Jan Vansina

Jan Vansina
Born	(1929-09-14)14 September 1929 Antwerp, Belgium
Died	8 February 2017(2017-02-08) (aged 87) Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
Alma mater	Catholic University of Leuven
Scientific career
Fields	African history
Institutions	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Doctoral students	David Newbury

Jan M. J. Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017)^[1] was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was a major innovator in the historical methodology of oral tradition. As a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he taught several generations of students and, according to a biographer, "set the pace in African historical studies from the 1950s into the 1990s."^[2]

Biography

Vansina was first trained as a medievalist and ethnographer but became known as one of the most prominent Africanist scholars. In his work, he focused on the history of African societies prior to European contact, and is widely regarded as the foremost authority on the history of the peoples of Central Africa. He published widely on the subject, including a landmark text on the factual interpretation oral history. On Vansina, historian David Beach writes, "In 1985, Jan Vansina's Oral Tradition as History provided a worldwide theoretical framework on oral tradition that rendered nearly all of its predecessors obsolete."^[3]

Vansina obtained his doctorate in history from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1957. After his retirement in 1994,^[4][5] he became a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lived in Madison, Wisconsin. Vansina died of lung cancer in Madison.^[4]

Vansina assisted Alex Haley (the author of the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family) in deciphering several African words that had been handed down from Haley's ancestors, determining that they were of Mandinka origin.^[6][7]

Selected works

• Vansina, Jan (1965). Oral Tradition. A Study in Historical Methodology (Translated from the French by H. M. Wright). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Vansina, Jan (1966). Kingdoms of the Savanna. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (1978). The Children of Woot. A History of the Kuba Peoples. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (1985). Oral Tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (1990). Paths in the Rainforests. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (1994). Living With Africa. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (2004). Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom (Translated from the French by the author). Africa and the Diaspora series. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (2004). How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa Before 1600. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
• Vansina, Jan (2010). Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880–1960. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Vansina, Jan (2014). Through the Day, through the Night. A Flemish Belgian Boyhood and World War II. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

References

1. "Trailblazing African History Scholar Jan Vansina Passes Away". 13 February 2017.
2. Joseph C. Miller, "Vansina, Jan," in Kelly Boyd., ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 2. Taylor & Francis. pp. 1252–53. ISBN 9781884964336.
3. Beach, David (1998). "Cognitive Archaeology and Imaginary History at Great Zimbabwe". Current Anthropology. 39: 47–72. doi:10.1086/204698. S2CID 143970768.
4. "UW Professor Transformed the Study of African History". Wisconsin State Journal. 16 February 2017. p. A4. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
5. "Deceased Fellows. British Academy" (PDF).
6. "UW Professor Guided Alex Haley to 'Roots'". Wisconsin State Journal. 27 February 1979. p. 17. Retrieved 14 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
7. "Searching for Roots". Every Generation. 2003. Archived from the original on 2 April 2007. Retrieved 15 February 2017.

Further reading

• Harms, Robert W. ed. Paths toward the past: African historical essays in honor of Jan Vansina (African Studies Assn, 1994).
• Whitehead, Neil L. (Spring 1995). "Interview with Jan Vansina". Ethnohistory. 42 (2): 303–316. doi:10.2307/483088. JSTOR 483088. S2CID 163695408.
• Vellut, Jean-Luc (2021). "Jan Vansina (1929-2017): Un itinéraire rebelle et pionnier". In Ndaywel E Nziem, Isidore (ed.). Afrique centrale ancienne : Histoire et culture : En partage avec Jan Vansina. Paris: Harmattan. pp. 9–26. ISBN 978-2-343-21603-4.
• Mabiala Mantuba-Ngoma, Pamphile (2021). "Vansina et la valorisation des traditions orales". In Ndaywel E Nziem, Isidore (ed.). Afrique centrale ancienne : Histoire et culture : En partage avec Jan Vansina. Paris: Harmattan. pp. 253–76. ISBN 978-2-343-21603-4.
• Wagner, Michele D. (2017). "Jan Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017)". History in Africa (44): 5–9. doi:10.1017/hia.2017.8. S2CID 164818679.

See also

• List of kingdoms in Africa throughout history and its Comparison section

External links

• "History Facing the Present: An Interview with Jan Vansina", by Karel Arnaut and Hein Vanhee (November 2001)
• "Jan Vansina on the Belgian Historiography of Africa: Around the Agenda of a Bombing Raid", by Jean-Luc Vellut
• Archive Jan Vansina, Royal Museum for Central Africa