Африка. История и историки

FROM A THEORY OF HISTORY TO GENOCIDE: THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RWANDAN TRAGEDY OF THE XX CENTURY

The article shows how the Hamitic hypothesis invented by early European anthropologists was promoted by German and Belgian colonizers and missionaries to explain the native Rwandan society and organize it into pseudo-racial hierarchies under colonial rule, how the colonial ethnicist practices and ideologies resulted in ethnicist consciousness-raising of populations and how the Rwandan post-colonial political regimes supported, instrumentalized and institutionalized them to consolidate their power. The author concludes that these historical developments made the Hamitic hypothesis a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

G. V. Tsypkin

ETHIOPIA AS SEEN BY AFRICAN HISTORIANS

It may seem a paradox but the historical developments in the most ancient independent state of the African continent never created the prerequisite for the establishment of historical science in Ethiopia. The author's task is to open the reasons for such phenomena. The leading among such reasons are the conservatism and stagnancy of Ethiopian society and very low educational level as even at the beginning of the XX^th century one can attain education only at the church-operated schools. The Ethiopian society was unable to absorb new ideas as well. Both in the period of feudal absolutist state and in the times of so called «socialist experiment» we have to consider the strong role of censorship which prevented the development of historical science.

M. S. Kurbak

SOUTH AFRICA AND THE WORLD AS SEEN BY J. M. COETZEE AND N. GORDIMER

J. M. Coetzee and N. Gordimer, the most popular South African writers and the holders of a Nobel Prize for literature, were born in South Africa and their lives and works are bound with this country. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to compare the views of J. M. Coetzee and N. Gordimer, because they are very different. During the apartheid era the main theme of N. Gordimer's novels was the disclosure of injustice and racial discrimination in South African everyday life. Coetzee didn't support the resistant movement of the black South Africans, but he didn't support the politics of the National Party either. In his first novels («Dusklands», «Waiting for the Barbarians») he tried to see the apartheid as «only one manifestation of a wider historical situation to do with colonialism, late colonialism, neocolonialism».

The main thing that unites these two writers is that in their novels they try to think not only about South Africa but about the presence and future of the others countries as well.

L. V. Ivanova

STUDY OF HISTORY IN SOMALIA

The study of history in Somali is quite fragmented and specific subject due to the lack of official system of the written Somali language until 1972. The colonial partition of Somali between Britain, France and Italy influenced the shaping of Somali national identity and the way of its expression. This article is a preliminary and exploratory examination of three distinct traditions of intellectual process in Somalia: the Western secular tradition, the Islamic religious (and educational) tradition, and the indigenous Somali poetic tradition. To reconstruct Somalia's past we have to use valuable knowledge in the products of each of these traditions, their wisdom and experience. It therefore seems worthwhile to examine the character of each of these three distinct systems of knowledge and the historical circumstances that kept them separated, or partitioned, over the course of the past century. We can then reflect on the consequences for understanding contemporary Somalia.

A. S. Balezin THEMES OF WEST AFRICAN STUDENTS' GRADUATE PAPERS IN HISTORY IN THE LAST THIRD OF THE XX^thCENTURY

The author tries to draw some conclusions from the publication of the themes of graduate papers of students in Mali, Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cote d'lvoire, Niger, Guinea, Congo and Senegal. These students were taught by the first generation of African historians. The results differ from country to country but there are some common features. The tendency to research the history of local societies using local languages and sources has been continued and deepened. Very few papers were devoted to anti-colonial struggle of Africans and if so then to its initial period, the so-called primary resistance. Even less papers were dealing with the period afer Independence. Very many papers were devoted to certain customs or local villages and towns. Some of the graduates but not many have become quite known historians.