African Historiography

John Reader

• British photojournalist

• Wrote “Biography of the Continent Africa”

• Focuses on biological aspects of African History

Zenaib Bedawi

• Sudanese born African historian

• Main research method is studying modern peoples and their connection to their own histories

Cheikh Anta Diop

• Senegalese Historian

• Published Research on the blackness of Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs based on the word “kemet”

Wilhelm Bleeck (1850s)

• Found similar words all across the African continent

• Became the baseline for discovering the Bantu language family

Jan Vansina

• believes the Bantu language spread through a wave model

  • The language spread gradually through the original Bantu speakers conversing with neighboring groups

Basil Davidson (1914-2010)

• British Pan-Africanist

• Published works on the ancient greatness of African

  • Nationalist Historiography

al-Bakri (1068 CE)

• Spanish Arab

• Wrote about the Muslim presence in the Ghana empire

• Never visited so is a second-hand source

Ibn Battutah (1352-53)

• North African Muslim who visited the Mali Kingdom

• Found the Mali Kingdom to be safe however only wrote comparison about the Kingdom and not just facts

al-Masudi (943 CE)

• Traveled to Swahili coast and found a thriving trade economy

• Noted that the Swahili were also devout Muslims

Gertrude Caton-Thompson (1931)

• Published “Zimbabwe Culture“

• Asserted that the Zimbabwes were made by Africans and not outsiders

• Accomplished by completing archeology and ethnography

Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003)

• Believed that African history was not worth studying since it did not contribute to the history of the world

Richard Hall (1902)

• Published “The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia“

• Said that the Great Zimbabwe was made by (white) outsiders and it collapsed due to racial mixing

Olaudah Equiano (1789)

• His Autobiography detailed his capture in Africa, experience of the Middle Passage, and slavery in the Americas

• Historians debate whether this is a retelling of another person’s life or it was actually him

• Appealed to white people who believed slavery was a peaceful experience

Stanley Elkins

• Argued that the middle passage was a totalizing experience

• It left slave traumatized and their minds blank slates

• Claims slave could not fight back because they were so traumatize