|
Peter Ewart
| Joined: 31 Aug 2005 |
| Posts: 1797 |
| Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England. |
|
|
 Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 11:32 am |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Yes, there are examples among these interviews where the interviewee describes a distance as, for example, approximating to "from here to the Maritzburg courthouse" (if being interviewed in PMB) and the interviewer or transcriber converted the expression into miles or yards for the European reader.
In reality, a huge portion of many of these interviews have come down to us in a very different form from what the interviewees actually said. Mel's point about conveying a message which suited the European angle is very valid, and even with an even-handed interviewer or transcriber, all the pitfalls of verbal accounts and shortcomings of oral history are present. The individual Zulu's own account may or may not be accurate; it may be an honest attempt at the truth or it may intend to convey something else. The interviewer/translator may understand what is being said or he may err (the level of understanding of Zulu language, idiom and culture was not as good among all Europeans at that time as we may like to assume. They weren't all Longcasts). Translations, also, may well have gone through several more stages before appearing in print in a military or administrative report, and newspapers certainly edited this sort of account in all sorts of ways.
These are the ever present pitfalls awaiting any historian but oral history has its additional dangers, and the traditional recognition of Zulu oral history and careless assumptions of its accuracy could lead the historian into further traps. It is very easy to assume that, when reading what a Zulu is reported to have said here or there about, say, Isandlwana, it is what he actually said or meant to convey - but often it simply won't be. It would not be fair to dismiss all surviving Zulu accounts as worthless but it would be sensible to treat many of them with great caution, however genuine the speaker's intention might have been. Nor is it wrong, of course, for historians to use them (they're often all there is) but again the usual caveat applies.
For similar - and additional - reasons, it becomes obvious that many British/European accounts must also be treated with great caution, and occasionally a pinch of salt. (And accounts from either Zulu or European, if given some years after the event, are inevitably tainted). The skill, I suppose, is in assessing which!
Peter
|
