There is one great disadvantage that the history teacher must feel in drawing up a syllabus of history for African schools. It is accepted now that young children should begin their study of history by learning about their own home district; and at this stage, history and geography should hardly be separated. It is common to find quite young children in elementary schools in Europe putting together little co-operative booklets about the history and geography of their own home; and even in out-of-the-way country districts there are usually enough historical traditions for the purpose. Market charters, manorial court rolls, perhaps a battle-field, or monastic ruins, or a great historic local family—this is material which has reference to places and buildings that the children know well, and which yet leads up easily to the history of a wider area.

Despite great linguistic and cultural diversity, sustained political relations among the many different groups of the Jos-Bauchi Plateau are a notably regular feature of this area of Northern Nigeria. That these relations are often expressed in a ritual context is an observation frequently made in the literature on the Plateau Pagans. My intention here is to specify some of the regular ways in which ritual paraphernalia may be manipulated for a variety of secular purposes (often political) among communities of such very different kinds as those of the Plateau mountain people and neighbouring plainsmen. These manipulative techniques appear to be important in the analysis of such widely different phenomena as the adoption of Islam, technological diffusion, the spread of art styles, and, more generally, the successful persistence, through time, of relations between societies of very different levels of complexity and organization. My data are drawn from field experience among Barawa mountain settlements and the Bankalawa–Jarawa plains communities of Dass Independent District, Bauchi Province, on the east-south-eastern slopes of the Plateau.

The Gurage of south-western Ethiopia possess a form of civilization which is of quite remarkable interest. Their social institutions and modes of livelihood have been well described by Dr. William A. Shack in his work The Gurage (1966). This admirable monograph has received in The Times Literary Supplement a long analytical review (Anon., 1966) couched for the most part in highly laudatory terms with which I readily identify myself. The review concentrates on the principles of Gurage mystical ideology, which is a source of great fascination and the discovery of which stands to Dr. Shack's enduring credit, but it also expresses incidentally certain reservations concerning the ethnographer's analysis of the relationship terminology. The purpose of the present notes is to take up these critical points and to isolate in the terms of social classification a formal feature which makes the Gurage of exceptional sociological interest as well.

Nyavingi possession has had a long and varied history among the peoples who occupy the borderlands of northern Rwanda, south-western Uganda and eastern Zaire. Jim Freedman (1974, 1979), Who has studied the cult's early history and diffusion, has suggested that Nyavingi, or Nyabingi, as it is more frequently spelled, initially emerged in association with the rule of the Bashambo clan in the ancient kingdom of Ndorwa, although its role as a religious support for Bashambo rule may only date from the collapse of Ndorwa and the establishment of Bashambo kingdoms to the west of Lake Bunyoni in Kigezi and in the Mutara district of Rwanda at the end of the eighteenth century. While it is perhaps impossible to define the exact role which Nyavingi played in the Bashambo states, Freedman suggests that, at least in the successor states, Nyavingi represented a powerful spirit of a deceased female ancestor of the Bashambo. Hopkins (1969) notes, in addition, that, as a result of its support of Bashambo rule in northern Rwanda, Nyavingi became a focus of local resistance to Tutsi political expansion into the region.

The following remarks are not addressed to specialists, but to those Europeans and Africans working in Africa who have for professional reasons an interest in getting to know the native better and, if possible, in making this knowledge available to a wider circle. This applies pre-eminently to missionaries. They, more than any other body of men, have an interest in studying the people among whom they work. It is their aim to transform the inner life of the tribe and of the individual. They are co-operating in creating a new religious, moral, and often social order. Only those who know the traditional environment of the native have the opportunity and the right of effecting such a transformation, as they are thus in a position to forge links between the old and the new, and in consequence will make the new ideas develop naturally from the old ways of thought. Old traditions must not be pushed on one side and ignored, on the contrary they should be carefully studied to see if there is not embedded in them something that can be incorporated in the new order, or something that has to be transformed.

Gutmann's Das Recht der Dschagga is one of the classics of anthropology, for it is based on that sound and valid knowledge of a people which, even when outdated, sets standards for knowledge and its presentation. Here I wish to consider only one of the most stimulating chapters of the book, that containing Gutmann's analysis of Chagga concepts of truth, veracity, lying, and feeling guilty.

Before turning to a critical appreciation of this Chagga material, I should like to outline, as briefly as possible, my own viewpoint. First, I must insist that any concept of truth to which observable behaviour relates and which can thereby be made the object of sociological study, is something very different from a logician's concept of truth. I do not mean by this that the Westerner, holding the logician's concept of truth, finds among the Chagga another and incompatible sort of concept.

Many local communities in Igala tell the story of their origin in the form of either a clan or a lineage pedigree going back to a founder who is described as a hunter by profession. Typically in these legends the founder is said to have come to the locality from elsewhere and to have found it so good for hunting that he decided to remain and make a new home. His hunting camp becomes a permanent settlement in whose affairs the hunter's family play a leading role, and after his death his descendants form the dominant clan or lineage in that area. The theme of the actual arrival and settlement of the hunter is often woven into stories telling of his hunting exploits and describing the unusual success that he had in the hunting field.

Dans l'état présent de nos informations ethnographiques, deux migrations sont à considérer au Mayombe: celle des Basundi, à laquelle aurait succédé à une époque déjà plus rapprochée celle des Bakongo.

Les premiers seraient originaires de la région des Manianga. Leurs légendes non seulement parlent d'un roi Makoko qui aurait regné à Muembe-Tsundi, elles rappellent aussi que Matsundi Nzila, après avoir erré au nord de la Tshiloango, aurait conduit les émigrants Tsundi dans la partie septentrionale du Mayombe belge actuel, où il se serait établi à Nganda-Tsundi. De là certaines fractions du groupe auraient gagné la basse Lubuzi, d'autres plus nombreuses se seraient dirigées vers le sud-est de la région.

From Lake Mweru to Tanganyika is an area which was exposed to European influence at a very early date, when the lakes were the chief entrance to Northern Rhodesia. There was then a comparatively large European community, traders and administrators, settled at Chiengi and Kalungwishi. However, with the coming of the railway, and, later, the development of the copper mines, attention was focused farther South; trade in the Chiengi district became less important, and, recently, the District Commissioner, the last remaining European, was removed owing to Government economies.

La fondation de l'État Indépendant du Congo date du Ier juillet 1885. Le 15 novembre 1908, cet État cessait d'exister pour être annexé à la Belgique et devenir le ‘Congo Belge’. Au cours des premières trente années, le Gouvernement eut, comme tâche principale, la pacification des populations indigènes, l'organisation des services d'intérêt public, l'étude des ressources économiques et le développement de leur outillage. La mise en valeur réelle de la Colonie ne débuta qu'en 1910. Le développement économique marqua depuis cette date une progression rapide et considérable.

African land tenure is a subject so vast that in dealing with it one hesitates to commit oneself to statements of general application lest particular instances should be found to controvert them. Yet, when it is considered from the point of view of culture change, it is possible to discern a number of general trends, the nature of which is similar because their cause is the same–the impact on African society of the commercial economy of Western Europe with its infinite range of forms of wealth and possibilities of acquiring them. Though other forces too are active in the modern process of culture change, this is the most pervasive, and its influence can be traced in the development of every institution. In the case of land rights, closely bound up as they are with systems of production, the influence is direct and obvious.

En 1957, M. G. Smith a publié un document déterminant sur le rôle du maroki, chanteur de louanges da la communauté musulmane Haoussa, dans la partie nord du Nigeria. Cet article examine le rôle du maroki dans la communauté Sabon Zongo d'Accra, issue d'une diaspora. Bien que les communautés zongo d'Accra soient considérablement diluées au sein de leur orthodoxie islamique, elles nʼen demeurent pas moins distinctement islamiques dans le ton, comme en témoignent les mosquées, les écoles coraniques, les robes flottantes et les voiles de prière diaphanes, ainsi quʼune orientation culturelle générale fortement influencée par les Haoussas et distincte de la région chrétienne du sud du Ghana. Au sein de la communauté haoussa et des institutions zongo sur lesquelles la coutume haoussa exerce une influence particulière, il existe une séparation résiduelle entre le monde des hommes et le monde des femmes. Cet article considère le maroki comme un acteur dépourvu de distinction de sexe. Ceci suggère que par sa présence dans les rassemblements de femmes haoussas et zongo, il est devenu leur client, les considère comme ses bienfaitrices et relie leur monde à celui des hommes.

Like most southern Ghanian populations, the Abutia Ewe – one of the numerous ‘village leagues’ which compose the northern part of Eweland (Volta region)– have experienced far-reaching transformations in the last century, and nowhere more radically than in their matrimonial practices. In this article, I wish to concentrate on two aspects of these practices, namely the definition of marriage and the incidence of divorce.

Indeed, an adequate analysis of divorce requires some heuristic tools which enable us to decide whether particular couples are ‘married’ or not, a procedure made extremely difficult in the case of Abutia because of the changes in their definition of marriage. In the first part of the article, I shall briefly survey these changes and discuss the definitional problems they raise and, in the second, present the main findings of a quantitative survey which helps to measure the impact of the changes discussed. It also reveals that divorce was in fact common before 1890, when German colonial rule was imposed. In the third and last part I seek to explain this marital instability in ‘pre-colonial’ Abutia.

In the vast countries which stretch between Kordofan and the Bahr el Ghazal Province in the east, Tripolis in the north, Lake Chad and the north-western frontier of the Cameroons in the west, and a line in the south which is formed by the southern border of the colony Ubangui-Chari, linguistic research work is still only in its beginnings. The languages spoken in the above regions which comprise the highlands of Tibesti, Borku, Enedi, and the old kingdoms of Darfor, Dar Banda, Wadai, Bagirmi, Bornu, Adamawa, and their neighbouring countries, are still to-day the least known of all the languages of Africa. This part of Central Africa lies far from the animated coastal areas and was occupied by European Powers only in a comparatively recent period. But the study of languages of newly occupied countries is not the first object of a Native Administration, especially where Arabic is a first means of communication; and Arabic plays an important role indeed in some parts at least of Central Africa. Besides the use for purposes of administration, linguistic research work is linked to two undertakings: the missions and native education. Missionary work is especially important in pagan countries, but may have little or no influence in a large part of Muhammadan Central Africa.

Text-Books used in African schools are admittedly to a large extent not satisfactory. Many of them are neither adapted to the life and mind of the people whom they are intended to teach, nor do they meet the requirements of the principles of modern education. The call for better school-books in Africa is therefore general.

The International Institute of African Languages and Cultures considers it as one of its foremost duties to direct attention to this serious and urgent problem, which needs careful study, and for the solution of which the co-operation of those engaged in education in Africa is imperatively required.

Of the 1.75 milliard people in the world to-day, about 550 million, that is roughly a third, belong to the white races. About 450 million of these live in Europe. Thus two-thirds of the whole of mankind are made up of members of the various other races, which are under the economic and cultural influence of different white nations, to a great extent even under their political influence as well. As a result of technical inventions and improvements distances are daily growing smaller, and the different sections of mankind are perceptibly being brought closer together. Moreover, through the wide-spread network of commerce our relationships with all the peoples outside the European-American zone of culture have become more numerous and intimate, leading to grave social and intellectual upheavals among the foreign nations. These occurrences and phenomena are the result of the enormous expansion caused by technical invention in Europe. It would be mistaken to regard them as having been deliberately and maliciously planned by the European nations, for technical progress manifested in inventions is a phenomenon less within the range of man's control than is generally imagined. These consequences of technical development have to be reckoned with, whether we will or no. As Mussolini said a short time ago in the course of a statement on the population question: ‘A statesman has to think at least fifty years ahead of his age.’