Коллектив авторов - Африка. История и историки

A. B. Davidson

HISTORY IN AFRICA: PROBLEMS OF STUDY

This introductory article sums up the work that has already been done by Russian scholars and draws the outline of the new tasks that they now have to fulfil in order to understand the way history is studied and taught in Africa.

S. V. Mazov

HISTORICAL ISSUES IN THE WORKS BY J. E. CASELY HAYFORD

J. E. Casely Hayford is best known as a Gold Coast politician and journalist. His merits as a writer relates primarily to popularizing the ideas of Wilmot Blyden, the father of cultural nationalism in West Africa. Revealing Casely Hayford views on the African past and the role of Africans in the World History, the author argues that he deserves the right to be a distinctive thinker with his own vision of fundamental problems of the world.

N. G. Scherbakov

A HARD TREK: FROM THE HISTORY OF NEGROES TO THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN PEOPLES

Four centuries of trans-atlantic slave trade and more than one hundred years of the migration of Africans to the former metropolitan and other western countries formed a unique community – a large diaspora of the peoples of African origin. Among those who influenced the historical studies of African peoples most of all is the personality of William Edward B. Du Bois (1868–1963).We try to clarify in which way and when his understanding of Black History transferred from the history of Negroes to the history of African Peoples. The 15 years after the Manchester Pan-African congress show the best promise as Dr. Du Bois attached much importance and influenced greatly the development of African studies in the USSR. Through better understanding of newly independent states of Africa more and more historians realized the new character of Black History which became separated and from the late 50-s and on was developing as the history of Africans and Negroes, i.e. African-Americans.

A. V. Voevodsky

THE HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA AS SEEN BY AFRICAN INTELLECTUALS (1870s-1930s): SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE FORMATION OF IDEAS ABOUT HISTORY

Historical views are the most important factor in the development of the ethnic self-consciousness. They have an impact not only on the methods of representation of the past, but also on the perception of the modern world. African intellectuals played an important role in the formation of the collective historical memory of Africans and in the understanding of their own past. Literature (historical prose) had a big influence on this process. African intellectuals saw their main mission in the restoring the historical justice and showing that African people of Southern Africa have not been deprived of greatness, that they were the creators of their history. However their writings were full of fiction and biased assessments in the interpretation of historical events. The first African historians became the authors of new historical myths, many of which are alive to the present time.

S. V. Mazov

«AFRICAN HERCULES» AND «COLONIAL HYDRA». COLONIAL PROBLEM IN THE KWAME NKRUMAH'S WORKS

The article covers Kwame Nkrumah's views on colonialism and its impact on Africa. His works are often read as though they were all written at the same time, and an abstract and dogmatic system called «Nkrumaism» is extracted from them. The author traced the evolution of Nkrumah's assessments of colonialism caused by the changes in his status and political career.

V. I. Yevseyenko

HISTORICAL STUDIES IN GUINEA: STAGES OF MAKING AND PROBLEMS

The roots of historical studies in Guinea are to find in traditional society, beginning with the Griots of the Mandingo people. In the colonial times there were some amateur historians among the local intelligentsia. The foundation in 1944 of the Guinean branch of the French Institute of Black Africa (IFAN) marks the beginning of the new period in studying local culture and history. In 1958 it was reorganized into the National Center of research and documentation under the leadership of the prominent French scholar J. Suret-Canale. In this center the first generation of professional Guinean historians was formed. Some of them were persecuted by the repressive regime of president Seku Toure, some emigrated like J. T. Niane. Others cooperated with the ruling regime writing books which glorified its leaders and the ruling party. In the emigration some Guinean historians like Alpha Diawara tried to write the objective history of the country. A great role in the historiography was played by Guineans naturalized in France, such as Kamara Silvin. After the fall of the Secu Toure regime some books trying to give its real assessment were written.

I. V. Krivoushin

FROM A THEORY OF HISTORY TO GENOCIDE: THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RWANDAN TRAGEDY OF THE XX CENTURY

The article shows how the Hamitic hypothesis invented by early European anthropologists was promoted by German and Belgian colonizers and missionaries to explain the native Rwandan society and organize it into pseudo-racial hierarchies under colonial rule, how the colonial ethnicist practices and ideologies resulted in ethnicist consciousness-raising of populations and how the Rwandan post-colonial political regimes supported, instrumentalized and institutionalized them to consolidate their power. The author concludes that these historical developments made the Hamitic hypothesis a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

G. V. Tsypkin

ETHIOPIA AS SEEN BY AFRICAN HISTORIANS

It may seem a paradox but the historical developments in the most ancient independent state of the African continent never created the prerequisite for the establishment of historical science in Ethiopia. The author's task is to open the reasons for such phenomena. The leading among such reasons are the conservatism and stagnancy of Ethiopian society and very low educational level as even at the beginning of the XX thcentury one can attain education only at the church-operated schools. The Ethiopian society was unable to absorb new ideas as well. Both in the period of feudal absolutist state and in the times of so called «socialist experiment» we have to consider the strong role of censorship which prevented the development of historical science.

M. S. Kurbak

SOUTH AFRICA AND THE WORLD AS SEEN BY J. M. COETZEE AND N. GORDIMER

J. M. Coetzee and N. Gordimer, the most popular South African writers and the holders of a Nobel Prize for literature, were born in South Africa and their lives and works are bound with this country. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to compare the views of J. M. Coetzee and N. Gordimer, because they are very different. During the apartheid era the main theme of N. Gordimer's novels was the disclosure of injustice and racial discrimination in South African everyday life. Coetzee didn't support the resistant movement of the black South Africans, but he didn't support the politics of the National Party either. In his first novels («Dusklands», «Waiting for the Barbarians») he tried to see the apartheid as «only one manifestation of a wider historical situation to do with colonialism, late colonialism, neocolonialism».

The main thing that unites these two writers is that in their novels they try to think not only about South Africa but about the presence and future of the others countries as well.

L. V. Ivanova

STUDY OF HISTORY IN SOMALIA

The study of history in Somali is quite fragmented and specific subject due to the lack of official system of the written Somali language until 1972. The colonial partition of Somali between Britain, France and Italy influenced the shaping of Somali national identity and the way of its expression. This article is a preliminary and exploratory examination of three distinct traditions of intellectual process in Somalia: the Western secular tradition, the Islamic religious (and educational) tradition, and the indigenous Somali poetic tradition. To reconstruct Somalia's past we have to use valuable knowledge in the products of each of these traditions, their wisdom and experience. It therefore seems worthwhile to examine the character of each of these three distinct systems of knowledge and the historical circumstances that kept them separated, or partitioned, over the course of the past century. We can then reflect on the consequences for understanding contemporary Somalia.

A. S. Balezin THEMES OF WEST AFRICAN STUDENTS' GRADUATE PAPERS IN HISTORY IN THE LAST THIRD OF THE XX th CENTURY

The author tries to draw some conclusions from the publication of the themes of graduate papers of students in Mali, Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cote d'lvoire, Niger, Guinea, Congo and Senegal. These students were taught by the first generation of African historians. The results differ from country to country but there are some common features. The tendency to research the history of local societies using local languages and sources has been continued and deepened. Very few papers were devoted to anti-colonial struggle of Africans and if so then to its initial period, the so-called primary resistance. Even less papers were dealing with the period afer Independence. Very many papers were devoted to certain customs or local villages and towns. Some of the graduates but not many have become quite known historians.

Кристофер Сондерс

100-ЛЕТИЕ АФРИКАНСКОГО НАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО КОНГРЕССА: НОВЫЕ ВЗГЛЯДЫ?

Статья представляет собой фундированный анализ исследований последних лет, посвященных истории АНК. Автор дает общую оценку степени разработанности различных периодов и проблем его истории.

Известный южноафриканский исследователь выделяет четыре основных периода в истории АНК: от основания до 1940-х годов, 1940-е – 1961 гг., «десятилетия изгнания» – 1960-е – 1990 гг. и с 1990 г. по настоящее время. Сондерс указывает, что до сих пор остается еще достаточно много спорных и недостаточно изученных вопросов в истории АНК: степень радикализма АНК в ранние годы его существования, роль Южноафриканской компартии в формировании тактики борьбы против режима апартхейда, значение АНК в освободительной борьбе в ЮАР в 1960–1980-е годы, когда основные управленческие структуры и базы организации находились за границей и т. д. На основе проведенного анализа автор приходит к выводу, что вплоть до настоящего времени еще не появилось взвешенного и максимально объективного обобщающего труда по истории АНК. Его создание – неотложная задача будущих исследований.

Селестэн Разафимбелу

МАДАГАСКАР, СОРОК ЛЕТ НЕЗАВИСИМОСТИ