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Making the James Stuart Archive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

John Wright
John Wright*
Affiliation:
University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg
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Extract

Since the first of its volumes appeared in 1976, the James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples has become well known to students of the precolonial history of southern Africa generally, and of the Natal-Zululand region in particular. The four volumes, edited by Colin Webb and myself, which were published by the University of Natal Press between 1976 and 1986, have become a major source of evidence for students of the history of African communities in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Although the various volumes have been reviewed in a number of international academic journals, the Stuart Archive is still, I suspect, little known outside the ranks of historians of southern Africa. The hiatus that has occurred in the process of publication since volume 4 came out has not helped in drawing the series to the attention of a wider circle of scholars. In writing this paper, one of my aims is to bring the existence of the Stuart Archive to the attention of Africanists at a time when work on the projected three volumes which still remain to be published is about to resume.

Another and more specific aim is to outline the nature of the processes by which the Stuart Archive was brought into existence, in order to underscore for users and potential users the need to use it critically as a source of evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 23 , January 1996 , pp. 333 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1996

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References

Notes

1. The “Natal-Zululand region” here refers to the area between the Drakensberg mountains and the Indian Ocean roughly bounded by the Phongolo river in the north and the Mthamvuna river in the south.

2. A full biographical study of Stuart still waits to be written. The sketch here draws on the following sources: autobiographical notes in the James Stuart collection; the semi-fictionalized but apparently accurate Stuart family history published by V. M. Fitzroy, a niece of Stuart's, in her Dark Bright Land (Cape Town, 1955)Google Scholar; autobiographical memoirs written by Stuart's sister, Marx, Beatrice (She Shall Have Music [Cape Town, 1961])Google Scholar, and by one of his nieces, Esme Stuart (I Remember…, privately published in Durban in 1984); and a tape-recorded interview conducted by the author with Justin Stuart, one of Stuart's nephews, in Pietermaritzburg in 1984. Readers are also referred to the sensitive analysis of Stuart's recording work made by Hamilton, Carolyn in her “Authoring Shaka: Models, Metaphors and Historiography” (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1993)Google Scholar, chapters 7 and 8 (a book based on this work is due to be published by Harvard University Press in 1996).

3. UTulasizwe (1923), uHlangakula (1924), uBaxoxele (1924), uKulumetule (1925), uVusezakiti (1926).

4. See the reference in note 2 above, and also Hamilton's unpublished paper, “James Stuart and ‘The Establishment of a Living Source of Tradition’,” unpublished seminar paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 1994.

5. See numerous entries in his diaries for 1886-89 in the Killie Campbell Africana Library.

6. Hamilton, , “James Stuart,” 5.Google Scholar

7. Hamilton, “Authoring Shaka,” chapter 6.

8. Ibid., 401-37.

9. Cited from ibid., 397-98.

10. Cited in the introduction to Stuart Archive, 1:xiv. See also 3:160.

11. See ibid., 1:93.

12. Ibid., 3:187.

13. Cobbing, Julian, “A Tainted Well: the Objectives, Historical Fantasies, and Working Methods of James Stuart, with counter-argument,” Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 11 (1988), 115–54.Google Scholar

14. Hamilton, “Authoring Shaka,” chapters 7 and 8.

15. Ibid., 481.

16. See Stuart Archive, 3:191n76.

17. The long drawn-out negotiations over the fate of the papers are detailed in correspondence in files 45 and 46 of the Stuart collection.

18. Herd, Norman, Kiltie's Africa: the Achievements of Dr Killie Campbell (Pietermaritzburg, 1982), 139, 185, 186.Google Scholar

19. Philip Bonner, personal communication, 20 October 1995; Jeff Guy, personal communication, 20 October 1995.

20. This was Trevor Cope, whose edited compilation of praises recorded by Stuart was published in Oxford in 1968 under the title Izibongo: Zulu Praise-Poems. On the circumstances in which Cope came to work on the praises see the preface to this work, and also Herd, , Killie's Africa, 171–72.Google Scholar

21. Papers from the conference, among them Webb's, were published in Thompson, Leonard, ed., African Societies in Southern Africa (London, 1969).Google Scholar

22. Introduction to Stuart Archive, 1:xv.

23. Colenbrander, Peter, South African Historical Journal, no. 11 (1979), 108Google Scholar; Hamilton, Carolyn, African Studies, 43 (1984), 62–65.Google Scholar

24. Doke, C.M. and Vilakazi, B.W., Zulu-English Dictionary (Johannesburg, 1948).Google Scholar

25. Bryant, Alfred T., A Zulu-English Dictionary (Pinetown, 1905).Google Scholar

26. Lugg was born in 1882 and died in 1977. He published an autobiography and several still useful reference works on Zulu history and custom.

27. See the Appendix for an example.

28. Cobbing, “Tainted Well.”

29. Quotations are from Cobbing, , “Tainted Well,” 119–22.Google Scholar

30. Hamilton, , “Authoring Shaka,” esp. 359-63, 477–81.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 478.

32. Ibid., 363.

33. Cobbing, Julian, “The mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo,” Journal of African History, 29 (1988), 487–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Guy, J.J., “The destruction of the Zulu kingdom: the civil war in Zululand, 1879-1884” (Ph.D., University of London, 1975)Google Scholar; Bonner, P.L., “The Rise, Consolidation and Disintegration of Dlamini Power in Swaziland Between 1820 and 1889” (Ph.D., University of London, 1977)Google Scholar; Hedges, David, “Trade and Politics in Southern Mozambique and Zululand in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth centuries” (Ph.D., University of London, 1978).Google Scholar

35. Hamilton, Carolyn, “Ideology, Oral Traditions, and the Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom” (M.A., University of the Witwatersrand, 1986)Google Scholar; Wright, John, “The Dynamics of Power and Conflict in the Thukela-Mzimkhulu Region in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries: a Critical Reconstruction” (Ph.D., University of the Witwatersrand, 1990).Google Scholar

36. Klopper, Sandra, “The Art of Zulu-Speakers in Northern Natal-Zululand: an Investigation of the History of Beadwork, Carving, and Dress From Shaka to Inkatha” (Ph.D., University of the Witwatersrand, 1992)Google Scholar; Kennedy, Carolee, “Art, Architecture and Material Culture of the Zulu Kingdom” (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 1993).Google Scholar

37. Hamilton, Carolyn, “Authoring Shaka: Models, Metaphors and Historiography” (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1993).Google Scholar

38. Laband, John, Rope of Sand: the Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century (Johannesburg, 1995).Google Scholar