In the Realms of Gold: Pioneering in African History by Oliver, Roland

ISBN: 9780299156541

University of Wisconsin Press, 15 October 1997

Paperback, 448 pages

Over the last fifty years, Roland Oliver has been both a witness to the post-colonial history of Africa and a preeminent scholar of the continent's pre-colonial history. Oliver was a young Cambridge graduate in 1947 when he took a newly created position at the University of London to research, and eventually teach, the pre-colonial history of Africa. Seeking from the outset to establish a unified conception of African history free from European frameworks, Oliver and his colleague John Fage went on to write the influential A Short History of Africa, found the Journal of African History, and co-edit the eight-volume Cambridge History of Africa.
In the Realms of Gold is Oliver's account of his life and work. He writes in a deft and lively style about the circumstances of his early life that shaped his education and outlook: his childhood on a river houseboat in Kashmir, the influential teachers and friends met at Stowe and Cambridge, and his service in World War II as a cryptographer in British intelligence, where he met his first wife, Caroline Linehan. His interest in church history while at Cambridge led him to study the historical effects of Christian missionaries in Africa, and thus his career began.
The core of the book is Oliver's account of his research travels throughout tropical Africa from the 1940s to the 1980s; his efforts to train and foster African graduate students to teach in African universities; his role in establishing conferences and journals to bring together the work of historians and archaeologists from Europe and Africa; his encounters with political and religious leaders, scholars, soldiers, and storytellers; and the political and economic upheavals of the continent that he witnessed.

Editorial Reviews

Review
Born in India of British colonial parents, Roland Oliver moved to Africa as a young man and became one of the continent's leading modern historians. In this memoir, he writes of his work in training African scholars to conduct regional surveys and collect oral histories, in assembling the multivolume Cambridge History of Africa, and in struggling to give African history academic legitimacy at a time when most universities did not have scholars qualified to teach even an elementary course in the subject. Along the way Oliver considers the questions that engage Africanists today, such as the significance of European colonialism in the historical development of the continent and whether nationalism did more harm than good in the formation of modern African states.

Review
"This autobiography is essential to understanding the historiography of Africa. Oliver vividly evokes facets of life, research, and the effects of rule in tropical Africa from the Second World War onward to the waning days of the first generation after independence."--Jan Vansina, University of Wisconsin-Madison

About the Author
Roland Oliver is emeritus professor of the history of Africa at the University of London. His most famous book, A Short History of Africa, has been translated into some dozen languages, and among his many other books are The African Experience, Africa since 1800, and The Cambridge History of Africa.