Recasting the Past

Derek R. Peterson is Ali Mazrui Collegiate Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya, and editor of The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History.Giacomo Macola is associate professor in African history at Sapienza Università di Roma and research fellow in the Centre for Africa Studies of the University of the Free State. The author of Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, he has also coedited (with Derek Peterson) Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa.

"As a group, the contributors and editors of Recasting the Past constitute one of the most impressive cohorts of scholars brought together in a collective volume project in the past three decades. This work will be required reading for any individual venturing into serious study of Africa's past." "Collectively the authors of Recasting the Past are to be saluted, as are their editors. As an assertion of the vibrancy of Christian Africa's history of ideas in the twentieth century, this collection could hardly be richer." (International Journal of African Historical Studies) "This collection accomplishes what no monograph could because these nuanced inquiries each require deep expertise. The variety of questions posed here suggests many ways that professional historians could appreciate more fully the production of historical knowledge in Africa. Students of African intellectual history will come away better able to appreciate the deep and multiple roots that generate the production of culture in Africa." (American Historical Review) "Despite the study of Africa's intellectual history being curiously underdeveloped, the work in (Recasting the Past) confronts the idea that the study of African history is solely the preserve of professional historians." (Political Studies Review) "This lively volume focuses on what the editors call Africa's homespun historians: non-professionals who, throughout the twentieth century, devoted passionate and painstaking intellectual labor to recreating the past, often in vernacular languages.…(Recasting the Past) makes a welcome intervention in African intellectual history. In many ways, it is a model of the genre." (Journal of African History) "These are magnificent essays. What this collection shows with great power and verve is that starting early in the last century Africans constructed their own historical accounts using various methods, frameworks, and analytical tools. It adds a dimension to our understanding of the African past—and the African understanding of the African past—that is long overdue."