By June Meehan ’27, History, spring 2025 University Archives intern
My name is June Meehan, and I am a second year History major with an interest in archival work and the accessibility of archives. My historical focus includes modern imperial and colonial history. Ohio University Archivist Bill Kimok tasked me with examining and summarizing a 16-box collection belonging to a late history professor at Ohio University, Dr. Alan Booth. Dr. Booth’s collection is on Swaziland, a British colony in Africa at the beginning of the 20th century.
The creator of this collection, Alan Booth (1934-2024), graduated with his Bachelor of Arts at Dartmouth College in 1956, where he was a proud member of the Dartmouth rowing team and is a Wearer of the Green, as a member of the Dartmouth Athletic Hall of Fame. After graduating from Dartmouth, Booth worked in Navy Air Intelligence where he flew off aircraft carriers in the Douglas A-3 D. He served in a heavy attack squadron flying three megaton nuclear bombs across the Pacific. After his time in the Navy, he returned to school so he could teach at the collegiate level. He obtained his Master of Arts in 1962 and a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1964 at Boston University.
As a trained historian, Dr. Booth specialized in Southern Africa life, history, and culture (primarily Swaziland), publishing over 50 articles and five books. He taught at Ohio University from 1964-1999, where he was named the James Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of the Charles J. Ping Institute for Teaching of the Humanities. After he retired from OU, he became an adjunct at Bowling Green State University for the Honors Program where he taught The Culture of Espionage: The Spy in Novel, Film and History which he also taught at OU. His famed class on espionage became the stuff of legend, with students juggling schedules well in advance to be among those with a coveted seat. In retirement, Booth enjoyed volunteer work counseling inmates and was a volunteer with Meals on Wheels.
As I opened the first box of the collection, I knew this was going to be a daunting, but rewarding, task. Each box was practically stuffed with documents that made it difficult to pull individual folders out. The boxes began with documents at a very localized Swaziland district level discussing chiefs and land disputes. There were records of dozens of land disputes, usually the result of someone living under one chief crossing into another chief’s territory or co-opting another farmer’s cattle. Some of the disputes could turn out to be severely violent and deadly. Minutes of meetings of the chiefs would typically discuss resolutions to these fights.
There were also documents on a more centralized level dealing with the government and local community as a whole. A major focus of some of the records was the creation of a Swaziland Constitution during the years of 1957 to 1965; a careful endeavor which had to tread a very thin line between Europeans and Swazi.
I was extremely interested in the folders that allowed for glimpses into Swazi social life and culture. There were customs regarding the marriage of women by providing the groom a lobola or dowry as soon as a woman was born. This forced marriage system caused many women to run away from their homes, often to be closer to a young—and often young-er– lover.
The meetings between the Paramount Chief (PC) or King Sobhuza II and the European government Resident Commissioner (RC) were interesting as they discussed local and colonial coordination and agreements. When deciding who had specific jurisdiction over what, these meetings between the PC and RC provide wonderful insight into how some of these matters were decided.
Overall, I have learned that this Swaziland collection gives a researcher a glimpse into what Swaziland political and social life was like at district levels. There are hundreds of meeting minutes from the Swazi National Council, Assistant Commissioner, Native Recruiting Corporation, United Swaziland Association, and more. A lot of the meeting minutes are dialogues between two people such as the resident commissioner and assistant commissioner offering one another their respective opinions. Main topics of such discussion are labor, marriage, education, land disputes and land in general, and droughts. Researchers can view these topics in the dialogues seen by each meeting document. This is useful for any political, social, or labor historian wanting primary sources on Swaziland or African history, especially during colonization.
This entire collection contains hundreds of documents referring to the makeup of colonial Swaziland, from labor to government to education and more. This collection would obviously be valuable for anyone studying Southern Africa, African colonialism, African populations, labor in the early-1900s, and African women’s autonomy, just to name a few topics that are included in the collection.
Collection description: Alan Booth Swaziland research papers