Last week I found myself grapping with the delineation of actual and imagined geographic boundaries of ethnic groups because of contestations of citizens and (neo-)colonial forces. This week’s readings seemed to echo similar difficulties in determining the chronology of an empire and expansion of language groups. Following conversations about the role of written versus oral histories, McIntosh & McIntosh’s article explores the dissonance between various accounts of origins of the Mali empire. While European and Arabian accounts tend to pin the time frame no earlier than the 14th century, local oral history and new archaeological evidences suggests flourishing of the Jenne-Jeno empire as early as the 8th century. McIntosh & McIntosh propose a few possible explanations as to the disparity in range of historical origins, citing, “It is difficult to know how much of the vague reportage of sub-Saharan Western Sudan by Arab authors stems from genuine ignorance or confusion… and how much is a function of selective reporting.”[1] This question of selective chronicling of history brings to light the possibility of muted history as deliberate strategem. Certainly, for the purpose of European or Arabian historians aiming to establish their own empires as the oldest models of civilization, such tactics seem quite prudent. McIntosh & McIntosh go on to note that some historians would even believe that citizens of the local region create an imagined historical trajectory to construct the illusion of duration in a contested imperial legacy, “Triaud prefers to see Jenne as an artifact of Islam… He dismissed the oral traditions as pure fabrication on the part of the inhabitants of Jenne”[2] Once again, we are aware of the disadvantage of oral societies in Western myths of (others’) origins, and must turn to a reliance on the materiality of history in the form of archaeological remains in order to establish a more cohesive narrative thread. Perhaps it is time, as McIntosh & McIntosh and other suggest, that historians rely on more complex cognitive mappings of history, incorporating oral legacies as guides in the search for material evidence of empires.
In reference to my region of interest in the ancient Kongo empire, it becomes fundamental to consider the role of water systems in the development of economy and exploration by outsiders. One of the explorers I am beginning to research is Edward Glave, who worked closely under the guidance of Henry M. Stanley in the late 19th century, and traveled from the Congo river basin bordering the Atlantic Ocean into the interior of the continent beneath Rwanda and Burundi.
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| Congo River |
The Congo River formed the main route of their journey in the late 1890s, thereby connecting outside explorers as well as ethnic groups spanning across Congo, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In beginning to map Glave’s sojourn, it seems peculiar why he would branch off from this course and follow a (potentially less developed) land route, but perhaps this dimension of the journey is when the narrative of exploration becomes complicated and more compelling.
[1] Roderick J. McIntosh and Susan Keech McIntosh. “The Inland Niger Delta Before the Empire of Mali: Evidence from Jenne-Jeno,” in The Journal of African History, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1981), pp. 2
[2] McIntosh & McIntosh, pp. 10
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