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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Bantu Expansion and the SOAS Network |
Author: | Flight, Colin |
Year: | 1988 |
Periodical: | History in Africa |
Volume: | 15 |
Pages: | 261-301 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Subsaharan Africa Africa |
Subjects: | African studies Bantu-speaking peoples migration Bantu languages Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration |
Abbreviation: | SOAS=School of Oriental and African Studies |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171863 |
Abstract: | In 1949-1950, the American linguist J.H. Greenberg set about constructing a new classification for the languages of Africa, strictly on genetic lines. That his conclusions concerning the Bantu expansion were correct as far as they went is not any longer in dispute. Throughout the 1950s, however, reaction from the Africanist establishment was unenthusiastic, and sometimes overtly hostile. British linguists even seem to have done their best to misunderstand what Greenberg had to say. This article examines how it was that British linguists allowed themselves to fall into such perverse misapprehensions, and that British historians allowed themselves, in consequence, to be so thoroughly misled in their discussion of the Bantu problem. It argues that the answers lie in the organization of African studies in Britain during the 1950s, and more precisely in the School of Oriental and African Studies, and in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa. Notes, ref. |