The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Campared by Howard Lamar;Leonard ThompsonReview by: Gerald M. McSheffreyCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 17, No. 3,Special Issue: South Africa (1983), pp. 581-584Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/484950 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 13:20

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and Canadian Association of African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.216 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:20:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Par la suite, l'auteur expose et critique les methodes conventionnelles les plus usitees

pour analyser les diff6rents phenomenes demographiques (f6condite-natalite, mortalite, migration) et en deduire l'etat et le mouvement de la population. Les hypotheses, limites et questions que suscitent ces methodes, dans leur application parfois candide et dangereuse aux donnees africaines, sont minutieusement exposees. Cependant, des recommandations plus originales et approprices sont comme toujours laissees pour compte; c'est pourtant ce qui conf6rerait au livre une originalit6 v6ritablement africaine. Par exemple, on aurait aime un developpement meme theorique, sur "l'indigenous methods of reckoning age" (p. 42) plut6t que ce brillant expose des methodes conven- tionnelles de detection et de correction des erreurs sur l'age dont, on le sait, les donnees africaines reduisent souvent la valeur, si meme elles ne l'annulent pas tout-a-fait. De meme, on aurait aime que l'auteur aille plus loin que le simple avertissement sur le "very heavily youth-biased" taux de dependance (p. 16) en ce qui est de l'Afrique. Les deux derniers chapitres sont consacres aux theories et applications de la population stable et quasi-stable (en ce qu'elles permettent des estimations indirectes des phenomenes et une certaine prise en compte de leurs interrelations) et aux methodes indirectes d'analyse des

phenomenes. Des illustrations et des exercices bases sur des cas africains ainsi qu'une bibliographie selective suivent les brefs exposes theoriques.

I1 s'agit neamoins d'un outil de travail fort reussi, que la mediocrite persistante des donnees demographiques africaines et, surtout, que des preoccupations exclusivement quantitatives d'une certaine demographie accredite largement. Tout en reconnaissant que "any worthwhile interpretation of the causes and effects of population change must extend beyond formal statistical measurement of the components of change" (p. 1), I'auteur demeure curieusement prisonnier de la demographie formelle. I1 reste donc beaucoup ia faire pour que l'analyse demographique permette la comprehension des transformations demographiques des societes africaines: depasser les limites actuelles de ses techniques et, surtout, ses preoccupations exclusivement quantitatives.

Mumpasi LUTUTALA Departements de dimographie Universite de Kinshasa/Universitd de Montreal

Howard LAMAR and Leonard THOMPSON eds., The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Campared. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981, 360p.

The Frontier in History: North America, and Southern Africa Compared, the editors inform us, is the culmination of an idea of theirs which began with the establishment of an ongoing series of seminars on comparative frontier history at Yale beginning in 1971. With the exception of the editors themselves, however, and one or two of the contri- butors, the authors represented here were not participants in the Yale seminar series but seemingly specialists who were invited to present papers on a comparative frontier theme to a special seminar convened by the editors in 1979.

As a onetime participant in the Yale seminar series myself, it seems to me that this volume would have benefitted immeasureably if the contributors had been party to the

581

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.216 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:20:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

discussions and debates which went on regarding the aims and objectives of comparative history and the methodological imperatives of comparative research. Comparison, after all, as Arthur Kalleberg has pointed out, is "a basic methodological concept and not merely a convenient term vaguely symbolizing the focus of one's research interests."' Without a tight conceptual framework and a clear delineation of the phenomena to be compared, comparative studies are likely to produce shallow generalizations or truisms of the sort familiar to the most novice of students in either of the areas under investiga- tion. More often than not, the novel perspectives, fresh insights, or new knowledge that comparative historical studies such as this ought to be able to provide turn out to be diamonds which knowledgeable experts in their respective fields know to be stones.

This particular volume, one of several recent studies which attempts to compare aspects of the American and South African experience, falls into this category and is by far the least successful.2 Part of the reason for this can be attributed to the collective nature of the enterprise itself; for, if comparative history is intrinsically difficult at the best of times, collaborative comparative scholarship is doubly so. Most of the con- tributors to this volume recognize these difficulties and try to cope with them either by ignoring the comparative dimension of the study altogether or by attempting to relate their individual essays to the overall theme in some superficial way. Needless to say, this is not really comparative history at all but a series of essays on a very loosely interpreted theme which, in most instances, seems entirely irrelevant to them. The seeming confu- sion over the comparative method and the concept of the frontier extends to the editors themselves who do not appear very clear in their own minds as to what they hoped to accomplish by this exercise. The latter conclude an introductory chapter on the raison d' etre of comparative history and comparative frontier history specifically, for example, with the perplexing disclaimer that " ... much as we would have liked to structure this book as a series of systematic comparisons of two regional frontier processes, this has not been practicable, because not enough scholars possess sufficient control over the history of both regions to apply this method effectively" (p. 13). Apparently this is true of even the editors themselves, both of whom are acknowledged scholars in their respective fields; they provide little more than a superficial "list'" of the similarities and differences between the frontier or frontiers in Southern Africa and North America in a short introductory chapter. To them, the principal conclusions that can be derived from these eight "parallel" or "paired" essays in frontier history are as follows:

"For example, we discover that in both the cases we have studied, Europeans did not establish hegemony over frontier zones without exploiting the internal divisions among the indigenous societies; and we also find that mass conversions of indigenous peoples to Christianity did not occur in the frontier epoch, but did take place in some cases after whites established hegemony" (pp. 12-13).

Surely, one might ask whether this is all one is entitled to expect from a study sub-titled North America and Southern Africa Compared, or whether the editors are not stretching credibility when they refer to the above as "hypotheses." The fact is, one could easily change the title of this volume to read "Essays on Selected Aspects of European Conquest and Colonization in North America and Southern Africa" and delete the editors' introductory chapters on comparative frontier history and the North American and Southern African frontiers entirely without detracting in any way from the overall significance of the work.

582

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.216 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:20:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Whatever merit this exercise in "parallel history" does possess, therefore, rests not in the sum of its parts but in the strength of several of the essays which are in it, most of which ignore comparisons and frontiers almost entirely. The best of these and those deserving special mention are on South Africa, and particularly those by Herman Giliomee on "Processes in Development of the Southern African Frontier, " Robert Ross on "Capitalism, Expansion, and Incorporation on the Southern African Frontier," and Richard Elphick on "Africans and the Christian Campaign in Southern Africa." Even here, these contributions are most valuable for the succinct synthesis they provide and not because they tell us anything about the history of South Africa or North America or about the nature of the frontier "process" in these areas that was not already known. One is at a loss, moreover, to explain the absence of any contribution from Martin Legassick whose seminal studies of the frontier and the frontier tradition in South Africa are referred to on several occasions by editors and contributors alike.

Clearly what this volume demonstrates is that comparative history cannot be sum- moned into existence; rather, it demands a conceptual framework and systematic ap- proach that is noticeably absent here. Even the choice of frontier as a comparative framework is open to question largely because it is an elusive concept which is almost impossible to define. The editors' definition of the frontier "as a territory or zone of interpenetration between two previously distinct societies, " one of which is "indigenous to the region" and "the other intrusive" and as a distinct historical process which "'opens' in a given zone when the first representatives of the intrusive society arrive [and] 'closes' when a single political authority has established hegemony over the zone" (p. 7) is far too vague and inclusive a concept to demarcate a specific historical period or process. At one level, such a definition almost explains everything while at another it explains nothing at all. It is almost impossible, moreover, to separate frontier from the metaphorical and mythical connotations that have been conferred on the term by several generations of ethnocentric historians in the West over the years. To modern historians whose principal interest lies in achieving a full and undistorted understanding of the implications of European conquest and colonization in the non-European world, frontier has been an obstacle, a euphemism which obscures the hard realities behind the triumph of "civilization" over "savagery." It was, after all, Hancock who popularized the use of the term in colonial historiography at a time when American historians were already descarding it when, in a bit of historiographical slight of hand, he substituted European "frontiers" for "imperialism," claiming the latter was "not a word for historians."3

It is unfortunate that this volume has ignored this aspect of the frontier entirely because the myth of the frontier may tell us more about South African historiography than any of these studies. Although long since discarded in the United States as a meaningful interpretation of the American experience, the frontier has continued to be an integral part of the vocabulary of South African historiography largely because of the mythical significance it has for White South Africans. To Afrikaners, the frontier myth has always represented and continues to represent the legitimization of their historical tradition, the triumph of "white civilization" over "native barbarism," while to their liberal critics, the frontier has served to explain the racism, xenophobia, and "tribalism" of the Afrikaner, the somewhat less than "civilized" child of the frontier.

In either case, if the implications of the continuation of the frontier approach to South African historiography were more clearly understood, it might well be relegated to the past once and for all where it belongs. Only then, it seems, will South African

583

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.216 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:20:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

historiography come to grips with the imposed boundaries which divide the South African past and give false legitimacy to the present.

Gerald M. McSHEFFREY Department of History Queen's University (Ontario)

1. Arthur Kalleberg, "The Logic of Comparison," WorldPolitics, XIX (October 1966), 69-83. 2. The others are George Frederickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American

and South African History (New York, 198 1); and Stanley Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development: Comparative Perspectives (New Haven, 1980).

3. Keith Hancock, Argument of Empire (London, 1943), Chapter 7, "Moving Frontiers," 62-77.

Nina Emma MBA, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women's Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1982, xii + 344p. (Research Series, No. 48.)

Inspired by the need to present women's viewpoint of the 1929 "Women's War," commonly known as the "Aba Riots," Mba traces the pedigree of various women's political mass movements in southern Nigeria, from 1900 to 1965. She explores un- conventional political activity of women and the policies against which they protested, and offers the first extended discussion of Nigerian women's initiative, leadership and involvement in conventional political parties. The Abeokuta Women's Union, and the elite Lagos Women's organizations are examined in scholarly detail. As such, the book should appeal to the specialist in the social sciences as well as to the lay person interested in understanding some of the antagonism between traditional African political systems and the modern political systems as they affect women.

The book is not as much an analytical exercise as it is an historical exposition of essential details that inform political activities of a group facing consistent and systemic bias, as well as the diminution of its autonomy with the advent of a new system of governance. The lack of analytical emphasis is perhaps compensated by historical precision. The bulk of the material is from primary sources, and Mba's skills as a historian and an educator are evident.

The book focuses on the motivation and self-images of women, their objectives in specific cases, their organization and leadership. The effectiveness of the protest movements and political associations "with a special emphasis on the effects of historical change on the political positions and roles of women in Southern Nigeria" (p. x). The argument is that in pre-colonial southern Nigeria, "women's world was not subordinate to that of men, but rather the two worlds were complementary" (p. 290).

Structurally the book falls into three parts. Chapters one and two comprise the introductory section. Chapter one identifies important traditional parallel power systems in which women independently exercised their judgment and power, pointing out some differences from place to place in traditional political structures. Chapter two describes

584

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.216 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:20:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions