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DE-VALERA BOTCHWAY: My name is Professor De-Valera Botchway. I am in the Department of History, University of Cape Coast, and there I am a professor of history.

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I teach African history-- aspects of African history and aspects of different parts of the world history. But as far as my research is concerned,

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I am more into the social and cultural histories of African and African diasporic peoples. In undertaking my research, I find themes that are different, and that makes my research work very eclectic.

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Some of the themes that I have worked on include women, include children, include popular culture, paying attention to things like sports, music, fashion. I also pay attention to Indigenous knowledge systems.

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So fundamentally this is what my research interest is about. And when it comes to undertaking my research work, I think I employ interdisciplinary approaches to unearthing and reconstructing the past.

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I use different sources for my work. I use primary and secondary sources, but I also derive sources that are from other disciplines. So as far as history is concerned,

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I use primary sources that are in Africa, in Ghana where I currently teach. And also from other parts of the African diaspora. Regarding the sources that I use,

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I use oral traditions, including songs of Indigenous peoples. Even popular culture songs. I use interviews of people who are custodians of certain knowledges about the past.

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I use photos. I use maps. I use diaries. I depend on archival materials, including

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people's journals, letters-- colonial letters. I also depend on posters. I use material items that are found in the societies

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that I undertake my research in. So for example, material items like the slave dungeon and castle which is in Cape Coast where my university is-- I studied them.

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And I also use items that Indigenous peoples have left behind. I study them. It could be a calabash, a piece of stone that people revered,

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and any material item that Indigenous peoples have left behind. Regarding secondary materials, I use people's books, research works that people have undertaken,

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and journal articles. I also depend on things that people have also heard and are passing it on to me. So it's an oral source, but it's not primary

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because it is something that is coming from someone who heard it from another person. And that person who is conveying it to me give me a different kind of interpretation of it.

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So these are the sources that I use, but I also veer into other disciplines as part of accessing an interdisciplinary approach where I go into areas like sociology.

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I use sociological concepts to explain aspects of the historical narrative that I construct. I go into area of language where I work with linguists who at times interpret

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certain language constructions of people that I study. I also go into the area of even film studies where people who work with films are able to give me old films. Some are even extracted from online databases, and even

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old films in repositories in Ghana and elsewhere that do capture historical events. And I study these just as I would study still pictures, and I'm able to extract information from them.

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At times, these films offer me direct words of historical actors and I'm able to use them in the construction of history. So basically the sources that I use

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are primary and secondary sources, and I extract them from the realm of the discipline of history and also of the realm of the discipline of, say, sociology or economics.

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Cultural studies, linguistics, languages. Even the classics and others. So that is fundamentally what I do and what I employ when I am trying to get information

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to reconstruct the past. As far as the archives are concerned, I work in them, and I go to the archives as a seeker. As a searcher.

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And of course we have the archivists there, so fundamentally I go to the archivists. And the archives that I would like to talk about are the archives in Ghana for now

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because that's where I currently am and that's where I work. And so I go to the archives. In Ghana we call it the Public Records and Archives Administration Department--

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PRAAD. And I go there bearing in mind that I am going to look or mine for information, and there are newspapers, journals, maps, old photographs, diaries, government documents,

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among others that are primary sources. And so I go there at times with a few pointers in hand. Now these pointers are sources that other researchers have used and they have cited in their works

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say a book or a journal article that I read. And when I find such a source cited in those works, I use them as leads or pointers. So I go into the archives and my intention

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is to access that source and study it to find out other dimensions of the information that that source gave to the work that I read. And so when I go there I have something in mind,

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and I give it to the archivist. Of course the archivist will be able to get me that source, and I study that source. So I am able to extract further information from that material

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that I obtain from the archivist. But at times I just go there with no pointer in hand, and I think that's where the friendship between a researcher and an archivist comes in handy--

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a friendship that exists already because you've worked in the archive before, or friendship that you create when you go there with an archivist. And you tell the archivist that this is what I'm researching on

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and I'm looking for information-- maybe newspapers of a certain period that I believe contain some kind of information that will be helpful to my research, or any document

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that the archivist knows will be useful in my search for information. So at times these archives are able to pull up something, and we have some archives that do have computers

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that you can key in certain words that will help you to get some kind of documents to study. But some archives do not have those computers, so things are done manually.

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And that is where an archivist will become very helpful in the endeavour to get documents for-- for the work that you are undertaking or am undertaking. But there is also there that area

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where you go into the archives and you have these books that do contain there the files in the archives that are also catalogued. So the files are catalogued and, for example, you get the book

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and you find one part of the book which contains the documents in the archives, say catalogued as, for example, women uprising in an area. And so you find certain files that contain information

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about women uprising in a particular area, or shrines in a particular area. And you find there a catalogue that contains documents that do have information about shrines

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in a particular area. So studying such a book and the documents under such headings, I'm able to identify some that I find useful, and I study them for--

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for information for my work. And once I get information from a particular document, what I do is that I do take photographs of the information as they spread out on, say, a piece of paper

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or even a plaque. I take photographs of them. There are times too that I do ask the archivists to make photocopies of them for me.

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Some of the archives do have photocopying sections that offer such services. But the other times that I also do copious copying-- longhand writing in my notebooks.

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So I employ these three techniques. That is one, to copy by hand, two, to ask the archivist to make photocopies of parts of documents for me, and three, to use my smartphone

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to take photographs. Before I came to possess a smartphone, I would go into the archives with a real camera and still take photographs of the documents.

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And on my return to my study or my office or my home, I will download these photographs on my laptop or computer and study them and read them and extract the information that I

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need as building blocks to construct the narrative that I seek to have now as history. So basically this is how I do my archival work. But the archives are not only the government-owned archives

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for the public that we find in the different regions in the country and also the national one in Accra, but there are private archives of, say, churches. We have archives of some university libraries that

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at times I visit, and I'm also able to employ the same technique that I use in the bigger archives, which is the P-R-A-A-D-- PRAAD archives.

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I employ the same techniques in these smaller archives, and I'm able to extract some information from the documents that are stored in those archives. So that's basically how I undertake my archival research.

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Colonial sources are important sources in the reconstruction of African history. They include colonial letters, diaries of colonial officers, dispatches, even newspapers that were written by--

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or that contained information about African peoples. And so in searching for information about the past, a historian like myself will pick up maybe a diary of a colonial officer

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and engage in a critical evaluation of the diary. The internal criticism and external criticism, first trying to figure out who this person was. What was his political orientation?

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Why did he write the things he-- he wrote? What kind of work did he do? And I also go into the question of, what was his perception about African peoples,

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and who did he write what he wrote for? I explore all these questions. But I also know that apart from exploring these questions, I have to make sure that I understand

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the fact that this person was working for a certain system, and so he had his biases and prejudices. And so I do not take everything that is written lock, stock, and barrel, but I critique and apply

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my historical imagination, common sense, and also I do put what I read side by side with what I hear from Indigenous peoples who are custodians of historical information about their people

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or themselves. And I put them side by side and I'm able to come to a certain conclusion where I try to move away from extremes

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and find a common ground between the information that I obtain from colonial sources and the information that I obtain from Indigenous sources with particular reference to the oral traditions

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of the Indigenous peoples. The oral traditions of the Indigenous peoples manifest in different forms. So you have drum music, you have dirges, you have poems.

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There also exist proverbs, and these manifest either as fixed texts or free texts where the fixed text is, for example, a song that doesn't change. The lyrics do not change and it is passed on

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from one generation to the other. And these songs often do contain historical information that one or I am able to extract to use in the construction of history.

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The free texts do change. They may be histories of families, and the-- the information is not memorised word for word. And so I'm able to listen to such histories

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from members of families as they tell me, knowing and bearing in mind that they change over time according to the literary skills of the person who is conveying it.

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And so it is basically more about not getting the information word for word, but getting a sense of what happened in the past for a particular family.

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Whereas regarding the fixed text, this is getting the information word for word as it's been passed on from one generation to the other. For example, a poem or a song.

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The texts do not change, so that text is a fixed text. So I take some of these-- that fixed text and even the free text from the Indigenous peoples and I

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put them side by side with information obtained from colonial sources. And I find, as I said, a common ground. What is the Indigenous peoples saying

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and what is the colonial people saying, or the colonial administrator or colonial worker saying? I put them side by side and I am able to draw this kind of middle line between them.

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Of course I remove all the extremes and deal more with-- with a balanced approach to documenting the information of the past in my work. I do locate my sources through some techniques.

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The first one is to read the works of other people, and those works that are of other people that are connected to research interests that I have. And in those works I'm able to find the sources that they use.

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So these become some kind of shoulders on which I stand to access others. So when I read and I find in the work that this work had information obtained from source A,

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B, C domiciled in archive A, B, C, I take notes and I go to those archives and I'm able to access their archival sources and extract further information or more information

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from-- from those archival documents. But there are times too that if I'm not going to deal with archival documents and I have to deal with maybe journals or books,

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I just go to the library and I use the search facilities in the library to access journals and books that do speak to issues that I have interest in, and I'm able to read them.

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So these are the secondary sources and how I access them-- accessing them from the libraries. And then if I have to get sources that are not written--

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and so sources being manifesting oral information, then it means that I have to find custodians of such information. And so in Ghana or in African societies and communities

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or African diaspora communities, there exist people with knowledge about the culture of the societies and people who are repositories of historical information.

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And how do I find such people? I basically immerse myself in the community and have conversations with people, particularly elders who are able to point me to certain local custodians

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of historical information that I visit. These may include linguists. I use linguists here to mean spokespersons of Indigenous chiefs, or even chiefs

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of Indigenous communities. Religious leaders, elderly persons in the societies, opinion leaders. But I ensure that I do meet these people

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and I interview them. We have conversations, and I make sure that I get to understand whatever they tell me by asking other people in the society

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to help me to understand whether what such people tell me are credible or not. I also use what may be referred to as snowballing technique where I may be on my way to a village.

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I bought a bus and I have a conversation with people on the bus. And I do tell them what I'm going to do in the village and I ask them if they have information about whatever I'm

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interested in, bearing in mind to ask them about the social status and backgrounds. Because it's not everybody in the society or in a village that has authentic information about the past.

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So once I have a conversation, I get to know, OK, this person is a custodian of-- of a particular cultural information. I'm able to go on further by way of befriending that person

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and having some kind of information from that person. But that person may not be a custodian. That person may be able to point me to someone in this community that I'll visit.

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I'll go and make an appointment and have a conversation with that person. And at times I go in there as a person who does not speak the language of that community.

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What I do is I do record with-- I take a recorder along and at times I carry someone who speaks the language with me, or I look for someone who speaks the language,

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and it is recorded. The person becomes a translator who translates whatever I get from the interviewee, and I record. And upon returning to my school or my office or place of abode,

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I find a linguist or someone who speaks the language and the recorded interview is transcribed into English and I'm able to extract some kind of information to write history.

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So talking about the snowballing technique, I said that one person points me to another person. I have a conversation with that person, and that person will point me to another one.

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And I keep moving from these people who have information, and I extract information-- the information I need to construct history. So this is basically how I locate sources.

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But also moving through a village or a town, I am able to look around to identify material evidence that I'm able to use. Or even the people that I have conversations with

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or I interview-- they're able to point me to material evidence that I'm able to study in order to extract some kind of information to write history. For example, shrines are material evidence

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of people's religious traditions. If I'm in Cape Coast, for example, the slave dungeon is an enduring testimony of the transatlantic slave trade.

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And within the slave dungeon one can find artefacts and items of the past that do have direct link with the enslavement of African peoples. And I'm able to stay within the slave dungeon as this museum.

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And I'm able to go there and also study the cultural items within the museums, and having information with the curators I'm able to understand the histories behind such items.

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So I also explore looking around for just material evidence, and once I get them I study them all. And I also get support and help from custodians of such materials.

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I also go online, use the internet to search for videos and photographs about the past. And so it's just going online and keying certain important keywords that often

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will take me to a video or a documentary useful for-- for my work. So that's how I locate sources for my research work. As users of the archives, it's important

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for us to have some leads, and that means that we at least have to find some secondary materials-- books that deal with a particular topic or theme that we're interested in.

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And those books will point us to certain archival documents that helped those books to come into existence in terms of the information that those books carry. And so with these we arm ourselves with these sources--

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information about these sources when we go into the archives. Because once we take a look at those books, their reference sections will tell us some of the sources that were used

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and where they were obtained from and the archives that were obtained from source. Maybe source A was obtained from archive A. We take that information and we go into the archives

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confidently and we ask for such a source or such a document and we study the document. That document may give us a bigger knowledge and information about a particular issue

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that the book that we read created, and also the topic that is of common interest to us and-- and the author of the book that we read. It's also very important for us to make sure

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that once we go into the archives, we exercise a lot of patience. Because at times, one will go into the archives looking for particular information.

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They may not get it, and it will mean that the person will have to mine further together with the archivist for documents that will support the research. But in all this, the archivist plays a very

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important and central role. They know a lot about the documents that they have in the archives, and so once we go there we can always have very friendly and good conversations

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with archivists. And I know many of the archivists are very friendly and nice to have conversations with, and we tell them what we are working on

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and the kind of documents we're looking for. Maybe even old newspapers or diaries or colonial letters-- any archival document that will be useful. The archivists will be able to-- or in most cases

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will offer to give us certain documents to study, hoping that we will come across some kind of useful information for our work. But there are times that you will just

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go through all the documents and you don't find anything. But that does not mean that we should stop looking for or searching for the information, and that really demands the employment of a lot of patience

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to do that. So once we employ patience, we most often come across snippets of information that becomes useful for our work.

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We all must always go into the archives well prepared with things to carry the information that we are there for, and that means that we go into the archives with either our phones to take photographs of the documents

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or we go in with our notebooks to take down notes about the topics that we interrogate. So basically this is something that we should bear in mind when we go into the archives to work as students of history

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and scholars and researchers of history.