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Bibliothèque

Margaret Binns. Guinea

World Bibliographical Series. Vol. 191. CLIO Press.
Santa Barbara, Calif. 1996. 89 p. 1 map.

Preface

The major problem encountered when compiling this bibliography was the lack of published material, especially recent works, relating to Guinea. Volumes in the World Bibliographical Series are intended to be selective and to include publications from all subject areas, in order to provide a balanced overview of the country. However, this proved to be difficult and in some subject areas, such as history, I had to be more selective in the interests of balance, than in other areas where I had trouble identifying any publications at all. There is very little writing on Guinea in English and consequently, about half the items included are in French.
The vast majority of works on Guinea are by, or about, Ahmed Sékou Touré, the President, who, as leader of the PDG, led the country to independence in 1958 and maintained power until his death in 1984. Sékou Touré himself produced huge quantities of publications, largely propaganda material promoting his political views and achievements. Indeed, during the first part of his presidency many other writers hailed him as a hero, who, with his socialist revolutionary policies, was turning the country around from the exploitation and domination of colonialism to a period of economic rebirth and equality. However, it soon became apparent, and this can be traced in the writings about him, that Sékou Touré was in fact a paranoid dictator who ruthlessly crushed any opposition. Indeed, the reason he remained in power for so long was that all political opponents fled the country, or were tortured or killed in several notorious prison camps. This period of Sékou Touré's regime has generated many publications, written at the time or more recently, and I had to be fairly selective about which to include, in order to avoid top-heaviness.
In contrast, writings about Guinea during the period under Lansana Conté since 1984, are noticeable by their absence. There is really very little recent material, which proved to be something of a problem when compiling this bibliography. I often had to toss up whether or not to include a rather marginal or specialist journal article, in the absence of anything more substantial.
Items included are monographs, periodicals articles and chapters in edited books. Every item was examined in order to obtain accurate bibliographic information and each item is annotated to give an assessment of its content and value. Some items for which I obtained references from literature searches or from other publications could not be found for examination and are therefore not included. Therefore, for this reason and for the reasons of selectivity stated above, this does not claim to be a comprehensive bibliography. It is rather intended to be a useful research tool to guide users to the most relevant and easily obtainable items on particular subjects relating to Guinea.

The libraries where most of the research was undertaken, and where the majority of items are to be found, were the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex; the University of Sussex; and Birmingham University. Libraries in France would no doubt have yielded more French material, but as the object of the bibliography was to include English material if possible, this hardly seemed necessary. There are no commercial publishers in Guinea itself and the Bibliothèque Nationale is apparently in a neglected condition, so it was not worthwhile actually visiting Guinea for the purposes of compiling the bibliography. However, I did speak to several people who have visited Guinea recently in order to build up some idea of conditions in the country.

The items are divided under subject headings in line with the World Bibliographical Series standard layout, and within the subject sections they are arranged alphabetically by author, or by title if there is no author. Cross-references are included at the end of each section to guide users to relevant items in different sections. The index includes authors, titles and subjects. The titles are in italics and only include the titles of actual publications, not periodical articles or book chapters, although in the latter case the title of the book itself is included.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the staff of all the libraries mentioned above, and especially those at the Institute of Development Studies for their continuing friendship and for allowing me to rummage in the restricted stacks. I also wish to thank Melissa Leach and James Fairhead for allowing me access to their personal collection of materials on Guinea, and to Rey Cline-Cole for his help at Birmingham University. Thanks also to Hazel Lintott for drawing the map. Finally, I must thank my husband, Tony, for his encouragement and for occasionally holding the domestic fort in order that I could visit London and Birmingham.

Margaret Binns

Sussex
April 1996