Political Histories of Southern Africa's Kingdoms and Chiefdoms

Abstract

... In writing this review I must begin by declaring an interest. In both the books under discussion, my own work, published and unpublished, in the field of the history of southern Africa in the two centuries or so before the establishment of colonial rule, comes in for a certain degree of both praise and criticism. The more significant criticisms extend to work that I have co-authored with Carolyn Hamilton, and also to work done by Hamilton individually. In important respects, these criticisms are based on what we both see as serious misunderstandings and misrepresentations of positions that we have argued, jointly and individually. This review will necessarily be a combination of commentary, critique, and rebuttal. It will focus on the crucial issue of what kinds of understanding researchers bring to the study of recorded oral materials as sources of evidence on southern Africa's past before the colonial era, and on the equally important question of how to read them.....