Historians of Africa have often cast a jaundiced eye in the direction of written sources; their suspicions have been particularly grave with regard to colonial documents. They have seen them as, at best, the creations of ill-informed foreign observers or, at worst, as the deliberately self-serving justifications of the ruling elite. To counter the all-too-real deficiencies of these documents, historians have laid increasing emphasis on materials produced by Africans themsleves--oral accounts. Yet these records too are problematic, and their principal weakness lies in the fact that they are often collected decades after the events and circumstances the historian wishes to understand. Each of these kinds of sources thus presents methodological difficulties. This paper advocates the use of a third type of source, African court records, which are at once contemporary and yet created by Africans themselves. These records--while not without their own particular biases--permit one to overcome some of the problems inherent in official documents and oral interviews. Courts for Africans were established by colonial regimes throughout the continent. But, although Africans participated in varying degrees in their proceedings, the records have largely remained ignored by historians. In what follows I discuss the court records in two tribunals in Bujumbura, Burundi. The paper is divided into three sections: the first is a description of the city's African community and the courts; the second is a discussion of the court proceedings and the reliability and use of the records; and the last is a brief summary of some of the data the documents have yielded.

A series of panels at the ASA meeting in November 1989 focused on sources and methods for the study of law in colonial Africa. At an informal discussion held afterwards, participants agreed that court records are potentially very valuable sources for historians, anthropologists, and other scholars of Africa but that they have not been used as widely as they might be. In an effort to alert Africanists to the existence of such documents and to encourage their use, those of us who had used court records in our research were asked to provide descriptions of them. This paper is a collection of the responses.Courts were established in the African housing quarters in what was then Usumbura in 1938 as part of a broad reorganization by the colonial administration of the conditions of African residence in the city, one in the quartier of Buyenzi and the other in that of Beige (today Bwiza). These tribunals, which are still in existence, were granted jurisdiction over civil and minor criminal cases between Africans; each court had its own officials, advisors, and clerks, prominent residents of the quartier appointed by the colonial administration. Buyenzi's population was predominantly Muslim, and its court officials were men knowledgeable about Islamic law. Beige, in contrast, was a more heterogeneous community, and its court tended to be staffed by residents who had risen in the African ranks of the civil service.Men and women of both housing quarters resorted frequently to the courts, with the Buyenzi court hearing approximately 9,000 cases and Beige almost twice that many in the years between their establishment in 1938 and independence in 1962. Their complaints covered a wide range of matters: debts, business ventures, bridewealth disputes, divorces, child rights, property transfers, and various quarrels between friends, neighbors, and family members. Procedure was relatively simple. A man or woman who wished to present a complaint went before the court and was given an appointment for the case to be heard. At the time the court considered the complaint, both accuser and defendant were present. Although the parties might bring with them supporters and witnesses, there were no intermediary personnel such as lawyers. Each individual argued his own case and answered questions put by the judges. A judgment was usually handed down immediately, and it was based on customary rather than European practice. As these courts were originally established, their autonomy was very great: in principle, unless the decisions violated colonial law, they could not be overruled by Belgian officials.

The Société des Missionnaires d'Afrique, more commonly known as the Pères Blancs or White Fathers, began its work of proselytizing in northern and sub-Saharan Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their archives, located in Rome, are a treasure trove for Africanists of all disciplines. In founding the order in 1868, Cardinal Lavigerie, archbishop of Algiers, charged its members to bring Christianity to Africa not by imposing European civilization on Africans but rather by converting the inner man while maintaining the external indigenous forms of dress, food, shelter, and especially language. Lavigerie wrote that it was thus indispensible for the fathers to learn the local language as rapidly as possible, and in areas where the language had not yet been studied, one member of the mission was to spend one or two hours each day compiling a dictionary. In addition, the superior of each post was to keep a daily journal in which he entered, among other matters, information gleaned from the local people about their history, geography, and customs. This journal, Lavigerie wrote, could easily become “une mine féconde.” Another obligation of the superior was to send a monthly letter to the Maison-Mère in Algiers describing the progress of the mission, the health of its members, and any extraordinary local events or activities by the authorities.These injunctions of Lavigerie have yielded a very valuable collection of material on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa that is housed in the White Fathers' headquarters in Rome. (The transfer from Algiers took place in 1952.)

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 205.133.226.104 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 15:51:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 390 BOOK REVIEWS HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF BURUNDI. By Ellen K. Eggers. African Historical Dictionaries, No. 73. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1997. Pp. lxxvi, 199. $38.00. Scarecrow Press's African Historical Dictionary series lives on. Beginning with the Historical Dictionary of Cameroon by Victor LeVine and Roger Nye in 1974, the series now numbers some seventy-three volumes and shows no signs of ending. Many of the original volumes have been revised, and a few are now in their third editions. Ellen K. Eggers's Historical Dictionary of Burundi, the latest in the series, is a complete revision of the original Burundi volume, compiled by Warren Weinstein and published in 1976.Eggers's revision follows the same organization as the earlier volume, beginning with a fifty-page chronology of Burundi history, followed by the dictionary proper and concluding with a lengthy bibliography organized by subject. The chronology and dictionary entries focus on the twenty most recent years of Burundi history, with scant coverage of the precolonial and colonial periods. Events of the centuries and decades up to independence are outlined in the first six pages of the chronology, for example, with the remainder of the forty-seven pages detailing happenings between 1962 and 1 January 1996. The dictionary is similarly focused, with modern entries predominating. Eggers, a member of the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was a lecturer at the University of Burundi in 1985-86, and her emphasis on current events highlights the years closest to the time she herself was in Burundi.It would be easy to find fault with many of the chronology and dictionary entries, which are sometimes inaccurate and often confusing. But perhaps the more important concern is to consider this volume as yet another entry in a series with the most dated, unimaginative approach possible to African history. Scarecrow has no doubt found it profitable to continue turning out these volumes, and I suspect that for many, if not most, of the libraries that purchase the African Historical Dictionaries series, the volumes constitute the only books in their collections that provide coverage of individual countries. Even in larger libraries, like the University of Michigan's, where one set of the volumes is part of the noncirculating reference collection, these may be the first sources students consult when beginning to research a historical topic. The volumes depict African history as a series of exact dates, unpronounceable names, and exotic terms, with little attempt to provide context or ...

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies.