Around Cliopatria's Circle ...

by Cliopatria

We've been discussing it at Cliopatria and at Liberty & Power, but David Beito, KC Johnson and I explain"Why We Are Dissatisfied with the OAH's Report on Repression" over on HNN's mainpage. Of course, we don't speak on behalf of our colleagues, either at Cliopatria or Liberty & Power.

Cliopatriarchs are, nonetheless, imperialist powermongers, who have occupied a lot of territory on HNN's mainpage. KC Johnson expands on his thoughts here to explain"Why the Democrats Won't Win Back the Congress for a Long Long Time." And Cliopatria's Contributing Editor, Sean Wilentz, explains that,"It Wasn't Morality that Divided Bush and Kerry Voters, It Was ...".

In other parts of the world, Sharon Howard scouts Africa (scroll down, ignoring the foot fetishist stuff, but do check out her comments and links about the history of ball games), uncovers an abundance of resources on the net, including Jonathan Reynolds's H-Africa, and asks whether a periodization such as"early modern" serves African history very well. I suppose some Africanists would argue that we had better learn to say"African histories". Sharon's African cornucopia inspired Natallie Bennett at Philobiblion to wander over to the British Museum and give us a look at some wonderful pieces of pottery produced by a gendered Africa.

You've been missing a lot if you haven't followed Tim Burke's post-election discussions with Jeanne D'Arc, Russell Arben Fox, Kieran Healy, Jim Henley, Mark Schmitt, Brian Ulrich, and Matt Yglesias. And I mean a lot. For Tim's most important statements, see:"Ship of Fools","Moral Values, Divided Universalisms, and Parasitic Anti-Modernities,""And Another Thing,""The Road to Victory" (scroll down for the pdf) and"Why Is Equality Good?" It almost makes a Tim Burke addict, like me, wish our elections occurred more often. (I can't believe I said that, but thanks to Abu Aardvark who helped me keep up with it all!)

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Timothy James Burke - 11/15/2004

It's questions like this that have led me to break up my survey into three parts and refuse to teach the entirety of the continent's history in any of those three portions.

I simply don't think that the 16th Century is any sense the same historical era in southern Africa that it is in West Africa and the same between West and East Africa--the scale of integration into the global economy, the forms and pace of state formation and social transformation, the major underlying dynamics of cultural practice and identity--they simply don't seem to have any sense of sharing an era or period with certain common characteristics. Whereas I think "modernity" or "the modern" is a period that does share some linked characteristics across the whole of the continent which are particular to Africa--though a negative particularity, since they have something to do with Africa being conceptualized by Europe as an entire place to be subjected to common or shared structures of rule and imagination.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/15/2004

I agree with what you said here. That is why I had said earlier that we may have to learn to say "African histories" rather than "African history." I doubt whether the continent has a single narrative thread. Perhaps I should say that, even if we construct such a narrative thread, its themes are hardly recognizable everywhere in Africa.

Brian Ulrich - 11/15/2004

Looking over some of that H-Africa thread, one thing that leaps out at me is that a lot depends on *where* you are talking about. The stuff about dividing "African history" by contact with Arab civilization doesn't affect, say, South Africa. The same goes for my comments about European penetration. Perceptual distortion is caused by the fact that for earlier centuries, the documentary evidence is (as far as I know) entirely Arabic or European in origin. That leaves you with archaeology and oral tradition as the main way of studying the rest of the continent, both of which have serious strengths and weaknesses.

Brian Ulrich - 11/15/2004

It depends on the scale of penetration. When the trans-Atlantic slave trade became important, it had a huge impact on West Africa, as did the stuff Portugal did in the south. You don't have stuff like the Futa Djallon Revolution without the slave trade. I forget exactly what happened with the Christian kingdom of Kongo, but it was definitely in full swing by the 18th century. It is, I think, misleading to seek after a "pristine" African culture or cultures that can be periodized independent of European influence.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/15/2004

Brian, Doesn't that merely say that "early modern" works for Europe? The question is does it work for African societies themselves.

Brian Ulrich - 11/15/2004

I wrote 17th-18th century entries on Africa for the recent Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life, and thought that period, roughly "Early Modern," worked out fairly well, as it corresponds to the era of European expansion which had such a profound impact on the continent. However, I was working strictly off secondary sources and established scholarship, and so would have inherited whatever biases were in the field.