Jan Vansina


Jan M. J. Vansina 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."

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. David Henige wrote that Vansina's Oral tradition was one of the most influential works written about African history. 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."
Vansina obtained his doctorate in history from the Catholic [University of Leuven |Catholic University of Leuven] in 1957. After his retirement in 1994, he became a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lived in Madison, Wisconsin. Vansina died of lung cancer in Madison.
Vansina assisted Alex Haley in deciphering several African words that had been handed down from Haley's ancestors, determining that they were of Mandinka origin.

Selected works