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Notes: The scholar interested in the early history of the interlacustrine area has an unusually large corpus of traditional evidence available. These sources are among the most detailed in tropical Africa and several full-scale works have been based on them. This paper seeks, through textual analysis, to demonstrate that some of the most important of these sources have been influenced by the content of earlier writings and by each other, and that their corroborative value is very small.Three problems are of particular interest here—the alleged contemporaneity of Nakibinge of Buganda, Olimi Rwitamahanga of Bunyoro, and Ntare Nyabugaro of Nkore; the Biharwe eclipse and its ascribed dates; and the value for chronology of the accounts of Nyoro invasions southward. Emphasis on these aspects has meant that while the questions of the Bacwezi, the Nkore capitals, and the Nyoro tombs have been taken into account, specific attention has not been paid to them here.The present paper seeks only to suggest possible alternatives to the presently accepted reconstruction of early interlacustrine history, and argues that the nature of our evidence, once divested of its synthetic accretions, precludes the development of comprehensive hypotheses. It is important at this stage to attempt a full reassessment of these traditional sources through comparative textual analysis and through the extensive use of archival documentation which may illuminate more clearly the milieu in which the traditional historiography of the interlacustrine region developed.

Notes: Little attention has been devoted to the uncritical and almost reflexive incorporation of available printed information into allegedly oral historical materials. This inclination is particularly strong when oral traditions attempt to cope with material more than a century old. The present paper discusses the mechanisms by which such ‘feedback’ materials were incorporated into the traditional accounts of four coastal Fante stools, and the ambiences which encouraged such processes.Stool, succession, and land disputes were concomitants of Fante political activity, and the imposition by the British of an indirect form of rule allowed Fante traditional historians ample scope for manipulating and creating traditions to fit every contingency. The high level of literacy among the Fante and the relatively large number of early printed works which touched upon the history of the area only served to encourage these propensities. For various reasons many of these barnacles failed to become entrenched, but others were accepted by the British at the time that they were advanced and have since become the accepted and orthodox versions of traditional accounts.While in degree the responses of the Fante were not representative of other African societies, in kind their responses were wholly typical of the development of oral historical materials almost everywhere. The historian must consider a given tradition as having been dynamic over time, and must concern himself not only with its content, but with the circumstances of its development as well.

Notes: Perhaps the weakest aspect of oral tradition is its inability to establish and maintain an accurate assessment of the length of the past it purports to relate. As time passes, societies without calendrical systems tend to become either very vague about this time depth or to relate it to present, changing circumstances. The most common method of measuring the past in many societies is in terms of king lists or genealogies. A comparison of orally transmitted king lists and genealogies in various places and times, for example, the early Mediterranean world and the Ancient Near East, the native states of India, Africa and Oceania, indicates that certain patterns of chronological distortion seem to emerge, sometimes telescoping but more often lengthening the past.The former may occur through omission of usurpers, however defined, periods of chaos or foreign domination, or by the personification of an entire epoch by a founding folk-hero. If the reasons for artificial lengthening are obvious, the mechanisms are less so. In this respect a survey of both welldocumented cases and of orally transmitted lists can be instructive. Lengthening is often the result of euhemerism; more often subtler themes emerge. These include longer reigns in the earlier, less known period, the arranging of contemporary rulers as successive ones and, most importantly, extended father/son succession throughout the list or genealogy. This last is of direct and profound chronological importance, and its occurrence is widespread enough to be termed stereotypical. Yet it is not often recognized as aberrant, even though its documented occurrence is exceedingly rare. The consequent equation of reigns with generations will almost always result in an exaggerated conception of the antiquity of the beginning of the genealogy. Other weaknesses of orally transmitted king lists include lack of multiple reigns and dynastic changes, and suspiciously perfect rotational succession systems.Within its scope this article only attempts to hint at the origin, shape and effects of these distortions. Its main thesis is that much light can be cast on African cases of this nature through a comparative analysis drawing from a whole range of societies and sources.