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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Ethnography as history: the past of peoples in the Equatorial rainforest of Africa |
Author: | Vansina, J. |
Year: | 1981 |
Periodical: | Kiabārā: Journal of the Humanities |
Volume: | 4 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 157-191 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Central Africa |
Subjects: | anthropology historiography |
Abstract: | Anthropologists have often maintained that the cultures and societies in the equatorial rainforest of Central Africa were all very similar, conforming to a lineage model of social organization. By using ethnographic data, the author has shown elsewhere that this model is wrong. In this article he uses the abundant ethnographic data in order to obtain as complete and accurate a view as possible of the situation in the forest area on the eve of the colonial conquest, and, going backwards, during the Atlantic period (the period of slave trade, from c. 1660 in the West and c. 1700 or even 1750 on the Zaire river up to the 1870s), before the Atlantic period, and during settlement and early history. Concerning the latter period, the author relies more on linguistic material. Notes, ref. |