Historical Evidence and Argument

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sigmund Freud would have said “aha!” but I think it all began early. Unconsciously (I imagine) following Robert Ingersoll’s dictum that “[t]he child should be taught to investigate, not to believe,” my mother wasted no time in enjoining the three of us that a jaundiced eye is all too often the most reliable of optics, and a host of experiences ever since have vindicated her view. By the same token, she was no less adamant that any skepticism be routinely tested, and that we should never fail to allow ourselves, if necessary, to be provisionally persuaded by the preponderance of evidence in whatever direction. As noticed below, I was ingenuousness personified at first, but eventually I found that it was seldom particularly necessary or profitable to believe unreservedly at any point in the process. I thank her then for setting me on the right track while I was still too young to suppose that I knew better, and thereby helping to save me from countless moments of chagrined disabusal. In his “Ulysses” Tennyson wrote that “I am a part of all that I have met.” Slightly exaggerated perhaps, but the fact remains that I have accumulated sizeable debts over the years, in part through being assimilated by the thoughts and attitudes of those with whom I have interacted. Some of these were more important, some more prolonged than others, and I cannot escape offering thanks—in some cases yet again. I doubt whether any other ambiance than the one in which I have worked for these many years would have allowed me to paint with such broad strokes. The General Library System of the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers the ideal—even idyllic—asylum for the terminally inquisitive. Here curiosity is raised daily, but the same opportunities permit it to be quenched with gratifying efficiency; the real task is keeping up with opportunities there are constantly thrown up in virtually every direction. I have probably failed at this, but the fun xi is in the trying, and I confess happily to using and overusing, even abusing, the myriad opportunities shamelessly—and very gratefully too. Even so, the lamentable state of library budgets these days, pitted against the unrelenting proliferation and increasing cost of information, make it impossible to rely entirely on local resources for any research initiative of a broadly comparative nature. And so, for the umpteenth time over the past thirty-five years, I find it necessary—but undeniably pleasurable—to thank the staff of Memorial Library’s Interlibrary Loan Department for their continuing staunch support. Indeed, I cannot be grateful enough for their contributions over the years; their generous policy in acquiring materials enables me—and other users—to secure items for no higher purpose than to check the accuracy and context of quotations, whether transcribed by myself or by others. In particular I want to thank Ken Frazier, the Director of the General Library System, for fostering an atmosphere that accepts that scholarship works best when all the boundaries are osmotic. At the same time the overall collegial atmosphere within Memorial Library itself has made using its rich materials a process that has been both extraordinarily efficient and congenial. It is hardly a wonder that over the years I have come to appreciate more and more the serendipitous circumstances into which I happen to have fallen. Bruce Fetter and Jan Vansina both read rather longer versions of this work and offered advice that I was happy to take in terms of shortening and rationalizing the presentation of what, after all, is a disparate set of arguments. David Conrad and an anonymous reader offered the kinds of detached observations on the penultimate—but nearly ultimate—version that an author cannot produce, but also cannot prosper without. I especially appreciate Paul Irwin’s really thorough exegesis of an earlier, less digested, version, reminding me once again what a loss his career path has been to African historiography. Phyllis Holman Weisbard read the entire manuscript at a late date in the process and brought to my attention several deficiencies that I had lost sight of through overfamiliarity, as well as offered some suggestions for including materials. I regret now that I did not give her an earlier crack at the text. Camera-ready formatted pages were prepared by Jeff Kaufmann, who has done the same for History in Africa, a journal I edit, for several years. Jeff’s technical skills and reliability—the second unquestionably rarer than...