Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home Africana Periodical Literature Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat 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.
Views
Cover