I am very pleased to be asked to say a few words to this meeting of archivists and librarians. I am myself a historian, and therefore I love archives. I actually find it a sensual experience to see and feel old documents. Terry Barringer, who invited me to talk to you this morning, encouraged me to say something about my personal experiences of archival research, so allow me to begin with some personal remarks and anecdotes.

I started my PhD, on the history of nineteenth-century Madagascar, in 1976. Before then, I don't believe I had ever been in an archive. In the course of doing research for my PhD, I made quite extensive use of government, missionary and private archives in the United Kingdom, France and Madagascar. An exciting moment was locating the archives of the first French Resident of Madagascar after its conquest by French troops in 1895, Hippolyte Laroche.

If I start with my national origin the colonial legacy is very limited. Regarding Africa Denmark had a kind of colony on the Guinea Coast in West Africa, called the Gold Coast. It was sold to Britain in 1850, at a time when there was still some money to extract. It was in the precolonial days when royal companies were running the show. The possession was very much geared to the slave trade, and when it could not pay anymore the Danes withdrew, like the Dutch by the way.

But it raises a special problem which I will point out from the outset for consideration on this occasion. For European countries with a limited colonial legacy and thereby also outside the major languages there is a language problem regarding archives and other kinds of contemporary source material.

This article does not attempt to give a full answer to the question of what has been achieved in African Studies. It does attempt to give a preliminary checklist of measurement indices which might be helpful especially as the African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) approaches its half century in 2013.

ASAUK was founded in 1963, on the initiative of Professors Roland Oliver and John Fage, who went on to organise its first conference in 1964. Appropriately this was held at the University of Birmingham, where Fage had been appointed to direct a new (1962) Centre of West African Studies. Identifying Birmingham as the first Africa-dedicated centre in the UK must not be allowed to mask the pioneering role of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) which however, though founded in 1916, did not add Africa to its title until 1938.