Sources and Methods for African History and Culture: Essays in Honour of Adam Jones

Synopsis

The conversation with sources is at the heart of the historical profession. People of past times have left messages and traces in a variety of forms – oral transmissions, the written word, artefacts, visual depictions, etc. People of today try to interpret these sources in an attempt to understand human action in its historical context. What may, at first sight, seem like a straightforward dialogue between source and historian, hardly ever is. Neither the messages and traces, nor the historical interpretation, nor the availability and accessibility of the source itself turn out to be self-evident. This volume provides practical examples of and methodological reflections on working with sources from African history and culture. It includes cases from across the continent, from pre-colonial times to the present, and from a variety of disciplines all drawing on the conversation with sources. It includes transregional relations and conceptual reflections and draws attention to the politics of history. The organization of the volume reflects the research interests of Adam Jones and uses his academic trajectory as a backdrop for a volume about the use of sources and methods used for researching African history and culture.

• Prelude (Geert Castryck, Silke Strickrodt, & Katja Werthmann): 11–26.
• Wie Afrika auf die Karte kommt: das Beispiel Georg Schweinfurth (Karsten Jahn & Ute Wardenga): 137–162.
• ‘My Slave Sold all of Kigoma’. Power Relations, Property Rights and the Historian’s Quest for Understanding (Geert Castryck): 317–336.
• Die tanzende Sonne: Frauenlieder in Westafrika (Katja Werthmann): 393–412.
• Not Yet Development: The Use of GDP to Construct African Economies (Ute Rietdorf): 671–690.
• Rückblick: „Afrika 2000“ – die 17. VAD-Konferenz in Leipzig (Ulf Engel & Robert Kappel): 691–698.

Biographical Notes

Dr. Geert Castryck (SFB 1199, Leipzig University, Germany)
Geert Castryck has been employed at the Centre for Area Studies since April 2010. He studied history, Oriental languages, and cultures (Islam and Judaism) at Ghent University and received his PhD in history from the same university in 2006 with his dissertation about the Muslim communities of colonial Bujumbura. From 2006 to 2010, he conducted peace research in Brussels. His academic specializations are: African, Islamic, colonial, urban, and global history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Dr. Silke Strickrodt (Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, UK)
Silke Strickrodt is a historian of West Africa with a particular interest in the precolonial and early colonial periods. Her research focuses on the history of Afro-European encounters in the context of trade, Christian missions, and scientific exploration as well as the economic, political, social, and cultural changes that these encounters have entailed for African societies and individuals.

Prof. Dr. Katja Werthmann (SFB 1199 & Institute of African Studies, Leipzig University, Germany)
Katja Werthmann is professor of society, politics, and economics of Africa at the Institute for African Studies (Leipzig U, Germany). As of 2016, she is part of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition” and leading the project B6: “Gold Mining and New Regulations of (Sub)National Spaces in Africa”.