Christopher Fyfe
Christopher Fyfe (9 November 1920 – 26 August 2008) was a Scottish historian most noted for his work on Sierra Leone in West Africa.
Biography
Christopher Hamilton Fyfe was born in England in 1920 to a family of Scottish ancestry. His father moved to
Fyfe graduated from
In 1950 Fyfe was invited by his brother-in-law, who was with the colonial secretariat in Freetown, to organise the Sierra Leonean archives.[2] After two years as the government archivist, preserving and classifying precious documents, and teaching assistants, he returned to England. There he lived first in London, then Bristol and Belfast.
Fyfe spent ten years working on his seminal History of Sierra Leone (1962).[2] He modelled his 852-page text on James Joyce's novel Ulysses, writing it as a single block of text. When the publisher demanded chapters, Fyfe inserted numbered breaks.
In his masterwork, Fyfe explored the history of the
Following the publication of his book, Fyfe took up a lectureship at the University of Edinburgh in 1962, at the newly founded Centre of African Studies. He became a reader in 1964, retaining this position until his retirement in 1991. The bicentenary of Freetown was celebrated in 1987 with an international, interdisciplinary conference, at which Fyfe was honoured as a father of the Krio cultural revival.[2]
He edited the
Fyfe produced a shorter history of Sierra Leone, which was used as a school text book in Sierra Leone. He was a mentor to many younger researchers of Sierra Leone. Some became key figures in the intellectual establishment of Freetown. Some became at odds with various governments and had to go into exile.[1]
Fyfe was active in the arts scene in Edinburgh. He helped preserve Old Town from motorway development that would have cut through the historic architecture. He died in London in 2008, aged 87.[1]
Books
- (editor), Sierra Leone Inheritance (1964), documentary anthology
- African Studies since 1945: A Tribute to Basil Davidson (Proceedings of a Seminar in Honour of ISBN 0-582-64207-8
- Africanus Horton: West African Scientist and Patriot, ISBN 0-7512-0085-9
- Africanus Horton, 1835–1883, ISBN 0-19-501500-2
- ISBN 0-85323-643-7
- A History of Sierra Leone, Gregg Revivals, ISBN 0-7512-0086-7
- Our Children Free and Happy: Letters from Black Settlers in Africa in the 1760s, ISBN 0-7486-0270-4
- People of the ISBN 0-905838-68-8
- Rethinking African History, University of Edinburgh, Simon A. McGrath, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, ISBN 0-9527917-1-4
- A Short History of Sierra Leone, ISBN 0-582-60358-7
- Sierra Leone, 1787–1987: Two Centuries of Intellectual Life, with Murray Last, ISBN 0-7190-2791-8
References
- ^ a b c Nugent, Paul (17 December 2008). "Christopher Fyfe – Pioneer of African history". The Scotsman. Archived from the original on 26 September 2008. Retrieved 16 September 2008.
- ^ a b c d e f John Hargreaves, "Christopher Fyfe – Historian whose work sparked a cultural revival in Sierra Leone" (obituary), The Guardian, 28 October 2008.
External links
- John Hargreaves, "Christopher Fyfe – Historian whose work sparked a cultural revival in Sierra Leone" (obituary), The Guardian, 28 October 2008.
- "Pioneer of African history" (obituary), The Scotsman, 16 September 2008. Retrieved 12 March 2013
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