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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Benin kingdom in Britsh imperial historiography |
Authors: | Osadolor, Osarhieme Benson Otoide, Leo Enahoro |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | History in Africa (ISSN 1558-2744) |
Volume: | 35 |
Pages: | 401-418 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Nigeria Great Britain |
Subjects: | Benin polity historiography imperialism |
External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_in_africa/v035/35.osadolor.pdf |
Abstract: | Imperial writings by British authors about precolonial Benin before the emergence of Nigerian academic history writing in the 1950s serve as the basis for discussion in this paper. It examines the extent to which the imperial agenda influenced British writers' representation of the historical knowledge of Benin and draws attention to the possibilities and limitations in the production of the historical knowledge of Benin as defined by the politics of imperialism, and redefined with the professional authority of Africanists. It first examines the representation of Benin in early European accounts, from the 15th century onwards. This is followed by a discussion of the late 19th-century British perspective as influenced by the Age of the New Imperialism. The distortion and crisis in perspective in 20th-century imperial historiography is then examined, and the paper ends with the efforts to redefine the imperial viewpoint since the 1950s. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |