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COLLECTIONS Africa
Introduction
The Africa Collection has extensive holdings of books, serials, newspapers, pamphlets, government documents, society publications, and manuscript and archival materials as well as political ephemera. These materials concentrate on the period from 1870 to the present and cover history, politics, economics, colonial administration, military and police affairs, political and social movements, communism, and socialism in sub-Saharan Africa. All aspects of colonial rule and African movements during the struggle for independence are well documented as are the economic, political, and government of independent African states. Inter-African and international relations involving Africa and the world are well documented. The library has one of the largest African newspaper collections in the United States, with more than 70 current titles and many older newspapers in print form. Documents from the colonial period (legislative debates, journals, government commission reports, early government gazettes), covering the early 1900s to the early 1960s, are a rich source for researchers. The African collections at Stanford University are housed mainly in the Hoover Institution Library and the university (Green) library. Green Library has extensive holdings on Africa in precolonial history, anthropology, linguistics, literature, and other areas. It receives the majority of university press and major commercial publications in all subjects. See also the Stanford University Libraries (Green Library), Africa Collection web site. Other Africana may be found in the Food Research Institute, Art Library, Earth Science Library, Education Library, and the Business, Medical, and Law School Libraries. The curator of Hoover's Africa Collection was also curator for the Green Library's Africa Collection and assisted the branch and other coordinate libraries by referring titles to them so that Africana materials were acquired in all fields. History The Hoover Institution has long sought to collect, preserve, and make available to the scholarly community Africa's rich historical past. Colonialism in Africa under the European powers had been the major focus of collecting until 1960, when the acquisition program began to cover the struggle for independence; after independence, African internal affairs, politics, and economic studies became major collecting areas for the Hoover Institution. The Africa Collection had its beginnings in 1919, when the Belgian government presented Herbert Hoover with a collection of official Belgian documents and reports, many pertaining to the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. Nina Almond, head librarian in the 1920s, expanded the collection, acquiring League of Nations Mandates Commission reports, African government official gazettes, and colonial government annual reports. Ruth Perry, appointed curator in 1956, further expanded the Institution's African holdings, particularly with materials acquired on trips to Ghana and Nigeria. In 1959, historian Peter Duignan became the collection's first full-time curator, signaling a significant increase in library and archival holdings, especially of materials produced in Africa. A major collecting effort to document further all aspects of colonialism and of the struggles of Black South Africans to be free began in 1960. Colonialism in Africa under the European powers had been the major focus of collecting until 1960, when the acquisition program began to cover the struggle for independence; after independence, African internal affairs, politics, and economic studies became major collecting areas for the Hoover Institution. Publications documenting Lusophone Africa (from Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique) were strengthened in the 1960s with the acquisition of material from Richard Hammond, then a researcher with Stanford's Food Research Institute, and from acquisitions trips by Curator Duignan and Ronald Chilcote, a Stanford lecturer. In 1976, with the establishment of the Hanna Collection on the role of education in twentieth-century society, acquisitions of publications on education as it relates to political and social developments in African countries increased. Liberation movement publications and documents from political parties and other advocacy organizations continue to be collected from all of sub-Saharan Africa. With the transfer to the Stanford University Library of collecting responsibilities for books, serials, newspapers, journals, and all government documents, the Hoover Library has stopped collecting in those areas, limiting its collecting activities to archival materials and political ephemera. Peter Duignan served as curator for the Africa Collection until 1995, when he became curator emeritus; Karen Fung, who joined the library in 1966, was the deputy curator until she moved in 2002 to the Stanford University Green Library. Description
The Africa Collection contains approximately 85,000 volumes of monographs, government publications, and pamphlets. Many older serials are held—both those produced in the metropole, for example, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer (Paris, 1913-38, 1945-79) and the Revue indigène (Paris, 1906-14, 1916-32) and those produced in Africa itself, such as Uganda Journal (Kampala, 1934- ) and Tanganyika Notes and Records (Dar Es Salaam, 1936- ). The library attempts to acquire legislative proceedings from all of sub-Saharan Africa. Hoover has, for example, debates held in Chad (1952-58), the Gold Coast (1928-57), French Equatorial Africa (1947-56), French West Africa (1947-59), Kenya (1907-66), and Zimbabwe (1899- ). Along with having one of the most extensive current African newspaper collections in the United States, the Hoover Library holds valuable runs in print and on microfilm of older titles, including African Times (London, 1862-1902) and Ashanti Pioneer (1939-62). The serial holdings of the university library and Hoover Library were partially inventoried by Peter Duignan and Kenneth Glazier in A Checklist of Serials for African Studies (1963). The Hoover Library has holdings of such rare journals as the Zambesi Mission Record (1898-1934), in effect a history of the Catholic church in Zimbabwe; Nouvelles du Zambèze (1898-1934); Revue d'histoire des missions (Paris, 1924, 1926-37); and Tropiques: Revue des troupes coloniales (Paris, 1902-53). Other major scholarly journals held by Hoover include Sudan Notes and Records (1918-74) and the Zambia [Northern Rhodesia] Journal (1951-65). Political ephemera such as election material, party pamphlets, and trade union and liberation movement literature constitute an important element in the collection. For example, the library has the Immanuel Wallerstein Collection of political ephemera and journals from liberation movements of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe as well as its own extensive collection of such materials. The library houses runs of South African Communist Party (SACP) newspapers and numerous pamphlets issued by the SACP as well as microfilm of African opposition movements from 1882 to 1994. Hoover also possesses the papers of Kenya nationalist leader, Tom Mboya, as well as of his industrialist friend William X. Scheinman; a collection of documents on East African political leaders (former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, former Ugandan president Milton Obote, and former Ugandan foreign minister Sam Odaka), also from William X. Scheinman; a 1997 ten-volume Belgium Senate report on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; publications of the Umma Party of the Sudan and the Union des Forces Démocratique-Ère Nouvelle, Mauritania's main opposition party; a collection of photographs of the civil war in Angola; a rare copy of Une Colonne dans le Soudan français, by Joseph-Simon Gallieni, a well-known French colonial administrator in West Africa at the end of the nineteenth century; a collection of reports, letters, and other documents of the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo concerning political resistance to the government of the Congo; ephemeral publications of the National Union of Eritrean Women; ephemera of the SACP on the 1999 election; campaign materials from the 1997 Liberian election, the nation's first after eight years of civil war; manifestos, leaflets, pamphlets, and posters from the 1996 South African local government elections; the papers of Urbain Joseph Kinet, director of the Uvira, Congo, station of the Belgian research institute Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale; the documents of Félix Éboué, governor-general of French Equatorial Africa from 1940 to 1944; and monographs and documents of Professor Carl Rosberg on the colonial period of Kenya, Rhodesia, and the Gold Coast. Trade union material includes the William H. Friedland Collection on Tanzanian trade unions (1929-67); the Martin Lowenkopf Collection on Liberian economic conditions and labor relations; the Jay Lovestone Collection, which includes letters regarding the African-American Labor Center (1969-74); the African Labor College in Kampala (1959, 1963-65); the Tom Mboya Collection (1953-69); letters from John K. Tettegah, a Ghanaian labor leader (early 1960s); letters from G. Mennen Williams (early 1960s, and letters and reports on trade union activities during the late 1950s-1960s in Nigeria, Kenya, Congo Leopoldville, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroun, Tanganyika, Rhodesia, Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Gabon, and the Sudan); and the Paul Lubeck Collection on the trade union movement in Africa, primarily during the 1960s. The library attempts to obtain the newsletters and newspapers of important trade unions. Holdings include Advance (Nigerian Trade Union Congress, 1966-76), Éveil du travailleur togolais (Confédération Nationale des Travailleurs du Togo, 1982- ), FOSATU Worker News (Federation of South African Trade Unions, 1980- ), Labour Mirror (Trade Union Council of South Africa, 1976- ), Mfanyakazi (National Union of Tanganyika Workers, 1968, 1972- ), and Walike (Confédération Nationale des Travailleurs de Guinée, 1975- ). Coverage for all African states for the period since independence is extensive and includes official publications, newspapers and journals, scholarly series and proceedings of institutes, party and trade union publications, and locally produced books and ephemeral materials. Military and police journals, if available, are acquired for all countries. As a founding member of the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) of the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, the Hoover Institution has available on interlibrary loan more than 3,000 entries in this collection of rare journals, newspapers, books, pamphlets, government documents, and archival collections on microform. (Many of these are rare, such as the Archives of the Council for World Mission and the Church Missionary Society). A published catalog listing materials in the CAMP collection is available. During the colonial era, the British created an infrastructure of colonial archives, research institutes, and similar bodies as well as numerous missionary and exploration societies. The work of these government and private organizations was documented in a vast body of publications ranging from legislative proceedings, departmental annual reports, and investigatory commissions to mission society correspondence and reports—on both the metropolitan and the local levels. Anglophone Africa is one of the best documented colonial ventures in world history. The holdings of the Hoover Institution and the university libraries are exceptionally rich in these areas; this section can make only brief and selective references to the material in the Institution's possession. Government publications fall into two major categories: (1) material produced in Great Britain and (2) local publications centering on specific territories, designed as reference tools, as records of past achievement, or as instruments of reform. On the metropolitan level, for example, a major series is the confidential prints relating to colonial Africa, produced for internal use by the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office in London. Hoover has the confidential prints relating to Africa (1870-1914) in microfilm. Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been the practice of both the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office to print, for internal circulation, all important letters, dispatches, memoranda, and minutes. The format was identical with the published blue books on foreign and colonial affairs, which were often based on these confidential prints. Memoranda were customarily printed separately and given a separate series; correspondence and minutes were collected under the subject matter headings in chronological order of receipt. All collections are furnished with a contents table. The volumes vary greatly in length but may run to as many as 400 pages or 1,000 documents. The contents are virtually unedited. They are available for study and microfilming within the time limits laid down by the fifty-year rule (i.e., as far as the end of 1951). The uniformity of format and the use of print make them exceptionally suitable for microfilm, and they are, of course, far more convenient than the originals for research and reference. For a time the Colonial Office destroyed the original documents after printing, so that the prints sometimes constitute the only source material. Another major source is Great Britain's Colonial Office, from which comes East African pamphlets, 14 reels and pamphlets about Africa (1870-1940s), and 24 reels covering West and Central Africa plus Mauritius. An index has been prepared for the West and Central African files. Every colony throughout the British Empire sent each year copies of all publications arising in the colony to London, where they were joined to publications in Great Britain about that colony. In many cases these prints are the only copies left on record. Equally valuable are the parliamentary papers, or "command papers," produced for the British Parliament on a great variety of topics under debate. Other categories include the Annual Lists of the Colonial and Foreign Offices (with information on personnel) and a variety of reports, all of them well represented at Stanford. Of equal value are the reports of investigatory commissions. Some of these are major works of scholarship in their own right. (For instance, the Report of the Commission Appointed into the Financial and Economic Position of Northern Rhodesia [London, 1938] still stands as a basic economic and administrative history of the period.) Corresponding material was issued on the local level in the shape of the legislative council debates of individual territories and reports issued by territorial census, archives, agricultural, mining, and other departments. Equally informative were the reports of local commissions of inquiry. (For example, the Evidence Taken by the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Disturbances of the Copper Belt, Northern Rhodesia [Lusaka, 1938] remains one of the most valuable sources for this particular aspect of labor history in Zambia.) Government publications are supplemented by a broad range of serials put out by private and semiprivate bodies both in Britain itself and in the various African countries. Hoover is rich in such holdings. These include, among many others, NADA (the journal of the Southern Rhodesia Native Affairs Department, 1923-63); Rhodes-Livingston Journal (1944-67), produced by a sociological research institute set up in 1937 in what is now Zambia; and the various publications (held in the Stanford University Library) of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia, set up in 1901. Journals produced in Great Britain are even more varied in their provenance and coverage; they range all the way from those published by geographical societies, anthropological societies, and research institutes to private publications issued by specialized societies. There are likewise journals of opinion such as Round Table (in the Stanford University Library) begun in 1910 as a journal specializing in Commonwealth affairs and the multifarious publications of lobbies or of societies such as the Royal Commonwealth Society (originally set up in the 1860s as the Royal Colonial Institute). Journals, Newspapers, and Monograph Series The library holds a wide selection of titles. Examples are early serials, in print and on microfilm: The African Times (London, 1862-1902), Ashanti Pioneer (Kumasi, 1939-62), Gold Coast Leader (Accra, 1901-29), L'Afrique française/ Renseignements coloniaux (Paris, 1891-1940, 1952-60), Les Échos d'Afrique noire (Dakar, 1952-58, incomplete), Guinée française (Conakry, 1947-52), La Quinzaine coloniale (Union Coloniale Française, Paris, 1897-1914), Réveil (Fédération d'A.O.F., Dakar, 1944-50), La Revue indigène (organ of Intérêts des Indigènes aux Colonies et Pays de Protectorat, Paris, 1906-14, 1916-32). Holdings of IFAN, Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire (formerly the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire), are divided between the Stanford University Library and Hoover with Hoover holding the series Études camerounaises (1935-37, 1943-58), Études dahoméennes (1948-58, 1963-64), Études éburnéennes (1951-60), Études sénégalaises (1949-66), Études voltaïques (1960-64), and Recherches africaines/Études guinéennes (1947-55, 1959-64, print and microfilm). Newsletters of political movements include PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau's PAIGC Actualités (Conakry, 1969-73/74), and the UPC's La Voix du Cameroun/The Voice of Kamerun, (1958, 1960, 1962, and 1980-91, though files are not complete). Archival Collections The Hoover Archives contains more than 200 Africa-related collections. Archives collections may contain a variety of formats, including manuscripts, leaflets, articles, and pamphlets. (There is also a pamphlet collection in the library.) The separate Poster Collection, which includes election posters, covers all countries but is strongest for South Africa. Archival collections covering more than one country and/or region include the L. Gray Cowan Papers; the Ernest W. Lefever Papers on African politics; the Arthur J. Lewis Papers on African education and the American Council on Education, 1960-1984; the Marvin Liebman Papers on U.S. conservative and anti-communist organizations and Africa; the Arthur B. McCaw Papers on U.S. assistance in Africa in the 1960s; the Frank J. Moore Papers on development in Africa, especially in regard to education; the S. Daniel Neumark Papers on economic development in Africa in the 1950s; publications from the sixth Pan-African Congress in Tanzania (1974); and the J. Matt Seymour Collection on education and development, 1960-1981. Archival materials dealing with African labor include the Paul Lubeck Collection on trade unionism in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, but also for Cameroon, Congo, Algeria, Dahomey, Liberia, Ethiopia, Libya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Uganda; the William H. Friedland Collection on Tanzania, 1929-1967, with materials on the Tanganyika Federation of Labor, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, African Labour College materials, interviews with union members and reports on union meetings (dock, railway, plantation, postal, sisal, and government workers); and the Jay Lovestone Collection, with material on the African-American Labor Center (1969-74), the African Labor College in Kampala (1959, 1963-65), letters from Tom Mboya, leader of the labor movement in Kenya (late 1950s-1960s), Mboya paper from John K. Tettegah, Ghanaian labor leader (early 1960s), and letters and reports on union activities of the late 1950s to 1960s in Nigeria, Kenya, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Leopoldville, Cameroon, Tanganyika, Rhodesia, Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Gabon and Sudan. The United States' links with Africa have been close, not only because of the slave trade but also because Americans (as whalers and shippers, traders and merchants, explorers and missionaries, frontiersmen and soldiers, tobacco experts and mining engineers, government officials and Peace Corps volunteers) played a significant role in the history of the continent. Because of the extent of American commercial, missionary, philanthropic, scientific, and governmental contacts with Africa since the seventeenth century, resources are numerous, and the Africa curator has tried to cover all aspects of this involvement. Holdings of papers and records of Americans serving and working in Africa include the following:
Access Information The Africa Collection is integrated in the general collections and holdings of the Hoover Institution. A complete database of archival collections and books can be found through Socrates, the Stanford online catalog. Socrates searches can be limited to the Hoover Institution Archives or Hoover Institution Library. There are no specific limitations on language coverage, but the vast majority of the material is in English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, with important holdings in Swahili, Afrikaans, and Russian. The Hoover Library uses the Library of Congress classification system to organize books and other publications. Approximately 80 percent of the Africa Collection's holdings are cataloged in Socrates. The remaining 20 percent are listed under country or organizational headings Archives collections may be located in Socrates under the heading of the country and/or topic, such as AIDS education, or under specific collection titles, such as the Angola Subject Collection or the Zimbabwe Subject Collection. More detailed finding aids are also available for many Archives collections via the Online Archive of California (OAC) and in the Archives reading room. While all Archives collections are cataloged in Socrates, only a fraction of them have finding aids available on the OAC. Many smaller publications (generally those under 100 pages) are not listed in Socrates. One may obtain information on these by visiting the library and archives. Some pamphlets are housed in the library, with access through brief subject headings in the catalog. Other pamphlets are in the country subject collections in the archives. It should also be noted that there are some archival collections on microfilm, such as the Confidential Prints of Britain's Colonial Office and Foreign Office, that are held in the Hoover Library. These will be missed if you limit your Socrates search to the Hoover Archives. Guides to the Collection Much useful information is available in Peter Duignan's Handbook of American Resources for African Studies (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1967, 218 pp. Hoover Institution Bibliographic Series 69). For African collections at Stanford University Library and at the Hoover Institution, see pp. 118-25. See also Hoover Institution Survey no. 4, African and Middle East Collections: A Survey of Holdings at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, by Peter Duignan, Karen Fung, George Rentz, and Michel Nabti (1971). For the most recent description of the African collection in print, see Peter Duignan, ed. The Library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1985). For African collections, see pp. 78-91. The library catalogs of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University; Catalog of the Western Language Collections (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1969- ). Library has volumes 1-63. The library catalogs of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University; Catalog of the Western Language Serials and Newspaper Collections (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1969). Library has volumes 1-3. The library catalogs of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University; Catalog of the Western Language Collections. Second supplement (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977). Library has volumes 1-6. These printed versions of the catalog have much information dealing with colonial powers' publications about Africa and about government politics of African colonies and African states. All of these volumes are online through Socrates, Stanford University Library system. Descriptions and lists of holdings for the Africa Collection may also be found in the following specialized publications: Bridgman, Jon, and Clarke, David E. German Africa: A Select Annotated Bibliography. Hoover Institution Bibliographical Series, 19. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1965, 120 pp. Chilcote, Ronald H. Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa: A Bibliography of Documentary Ephemera Through 1965. Hoover Institution Bibliographical Series, 39. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1969, 114 pp. Duignan, Peter. Madagascar (the Malagasy Republic: A List of Materials in the African Collection of Stanford University and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace). Hoover Institution Bibliographic Series, 9. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1962, 25 pp. Duignan, Peter. French Parliamentary Papers in the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Library. Stanford, 1964. 3 pp. Typewritten. Gosebrink, Jean E. Meeh. African Studies Information Resources Directory. Oxford, New York: K. G. Saur, Pub. for the African Studies Assoc./Hans Zell Publishers, 1986. For Hoover African holdings, see pp. 275-281. Karis, Thomas. The Treason Trial in South Africa: A Guide to the Microfilm Record of the Trial. Hoover Institution Bibliographical Series, 23. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1965, 124 pp. Limb, Peter. The ANC and Black Workers in South Africa, 1912-1992: An Annotated Bibliography. London, New Jersey: Hans Zell, 1993. For Hoover African holdings, see pp. 328-331. Palm, Charles, and Dale Reed, eds. Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980, 418 pp. Perry, Ruth M. New Sources for Research in Nigerian History. London: International African Institute, 1955. 3 pp. Perry, Ruth M. A Preliminary Bibliography of the Literature of Nationalism in Nigeria. London, International African Institute, 1956. 38 pp. Mimeographed. South, Aloha, compiler. Guide to Non-Federal Archives and Manuscripts in the United States Relating to Africa, researched and compiled by Aloha South. London, New York: H. Zell Publishers, 1989. Vol. 1, pp. 46-66. Stillmann, Minna. "Foreign Statistical Documents in Stanford Libraries: A Preliminary Survey of Holdings Published by Approximately 198 Countries and Dependent Territories in Collections of the Document Library of the Stanford University Libraries, the Food Research Institute Library and the Hoover Institution." Stanford, 1959. 164 pp. Mimeographed. "Survey of Hoover Institution Holdings on Great Britain." Stanford, 1976. 34 pp. Typewritten. "Survey of the German Collection at the Hoover Institution." Stanford, 1970. 110 pp. Typewritten. "Survey of the French Collections at the Hoover Institution." Stanford, 1976, 75 pp. Typewritten.
Internet Resources
Socrates, Stanford's online catalog
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