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The article discusses the papers of Rhodesian liberal Diana Mary Mitchell, known as the Mitchell collection, held at the Manuscripts and Archives Department of The University of Cape Town (UCT). It notes that the archive also contains papers concerning several opposition politicians in Rhodesia in the mid- to late-twentieth century, including Morris Hirsch, Pat Bashford, and Allan Savory. The author suggests that the archive is useful for the study of the historical role of women in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe.

Copyright of History in Africa: A Journal of Method is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction is provided to various articles in the issue on topics based on the work of historian David Henige including Henige's impact on the discipline of history, the relationship between literacy, oral traditions and historiography, and African archives.

This article focuses on the months before the Spanish-American war began in April 1898 and addresses two related questions: first, why was the op- position to the war so strong in the United States; second, why did it not prevail? To explore these questions, the papers of the McKinley administration are examined, along with the Congressional Record and forty-one US newspapers, as well as twelve major European newspapers (British, French, German and Spanish) and the relevant documents from the British and Spanish archives. It is only in the press that one can find a coherent, well-articulated and explicit explanation of the antiwar position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which provides a backstory and biography for "The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples," a published archive of papers written by anthropologist James Stuart detailing documentation of the oral history of the Zulu people of Africa. Topics discussed include the impact of the archive's publication, its relevance for historians, and its role beyond scholarly applications.

The article discusses South African archives that provide information concerning the foreign policy of the South African government and of anti-apartheid groups during the era of apartheid. Archives examined include the African National Congress (ANC) Liberation Archive, the Mayibuye Archive, and the South African History Archive (SAHA). The author also comments on the Historical Papers Archive and the Foreign Affairs Archive. Issues of historical censorship and the destruction of archival documents are also discussed.

Recent scholarship has explored the dynamics between families and colonial lunatic asylums in the late nineteenth century, where families actively participated in the processes of custodial care, committal, treatment and release of their relatives. This paper works in this historical field, but with some methodological and theoretical differences. The Foucauldian study is anchored to a single case and family as an illness narrative that moves cross-referentially between bureaucratic state archival material, psychiatric case records, and intergenerational family-storytelling and family photographs. Following headaches and seizures, Harry Walter Wilbraham was medically boarded from his position as Postmaster in the Cape of Good Hope Colony of South Africa with a ‘permanent disease of the brain’, and was committed to the Grahamstown Asylum in 1910, where he died the following year, aged 40 years. In contrast to writings about colonial asylums that usually describe several patient cases and thematic patterns in archival material over time and place, this study’s genealogical lens examines one white settler male patient’s experiences within mental health care in South Africa between 1908 and 1911. The construction of Harry’s ‘case’ interweaves archival sources and reminiscences inside and outside the asylum, and places it within psychiatric discourse of the time, and family dynamics in the years that followed. Thus, this case study maps the constitution of ‘patient’ and ‘family’ in colonial life, c.1888–1918, and considers the calamity, uncertainty, stigma and silences of mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the preservation and maintenance of archival resources in Liberia in light of a civil war in the country. Archival collections at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Center for National Documents and Records (National Archives), and the Executive Mansion on Capitol Hill, all in Liberia, are discussed. The author presents descriptions of the archival resources collections of each of the three centers, as well as the contact information of staff members including Director of Archives Jackson K. Purser and Director-General Philomena Bloh Sayeh.

Copyright of History in Africa: A Journal of Method is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article provides a list of accessions to repositories in Great Britain and Ireland during 2004 relating to Irish history and reported to the National Archives: Historical Manuscripts Commission. It includes literary papers from poet Dorothy Molloy Carpenter, short stories, scripts and plays from playwright Miriam Gallagher and a scrapbook relating to the life of journalist Edmund Dwyer Gray.

The article offers information on the documents of Ramsbury Manor country house in Wiltshire archived at the Townshend Archive at Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. The house was built by Sir William Jones who died in May 1682 before the completion of Ramsbury Manor. The surviving document mainly concerns the Manor of Aldbourne in Wiltshire, purchased by William Jones in April 1682. It also includes several paper relating to the post completion of the Ramsbury Manor house, which was considered to be one of the finest example of the medium-sized country house of the post-Restoration period.

The article examines the architectural history of the Blickling Hall, a Jacobean building, in Norfolk, England. It discusses various extensive building accounts from the Lothian papers in the Norfolk Record Office and surviving documents concerning the mansion's construction and personnel involve, such as the full summary drawn up by Richard Burton, the steward of Sir Henry Hobart, the first Baronet of the Blickling Hall. The architectural drawings of the house provided by the master craftsmen Robert Lying, which shows the design for a banqueting house in the east garden, and other documents which includes the total expenditures and service contracts are presented

Presents through a variety of documents the opposition of senior British historians to the proposals to return to Germany the archives of the German foreign ministry and the Prussian ministry of foreign affairs. Copy of a minute by Lewis Namier; Copy of a letter from E.L. Woodward to Margaret Lambert; Copy of a translated memorandum by Kaempfe.

This article presents a list of archival material relating to Irish history added to repositories during 2006. They include the papers and correspondence of George E. Good, Derek Hill and Jane Sandford.

Lists the accessions to repositories in Great Britain and Ireland during 2002 relating to Irish history and reported to the National Archives: Historical Manuscripts Commission. Belfast: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland; Belfast Masonic Widows' Fund: Papers, 1885-1936: T/3880; Second Cookstown Presbyterian Church: Records, including registers, minute books and roll books, 1822-1959: MIC/1 P/463.

The Parkes pulsar data archive currently provides access to 144044 data files obtained from observations carried out at the Parkes observatory since the year 1991. Around 105 files are from surveys of the sky, the remainder are observations of 775 individual pulsars and their corresponding calibration signals. Survey observations are included from the Parkes 70 cm and the Swinburne Intermediate Latitude surveys. Individual pulsar observations are included from young pulsar timing projects, the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array and from the PULSE@Parkes outreach program. The data files and access methods are compatible with Virtual Observatory protocols. This paper describes the data currently stored in the archive and presents ways in which these data can be searched and downloaded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses historical sources and archives related to Timbuktu, Mali, focusing on the work of scholar and archivist Aḥmad Bul'araf. The author describes various works produced by Bul'raf and notes his talent for book conservation and devotion to the collection of manuscripts and other texts. Special attention is paid to his work on a biographical dictionary and its place in Islamic scholarship. It is concluded that the work has value as a historical source on Bul'araf's life, the history of Timbuktu, and the history of archives.

The article discusses the documentary citations of Greek historian Thucydides, as well as his methods and the status of these documents, which had attracted the highest levels of scholars. It mentions that Thucydides did not refer his researches and citations as innovations nor mention them among his sources. The author explores the origins of these innovations, and its role in the researches of Thucydides.

The perspectives of African informants and researchers profoundly shaped the writings of government ethnologist Dr. Nicholas Jacobus van Warmelo who not only collected information from local African informants but also relied on African researchers who wrote manuscripts in the vernacular that would constitute part of his archive. This study explores the process of producing knowledge on the 'Transvaal Ndebele', and provides an analysis of Van Warmelo's texts and of his researchers' manuscripts. By looking at the role of local interlocutors, I make a case for African agency in shaping the 'colonial ' expert's conceptions of Ndebele identity. This article provides an account of the co-production of cultural knowledge. Van Warmelo was employed by the South African Native Affairs Department to identify and fix 'tribes ', a highly political enterprise, and in the process generated an archive. His work was as much appropriated by the apartheid state for social engineering as by Ndebele interlocutors involved in contemporary struggles over chieftainship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using new sources and a complementary historical and geoanalytical approach, this article illustrates that the Natives Land Act (no. 27 of 1913) failed to stop Africans from buying land. New evidence demonstrates that African land ownership outside the reserves in the Transvaal actually increased after 1913. This evidence leads to a deeper questioning of the extent to which the South African government was able to impose rural territorial segregation by 1936 and reveals the limits of white power in the early Union period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a research report among the musical archives of St. Paul's Girls' School in London, England specifically on works by Gustav Holst, on his connections with the School as its Director of Music and on certain of his pupils and associates there. It focuses on Holst's "St. Paul's Suite" and the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." It examines the relationship of Holst with his associate Jane Joseph. It compares the engravers score with the original and the score published by Curwen.

The article attempts to challenge the assumption that the Athenians thought of, and described, their imperialistic actions in frank, even brutal, terms. It explores two sets of fifth-century Athenian epigraphical material, documents which contain the phrase "the cities which the Athenians rule," and inscriptions imposing regulations on allied states which are erected at the ally's expense. It is argued, in both cases, that if the apparently overtly aggressive documents are considered in an epigraphic rather than a Thucydidean context, they reveal the existence of a more subtle, nuanced and diplomatic approach to imperial politics.

Presents several documents relating to the political and economic affairs in China.

The files of the Ciechanów (Zichenau) Gestapo – one of the few remaining archives of this kind from German-occupied Poland – offer interesting insights into the social policy of the Nazi state. The Germanisation of Polish territories occurred by deporting and exterminating the Jews, depriving Poles of their rights and supporting the local Germans and the ethnic Germans resettled from the East. The German minority living in this ethnically mixed region was required to adhere to strict codes of behaviour and was held accountable for all unauthorised contacts with their Polish and, even more so, their Jewish neighbours. The system of control and repression strove to isolate the various ethnic (‘racial’) groups, encouraging denunciations and thus instilling fear in the populace. This article pays particular attention to the actions of German citizens who fell under the scrutiny of the Secret Police. Les dossiers de la Gestapo de Ciechanów (Zichenau) sont une des rares archives de ce type à nous avoir été conservées pour la Pologne occupée, et offrent une perspective intéressante sur la politique sociale de l''Etat allemand. On y perçoit les tensions de la germanisation des territoires occupés, à la rencontre de la déportation et l''extermination des Juifs, de la privation de droits des Polonais, du soutien aux minorités allemandes locales et de l''installation de colons allemands en provenance de l''Est. La minorité allemande qui vécut dans cette région ethniquement hétérogène dut adhérer à des codes de comportements qui interdisaient les contacts avec les Polonais et les Juifs. Le système de contrôle et de répression, dans le climat de peur installé par une délation officialisée, s''efforça ainsi d''isoler les différents groupes. Cette contribution s''attarde sur les citoyens allemands qui furent l''objet de la surveillance de la police secrète. Die Akten der Gestapo des Bezirks Ciechanów (Zichenau) sind eine der wenigen Überlieferungen ihrer Art aus dem von deutsch besetzten Polen. Sie bieten einen besonderen Einblick in die Sozialpolitik des nationalsozialistischen Staates. Die Germanisierung des polnischen Gebiets wurde durch die Deportation und Ermordung der jüdischen Bevölkerung, die Entrechtung der polnischen Einwohner und durch die Unterstützung sowohl der einheimischen als auch der aus östlichen Gebieten umgesiedelten Deutschen erreicht. Die deutsche Minderheit in dieser ethnisch gemischten Region wurden angehalten, strenge Verhaltensregeln zu befolgen, und zugleich für alle nichterlaubten Kontakte mit ihren polnischen und jüdischen Nachbarn Polen zur Verantwortung gezogen. Das System von Kontrolle und Unterdrückung sollte die verschiedenen ethnischen Gruppen voneinander isolieren, es ermutigte Denunziationen und rief Furcht und Angst in der Bevölkerung hervor. Der Aufsatz lenkt das Augenmerk insbesondere auf das Verhalten der deutschen Einwohner, die von der Geheimpolizei beobachtet wurden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the history of archived documents. Textual models of archived documents; Mode of archived document representation; Institutional underpinnings of archived documents.