ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between 'oral tradition' and 'history'. It addresses some preliminary issues of oral tradition. Much of the 'oral tradition' used by modern historians, in fact, is taken at second-hand from the writings of such literate local scholars, rather than recorded in oral form. In Europe, however, a more sceptical attitude towards oral tradition had begun to develop from the eighteenth century onwards. Although oral tradition has been utilised in the study of many fields of history, in recent years it has been associated especially with the history of sub-Saharan Africa, and more especially of sub-Saharan Africa during the pre-colonial period. The most useful and influential analyses of the historical use of oral tradition have been written by historians of Africa, and have drawn most of their illustrative material from African history. Oral tradition remains the only source for the history of some African societies, and the only form of internal source for many.
