African research & documentation最新文献

{"title":"Boycotts and Bailouts: the archives of the Commonwealth Games Council of Scotland","authors":"K. Magee","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019130","url":null,"abstract":"In December 2010 the archives of the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland were transferred to the University of Stirling Archives. The Council is the lead body for Commonwealth sport in Scotland and is responsible for selecting, preparing and managing Scotland's team at the Commonwealth Games. It is one of the seventy-one national Commonwealth Games Associations who are members of the Commonwealth Games Federation which is the parent body for the Games. The bulk of the collection, which consists of approximately one hundred and fifteen linear metres of records, relates to the planning, organisation and administration of the 1970 and 1986 Commonwealth Games, which were both held in Edinburgh. As well as these two major sporting events organised in Scotland the archive also contains material relating to the participation of Scottish athletes at other Commonwealth and Olympic Games. The relationship of the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland with other sporting bodies is also recorded in the collection's minutes and extensive correspondence files. This paper will provide an introduction to this new archive of great importance to those interested in the history of sport. It will concentrate in particular on the boycott suffered by the 1986 Games, when thirty-two Commonwealth nations, angered by the attitude of the British government towards the South African apartheid regime, refused to participate, and will highlight material of relevance to the study of the history of politics and sport in Africa in the collection. Edinburgh was awarded the 1986 Games at a meeting of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth Games Federation in 1980. It was the first city to be awarded the Games for a second time, after a successful competition in 1970 which became known as the Friendly Games. A review of the papers in the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland Archive relating to the 1986 Games shows that one of the main concerns and preoccupations of the Games organisers was to avoid a boycott of the Games by the Commonwealth's African members at all costs. The sporting conduct of the members of the Commonwealth was to be judged against two criteria governing the attitude of Commonwealth nations towards South Africa's apartheid regime which were established in the years preceding the Games - the Gleneagles Declaration of 1977 and the Commonwealth Games Code of Conduct agreed in 1982. In the run up to the 1986 games there were a number of sporting events which clashed with the aspirations set out in these agreements and raised the spectre of a boycott in Edinburgh. In 1976 twenty eight nations boycotted the Olympic Games because of the refusal of the International Olympic Committee to ban New Zealand after its rugby team had toured South Africa. In response to this the leaders of Commonwealth governments signed the Gleneagles Declaration in June 1977, a statement of their opposition to 'apartheid in sport'. The Commonwealth nations agreed it was: the urgent","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Colenso papers: documenting “an extensive chain of influence” from Zululand to Britain","authors":"Gwilym Colenso","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00020318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00020318","url":null,"abstract":"For several decades, members of the Colenso family conducted a vigorous humanitarian campaign across two continents, keeping in touch and exchanging information with one another between England and Natal. Prolific writers, continuously immersed in the often frenetic day to day activity of their campaigning work, they had little time to consider preserving for the future the vast amount of correspondence and documentation they produced. The result is that much of their prodigious output survives today only by chance, dispersed between different collections in the United Kingdom and South Africa. The Colenso papers are authored not by an individual but severally by the members of a family, the family of John William Colenso, the first Bishop of Natal, his brother in law, his wife, their five children and two daughters in law. But I suggest that it is useful to regard these papers as a unified whole because the Colensos saw themselves as working collaboratively and in pursuit of a common cause: the defence of the Zulu people of Natal and Zululand. In 1853, John William Colenso was consecrated as the first Bishop of the newly created Anglican Diocese of Natal [see fig I]. Two years later, he went out to Natal with his wife and their four children in their infancy. A fifth child was to be born in the colony. A mission station was established outside Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal. The family home built on the site was called Bishopstowe [see fig 2]. Bishop Colenso arrived in Natal believing in the civilising mission of the British Empire and seeing his own Christian mission as part of this imperial project. He formed a close working relationship with the Natal Secretary for Native affairs, Theophilus Shepstone, whose integrity and high motives he believed in implicitly. Then, in 1874, after nearly 20 years in the colony, he became disillusioned with colonial rule when the trial of a Natal Zulu chief, Langalibalele, revealed the underhand methods used by Shepstone to control the African population of Natal. Bishop Colenso travelled to England to protest to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, about the unjust way in which the trial of Langalibalele had been conducted. As a result, the Governor of Natal was recalled and instructions issued to the colony that Langalibalele should be released from detention and his people, the Hlubi, compensated for their losses suffered following the capture of their chief. This marked the beginning of a lifelong campaign by the Bishop and his family for justice for the Zulu people. But it brought the Colenso family into conflict with the Natal authorities and, in particular, it created a permanent rift between the Bishop and Shepstone. It also set the Colenso family at odds with the majority of the settler community of Natal. In early 1875, on his return from England, Bishop Colenso wrote, \"I landed and found the Durbanites were in a furious state of excitement threatening all sorts of iniquities against me.\"","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"3-23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Game for the Good?: Football, youths and the Liberian civil conflict","authors":"H. Collison","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019154","url":null,"abstract":"The Setting for conflict Africa's first republic was founded in the mid-19th century by recently freed American and Caribbean slaves originally stolen from Central and West Africa. This West African nation became fittingly known as Liberia or \"Land of the Free\". In 1847 the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Liberia written by Baptist Minister Hilary Teage was signed by representatives of the major counties, Liberia adopted a constitution based on the American model and until the 1980s was considered a beacon of stability in Africa. Shortly after this date the small West African nation was a global byword for atrocity, carnage and child soldier militias. The execution of President William Tolbert on the 12th April 1980 in a military coup d'etat fronted by Sergeant Samuel Doe and supported by the Peoples Redemption Council represented the end of the Americo-Liberian \"settler\" political dominance and reflected the indigenous people's desire for change. By the late 1980s Liberia was characterised by arbitrary ethnicity-based rule, the suppression of political opposition, economic collapse and sporadic civil conflict. In 1989 Charles Taylor entered the conflict via the USA and Libya and on the 24th of December brought war to Liberia for the next five years. In 1995 his National Patriotic Party was elected via democratic proceedings and Taylor assumed the position of President. The war was to continue until 2003 when a United Nations Justice Tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor's arrest. An estimated 250,000 Liberians were killed during the civil conflict between 1989 and 2003. The National Transitional Government of Liberia established temporary control from October 2003 until January 2006 and the UN ensured a military presence of some 15,000 personnel to establish and keep the peace. The country today remains in economic ruin and is one of the poorest countries in the world. In the new phase of peace, people both indigenous and from various representatives of the international community search for that which can bring people together. Peace of a sort has been sustained since August 2003. In 2005 Liberia participated in free and fair elections as recognised by international organisations. At this election Harvard educated Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf defeated the former World Footballer of the Year George Weah, becoming the first female President in Africa. 'Capacity building' and 'peace training' have become the preferred means of many international and local agencies attempting to build a better Liberia. This is not an easy task in a country without electricity, running water and adequate housing, with up to 80% unemployment, massive rates of illiteracy and millions of unskilled workers. These continuous barriers to sustainable progress are a direct result of a long and bloody civil war. Tens of thousands of children and youths are orphaned, displaced, uneducated, traumatised and stigmatised as 'ex child soldier'. All are in desperate need of ","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electronic libraries in partnership: BEEP for Africa","authors":"Pierpaolo Rossi","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00020355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00020355","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Between September 2008 and September 2009, ERD (Research Institute for Development)1 established a programme of scanning workshops within the SIST project (System for Scientific and Technical Information)2 of MAEE (French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs)3. This initiative involved documentation centers and libraries of public institutions (Universities, Research Institutes) in several French-speaking African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia). The programme enabled the purchase of scanning equipment (fast A4 scanners, PCs, dedicated software) and training teams to digitise documents (theses, articles, books) produced by the staff (researchers, engineers, students) of participating institutions. The Greenstone software4 was chosen to provide access, over the Internet, to the collections of digital materials. All teams were trained in the installation, administration and use of this tool. The collections made by the project participants consist of documents in pdf format. Metadata is made available either by incorporating existing bibliographic databases (usually in the CDS /ISIS5 format) or by direct input into the metadata fields of digital files. In the latter case, the metadata entries include document title, authors, publication date and subject. The project scope was to digitise, enhance and make accessible on the Internet the scientific works of a wide range of institutions from developing countries. Concretely, this initiative organised 30 digitisation workshops in six countries. About 100 people were trained in the methodologies of scanning and creating digital libraries using the Greenstone software. The overall cost of this project (equipment, missions, training, expertise) was 145,000 euros. Electronic libraries and internet servers: BEEP for Africa The SIST project also funded the establishment of Internet servers (one server for each country) for sharing scientific information and hosting electronic libraries created with the Greenstone software. These computers were funded by another component of the SIST project. The operability of these countries' SIST servers often met with structural problems that limited their connectivity: low bandwidth, server downtime, frequent power outages, a complex implementation of IT projects. In an attempt to provide concrete answers to these difficulties, the ERD installed the BEEP (Bibliotheques electroniques en partenariat) server. This server is located in France, on Bondy ERD site. Its uri is www.beep.ird.fr. BEEP offers several SIST partner institutions temporary hosting of their electronic document collections. This offer is maintained until permanent solutions can be found locally. This is a cooperative approach that brings together the ERD and partners in developing countries. These institutions desire to share their publications, making them quickly accessible to the scientific communities of the internet world. Collections can be built ","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"69-75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anglophone Africa in the Olympic Movement: the confirmation of a British wager? (1948-1962)","authors":"Pascal Charitas","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019142","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Research topic, framework for analysis and archives In July 2010 I discovered the National Archives (Kew, London) while working on a dual project: my doctoral thesis, and a grant awarded by the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland. My goal was to conduct a comparative historical analysis of the administrative and political colonial situations of the United Kingdom and France. I wanted to understand their influence on the integration of the former British and French colonies into the Olympic movement between the end of the Second World War (1945) and the hosting of the Olympic Games in London (1948) on the one hand, and colonial independence in Africa in the 1960s on the other, reflected at the IOC by the creation of the Committee for International Olympic Aid (CIOA) to help the new countries in the Third World. Political and cultural conditions of an Olympic black Africa emerging from the British Empire Sports were a part of the colonizing process, and have remained in most colonized countries following independence. Given the presence of neo-colonial relationships, however, there is clearly no unambiguous division between colonialism and postcolonialism, and it can be argued that postcolonialism is something that has yet to be achieved, that is, indeed, a scenario for the future. Indeed, the international governing bodies of sports are often still intent on a colonizing mission.1 Between the wars, the United Kingdom (UK) helped open the way to the universalisation of sport arising from its colonial empire. The British Empire Games (1930)2 drew their logic from British imperialist ideology, and shine a light on the constitution of National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in British colonial countries such as Egypt (1911), South Africa (1912) and Southern Rhodesia (1934). While others, with a smaller proportion of settlers, did not have the opportunity to create NOCs, the administration of the British colonial territories that accessed the Olympic Movement was based on self- government and a high settler presence. The fact that the British Empire Games were only open to the self-governing white dominions (Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and the creation of NOCs in colonial enclaves with a high proportion of British settlers, encouraged the creation in response of the Pan-Indian Games in New Delhi (1934). After the Second World War, according to John Darwin (2006), both the French and the British colonial empires entered their \"second colonial occupation\" or \"fourth colonial empire\" phase3, taking action to advance the colonies through economic and social development plans4 based on the capitalist model and the principles of the United Nations. British and French colonial strategies after 1945 aimed to take account of the new geopolitical order and to respond to indigenous peoples' demand for self-government. British members of the IOC in August 1947 were not in favour of increased autonomy for African sport or the organisati","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The African American Odyssey of John Kizell: a South Carolina slave returns to fight the Slave Trade in his African Homeland, by Kevin G. Lowther Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. xx + 299 pp. ISBN 978-1-57003-960-7. $39.95.","authors":"T. Barringer","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019221","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Illustrating Empire: a visual history of British imperialism, by Ashley Jackson and David Tompkins. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2011. 212 pp. ISBN 978-1851243341. £19.99.","authors":"T. Barringer","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x0001921x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x0001921x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"African Naturalist: the Life and Times of Rodney Carrington Wood 1889-1962, by David Happold. Brighton: Book Guild Publishing, 2011. xx + 290 pp. ISBN 9781846245558. £17.95.","authors":"J. Mackenzie","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00020380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00020380","url":null,"abstract":"African Naturalist: the Life and Times of Rodney Carrington Wood 1889-1962, by David Happold. Brighton: Book Guild Publishing, 2011. xx + 290 pp. ISBN 9781846245558. £17.95. The British Empire offered extraordinary opportunities for individuals to follow an almost nomadic existence. Some, like Rodney Wood, flitted from job to job, never settling anywhere for long, while pursuing a succession of passions - hunting, collecting, recording, studying nature, supplying museums, yet all as an amateur, in the sense of never holding any professional position relating to these activities. Wood's life spanned the high point of the British Empire in Africa and ended just before the wave of decolonisations in the Central and Eastern areas of the continent. It seemed to have a fairly conventional start for a member of the London commercial elite: a prep school in Perthshire, Scotland, education at Harrow, training for entry into his father's business as a vintner. But Wood was one of those who broke loose. None of the rest of his life was in any way conventional. In 1909, barely twenty years old, Wood headed for Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to work on a farm. Soon he was in Nyasaland (Malawi), where he was involved in cotton planting and then tea. He lived in places that were deeply embedded in the history of the country, like Chiromo and Cape Maclear, but his mind was always on other things than the economic necessities of planting. He was a hunter and made collections of trophies, some of which were recorded as of record dimensions, but he soon developed such a respect for nature that he became a reformed hunter and devoted himself to natural history collecting in a variety of different fields. He collected small mammals, bugs and butterflies, and also birds, sending many specimens to the Natural History Museum in London, where he soon had professional contacts. Although he was largely self-trained, he seems to have been meticulous in his taxidermy and in his recording and it is this which gives him such value for subsequent biologists. A number of his specimens were unknown to science and thus became 'types' while several had his name attached to them. But his life became more varied. He spent some time in Canada working as a senior scout in the scouting movement there. He discovered the joys of the Seychelles and bought land there. He became an adviser to other collectors and, in particular, travelled with the retired Admiral Lynes on his natural history collecting expeditions in East and Central Africa in the 1930s. He divided his time between Malawi and the Seychelles and, as the collecting nomad that he was, he moved on to conchology, coElecting certain specialist forms of shells. His collections became so considerable that some were sold and turn up in a number of different museums in the United States. …","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56842588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Materials relating to sport in Africa in the collection of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University: an overview","authors":"Michelle Guittar, David L. Easterbrook","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019129","url":null,"abstract":"From its inception, the goal of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University has been to collect as comprehensively as possible materials from and related to Africa, regardless of subject. As a result, the Herskovits Library has acquired materials related to sport from its beginning. Formally established as a separate library in 1954, the Herskovits Library traces its origins to the arrival of Melville J. Herskovits at Northwestern University, who was the first anthropologist appointed to the faculty in 1927. Herskovits initially arrived at the university with a research focus on the study of black culture in the western hemisphere, although this quickly changed following two research trips to the interior of Suriname in 1928 and 1929. He conducted research in West Africa for the first time in 1933, and from that time on, his research agenda was increasingly Africa-related. From the day he arrived on the Northwestern campus, his commitment to library development was integral to his overall commitment to developing research and curricular programs at Northwestern. Clearly, sport-related research in the broadest anthropological context was a topic of early encounter for him at Northwestern. The earliest use of the collections for research in this area can be documented in the very first thesis, a Master's thesis, supervised by Herskovits following his appointment to the Northwestern University faculty-Primitive Games in Africa by Chester Lee Bower (1929). Herskovits established the Program of African Studies at Northwestern in 1948 with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, and convinced the Northwestern University administration to create a separate library of African studies committed to comprehensive acquisitions in perpetuity. Herskovits found support for the library's comprehensive retrospective collection building program for African Studies in the form of a $1,250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. Today the Herskovits Library is comprised of over 400,000 volumes, 2,800 current serials including 250 current newspapers, 16,000 books in 300 African languages, extensive collections of ephemera, maps, posters, videos and DVDs, photographs, archives, manuscripts, rare books and artefacts in all formats. The Herskovits Library serves a constituency that includes both the Northwestern University community and African studies scholars regardless of affiliation world-wide. In the Chicago region, Herskovits Library staffregularly work with a broad range of individuals referred from local public and school libraries, as well as researchers from local business, legal, and philanthropic organisations, and with primary and secondary teachers in efforts to improve Africa-related curriculum. Library staffparticipate annually in the Chicago Public Schools' continuing education course, \"Teaching about Africa.\" Estimating sport-related holdings is difficult given the manner in which Africana materials are cataloged at Nort","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"South African Sports History and the Archive","authors":"Dean Allen","doi":"10.1017/s0305862x00019178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305862x00019178","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The history of sport in South Africa is about more than mere games. Within the preface to his study of The Games Ethic and Imperialism, J.A. Mangan expressed the wish that he: Would not like [the] study of cultural diffusion to be naively and erroneously catalogued under \"Games\". It is concerned with much more: with ethnocentricity, hegemony and patronage, with ideals and idealism, with educational values and aspirations, with cultural assimilation and adaptation and, most fascinating of all, with the dissemination throughout the Empire of a hugely influential moralistic ideology.1 Arguably, nowhere more than in South Africa have such processes been played out through sport. This makes the country an ideal case study for sports historians. Based on experiences from my Masters and PhD studies, this paper will provide a contemporary perspective of studying South African sports history as well as form part of the discussion at the June 2011 SCOLMA conference, 'Sport in Africa: History, Politics and the Archive'. The 'cultural diffusion' of which Mangan talks of course relates to the ideology of British imperialism that arrived in South Africa during the nineteenth century. The origins of South Africa's most popular sports (soccer, rugby and cricket) can be traced to the period of British domination in South Africa - the late 1800s, of Victoria, of Empire - that laid the foundations upon which the sport and society structures of today are being contested. My PhD explored South African cricket and society during this important period. In the early 1980s, Eric Hobsbawm argued that sport was one of the most important new social practices of late nineteenth - early twentieth century Europe, and as such played a significant role in the creation of politically and social cohesive \"invented traditions\".2 Since then Stoddart has observed how, \"the evidence is now quite clear on just how central a social institution sport was in the development of British colonial rule.\"3 Based upon this, this paper will also briefly detail the relevant sport and imperial historiography relating to South African sport and the British Empire. It will also review the methods used to collect the data during my PhD and how the information was accessed from a variety of sources both in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Biographical Study Kitson Clark considers the most important reason to conduct historical research is the hope of making \"a valuable addition to knowledge on a subject which you believe to be ... important.\"4 Indeed, whilst much has been written about empire, imperialism, and the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa's history, there is still much to be investigated regarding social and political events as well as the key individuals who shaped this era. James Logan was a man of his time whose contribution not only to cricket, but also to the wider processes of colonial society, has been largely missed by twentieth century historians. My PhD has attempted t","PeriodicalId":89063,"journal":{"name":"African research & documentation","volume":"1 1","pages":"71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56841754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}