This is a professor-type comment, but I am struck in this essay by something that is a part of your other essays, it's just more notable here, which is that you don't actually do much historiographical discussion in your narration. e.g., you are often focusing on states or periods where there are some substantial questions about how much we know and how we know it--and when I look at your footnotes, you do a really interesting mixture of very old sources, of the major "first generation" of mainstream academic Africanists, and then a smattering of more recent archaeological and linguistic work often. But you don't talk about how you approach that mix of expertise, all of which presents at least a few issues. I really like the confidence and clarity of these essays, the straightforward narration of a knowable history, but I am a bit curious about how you see your approach to assembling the expert knowledge that informs these essays.
mixing old and new sources is more about my ability to access each work, although i do prefer recent research over old research wherever i can get it
although as a non-specialist, older research whose findings get "vindicated" by new research becomes more appealing to me as it shows that the researcher had a firm grasp of his field at an early stage, which is why i'm comfortable citing the work of a few historians like Wilks, Hunwick, Vansina, Pouwels, Torok, etc, no matter when it was written, knowing that its much less likely to be contradicted by new research
This helps alot to compensate for my inability to access some of the new research.
Well, you are doing some great deep digs into the historiography. I suppose I raise the point just because on some of these precolonial polities, most of the scholarship is a bit more tentative or notes where it's being speculative--you can see that some in Gomez' African Dominion or in Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History. But I also know that makes that material harder to read, it's a classic problem with academic prose that it is so full of qualifiers--this might be true, one way to see this is X, it is reasonable to suppose, etc.
Thanks for your contribution. As a native of Gonja person and researcher of my Gonja story as the history of Gonja as people claimed. I am sorry but most of your informations here about the history of Gonjas are not acurate and you need to go more deep your research.
This is a professor-type comment, but I am struck in this essay by something that is a part of your other essays, it's just more notable here, which is that you don't actually do much historiographical discussion in your narration. e.g., you are often focusing on states or periods where there are some substantial questions about how much we know and how we know it--and when I look at your footnotes, you do a really interesting mixture of very old sources, of the major "first generation" of mainstream academic Africanists, and then a smattering of more recent archaeological and linguistic work often. But you don't talk about how you approach that mix of expertise, all of which presents at least a few issues. I really like the confidence and clarity of these essays, the straightforward narration of a knowable history, but I am a bit curious about how you see your approach to assembling the expert knowledge that informs these essays.
mixing old and new sources is more about my ability to access each work, although i do prefer recent research over old research wherever i can get it
although as a non-specialist, older research whose findings get "vindicated" by new research becomes more appealing to me as it shows that the researcher had a firm grasp of his field at an early stage, which is why i'm comfortable citing the work of a few historians like Wilks, Hunwick, Vansina, Pouwels, Torok, etc, no matter when it was written, knowing that its much less likely to be contradicted by new research
This helps alot to compensate for my inability to access some of the new research.
Well, you are doing some great deep digs into the historiography. I suppose I raise the point just because on some of these precolonial polities, most of the scholarship is a bit more tentative or notes where it's being speculative--you can see that some in Gomez' African Dominion or in Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History. But I also know that makes that material harder to read, it's a classic problem with academic prose that it is so full of qualifiers--this might be true, one way to see this is X, it is reasonable to suppose, etc.
Thank you, really interesting to learn a more about that region of Africa.
grateful
Wow. History class has never never given me an in depth account like this. Brilliant work. Can’t wait to learn more.
thank you.
Thanks for your contribution. As a native of Gonja person and researcher of my Gonja story as the history of Gonja as people claimed. I am sorry but most of your informations here about the history of Gonjas are not acurate and you need to go more deep your research.
We can help you if you want to do so.
Thanks
I also find out a lot errors in it
Hi Rashid, It would be great if you can expand the research work some of your findings to expand the knowledgebase.