Download Vansina_.doc

Evaluation: Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina has inserted scientific methodology into the study of history. His extensive
training in linguistics and his application of historical analysis to language constitute the core of
his science. While avoiding the uncertainties of glutochronology, he applied comparative Bantu
linguistics to historical analysis in a way that demonstrates how historical documentation can be
deciphered from non-written sources. He pioneered an approach to orality that is still open for
innovation. His disciples include Harold Schueb, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin,
whose work on oral performance and myth in South Africa has generated a corpus of traditions
that effectively explain and explicate the social, cultural, and aesthetic components of South
African traditional society, and with implications for the rest of Africa and elsewhere. David
Henige, another protégé, established a leading methodological journal on history, History in
Africa. Although the journal focuses on Africa, it has been an essential outlet for the scientific
discussion of historical methodology. Vansina has been a frequent contributor to the journal, and
many of the articles in the journal focus on historical methodology and Vansina’s contributions.
Vansina’s work has influenced a generation of African and African American scholars working
in different parts of the world.
Vansina revolutionized how African history is reconstructed and, by implication and
extension, how the African Diaspora is studied and interpreted within the discipline. The
implications of his theoretical approach—founded in classics and linguistics, tested in
anthropology and applied in history, and first developed in his monumentally important book
Oral Tradition—astonishingly demonstrate how various forms of data can be assembled in the
reconstruction of the past. The application of his methodology has demonstrated the complexities
of scientific enquiry, which requires sound theory and rigorous testing. For example, His study
1
of the Teke showed that traditions could be shallow in terms of time depth, in this case because
of the imposition of the colonial regime, which established a new base line for local
interpretation of the past. Elsewhere, historical depth was astonishing, although cyclical views of
history led to some misinterpretation, most notably by one of Vansina’s most brilliant students,
Joseph Miller, former President of the American Historical Association, who misjudged the
meaning of oral data in the interpretation of how political titles spread in central Africa and what
this actually meant in terms of historical change.
The scientific contribution of Vansina’s methodology can be seen in the concrete
example of the bells of kings in central Africa.1 Vansina applied his view of oral transmission of
knowledge in examining the ritual significance of bells to political office. He was able to
demonstrate political change over time and patterns of change as reflected in the distribution of
bells as a symbol of political office, in which linguistic analysis was essential to establish
patterns of distribution and adaptation and relative chronological measures of when things
happened. Vansina successfully ventured where historians had not been able to go – how to
develop a chronology with no fixed texts or other signs to a date.
The significance of this innovation in finding out how we can uncover new knowledge is
scientific. Vansina conceptualized oral traditions and orality, and he established situations that
are comparable to experiments which could be examined, holding different features constant for
purposes of experimentation and analysis, such as time depth in the case of Teke, and
timelessness in the case of the Kuba. He has influenced more than a generation of historians who
have critiqued his approach, such as E. J. Alagoa of Nigeria, who has assembled oral data with
the rigors of Vansina’s theory, or David Henige, who accepted the challenge of discussing
historical methodology, to his many students who have tried to apply the methodology with
2
various degrees of success, like Miller, or who have taken the discourse beyond history into
aesthetics, like Scheub, or have extended the discourse into biography, like Paul Lovejoy on
slavery and trade.
Jan Vansina represents the spirit of discovery that draws so many scholars to the field of
African history, Anthropology, Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, and Philosophy.
Until
Vansina’s revolutionary intervention, the potential for originality and the unfamiliar rules by
which non-Western societies disseminate knowledge is a fascination and frustration to scholars
who are outsiders to the cultures and societies they study. Throughout his career as an historian
and anthropologist, Vansina has literally written the book on the use of oral traditions as
historical sources as well as several monographs about pre-colonial societies throughout Central
Africa. Beginning with his work at the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifiques en Afrique
Centrale (IRSAC) and continuing throughout his long tenure at the University of WisconsinMadison, Vansina’s emphasis on original research and the belief that living people are just as
valuable as dead papers made him a standard bearer of humanistic studies, and a scholar whose
methodological innovation challenged the orthodoxy of the historical profession.
Born in Belgium in 1929, Vansina was the product of the uncertainties of Nazi
occupation, and exhibited from an early age the individuality, work ethic, and keen mind that
would propel him to the forefront of social and cultural history. Furthermore, his distaste for
orthodoxy seems to have made his career path pre-ordained. He first attended the University of
Leuven (1946-1951) and then the University of London (1951-1952) before taking a position at
the IRSAC. While his time at Leuven was spent learning the fundamentals of the historical
canon, his M.A. thesis about medieval dirges was an early sign of his interest in orality and its
effects on historical transmission. Vansina’s time in London was largely influenced by the likes
3
of Daryll Forde, Mary Douglas, M. Garfield Smith, and Phyllis Kaberry and the rising popularity
of functionalism and structural functionalism within the field of anthropology.
However,
Vansina often found himself at odds with anthropologists due to their ahistorical approach and
strict adherence to empirical observation.
Vansina’s autobiography, Living With Africa, is a window into his professional and
intellectual development and the genesis of African history. When Vansina began his work at
the IRSAC in 1952, African history had been a recognized academic profession for only four
years. Spurred by the 1943 Asguith2 and Elliot Commissions and a hope that “research into the
past will not only stimulate local interest in the ancient traditions of the [African] peoples, but
will help to maintain a sense of continuity in the rapid changes coming upon [Africa],” the
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) under the guidance of Cyril Phelps, Roland
Oliver and John Fage instituted a course of study built upon the ideas that Africa should be
studied in its totality, the importance of an African point of view, the rejection of history based
solely on written records, and a complexity of African history that matched that of Europe.3
Vansina’s research interests were a direct byproduct of his eight years spent at the
IRSAC, his contact with the Kuba peoples of the Congo, and regular incursions into Rwanda and
Burundi. Through extensive linguistic study, field research, and attempts at cultural integration,
Vansina became fascinated in how the Kuba maintained their history despite the lack of written
records. By the time Vansina began publishing his findings in the early 1960s, he had developed
a complex typology consisting of six distinct forms of oral literature, three different forms of oral
histories, and the role of human interaction in oral testimony. 4 While Vansina’s research is
largely focused in Central Africa, his intellectual rigor and diverse background in Germanic and
Romance languages gave him a linguistic perspective on many topics within African history. In
4
addition to his work on pre-colonial Central Africa, Vansina has published methodological
monographs on topics ranging from African art to oral traditions. It is with regards to the latter
that Vansina gained much acclaim and cemented himself as a pioneer and champion of
ethnographic research in African history. However, Vansina, in the words of Daniel McCall,
“has never been a theorist who was above practice.”
This is evidenced by his extensive
bibliography.
The Works of Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina’s career spans six decades, twenty monographs, and over two hundred
articles in several languages. To cover these in any depth in a short evaluation such as this is
difficult due to the sheer quantity of materials, as the quality of the contributions. Therefore, this
essay focuses on what I consider as the most influential monographs, their strengths, weaknesses,
and contributions to the field of history.
Several journal articles are also incorporated to
illustrate Vansina’s methodological and theoretical evolution since 1960. In later sections, this
evaluation addresses Vansina’s work in relation to areas outside his research focus, analyzes his
accessibility to the general public, and offers commentary on his contributions to humanity and
society. This evaluaiton is presented, with one exception, in chronological order. That exception,
Oral Tradition, is discussed at length following the initial overview of his research
accomplishments.
Kingdoms of the Savanna
While De la Tradition Orale was the first of Vansina’s works to be translated into
English in 1961, it is best analyzed in conjunction with his 1985 publication Oral Tradition as
5
History. Therefore, this study begins with Vansina’s monograph Kingdoms of the Savanna.
Published in 1964/1965, Kingdoms is a broad examination of the pre-colonial Kongo, Luba, and
Lunda Empires, as well as the history of the peoples of Katanga and Zambia. Originally
presented as the Knaplund Lectures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 1961,
Vansina was encouraged to publish Kingdoms as an introduction to Central African history. In
fact, Kingdoms represents the first ever attempt at writing a general history of the peoples of
Central Africa and is a grand achievement that has guided a generation of scholarship.
While a relatively large amount of information existed about Northern, Western,
Southern, and even Eastern Africa by the early 1960s, Central Africa remained unexplored
territory among scholars. However, the increasing number of independent African nations and
growing public interest in the Congo prompted Vansina to present the public with the research
problems associated with Central Africa and attempt to formulate a typology for comparing precolonial African kingdoms. Vansina cites five types of sources used in Kingdoms: written
records that are available since 1500 C.E., oral traditions, archaeological discoveries, and
linguistic, ethnographic and anthropological findings. The result is a study encompassing over
four hundred years and kingdoms stretching throughout present-day Angola, Congo, Zambia,
and Tanzania. Regardless of the limitations of synthesis that Vansina attributes to the “tyranny of
conciseness,” Kingdoms draws several similarities between Central African kingdoms. These
include the dominance of ruling personalities and subsequent issues over succession, the
possibility of civil unrest, threats posed by rival kingdoms, the creation of dependent tributary
territories, and the dissolution of the state.
Furthermore, Kingdoms succeeds in informing
academics and laymen alike about theoretical and research-based problems surrounding Central
African history and making known the results of Vansina’s eight years of field research among
6
the Kuba. It also validates the use of oral testimonies and non-traditional source materials as a
gateway to understanding the “history-less” people of Central Africa.
Vansina continued his examination of African kingdoms in his 1962 article “A
Comparison of African Kingdoms.” Working from a general categorization laid out by E.E.
Pritchard and Meyers Fortes, Vansina classifies African kingdoms according to their
centralization of power. Additionally, Vansina discusses kingdoms according to their delegation
of judicial authority, military composition, territorial expansion, and principles of succession.
Much like Kingdoms of the Savanna, the power of this study is its ability to categorize and
classify kingdoms stretching throughout Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. In later articles,
Vansina examined the use of physical objects, specifically bells, as connector between African
kingdoms, thus allowing historians to trace the spread of their respective cultures and societies.5
The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Kongo, 1880-1892
The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Kongo is the result of six months of field research
conducted in 1964-65 among the Téké people located near Brazzaville.
It is an excellent
example of how social anthropology, in conjunction with historical analysis, can use oral
testimonies and alternative sources to construct a historical narrative without the use of written
records. The genius of this monograph is that its conception features how to reconstruct history
when there is lack of oral testimony, as there is in Tio (Téké) society.
Vansina had originally intended to write a general history of the Tio Kingdom, which had
been a powerful trading force beginning in the early 16th century. However, Vansina found that
Tio kinship terminologies only extend back two generations.
The loss of individuality to
generational clustering (remote individuals were known simply as parents or grandparents)
7
meant that the oldest available memories were limited to the beginning of colonial conquest at
the end of the nineteenth century. This revelation forced Vansina to refocus his efforts on more
recent Tio history. Fortunately, Vansina was able to chronicle Tio society from the point at
which the King Iloo signed the treaty which would initiate the Scramble in Equatorial Africa in
1882.
In contrast to his previous efforts, The Tio Kingdom was a temporally and geographically
specific examination of the religious, political, and economic structures of Tio society. The
demographic makeup of Tio society into small, lightly populated villages surrounding the capital
of Mbe meant that Vansina’s fieldwork was limited to a small network of sources. What
unfolded was an examination of the immediate Tio community, the larger society, and changes
that occurred in Tio society as a result of European incursion. According to Vansina, the book
was meant to “show that one could describe a society at a given period of the past in a way that
matched the ‘think description’ of anthropological monographs about ‘the present’.”6
In retrospect, The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Kongo represents one of the earliest forays
into the field of social history. Vansina’s study inspired the intersection of anthropology and
history and the use of ethnographic methodologies (i.e., oral testimonies, linguistics, and the
study of art and ceremonial objects) in conjunction with an examination of historical records left
by European explorers, missionaries, and colonial officials is now common practice among
African historians.
Art History in Africa: An Introduction to Method
8
Art History in Africa is perhaps Vansina’s most personal work as it is a multigenerational family affair. Vansina’s father was himself an art historian and both of his parents
were painters. Vansina attributes his early fascination with art to their influence. Additionally,
his wife Claudine provided many of the illustrations for the book. As one delves deeper into
Vansina’s bibliography, one sees that each of his major works builds upon the transformative
methodologies he has championed. Much in the same vein as The Tio Kingdom, Art History
calls for a historically-based approach to the study of African art history. Vansina claims that
scholars of African art “have been allergic to historical pursuits”7 and that contrary to the use of
history as a tool for understanding artistic development and relevance, it is also possible to infer
historical understanding from art.
Of course, what constitutes art is as much at the core of Art History as art’s integration
into historical scholarship. Vansina addresses the problems of identifying art objects as well as
the social contextualization of art. Also in question are the morphological and stylistic analyses
of African art (i.e., variations between geographically and culturally similar ethnic groups) and
the influence of Mediterranean cultures on Sub-Saharan artistic expression. “African Art,”
according to Vansina, “is not the Art of Africa. Northern Africa, almost half of the continent in
size, has been excluded from those studies because its arts clearly belong to widely flung
traditions centered on the Mediterranean and the worlds of Christianity and Islam.”8
In addition to an aesthetic analysis of African art, Vansina attempts to understand the
deeper creative process and the foreign inputs that alter artistic expression. The final chapter of
Art History tackles the question at the core of much of Vansina’s works, namely, how does one
use art, or any other non-written record, to examine history? Vansina argues that art is relevant
to history because it possesses qualities that are unique in comparison to other physical
9
representations of society and culture. First, art has a concrete nature that presents a complex
and unchanged expression of a place in time. Art is also a powerful source because it documents
change in time. Through events like Afro-European exchange, art can signify cultural change
throughout the long duration.
Art History in Africa is a dialectic response to art historians who had co-opted history for
their own purposes, but forsook the historical qualities inherent in art itself. The book has
simultaneously been considered a fundamental text in both the fields of art history and cultural
history and an advanced text in the critique of art history and historical methodology. What Art
History essentially amounts to is a critique of mainstream historians who have neglect the vast
amount of insight art can offer about the economic, social, and intellectual histories of Africa. It
is also a response to the ahistorical approach of art historians toward their profession in general.
Twenty-Five Years of Oral Traditions as History
Oral Tradition is the seminal work in a historical methodology based on the analysis of
oral sources that met crushing opposition until the late 1950s. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s,
with subaltern histories in their infancies, the vast majority of scholars deferred to the popular
belief of universal European agency. Consequently, written documentation became the sole
purveyor of historical fact, while illiterate and colonized peoples fell within the confines of
“imperial” history. However, the push for decolonization throughout the 1950s, in conjunction
with the creation of area-specific historical study in the late 1940s, meant that the racially-biased
concepts that dominated pre-war European scholarship began to erode. Within African history,
specifically, the study of pre-colonial societies illustrated a major information gap and
necessitated theoretical and methodological advancements. Furthermore, while academics called
10
for the need to develop a methodological framework for chronicling African histories, very few
were willing to conduct field research. Part of what made Vansina a success was his “boots on
the ground” mentality and passion for conducting original field research.
Vansina defines oral tradition as testimonies that are passed between generations for the
explicit purpose of memory preservation. Key to Vansina’s examination of oral traditions were
the questions of 1) why was the tradition preserved? 2) what was the function of the tradition,
and 3) who transmitted it and how?9 His examination of oral history utilizes a three phase multidisciplinary approach. First, Vansina defines and categorizes oral evidence and weighs its
historical viability through a series of internal and external tests. These tests help determine the
reliability of information by assessing the relationship of a person to their testimony as well as
offer a typology to weed put personal bias. The second phase is a methodological examination
of a multi-disciplinary approach that utilizes history, social anthropology, and linguistics. In this
respect, Oral Tradition is truly a groundbreaking work and is the first glimpse into Vansina’s
unorthodox approach to historical research. In retrospect, his methods and theories were
distinctly positivist, with a strong correlation between the hard sciences and the historical
process. Vansina’s use of the anthropological present to gain insight into history generated
criticism among mainstream historians and social anthropologists. At the time, StructuralFunctionalism was the bedrock of anthropological research. Its ahistorical nature, coupled with
the belief that oral testimonies could only be understood within a specific culture, alienated
Vansina from a large constituency within the academic community. Furthermore, Structural
Functionalists maintained that oral narratives were merely myths used to support the present
social order. The final phase in Vansina’s research justified the collection and use of oral
evidence for historical research. While critics claim that oral testimonies are inexact and open to
11
personal and social bias, Vansina believes that the importance of oral traditions in pre-colonial
and non-literate societies reinforces a degree of accuracy that is essential in assuring societal and
personal obligations.10 Furthermore, Vansina argues that in the end all a historian can do “is to
arrive at some approximation to the ultimate historical truth.”11
Oral Tradition first appeared in 1961 and was translated into English in 1965. Its timing
made it the primary manual for young historians beginning field research and was, for better and
worse, the methodological measure of oral research for more than two decades. As he expected,
contrasting conceptions of oral testimony have required new means of testing the validity of oral
traditions and forced Vansina to reconsider the importance of oral traditions and engage in a
process of self-critique which lasted throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This culminated in the
publication of a second monograph entitled Oral Tradition as History.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Vansina’s approach to oral traditions uncovered
considerable difficulties.
A new generation of historians questioned Vansina’s complex
typology and use of historical analysis, his search for “original” testimony, and insistence on
documentary analogy and chains of transmission. Debate over traditions and how best to
incorporate them into the historical record became increasingly contentious as Marxism and
postmodernism became the dominant theoretical constructs of the 1970s and 1980s, splitting the
field into groups such as structuralists, fundamentalists, and liberals.12 Vansina’s reentry into the
debate over oral traditions, beginning with his journal article, “Once Upon a Time: Oral
Traditions as History in Africa,” was a direct response to what he calls the extremes of Marxism,
structuralism, and “symbolic logic.” According to Vansina, “It was clear that [De la Tradition
Orale] would no longer be very useful and that it could not simply be ‘updated.’ Thus I came to
write Oral Tradition as History.”13
12
Critics of De la Tradition Orale fell into two diametrically opposed camps:
“fundmanetalists” and “structuralists”.
At one extreme, “fundamentalists,” such as Apollo
Kagwa and Alexis Kagame have argued that they were “true” African historians, thus making
their word absolute. This “fundamentalism” was a direct affront to the view of StructuralFundamentalists who believed that oral testimonies about the past were “contaminated” by the
present realities of their societies.
At the heart of fundamentalist history was the need to achieve a “singular history.”
Therefore, common practice included the use of “encyclopedic informants,” group interviews,
and the belief that oral testimonies offered chronological accuracy via genealogies, ecological
events, and similarities between accounts that allowed for precision compatible with Western
standards. While Vansina’s own search for “original sources” suggested his own belief in
singular history, the political nature of fundamentalism in the African context excluded the
“diverse provenance” of constituencies at the core of Vansina’s research.
At the other end of the spectrum resided structuralists such as T.O. Beidelman, Roy,
Willis, Wyatt MacGaffey, C.C. Wrigley, and Luc de Heusch. Much like their anthropological
cousins, structuralists were decidedly skeptical about the validity of oral traditions as historical
sources.
However, they went one step further in claiming that traditions were not literal
historical accounts and thus history prior to a time with written documentation could not be
known.
In contrast to fundamentalists, structuralists took issue with Vansina’s practice of
documentary analogy and belief in a single original testimony. Despite Vansina’s claims that
oral traditions in Africa cannot be compared to those in Europe due to the apparent triviality of
European oral tradition after c. 1400 and that oral traditions should be used in concert with
written sources, he could not appease either side.14 Therefore, by the early 1980s, Vansina was
13
under fire from two fronts, his liberal doctrines viewed as the worst that each school had to offer;
too literal for structuralists, yet too analytical for fundamentalists. But neither could ignore his
work!
Vansina’s second monograph on oral traditions ignited vibrant debate. This was due to
several factors that include the proliferation of African history since 1961 and little emphasis
given to the changing context of oral traditions in contemporary African societies. Much like in
his first volume, Vansina examines the creation and transmission of oral traditions, their
interpretation, and value to historians. He also differentiates between traditions and histories by
clarifying that oral history is a product of interviews while traditions are passed from generation
to generation, thus transcending their original source.15 Although some material are similar to
that found in De la Tradition Orale, new examples collected from twenty years of field research
demonstrate how Vansina has evolved as a scholar and theorist. The two primary differences
between de la Tradition Orale and Oral Tradition as History are Vansina’s emphasis on memory
and his focus on the importance of performance in the recitation of oral traditions. Additional
strengths of Oral Tradition as History are its focus on rules of evidence and interpretation and its
provovative section about the “the fallacy of structuralism.”16 While Oral Tradition as History
is sometimes considered an addendum or revision to de la Tradition Orale, it is actually a refocused examination of the old and new components of oral traditions and history and a
reaffirmation of the principles that sent Vansina into the jungles of Central Africa in 1952.
Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa
14
Paths in the Rainforests is the product of forty years of immersion in the field of African
history. Vansina surveys the history and development of social and political institutions within
the rainforests of Equatorial Africa. The geographic scale of the monograph speaks for itself.
Vansina explores sections of Cameroun, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, portions of the
Central African Republic, and Angola. Vansina posits that this area, composed of over four
hundred ethnic groups derived their cultural traditions from a common cultural ancestor.
Vansina believes that it is possible to reconstruct the political, economic, and social
histories of Central African peoples despite the lack of written records and the popular belief that
inhabitants of this region are somehow “history-less.”
He claims that through a use of
comparative ethnography and historical linguistics, links between contemporary peoples of
Central Africa and their distant ancestors can be found. Paths in the Rainforests is representative
of the kind of work Vansina gravitates towards. It is methodologically based in linguistics and
social anthropology and compensates for the lack of written records by drawing on oral
traditions, inferences, and reconstruction.
The primary point of attraction of Paths in the Rainforests is whether or not Vansina’s
use of logic in place of historical evidence is a new methodology. While his arguments are
sound, the degree of exposition begs the question of whether archeological evidence is needed to
validate some of them.
Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom
Originally published in 2001 and translated into English in 2004, Antecedents to Modern
Rwanda is a history of the Nyiginya Kingdom of Rwanda (c. 1650-1897) that promotes a
revision of Rwanda’s past in light of its post-colonial history. While Vansina is most noted for
15
his work on methodological issues, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda is a narrative work that
seeks to show that “the overall social and cultural conditions in [Rwanda] today are not so
different as to render the experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries invalid.”17
Vansina is obviously writing a monograph aimed towards a Rwandan people who were still
struggling with issues of unequal power distribution, exclusion, and alienation.
By tracing the origins of discontent among Rwandans to the policies of the Nyiginya
Kingdom, Vansina emphasizes that the origins of recent discord that have been so tragic lie not
in perceived ethnic elitism of the colonial era, but instead in unequal distribution by African
leaders. According to Vansina, the seeds of ethnic divisions in Rwanda originated in precolonial institutionalization that was exacerbated by colonial rule. Herds of cattle created to feed
standing armies resulted in the rise of royally favored herders and the concession of choice
grazing lands. These herders became the Tutsi class while those who had their lands taken for
grazing purposes became the lower Hutu class.
[T]his rift did not directly grow out of personal insecurity or from violence in general but
from the institutionalization of a humiliating differentiation made between Tutsi and
Hutu in the exploitation of the population both within the armies and especially within
the corvée labor imposed on farmers [Hutu] but not on herders [Tutsi].18
The modern crisis can be traced to specific historical circumstance, and Vansina demonstrated
this well before the crisis reached the proportion of genocide.
Vansina’s ultimate goal is to encourage thought about the social and cultural conditions
of present-day Rwanda by illustrating past inequalities in Ndori society in the hopes of fostering
discussion about how to prevent future injustices. The biggest strengths of Antecedents to
Modern Rwanda are its extensive research conducted over decades, use of oral sources, and
extensive reading of secondary materials. Its attempt to bridge the social and cultural gap
16
created by colonialism and challenge the collective memory of post-1994 Rwandans, is an
admirable one. Time will tell if Rwandans will use their past and lessons learned to effect real
change in their social divides.
The issue of memory is one that Vansina actively engages in his later works. In his
article “The Politics of History and Crisis in the Great Lakes” he warns of how current events
impact the future reconstruction of history. Vansina argues that the wealth of information
produced by modern media outlets and government institutions effect history in two major ways.
First, through the proliferation of massive, but extremely flawed evidence, the global media
becomes a tool of propaganda that will affect historiography as future historians debate how to
properly understand and contextualize conflicts. The consequent effect on the historiography
reinforces pervasive political myths (i.e. the divisions between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda).
Vansina concludes similarly to Antecedents in Modern Rwanda. He calls upon historians
to lay the groundwork for a more balanced historiography by becoming the “slayers of myth.”
This is accomplished by producing volumes of documents, because little of the readily available
data speaks to the core of evidence of these conflicts. Furthermore, it is the job of current
historians to ask questions, thus widening the agenda for future historians.
How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa Before 1600
Unlike Vansina’s previous monographs on Central African history, How Societies Are
Born focuses on the moment of genesis for African societies before their incorporation into the
Atlantic World by European contact. Vansina uses his standard forms of data collection (i.e.
linguistic, ethnographic, oral, written, and archeological) to chronicle the evolution of small
hunter-gatherer communities into class-based and institutionalized societies. Methodologically,
17
How Societies Are Born is rooted in what Vansina calls “words and things,” which is based upon
the linguistic reconstruction of physical objects.
The book is divided chronologically into two parts that separate the early foraging
communities prior to 1000 C.E. with the more complex societies of the last millennium. In part
I, historical catalysts included the acquisition of cereal agriculture, agro-pastoralism, and the
creation of overarching institutions – notably matrilineages. Part II emphasizes the utilization of
environmental opportunities and a general coalescence of practices and ideas. Vansina also
separates West Central Africa into three regions based on geography, climate, and the
consequent characteristics of their societies. It is at this point that the coalescence that helped
cement societies was replaced by geographic divergence. Finally, Vansina returns to the idea of
tradition that was touched upon in Paths in the Rainforests. As societies diverged and formed
three different forms of governance, people began reacting linguistically and perceptively based
upon their respective geographic affiliation. This “collective imagination” is the gateway to
divergent traditions.
The strength of How Societies Are Born lies in its structuring of early African history.
Through linguistics, Vansina has offered a window into a period missed by Paths in the
Rainforests and through a viewpoint that was unconsidered by Kingdoms of the Savanna.
Without doubt, Vansina has an ability to derive plausible and convincing arguments, even with a
lack of documentary data that reveals the mind of a genius.
Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880-1960
In a scholarly career spanning nearly sixty years, Jan Vansina has written eight books that
feature the Kuba as prominent actors. However, the difference between Being Colonized and
Vansina’s previous works about the Congo is that Being Colonized is in the same vein as
18
Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, having a much more narrative approach, rather than the
methodological, theoretical, anthropological, or ethnological tomes that characterize Vansina’s
previous efforts. Furthermore, Being Colonized is Vansina’s most accessible book to a wider
audience.
Given to a layman or student, Being Colonized makes it possible to trace to
experiences of the Kuba through eighty years of Belgian colonial rule.
While the title of the book suggests a certain degree of passivity to the Kuba’s colonial
experience, Vansina shows that the ambiguity of the term “experience” is indicative of the
various effects of colonialism on specific groups within society. Although very much a local
history of the Kuba and the colonial experience in the rural Congo, Vansina ties events to the
larger economic and political issues of the Belgian Congo. In addition, Vansina explores Kuba
responses to colonial rule that include: religious movements, fashion, education, and other
expressions of modernity thus instilling an agency that the title overlooks.19
Being colonized is an excellent addition to the historiography of the Congo because it
focuses on the rural communities that are often overlooked. By concentrating on the Kuba,
Vansina is able to offer a case study of “experiences at the grassroots village level [that] were
quite similar to those of rural folk elsewhere in rural Congo.” Furthermore, “these diverged
more and more over time from the experiences of Congolese who lived as wage laborers or were
self-employed in industrial surroundings or in the main cities.”20
The Impact of Vansina’s Scholarship and Intellectual Leadership.
Jan Vansina has garnered countless awards and infinite praise for his contributions to the
field of African history.
He represents the pinnacle of his profession and is welcomed
19
throughout the Western and African academy. His work has also had significant impact on fields
outside of history. Vansina’s work among the Kuba in the 1950s yielded methodological
breakthroughs and interdisciplinary approaches that were then unheard of, but are now
commonplace throughout the social sciences. His integration of history, social anthropology,
and linguistics was a groundbreaking approach to the study of “history-less” pre-colonial
societies because it expanded the field beyond the agency of Europeans and augmented the
methodological frameworks of African history. In almost every review of Vansina’s work,
certain keywords always arise. Generally they are in the vein of “groundbreaking” or “tour de
force.”
Vansina’s contributions have been at intersections, notably of historians who neglect
Africa and scholars of Africa who neglect history. From the outset, Vansina utilized a strategy
that worked within the analytical framework of conventional Western history while attempting to
expand its scope via the incorporation of new sources. While criticism is expected given the
ambitious nature of his methodologies, the applications of his tools and conclusions have
rewared three generations of scholars. According to David Newbury, it is often forgotten that
Vansina was publishing within the historical canons of the time and that the liberal school he
identified with called for a universal application of critical methods to written and oral sources.
The fact that Vansina, in collaboration with scholars such as George P. Murdock and others at
SOAS, pushed beyond the popular beliefs of Melville Herskovits and used linguistic data to
expand the range of African history, is a testament to their fortitude and ingenuity. 21 In later
works, he engages in an active self-critique and associates himself with many of the recent
theoretical constructs regarding oracy (i.e., his article on systematic doubt in oral sources).22
Vansina’s methods are his reaction to his understanding of European historical practices in the
20
1950s, while his critics’ responses were a result of their understanding of African oral practices
in the 1970s and 1980s.
If Vansina revolutionized his own field with the publication of De la Tradition Orale,
then he has generated noticeable contributions to other fields. Social anthropology, once a
decidedly contemporary in its research, now utilizes history to a far greater degree. Vansina’s
use of Malcolm Guthrie's four-volume lexicon of Comparative Bantu as a guide for Paths in the
Rainforests, as well as his use of linguistic reconstruction via “words and things” in How
Societies Are Born, show the viability of linguistics in historical study.
Vansina will always be recognized for his groundbreaking work in methodology, but he
has always been a theorist who conducted primary research and who has tried to reach a larger
audience beyond the ivory tower. Antecedents to Modern Rwanda and Being Colonized are
narrative in their approach and designed to be accessible to students and laymen alike. Much
like Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, Vansina targeted his early works, specifically Les tribus
Ba-Kuba et les peuplades apparentées, to the African academy. Vansina’s later works also show
an active self-critique in which his theories take a far less positivist stance and recognize the
flaws of the liberal school, while maintaining his belief in the value of oral traditions as historical
sources and the power of a multidisciplinary approach to African history.
In addition to his passion for research, Vansina was also a dedicated professor of history
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Vansina has also held positions at Northwestern
University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Paris, and Lovanium University (Congo)
and Leuven in Belgium in the early 1970s. His efforts helped establish one of the first African
history and African studies programs in the United States while many of the degree benchmarks
21
he instituted remain common practice today. The fact that many of Vansina’s greatest critics
were former students such as David Henige, Joseph Miller and Paul Irwin speaks to the
environment of exploration and original thought that he inspired.
Jan Vansina possesses a quality that academics aspire to. He embraces the unknown and
has an overwhelming love for his work. He has a keen mind aided by a wealth of knowledge
drawn from continental Europe, America, and Africa.
He has seen the rise, decline, and
reinvention of his field. Most importantly, he draws from a tireless spirit that is constantly in
search for new perspectives and approaches to the field of history.
Works Cited
Books
22
Vansina, Jan. Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom. Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
_____. Art History in Africa: An Introduction to Method. London: Longman Group Ltd., 1984.
_____. Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 2880-1960. Madison:
The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010.
_____. How Societies are Born: Governance in West Central Africa Before 1600.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004.
_____. Living With Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
_____. Oral Tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
_____. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology. Chicago: Aldine Publishing
Company, 1965.
_____. Paths in the Rainforest. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
_____. The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Congo, 1880-1892. London: Oxford University Press,
1973.
Journal Articles
Newbury, David. “Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon: Jan Vansina and the Debate Over
Oral History in Africa, 1960-1985.” History in Africa 34 (2007): 213-254.
23
Vansina, Jan. “A Comparison of African Kingdoms.” Source: Africa: Journal of the
International African Institute 32, No. 4 (October 1962): 324-335.
_____. “Bantu in the Crystal Ball II.” History in Africa 7 (1980): 293-325.
_____. “Ethnohistory in Africa.” Ethnohistory 9, No. 2 (Spring 1962): 126-136.
_____. “Kuba Chronology Revisited.” Paideuma 21 (1975): 134-150.
_____. “Once Upon a Time: Oral Traditions as History in Africa.” Daedalus 100, No. 2 (Spring
1971): 442-468.
_____. “The Politics of History and the Crisis in the Great Lakes.” Africa Today 45, No. 1
(January-March 1998): 37-44.
_____. “The Power of Systematic Doubt in Historical Enquiry.” History in Africa 1 (1974):
109-127.
_____. “The Oral History of the Bakuba.” The Journal of African History 1, No. 1 (1960):
45-53.
Jan Vansina, “The Bells of Kings,” The Journal of African History 10, no. 2 (1969).
Jan Vansina, “The Bells of Kings,” Journal of African History, 10, no. 2 (1969).
In collaboration with the University of London, the commissions set up four universities in
tropical Africa: Ibadan in Nigeria, Achimota in the Gold Coast, Khartoum in Sudan, and
Makerere in Uganda. In 1955, the College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland followed. Both
commissions called for a post set up specifically for the study of history.
3
Jan Vansina, Living With Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 46-50.
4
Jan Vansina, “Recording the Oral History of the Bakuba,” The Journal of African History 1,
no. 1 (1960)
5
Jan Vansina, “The Bells of Kings,” The Journal of African History 10, no. 2 (1969)
1
2
24
6
Jan Vansina, Living With Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 151.
Jan Vansina, Art History in Africa: An Introduction to Method (New York: Longman Group,
1984), 1.
8
Ibid.
9
Jan Vansina, “Enthnohistory in Africa,” Ethnohistory 9, no. 2 (Spring 1962): 130.
10
Francis West, “Review of Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology,” History and
Theory 5, no. 3 (1966): 348-352.
11
Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (Chicago: Aldine Publishing
Company, 1965), 186.
12
Ibid., 208-209.
13
Ibid., 210.
14
Jan Vansina, “Once Upon a Time: Oral Traditions as History in Africa,” Daedalus 100, no. 2
(Spring 1971).
15
Jan Vansina, Oral Traditions as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 12.
16
Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 162.
17
Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom (Madison: The University
of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 202.
18
Ibid., 192.
19
David Newbury, “Review of Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 18801960,” The American Historical Review 116, no. 4 (2011): 1237.
20
Jan Vansina, Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880-1960 (Madison:
The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 214.
21
Jan Vansina, “Bantu in the Crystal Ball II,” History in Africa 7 (1980): 294.
22
Jan Vansina, “The Power of Systematic Doubt in Historical Enquiry,” History in Africa 1
(1974).
7
25