Africana Periodical Literature 
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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | Studying the History of Those Who Would Rather Forget: Oral History and the Experience of Slavery |
| Author: | Klein, Martin A. |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Periodical: | History in Africa |
| Volume: | 16 |
| Pages: | 209-217 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Mali Senegal France Africa |
| Subjects: | colonialism slavery oral history History and Exploration |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171785 |
| Abstract: | Research on oral history tends to be concerned with two different types of sources. The author refers to them as oral traditions and oral data. Oral traditions are formally preserved, not always as narratives, but in some fixed form. Oral data are largely concerned with people describing things they experienced. They are valid primarily during the lifetime of those being interrogated. For over fifteen years the author has been studying slavery and French colonial rule in West Africa. As part of his research he has interviewed in the Kaymor region of Saalum in Senegal and has had some interviews done by an assistant in Masina in Mali. The information on slavery in these collections has come more from memories of life experiences than from formal traditions. The most striking conclusion from these interviews is that in these societies those of slave descent do not like to recognize their slave origins. The problem of the servile informant is not simply reticence. Slaves are essentially people without history. One result of the limited development of slave traditions is that slaves are often invisible in the oral historical record. Notes, ref. |
