitic Tutsi and ser- vile, Bantu Hutu, but was also too careful an observer to ignore vast amounts of evidence that blurred - if it did not altogether negate - this distinction. Les Barundi is far more than one trav- eler's observations, and the wealth of detail about Burundi culture is invaluable for the scholar of interlacustrine Africa, providing elaborate descriptions of economic and social activities as well as This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 23:31:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 164 BOOK REVIEWS 164 BOOK REVIEWS laying out Meyer's analysis of the area's prospects under German colonial rule. Originally published in 1916, several months after Belgian occupation of Ruanda-Urundi, the book has not been as widely accessible as it ought to be and the publication of this translation into French is to be welcomed. CAROL DICKERMAN University of Wisconsin Madison BLACK COLONIALISM: THE AMERICO-LIBERIAN SCRAMBLE FOR THE HINTERLAND. By YekutieZ Gershoni. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. Pp. xiii, 123. $19.00. As the tragedy of the post-1980 Liberian coup d'etat unfolds - the civilianization of military rule on an authoritarian model A la Zaire under Mobutu seems imminent - it is useful to trace the his- torical origins of the present political farce. This, indeed, is the fundamental mission of history: to understand present trends by studying the causal factors of the past. Based on a doctoral dis- sertation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yekutiel Gershoni's study is primarily an attempt to comprehend and document the "colo- nization" of the Liberian hinterland by the black settler government. The story is told with impressive economy in five short chapters and sensitive use of documentary sources from archives in Monrovia, Washington, D.C., London, and Paris, as well as published and unpub- lished works bordering on the subject. The founding of Liberia in the middle of the West African "bulge" - an area populated by the Kru, Mande, Kissi and Gola linguistic groups - is the subject of the first two chapters. With the establishment of a "Province of Free- dom" by British philanthropists in neighboring Sierra Leone for the settlement of liberated slaves in 1787, the idea of settling blacks from the United States in West Africa gained currency around 1816 when the legislature of Virginia decided that their representatives in Congress should act "for the purpose of obtaining a territory on the Coast of Africa ... to serve for an asylum for such persons of color as are now free, ... and for those who may hereafter be eman- cipated" (pp. 6-7). An American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in the same year to give the idea an organizational base. Missions were despatched to find a suitable place for colonization in the West African coast and the area south of Sierra Leone at Cape Mesurado was deemed suitable. By 1819 the ACS had garnered suffi- cient support to become an agent of the US government in the reset- tlement of blacks recaptured from slave traders' ships. "Between 1822 and 1867, the ACS brought 18,858 immigrants to the coast of West Africa" (p. 8). The goal of founding an "asylum" in Africa for blacks who had suffered injustice and discrimination apart, the ACS had the far more ambitious objective of converting "the wide regions of African barbarism, heathenism, cruelty and desolution into a garden of civilization and ... a prominent portion of Christendom" (p. 9). From about March 1820, the settlement at Cape Mesurado began to grow, spilling over into other areas along the Liberian coast use- laying out Meyer's analysis of the area's prospects under German colonial rule. Originally published in 1916, several months after Belgian occupation of Ruanda-Urundi, the book has not been as widely accessible as it ought to be and the publication of this translation into French is to be welcomed. CAROL DICKERMAN University of Wisconsin Madison BLACK COLONIALISM: THE AMERICO-LIBERIAN SCRAMBLE FOR THE HINTERLAND. By YekutieZ Gershoni. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. Pp. xiii, 123. $19.00. As the tragedy of the post-1980 Liberian coup d'etat unfolds - the civilianization of military rule on an authoritarian model A la Zaire under Mobutu seems imminent - it is useful to trace the his- torical origins of the present political farce. This, indeed, is the fundamental mission of history: to understand present trends by studying the causal factors of the past. Based on a doctoral dis- sertation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yekutiel Gershoni's study is primarily an attempt to comprehend and document the "colo- nization" of the Liberian hinterland by the black settler government. The story is told with impressive economy in five short chapters and sensitive use of documentary sources from archives in Monrovia, Washington, D.C., London, and Paris, as well as published and unpub- lished works bordering on the subject. The founding of Liberia in the middle of the West African "bulge" - an area populated by the Kru, Mande, Kissi and Gola linguistic groups - is the subject of the first two chapters. With the establishment of a "Province of Free- dom" by British philanthropists in neighboring Sierra Leone for the settlement of liberated slaves in 1787, the idea of settling blacks from the United States in West Africa gained currency around 1816 when the legislature of Virginia decided that their representatives in Congress should act "for the purpose of obtaining a territory on the Coast of Africa ... to serve for an asylum for such persons of color as are now free, ... and for those who may hereafter be eman- cipated" (pp. 6-7). An American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in the same year to give the idea an organizational base. Missions were despatched to find a suitable place for colonization in the West African coast and the area south of Sierra Leone at Cape Mesurado was deemed suitable. By 1819 the ACS had garnered suffi- cient support to become an agent of the US government in the reset- tlement of blacks recaptured from slave traders' ships. "Between 1822 and 1867, the ACS brought 18,858 immigrants to the coast of West Africa" (p. 8). The goal of founding an "asylum" in Africa for blacks who had suffered injustice and discrimination apart, the ACS had the far more ambitious objective of converting "the wide regions of African barbarism, heathenism, cruelty and desolution into a garden of civilization and ... a prominent portion of Christendom" (p. 9). From about March 1820, the settlement at Cape Mesurado began to grow, spilling over into other areas along the Liberian coast use- This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 23:31:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Article Contents p.162 p.163 p.164 Issue Table of Contents The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1986), pp. 1-185 Front Matter [pp.16-76] Muslim Responses to French Imperialism: An Algerian Saharan Case Study [pp.1-15] Njaa: Food Shortages and Famines in Tanzania between the Wars [pp.17-34] The Establishment of a European Plantation Sector within the Emerging Colonial Economy of Uganda, 1902-1919 [pp.35-58] The Migrations of Yao and Kololo into Southern Malawi: Aspects of Migrations in Nineteenth Century Africa [pp.59-75] The Descent from Oduduwa: Claims of Superiority among Some Yoruba Traditional Rulers and the Arts of Ancient Ife [pp.77-92] Book Reviews untitled [pp.93-95] untitled [pp.96-98] untitled [pp.99-103] untitled [pp.103-105] untitled [pp.105-106] untitled [p.106] untitled [pp.107-108] untitled [pp.108-109] untitled [pp.109-112] untitled [pp.112-113] untitled [pp.113-115] untitled [pp.115-126] untitled [pp.126-127] untitled [pp.127-129] untitled [pp.129-131] untitled [pp.131-132] untitled [pp.133-135] untitled [pp.136-138] untitled [pp.138-140] untitled [pp.141-142] untitled [pp.142-143] untitled [pp.143-145] untitled [pp.145-147] untitled [pp.147-148] untitled [pp.148-149] untitled [pp.150-151] untitled [pp.151-153] untitled [pp.153-154] untitled [pp.154-156] untitled [pp.157-160] untitled [pp.160-161] untitled [pp.161-162] untitled [pp.162-164] untitled [pp.164-166] untitled [pp.166-167] untitled [pp.167-168] untitled [pp.168-170] untitled [pp.170-171] untitled [pp.171-173] untitled [pp.173-176] untitled [pp.176-178] untitled [pp.178-182] untitled [pp.182-184] untitled [pp.184-185] Back Matter