ABSTRACT
Oral history has been used as a source and method for histories of colonialism for decades. This chapter describes canvass a series of issues and debates surrounding the use and interpretation of oral sources—both oral histories recorded in the present and oral evidence within archival records—for researching and writing histories of colonialism. To illuminate the ways in which scholars have used oral sources for colonial history, it takes a historical perspective. Specifically, the chapter traces historiographical and methodological developments since the 1960s and 1970s, when oral history emerged as a historical practice, through to the present time. In these public and legal (or quasi-legal) contexts, oral history and oral testimony regarding the colonial past have gained new prominence and purchase. At the outset oral history as a new historical method was championed as an approach that would introduce the hitherto excluded (or 'hidden') voices and perspectives of subordinated or marginalized groups.
