{"title":"The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel","authors":"T. Barringer","doi":"10.5860/choice.47-3635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.47-3635","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71128267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards, by Peter A.G.M. De Smet. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2010. 216pp. ISBN 978-94-6022-017-3. EUR 34.50. Peter De Smet is a postcard collector, but with a very serious purpose. As it happens, so am I. For more than thirty years, I have been collecting postcard images of scenes and themes relating to the British Empire and of the shipping which underpinned its mercantile and passenger exchanges. One theme among my ten thousand or so cards is ethnic images, particularly those issued by missionary societies. De Smet, a distinguished pharmacist with an international reputation, has collected postcards with medical themes, not just of 'ethnic medicine' among the indigenous peoples of the European empires, but also folk medicines of Europe and even some examples of the dissemination of western medicine into the further reaches of the colonial world. There are many images of Africa in this collection. Indeed there is at least one overlap between his collection and mine. An image of plague inoculation in Bombay, which appeared as the cover illustration of David Arnold's edited Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (1988), was taken from my collection: it reappears on the cover of De Smet's book. De Smet's collection was given the ultimate accolade of an exhibition at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and this book is associated with that public exposure. It is a book written with great sensitivity and demonstrating considerable anthropological expertise. Before embarking on the main body of its arguments, it offers sections on the history of postcards, on the reasons for collecting them (both in the past and today), the point of such collections and their increasing use as evidence of imperial constructions and attitudes. For postcards offer a multi-layered set of insights into their pasts. They, often uniquely, offer images of specific moments in particular places, most importantly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But they also offer insights into the motives of photographers and publishers in choosing particular scenes or themes. Moreover, they can be the subject of considerable manipulation, offering evidence for forms of lies as well as visual truths. They were used as propaganda devices, illustrated in their captions or in the additional material on their backs. In addition to all of that they can become small and unique historical documents, often with fascinating messages on those that have been postally used, conveying information from one continent to another. It is an interesting fact that etlrnomedical cards seldom seem to have been used in this way. Instead, they were purchased to enter private collections and are invariably devoid of messages or postal frankings. The reason for this is probably that they were not considered appealing images to send overseas. Indeed, some of them are extremely disturbing, showing medical conditions which give the viewer an uncomfortable sens
《不同的真相:早期明信片中的民族医学》，作者:Peter A.G.M. De Smet。阿姆斯特丹:KIT出版社，2010。216页。ISBN 978-94-6022-017-3。34.50欧元。彼得·德·斯梅特是一位明信片收藏家，但他有一个非常严肃的目的。碰巧的是，我也是。三十多年来，我一直在收集与大英帝国有关的场景和主题的明信片，以及支撑其商业和旅客往来的航运。在我的一万多张卡片中，有一个主题是民族形象，尤其是那些由传教士社团发行的。De Smet是一位享誉国际的杰出药剂师，他收集了医学主题的明信片，不仅有欧洲帝国土著人民的“民族医学”，还有欧洲的民间医学，甚至还有一些西方医学传播到殖民地世界的例子。这个集子里有许多非洲的照片。事实上，他的收藏和我的收藏至少有一处是重叠的。David Arnold编辑的《帝国医学与土著社会》(1988)的封面插图中出现的孟买鼠疫接种的图像，摘自我的收藏:它再次出现在De Smet的书的封面上。De Smet的收藏在阿姆斯特丹Tropenmuseum的展览中获得了最高的荣誉，这本书与公众曝光有关。这是一本非常敏感的书，展示了相当多的人类学专业知识。在开始其论点的主体之前，它提供了关于明信片的历史，收集它们的原因(过去和现在)，这些收藏的意义以及它们越来越多地作为帝国建筑和态度的证据。因为明信片提供了一个多层次的视角来了解他们的过去。它们通常是独特的，提供了特定地点的特定时刻的图像，最重要的是在19世纪末和20世纪初。但它们也能让我们深入了解摄影师和出版商在选择特定场景或主题时的动机。此外，它们可以成为相当大的操纵对象，为各种形式的谎言和视觉上的真理提供证据。它们被用作宣传工具，在它们的说明文字或背面的附加材料中加以说明。除此之外，它们还可以成为小而独特的历史文献，通常在那些经过邮政使用的文献上带有迷人的信息，将信息从一个大陆传递到另一个大陆。一个有趣的事实是，电子医疗卡似乎很少以这种方式使用。相反，它们被购买以进入私人收藏，并且总是没有消息或邮政印章。这样做的原因可能是他们被认为没有吸引力的图像发送到海外。事实上，其中一些非常令人不安，展示了医疗状况，给观众一种不舒服的偷窥感，进入私人悲剧。．．．
{"title":"Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards","authors":"J. Mackenzie","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-2759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-2759","url":null,"abstract":"Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards, by Peter A.G.M. De Smet. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2010. 216pp. ISBN 978-94-6022-017-3. EUR 34.50. Peter De Smet is a postcard collector, but with a very serious purpose. As it happens, so am I. For more than thirty years, I have been collecting postcard images of scenes and themes relating to the British Empire and of the shipping which underpinned its mercantile and passenger exchanges. One theme among my ten thousand or so cards is ethnic images, particularly those issued by missionary societies. De Smet, a distinguished pharmacist with an international reputation, has collected postcards with medical themes, not just of 'ethnic medicine' among the indigenous peoples of the European empires, but also folk medicines of Europe and even some examples of the dissemination of western medicine into the further reaches of the colonial world. There are many images of Africa in this collection. Indeed there is at least one overlap between his collection and mine. An image of plague inoculation in Bombay, which appeared as the cover illustration of David Arnold's edited Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (1988), was taken from my collection: it reappears on the cover of De Smet's book. De Smet's collection was given the ultimate accolade of an exhibition at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and this book is associated with that public exposure. It is a book written with great sensitivity and demonstrating considerable anthropological expertise. Before embarking on the main body of its arguments, it offers sections on the history of postcards, on the reasons for collecting them (both in the past and today), the point of such collections and their increasing use as evidence of imperial constructions and attitudes. For postcards offer a multi-layered set of insights into their pasts. They, often uniquely, offer images of specific moments in particular places, most importantly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But they also offer insights into the motives of photographers and publishers in choosing particular scenes or themes. Moreover, they can be the subject of considerable manipulation, offering evidence for forms of lies as well as visual truths. They were used as propaganda devices, illustrated in their captions or in the additional material on their backs. In addition to all of that they can become small and unique historical documents, often with fascinating messages on those that have been postally used, conveying information from one continent to another. It is an interesting fact that etlrnomedical cards seldom seem to have been used in this way. Instead, they were purchased to enter private collections and are invariably devoid of messages or postal frankings. The reason for this is probably that they were not considered appealing images to send overseas. Indeed, some of them are extremely disturbing, showing medical conditions which give the viewer an uncomfortable sens","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71132250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00019580
Sylvia Lynn-Meaden
In 1968, while redecorating my grandmother's flat, I came across an old battered brown suitcase containing the letters my father had written to her from the Gold Coast. I had lived in Tamale as a three year old child, and our closest family friends were from that period of my father's life. So I grew up with the stories and affection for Tamale - my first home - and a place called Zuarungu. In later life I encouraged my father to write his memoirs, reminding him of half remembered stories and encouraging him to dig deep into his memory. We discussed shaping these memoirs into book form, but he died in 1985 leaving me to finish the task. My somewhat unorthodox idea was to make it an edited autobiography of his early life, by integrating interesting letters into the text, and further illuminate it with detailed footnotes added by myself. I knew many of the people mentioned in the book, and had inherited many personal letters. The more I read their official letters and papers, along with the critiques of their work by academics, the more intrigued I became. Too often I could not see their all important personalities, or those times reflected in the text. Having known the people and read the letters I knew it was an interesting story. Then there were the small photographs of people and long bygone days, some three hundred of my father's, along with those from two other sources, bringing the total to nearly seven hundred. I digitalised them, adding captions. With the help of Picassa I was able to enlarge faces individually from group photographs, recognising those people I had not met! The agricultural survey written by Charles Lynn in 1937, Agriculture in North Mamprussi, is full of details, but how it came to be written and the way of life at that time is not recorded. It needs to be. After my parents' marriage in 1937 my mother too wrote letters home to my grandmother, and these also deserve a place in the book. So our family book The Long Garden Master came to be written. My father Charles Lynn was born in 1908. As a young child he spent many hours on his grandfather's farm in Lincolnshire, where happy pictures show him sitting on a large horse pulling a plough. Sadly the First World War brought this to an end, when his father and grandfather died, but this love and passion for farming and farmers remained all his life. He spent three years at Wye Agricultural College, followed by a year at St John's College, Cambridge, and finally a year at the newly opened Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad. At the age of twenty-one, in December 1929, he joined the Colonial Service and was sent to the Gold Coast as an Agricultural Supervisor. In March 1930 he travelled north to Tamale Research Station. It is from here he began writing his frequent and interesting letters home to his widowed mother, a health visitor for the London County Council. As a farmer's daughter she was interested in farming and the life of her son Charles. In the early day
1968年，在重新装修祖母的公寓时，我偶然发现了一个破旧的棕色手提箱，里面装着父亲从黄金海岸写给祖母的信。我三岁的时候住在塔梅尔，我们最亲密的家庭朋友都是我父亲那个时代的人。所以我是带着故事和对塔梅尔的感情长大的，塔梅尔是我的第一个家，还有一个叫祖润古的地方。晚年，我鼓励父亲写回忆录，提醒他回忆起那些只记得一半的故事，鼓励他深入挖掘自己的记忆。我们讨论过将这些回忆录改编成书，但他于1985年去世，让我来完成这项任务。我有些另类的想法是，把它编辑成一本他早年生活的自传，把有趣的信件整合到文本中，并用我自己添加的详细脚注进一步阐明它。书中提到的许多人我都认识，也继承了许多私人信件。我读了他们的官方信件和论文，以及学术界对他们工作的评论越多，我就越感兴趣。我经常不能看到他们所有重要的个性，或者那些时代反映在文本中。认识了这些人，读了这些信，我知道这是一个有趣的故事。然后是人物和很久以前的日子的小照片，我父亲的照片大约有三百张，加上另外两个来源的照片，总数接近七百张。我把它们数字化了，加上了文字说明。在毕加索的帮助下，我能够放大集体照中的每个人的脸，认出那些我没有见过的人!查尔斯·林恩(Charles Lynn)在1937年写的农业调查报告《北马姆普鲁士的农业》(Agriculture in North Mamprussi)中有很多细节，但没有记录它是如何写成的以及当时的生活方式。这是必须的。1937年我父母结婚后，我母亲也给我祖母写了几封信，这些信也应该在本书中占有一席之地。于是，我们的家庭书籍《长园主人》诞生了。我父亲查尔斯·林恩出生于1908年。当他还是个孩子的时候，他花了很多时间在他祖父位于林肯郡的农场里，在那里，他快乐地坐在一匹大马上犁地。不幸的是，第一次世界大战结束了，他的父亲和祖父都去世了，但这种对农业和农民的热爱和热情一直陪伴着他的一生。他在怀伊农业学院学习了三年，接着在剑桥大学圣约翰学院学习了一年，最后在特立尼达新开的帝国热带农业学院学习了一年。1929年12月，21岁的他加入了殖民地服务处，被派往黄金海岸担任农业监督员。1930年3月，他向北前往塔梅尔研究站。正是从这里，他开始给他寡居的母亲写那些频繁而有趣的家信。他的母亲是伦敦郡议会的健康访问者。作为一个农民的女儿，她对农业和儿子查尔斯的生活很感兴趣。在早期，他讨论了农业部的消极态度，以及他在20世纪30年代社会和政治变革中建立自己事业的斗争。农业部在黄金海岸很低调，以阿克拉为中心，专注于可可。农业和兽医部门正在处理牛瘟和蝗虫的祸害，这是19世纪90年代以来新出现的问题。流动的农学家应省行政当局的要求来到北方查看具体问题，然后向阿克拉报告。1930年，除了塔梅尔研究站的人外，没有人在北部领土的任何地方长期居住。1935年，负责殖民地事务的副国务卿普利茅斯勋爵(Lord Plymouth)访问了库马西，惊讶地发现库马西以北只有两名农业官员。这种不发达的原因在于缺乏资金，因此引入了令人讨厌的人头税。19世纪末的两次阿散蒂战争代价高昂，该地区需要得到巩固，因为那里的非洲人受过更好的教育，对社会和政治更有认识。．..
{"title":"The Long Garden Master: Charles Lynn, Agricultural Officer in the Gold Coast","authors":"Sylvia Lynn-Meaden","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019580","url":null,"abstract":"In 1968, while redecorating my grandmother's flat, I came across an old battered brown suitcase containing the letters my father had written to her from the Gold Coast. I had lived in Tamale as a three year old child, and our closest family friends were from that period of my father's life. So I grew up with the stories and affection for Tamale - my first home - and a place called Zuarungu. In later life I encouraged my father to write his memoirs, reminding him of half remembered stories and encouraging him to dig deep into his memory. We discussed shaping these memoirs into book form, but he died in 1985 leaving me to finish the task. My somewhat unorthodox idea was to make it an edited autobiography of his early life, by integrating interesting letters into the text, and further illuminate it with detailed footnotes added by myself. I knew many of the people mentioned in the book, and had inherited many personal letters. The more I read their official letters and papers, along with the critiques of their work by academics, the more intrigued I became. Too often I could not see their all important personalities, or those times reflected in the text. Having known the people and read the letters I knew it was an interesting story. Then there were the small photographs of people and long bygone days, some three hundred of my father's, along with those from two other sources, bringing the total to nearly seven hundred. I digitalised them, adding captions. With the help of Picassa I was able to enlarge faces individually from group photographs, recognising those people I had not met! The agricultural survey written by Charles Lynn in 1937, Agriculture in North Mamprussi, is full of details, but how it came to be written and the way of life at that time is not recorded. It needs to be. After my parents' marriage in 1937 my mother too wrote letters home to my grandmother, and these also deserve a place in the book. So our family book The Long Garden Master came to be written. My father Charles Lynn was born in 1908. As a young child he spent many hours on his grandfather's farm in Lincolnshire, where happy pictures show him sitting on a large horse pulling a plough. Sadly the First World War brought this to an end, when his father and grandfather died, but this love and passion for farming and farmers remained all his life. He spent three years at Wye Agricultural College, followed by a year at St John's College, Cambridge, and finally a year at the newly opened Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad. At the age of twenty-one, in December 1929, he joined the Colonial Service and was sent to the Gold Coast as an Agricultural Supervisor. In March 1930 he travelled north to Tamale Research Station. It is from here he began writing his frequent and interesting letters home to his widowed mother, a health visitor for the London County Council. As a farmer's daughter she was interested in farming and the life of her son Charles. In the early day","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00020963
S. Popoola, Yacob Haliso
Abstract This study investigates management perceptions of internet-based banking services with special references to commercial banks in Nigeria. There was a significant difference between male and female management perceptions of internet-based banking services; management had significant positive rather than negative perception of Internet-based banking services; there was a significant difference between strategic and tactical management perceptions of Internet-based banking services. Gender age, work experience, management cadre and computer experience /training strongly influenced the management perceptions of Internet-based banking services in the Nigerian commercial banking system. Suggestions are proffered on how to further enhance management's positive perceptions of the Internet-based banking services in Nigerian commercial banks. Introduction In recent years, banks in Nigeria have increasingly depended on the development of information and communication technology (ICT). In service organisations like banks, information flows to a greater extent than physical items. In the commercial world today, especially in the most advanced countries, money is carried in information storage medium such as cheques, credit cards, and electronic means rather than in its pure cash form. Salawu and Salawu (2007) state that banks have augmented their distribution networks with transactional websites, which allow customers to open accounts, apply for loans, check balances and transfer funds over the internet. Today, all commercial banks in Nigeria do business using the internet. The fact is that the days of carrying large amount of cash and travelling from one state to the other is totally history now. Even the most traditional old generation banks that resisted the introduction of automated teller machines (ATM), electronic banking (?-Banking), mobile telephony, standard computer networks and internet in the past have now introduced all these technologies. The exodus of customers to the New Generation banks that are technology inclined caused this. Customers' taste and desire have begun to raise the stakes of expectation of exceptional services. Customers want to transact their banking transactions at any time and location convenient for their life-style. They want to pay their regular bills, buy and sell stocks etc. Oghenerukeybe (2009) concurs that the internet is the medium for an escalating amount of business and other sensitive transactions, including online banking and ecommerce. However, she cautions of the ills of using the internet to do business like banking. As customers increasingly rely on the Internet for business, personal finance, and investment, internet fraud becomes a greater threat. Internet fraud takes many forms, from phoney items offered for sale to scams that promise customers great riches if assistance can be given to foreign financial transaction through the customer's own bank account. Commercial banking in the modern day Niger
{"title":"Management Perceptions of Internet-Based Banking Services in Nigerian Commercial Banks","authors":"S. Popoola, Yacob Haliso","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00020963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00020963","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study investigates management perceptions of internet-based banking services with special references to commercial banks in Nigeria. There was a significant difference between male and female management perceptions of internet-based banking services; management had significant positive rather than negative perception of Internet-based banking services; there was a significant difference between strategic and tactical management perceptions of Internet-based banking services. Gender age, work experience, management cadre and computer experience /training strongly influenced the management perceptions of Internet-based banking services in the Nigerian commercial banking system. Suggestions are proffered on how to further enhance management's positive perceptions of the Internet-based banking services in Nigerian commercial banks. Introduction In recent years, banks in Nigeria have increasingly depended on the development of information and communication technology (ICT). In service organisations like banks, information flows to a greater extent than physical items. In the commercial world today, especially in the most advanced countries, money is carried in information storage medium such as cheques, credit cards, and electronic means rather than in its pure cash form. Salawu and Salawu (2007) state that banks have augmented their distribution networks with transactional websites, which allow customers to open accounts, apply for loans, check balances and transfer funds over the internet. Today, all commercial banks in Nigeria do business using the internet. The fact is that the days of carrying large amount of cash and travelling from one state to the other is totally history now. Even the most traditional old generation banks that resisted the introduction of automated teller machines (ATM), electronic banking (?-Banking), mobile telephony, standard computer networks and internet in the past have now introduced all these technologies. The exodus of customers to the New Generation banks that are technology inclined caused this. Customers' taste and desire have begun to raise the stakes of expectation of exceptional services. Customers want to transact their banking transactions at any time and location convenient for their life-style. They want to pay their regular bills, buy and sell stocks etc. Oghenerukeybe (2009) concurs that the internet is the medium for an escalating amount of business and other sensitive transactions, including online banking and ecommerce. However, she cautions of the ills of using the internet to do business like banking. As customers increasingly rely on the Internet for business, personal finance, and investment, internet fraud becomes a greater threat. Internet fraud takes many forms, from phoney items offered for sale to scams that promise customers great riches if assistance can be given to foreign financial transaction through the customer's own bank account. Commercial banking in the modern day Niger","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"37-52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00021142
J. Pinfold
Riding High: horses, humans and history in South Africa, by Sandra Swart. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2010. xiv + 344 pp. ISBN 978-1-86814514-0. £26.95. In the opening chapter of this engaging and impeccably researched book, Sandra Swart asserts that "there is a strange concealment when historians write about the past", with the absence of the obvious from their accounts. Horses, she says "have been too ubiquitous ... to catch the historian's eye", and this study is an attempt to redress the balance through chronicling the effects of the relationship between horses and humans in South Africa from the time when the 17th century Dutch introduced the horse to the Cape through to the present day. It should be said at the outset that this is not a wholly comprehensive history of every aspect of South African equine history, but rather a collection of themed essays, some of which have been published in earlier incarnations in a wide variety of scholarly journals ranging from the Journal of Southern African Studies to Animals & Society. For this book these have been re-written and expanded, and hopefully they will now reach a wider audience by being brought together and presented as a consecutive narrative, for this is very much a case of the whole being much more than the sum of the parts. Some of the chapter headings - "The Reins of Power: Equine Ecological Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", "The Empire Rides Back: An African Response to the Horse in Southern Africa", " "The Cinderella of the livestock industry': The Changing Role of Horses in the First Half of the Twentieth Century" - give a flavour of the themes that are explored. Space precludes examining all of these in detail, so, by way of example, let me focus on her account of horses in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, headed "The last of the old campaigners". It is well-known that the British scoured the world for the huge number of horses they needed for the cavalry, mounted infantry, artillery and supply trains needed to prosecute the war, and that many of the horses they secured proved wholly unsuitable. Swart tells us that casualties on the British side amounted to 326,073 horses and 51,399 mules, a rate of 66.88% and 35.37% of the total head count respectively, leading one contemporary to describe this as a "holocaust". The story of their experiences during the war is harrowing indeed, and reminds one irresistibly of scenes in the National Theatre's stunning production of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse (set in a later war I know, but the parallels are strikingly close). But Swart takes the story further and looks at how the relationship between humans and horses developed and changed during the war. Shared hardships led to a greater dependency on each other and a greater intimacy, perhaps even a greater degree of sentimentality about the relationship, which could even be mobilised as propaganda when the enemy supposedly demonstrated a more callous attitude t
{"title":"Riding High: horses, humans and history in South Africa, by Sandra Swart. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2010. xiv + 344 pp. ISBN 978-1-86814-514-0. £26.95.","authors":"J. Pinfold","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00021142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00021142","url":null,"abstract":"Riding High: horses, humans and history in South Africa, by Sandra Swart. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2010. xiv + 344 pp. ISBN 978-1-86814514-0. £26.95. In the opening chapter of this engaging and impeccably researched book, Sandra Swart asserts that \"there is a strange concealment when historians write about the past\", with the absence of the obvious from their accounts. Horses, she says \"have been too ubiquitous ... to catch the historian's eye\", and this study is an attempt to redress the balance through chronicling the effects of the relationship between horses and humans in South Africa from the time when the 17th century Dutch introduced the horse to the Cape through to the present day. It should be said at the outset that this is not a wholly comprehensive history of every aspect of South African equine history, but rather a collection of themed essays, some of which have been published in earlier incarnations in a wide variety of scholarly journals ranging from the Journal of Southern African Studies to Animals & Society. For this book these have been re-written and expanded, and hopefully they will now reach a wider audience by being brought together and presented as a consecutive narrative, for this is very much a case of the whole being much more than the sum of the parts. Some of the chapter headings - \"The Reins of Power: Equine Ecological Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries\", \"The Empire Rides Back: An African Response to the Horse in Southern Africa\", \" \"The Cinderella of the livestock industry': The Changing Role of Horses in the First Half of the Twentieth Century\" - give a flavour of the themes that are explored. Space precludes examining all of these in detail, so, by way of example, let me focus on her account of horses in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, headed \"The last of the old campaigners\". It is well-known that the British scoured the world for the huge number of horses they needed for the cavalry, mounted infantry, artillery and supply trains needed to prosecute the war, and that many of the horses they secured proved wholly unsuitable. Swart tells us that casualties on the British side amounted to 326,073 horses and 51,399 mules, a rate of 66.88% and 35.37% of the total head count respectively, leading one contemporary to describe this as a \"holocaust\". The story of their experiences during the war is harrowing indeed, and reminds one irresistibly of scenes in the National Theatre's stunning production of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse (set in a later war I know, but the parallels are strikingly close). But Swart takes the story further and looks at how the relationship between humans and horses developed and changed during the war. Shared hardships led to a greater dependency on each other and a greater intimacy, perhaps even a greater degree of sentimentality about the relationship, which could even be mobilised as propaganda when the enemy supposedly demonstrated a more callous attitude t","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00016587
T. Barringer
Mad Dogs and Englishmen: A Grand Tour of the British Empire at its Height 1850-1945, by Ashley Jackson. London: Quercus, 2009. 237 pp. ISBN 978-184724 607-3. £20 If one picture is worth even a dozen words, this volume is weighty and decisive contribution to the ongoing debate between Professors John MacKenzie and Bernard Porter on the impact and influence of Empire on the British psyche and public consciousness1. This book is aimed for a popular readership, although an academic one could also read it with profit, and Jackson does not address the debate directly but the profusion of imperial and colonial imagery speaks for itself. The opening words set out the theme and bill of fare. MAD DOGS AND ENGLISH MEN takes as its inspiration the vivid representations of the British Empire conveyed by a wide range of media throughout its 'high noon' in the 19th and 20th centuries. The power of imperial imagery and ideas was immense, reverberating around the globe and defining the way in which millions of people viewed themselves and the world. No nation or international organization could lay claim to such widespread influence or such all-pervasive iconography as the British Empire. Illustrations, many in colour, take up over half the book. They come from a great range of sources: advertising, popular literature, missionary tracts, stamps, cigarette cards, postcards and other collectables, biscuit tins, jigsaws and board games. Many come from Ashley Jackson's own collection of memorabilia. The book is arranged thematically with chapters on maps, atlases and surveys; missionaries and humanitarians; explorers; the monarchy and native potentates; the military; routes and ports; architecture and engineering; sports and safaris; music and popular culture; public schools, Masonic lodges and clubs; produce and marketing. Dr Jackson, a Senior Lecturer at King's College London and author of several books on maritime and military aspects of Empire, with a major new book on Churchill in the pipeline, wears his learning lightly. There are no footnotes although there is a good bibliography, a useful index and unobtrusive lists of acknowledgements and sources. Actually, I regretted the lack of footnotes as there were many times when I wished to trace a quotation (such as the reminiscences on pp. 186 ff2) to its source. It is evident from the text, as well as from the bibliography, that Dr Jackson is well acquainted with the latest scholarship particularly that published in the Manchester University Press Studies in Imperialism series. His style is lively and colloquial, with flashes of wit. An analogy I particularly relished comes on p. 11: "The British had the biggest beach-towel by far, and the sight of it, draped over every continent and peninsula around the world, drove the Germans and the other colonial also-rans to distraction." But the book is underpinned by sound scholarship and is ideal for a sixth-former or undergraduate in need of an introductory text. The cha
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Pub Date : 2009-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00016551
T. Barringer
L.E.L.: The Life and Murder of Letitia E. Landon: 'a flower of loveliness', by Michael Gorman. London: Olympia Publishers, 2008, 292 pp. ISBN 978-1905513-70-3. £8.99 If Hello Magazine had existed in the early nineteenth century, Letitia E. Landon (1802-1838) would have been in it: a beautiful and well-dressed young woman who mingled with other celebrities, surrounded by whiffs of scandal and who suffered a mysterious and tragic early death on the coast of Africa. She was also an established poet, mentioned in the same breath as Byron and Sappho, an influential critic and editor and that rare thing at the time, a financially independent woman who supported herself by her writing. Her fame faded quickly although she had some influence on later Victorian women poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti. In the late twentieth century, with the rise of feminist literary scholarship, she became the subject of some modest academic attention and seven pages in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Her husband, George Maclean, "Governor" of the Gold Coast got only two).1 It is hard to know what to make of this book on first acquaintance. Is it a biography or a novel or a hybrid of the two? The 'blurb' on the back cover promises both scholarship ("a plethora of authenticated material only recently discovered and collated by the present author") and sensationalism (a "dramatic, lustful and yet sadly short life" . . . "tragically cut down at the height of her powers and in her youth [actually in her mid thirties, hardly youth by nineteenth century standards] whilst living in Africa, by a vicious and evil mulatto murderess, the mistress of her husband the 'Governor' of the Gold Coast who used mysterious native means to bring about her demise". The volume opens with a ten page "biography" of L.E.L. which, while for the most part following the standard account, does not hesitate to describe her as "lustful" and a "cock-teaser", introduce illegitimate children and hint at more shock /horror revelations to come. It ends with the disclosure that L.E.L. was the author's great-great-great-grandmother. Then comes a "prologue" in which Michael Gorman describes the kindling of his interest in Lentia and his identification with her. In an extraordinary piece of purple prose he describes himself as pulled by a strange "kinetic karmic attraction to this forbear" "like some postulant kneeling to the altar of power over mind". "So many are the similarities between L.E.L. and myself that I feel at times as if another presence (hers) is guiding my hands across the keyboard to tell a story that must be told and written in the first person through the spirit of the very subject herself - in such a way that perhaps she is insistent on assisting me to complete her story as she would like it to be told." Michael Gorman visited his ancestress' grave in the company of Cynthia Lawford, who is writing a scholarly study of L.E.L. and has published some of her resea
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Pub Date : 2009-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00016459
C. Cramer
Keynote Address at the Third meeting of the European Librarians in African Studies (ELIAS), Liepzig, 3 June 2009 Once upon a time, my brother was working in the Dominican library in Paris. This was in the early 1980s and he was doing research for his PhD - on the subject of baptism in the ninth to twelfth centuries. Another man often worked there and they would talk now and then but they never actually introduced themselves. The other man sometimes gave my brother a lift across town when they left the library. He seemed rather authoritative. One day he asked my brother, 'Who are you working with?' and my brother said 'Jacques Ie Goff, a very renowned medieval historian. 'Ah, le Goff, yes, he's very astute', the man said, and my brother thought my goodness, who is this man to pass judgement so confidently on le Goff. Another day, when the news was full of the Pope, John Paul II, coming to Paris, my brother asked the man if he was going to see the pope. No, the man replied; you'll find very few people go. The French are racist and they will take offence that the pope chose to go to Africa first, and then to come after Africa to France. He turned out to have been fairly accurate - the numbers were surprisingly low for the Pope's public mass. Eventually, my brother said, look, Fm terribly sorry, I haven't introduced myself, my name is Peter Cramer. The other man smiled: 'Je suis Michel Foucault'. That is the first of three very short stories I want to tell about libraries and librarians. Barbara Spina, who kindly asked me to give a short talk, suggested that I should do something more personal than a formal paper and so I have tried to take her at her word. Let me tell you two more stories and then try actually to make a point or two, as well as to ask some questions. The health warning is that this will not be exclusively about 'African studies' though it is nicely relevant to what I have to say that this conference takes place in the Albertina library in Leipzig, which itself has a long history and includes medieval manuscripts, some of which were rescued when the library buildings were bombed and two-thirds destroyed in the Second World War, after which the library and its collections have been rebuilt magnificently. The second story I was told by an Indian historian who teaches at Princeton. We had been talking about Parsees from Bombay. He told how he'd been in the British Library one day and he'd chanced upon an unpublished manuscript, a detective novel written by a Parsee, Phirozeshah Jamesetji Chevalier (Chaiwala) in the 1920s. In the novel a pilot had flown a plane low over the Tower of Silence in Bombay and taken an aerial photograph of the tower, something anathema to the Parsees. The story then cut to London, where a man was looking up at a building. He'd come to track down the editor of the journal that published the photograph, with the aim of killing the editor and then the pilot of the plane who'd taken the photograph. On page 197 the
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Pub Date : 2009-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00017684
V. Bickford-Smith
During my undergraduate years, a long time ago now, I cannot remember a single instance when any form of film was used for any purpose whatsoever in a history course at Cambridge University. Yet clearly film has become more acceptable to the historical academy as a whole in recent years. My own experience of engaging with film has been in three ways: with film as a form of historical evidence; through exploring the role film has played 'in' history, possibly by influencing opinions and policies; and, most controversially for historians at large, with analysing film as attempted history, as a form of history itself.1 One might of course engage with film in all three ways simultaneously, as many of the contributions to Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen demonstrate.2 One can also add that there are various forms of film that one can engage with such as actuality footage, documentary, docudrama or feature films; albeit that the boundaries between these categories are not always clear. I will begin by saying something about films as evidence, relating this to elements of my current research project, before moving briefly to consider film in history and, at greater length, film as attempted history. Film as evidence Film can be used as historical evidence, with all the caveats about how one should query evidence in whatever medium, in two obvious ways. First, for the information it contains, or supposedly contains, about the past: about, for instance, places, objects, people, events, or cultural practices. Take the example of Barbet Schreuder's documentary made with the full co-operation of Idi Amin and entitled Idi Amin: AutoPortrait (1974). This might be scrutinised for what it suggests about Amin's personality or oratorical techniques, whether witty or involving buffoonery; or perhaps for the urban landscapes of Kampala in the mid-1970s; or for a glimpse into the nature of an Amin cabinet meeting; or for the Ugandan leader's musical skills or ways in which he addressed the foreign press corps. Historians as well as the makers of Last King of Scotland can mine AutoPortrait for this kind of information. Secondly, films might be analysed for evidence of contemporary attitudes, values and ideas, or for changes and continuities in attitudes, values and ideas over time. Thus AutoPortrait might also be examined for what it says about Barbet Schreuder's, or perhaps other western observers', perceptions of Idi Amin and Uganda. For although it is firmed in a Cinema Verite style, and this itself naturally raises the question of what sort of truth the presence of the camera provokes in the individuals under scrutiny, clearly there is editing, sequencing, narration, and scenes added to the film beyond Amin's control. Though, as you may know, Amin did attempt to influence the editing process by taking French hostages. Most obviously, and like Last King as well, AutoPortrait might be held to be a typical case of focusing on individuals, whether
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Pub Date : 2009-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0305862x00020239
J. Mcilwaine
This continues the regular series of annual reports on African related activities at the annual IFLA conferences that have appeared In ARD since the early 1990s. Its most recent predecessors are "Africa at IFLA 2008 (Quebec City)", ARD, 106 (2008), pp.91-97 and "Africa at IFLA, 2005 (Oslo)", ARD, 99 (2005), pp.67-72. The World Library & Information Congress, 75th IFLA General Conference and Council was held In MUan, 23rd -27th August 2009. Among the 4,200+ delegates, the "List of participants" records 205 from 31 countries of Africa with 46 from Nigeria and 34 from South Africa. This represented a considerable increase (almost doubled) from African attendance at last year's Quebec conference where many delegates faUed at the last moment to be awarded visas. Government of IFLA. At the end of this year's conference, Ellen Tise (Senior Director, Library and Information Services, University of SteUenbosch) assumed office as President of IFLA, having served as President elect for the previous two years, and wUl hold office until the 2011 Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is the second African ever to serve as President, foUowing Kay Raseroka (University of Botswana) in 2003-2005. She is joined on the Governing Board of IFLA by two colleagues from Africa: Helena Asamoah-Hassan (University of Kumasi), already a Board member, who was re-elected by the membership for a further two years, and by Buhle Mbambo-Thata (UNISA), Chair of the Africa Section, 2007-2009, who joins the Board by virtue of being elected Chair of Division 5 (formerly Division 8: IFLA Sections and Divisions have been restructured) which represents the Sections of Africa, Asia and Oceania and Latin America and the Caribbean. The Africa Section http://www.rfla.org/en/africa This is the principal focus for IFLA's work with Africa and works closely with the IFLA Regional Office: Africa. The Regional Office relocated in February 2008 after long-term residence in Senegal to the University of South Africa Library Services, P.O. Box 392, PRETORIA, 0003, RSA. maafrica@unisa.ac.za The Director of the Regional Office, Lindy Nhlapo lnhlapo@unisa.ac.za is de facto a member of the Standing Committee of the Africa Section, and is also editor of the Section's Newsletter which under her management has returned to its scheduled two issues per year (most recent Issue 35, July 2009 http://www.ifla.org/files/africa/newsletters/jime-2009.pdf.) Membership of the Standing Committee of the Section has been increased to 18 with all regions of the continent represented: but sadly at the Milan Conference as so often in previous years, many members were unable to attend. Despite this, the two meetings of the Standing Committee held during the Conference and briskly chaired by the outgoing Chair Buhle Mbambo-Thata (UNISA), were comparatively weU attended by observers, both by African delegates to the Conference itseU and by the usual strong range of representatives of African interest from outside the contine
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