Living with AfricaIn 1952, a young Belgian scholar of European medieval history traveled to the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) to live in a remote Kuba village. Armed with a smattering of training in African cultures and language, Jan Vansina was sent to do fieldwork for a Belgian cultural agency. As it turned out, he would help found the field of African history, with a handful of other European and African scholars. "I'm not an ethnologist, I'm a historian!" Vansina was to repeat again and again to those who assumed that people without written texts have no history. His discovery that he could analyze Kuba oral tradition using the same methods he had learned for interpreting medieval dirges was a historiographical breakthrough, and his first book, Oral Tradition as History, is considered the seminal work that gave the study of precolonial African history both the scholarly justification and the self-confidence it had been lacking. Living with Africa is a compelling memoir of Vansina's life and career on three continents, interwoven with the story of African history as a scholarly specialty. In the background of his narrative are the collapse of colonialism in Africa and the emergence of newly independent nations; in the foreground are the first conferences on African history, the founding of journals and departments, and the efforts of Africans to establish a history curriculum for the schools in their new nations. |
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academic activities African history African Studies anthropologists arrived authors became become began Belgian called Central collection colonial conference Congo continued course culture developed doctoral earlier early edited especially Europe European evidence existed experience faculty field fieldwork finally followed French graduate Hence historians historians of Africa historiography institutions interest involved issues Kenneth Dike king Kuba language late later learned Leuven linguistic living London Lovanium Madison major Marxism Moreover needed North objects official once oral traditions Paris past person political position practice present Press proposed published question reconstruct record remained result Rwanda scholars seemed seminar situation social society soon sources teaching theory tion told took tropical tropical Africa turned United University Vansina West whole writing written