Living with Africa download PDF, EPUB, Kindle
Living with Africa download PDF, EPUB, Kindle
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Author: J. Vansina
Page Count: 328 pages
Published Date: 30 Sep 1994
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication Country: Wisconsin, United States
Language: English
Type: eBook
ISBN: 9780299143244
File Name: Living.with.Africa.pdf
Download Link: Living with Africa
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In 1952, a young Belgian scholar of European medieval history travelled 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 to 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 analyse Kuba oral tradition using the same methods he had learned for interpreting medieval dirges was a historiographical breakthrough, and his first book, "Oral Tradition", is considered the seminal work that gave the study of pre-colonial African history both the scholarly justification and the self-confidence it had been lacking. "Living with Africa" is a memoir of Vansina's life and career on three continents, interwoven with the story of African history as a scholarly speciality. 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.
Read online Living with Africa Buy Living with Africa Download and read Living with Africa for pc, mac, kindle, readers Download to iPad/iPhone/iOS, B&N nook Living with Africa
Living with Africa by J. Vansina
Author: J. Vansina
Page Count: 328 pages
Published Date: 30 Sep 1994
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication Country: Wisconsin, United States
Language: English
Type: eBook
ISBN: 9780299143244
File Name: Living.with.Africa.pdf
Download Link: Living with Africa
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In 1952, a young Belgian scholar of European medieval history travelled 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 to 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 analyse Kuba oral tradition using the same methods he had learned for interpreting medieval dirges was a historiographical breakthrough, and his first book, "Oral Tradition", is considered the seminal work that gave the study of pre-colonial African history both the scholarly justification and the self-confidence it had been lacking. "Living with Africa" is a memoir of Vansina's life and career on three continents, interwoven with the story of African history as a scholarly speciality. 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.
Read online Living with Africa Buy Living with Africa Download and read Living with Africa for pc, mac, kindle, readers Download to iPad/iPhone/iOS, B&N nook Living with Africa