Making the James Stuart Archive

Since the first of its volumes appeared in 1976, the James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples has become well known to students of the precolonial history of southern Africa generally, and of the Natal-Zululand region in particular. The four volumes, edited by Colin Webb and myself, which were published by the University of Natal Press between 1976 and 1986, have become a major source of evidence for students of the history of African communities in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.Although the various volumes have been reviewed in a number of international academic journals, the Stuart Archive is still, I suspect, little known outside the ranks of historians of southern Africa. The hiatus that has occurred in the process of publication since volume 4 came out has not helped in drawing the series to the attention of a wider circle of scholars. In writing this paper, one of my aims is to bring the existence of the Stuart Archive to the attention of Africanists at a time when work on the projected three volumes which still remain to be published is about to resume.Another and more specific aim is to outline the nature of the processes by which the Stuart Archive was brought into existence, in order to underscore for users and potential users the need to use it critically as a source of evidence.