One of the major, largely untapped sources for historical and social science research in Africa is the firsthand knowledge of Africans who were closely associated with the formation and life history of early political movements. At a conference held in February 1965 at Northwestern University, the Program of African Studies, with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation, a number of scholars in the African field agreed in the course of a three-day meeting that it is particularly urgent to undertake a systematic canvass of these sources of information on the earliest nationalist movements in African countries. The conference stressed the importance of moving rapidly to make use of such firsthand data in helping to fill a major gap in our information about African responses to European intrusion. Not only is the material all that is available on the movements but it is rapidly disappearing (a fact underlined by the death of Dr. Danquah during the time the conference was meeting). In addition, the conference carefully examined the problems involved in such oral history retrieval.

The historical study of nationalist movements in Africa is obviously of critical importance for the future history of mankind, but the relevance of such an undertaking is not quite so self-evident from the point of view of the social sciences more generally. Yet political scientists concerned primarily with the comparative analysis of contemporary political systems have come to recognize that the formative period of an organization is as important as its equivalent in the life of individuals; anthropologists and sociologists have found it useful to examine the emergence of new organizational life in Africa in order to intercept crucial aspects of the process of cultural and structural change. Scholars interested in individual behavior often discover new men in the making when they appear as actors in new organizations. If this were not enough to justify a cooperative effort on the part of researchers from a variety of academic tribes, it might be added that by reconstructing the history of nationalism social scientists can perform a significant service for their African hosts in search of a contemporary identity.

Although the origins of “nationalism” in Africa can and must be traced to at least the middle of the nineteenth century in some cases, it is evident that the period between the two world wars was one of direct preparation for the emergence of large-scale movements immediately afterwards. More is known about this period in some countries than in others, partly as a function of the more or less liberal nature of the colonial regime.

The political scientist uses oral testimony to record events which happened sometime not too long ago. He retrieves documents about events, usually from eyewitnesses but sometimes from descendants of eyewitnesses. Whenever a witness testifies to events and his testimony is recorded, the following sequence or chain between the events and the record of them has taken place:

The relation between the events and the events as described in the document has therefore undergone the following “distortions”: events--part of the events are perceived--part of the perception is stored in the memory of a man and colored by his personality--part of what is in the memory of the man is released and the release is colored by the interview. There is quite definitely a loss of information between the event and the record of it. There is also, and this is less obvious, quite an accretion to the record of the event by the reflections and the personality of the witness. The aim of the person who uses the record is to know what are the accretions and the distortions so that he would know what actually happened insofar as it is recorded. Critical analysis is the tool used to discover this. It can be made much easier if certain items of information besides the testimony and about it are available. It is therefore of great value to collect this ancillary documentation together with the oral testimony itself.

Given the fact that we are able to agree on a set of categories for the collection of material on early nationalist movements in Africa, it is necessary also to ask whether or not the form in which the material is gathered is important. Our answer would be: it is essential to the secondary analysis of the oral history material that it be put in such a form that “more than” and “less than” questions be answered by its use when material from one or more countries is compared with that from other areas. If in comparing data on early nationalism from one area with those of others we are not interested in saying area A has more of this or that than area B, then quantification serves no useful purpose. However, we would contend that such statements are crucial in several ways. First, they allow us to compare areas more precisely, and, secondly, such data allow us and others the privilege of utilizing them to test theoretical formulations already present in the literature. Thus, if African socialism, as many theorize, denies the usual Marxist statements that socialism originates from the alienation felt by political thinkers and the masses as a result of the industrialization of the society, then early nationalists, many of whom were socialists in orientation, should be compared so as to see whether they were in fact alienated from their society--who were more so, and where were the early natiionalist movements more and where were they less socialistic, and where were they more and less alienated. If the informants who can remember the early nationalist movements are available, then such questions can be answered when researchers are made aware that these data may have, eventually, to be coded into more than, and less than, categories.

An essential feature of the oral history project is the comparability of material once it has been collected. It should be made clear that for comparative analysis it is not essential (although it makes the work easier, if this has already been standardized) for all categories of data collection to be standardized in all countries studied; it is essential only that a full picture of all significant aspects of each movement will be covered--a task, as Professor Blanksten suggests, made easier by some forethought as to which categories should be covered in the interview. We assume that the categories not covered but very important in one or two countries will be recorded there if the interviewers perform their roles adequately.

Certainly there are a number of extremely interesting problems that comparison would solve. What are the different speeds with which success or failure of these movements occurs? Why did some simply die out, others become dominant and successful, while still others become separatist tribal groups? If we use Professor Zolberg's categories plus others that turn up in the pilot study, and take account of Professor Cohen's strictures concerning quantification, then some answers may be forthcoming.

Most of the Fellows of the African Studies Association have participated in at least one Peace Corps training program, so that they have an interest in, and opinions on, this subject. The present article summarizes the major factors of training programs, outlines the main characteristics of the projects in Africa and of the volunteers, and then considers some aspects of the relationship between the Peace Corps and the universities. Finally, there is a detailed summary of all Peace Corps training programs for Africa, from the first one in June 1961 through the summer of 1965. Forty-four different universities, colleges, or other organizations have produced 132 programs for 19 different African countries, and some 6,000 volunteers have successfully completed the training and gone to serve with the Peace Corps in Africa (the usual service period spent in Africa is two years).

The first step in the establishment of a training program is a discussion between an interested university and the Training Division of the Peace Corps, followed by a series of negotiations which culminate in a formal contract. The contract specifies the duration of the program, the number and educational background of trainees, the faculty who will participate, the details of phases of training, and the country and project for which the trainees are being prepared. An important part of the contract is the budget, the cost generally being a little more than $200 per trainee per week.

During 1963 and 1964 the Africana Newsletter published regularly surveys of ephemeral material (party pamphlets, rare newspapers, constitutions, reports of congresses, trade-union literature, hard-to-find government documents) on Portuguese African nationalist movements, the Camerouns, Nigeria, and the Congo. This material was then filmed and deposited in the Center for Research Libraries (formerly the Mid-West Inter-Library Center), Chicago, Illinois, for use by members of the Cooperative African Microfilm Project (CAMP). The Editors of the African Studies Bulletin would like to continue this program of locating, listing, and collating rare African ephemeral materials. Please send inventories of your collection to the Editors. The original plea by Immanuel Wallerstein to cooperate in this program is reprinted from the Africana Newsletter:

All of us when we go to Africa acquire, sometimes systematically, more often haphazardly, mimeographed and printed documents which we store, often unused, hopefully to be used in the future. Scattered issues of journals, when added together, can make nearly complete collections.

I have certainly collected many odd items which are of little immediate use to me but which might be invaluable to someone doing particular pieces of research. I would hope that photostats of all these items could be collected in a central place and thus be available to all scholars.

The rising demand for out-of-print Africana, and indeed all rare and scholarly books, is stimulating unprecedented interest and reprinting activity among publishers. With programs and courses springing up all over the United States, Africa, and other parts of the world, librarians and scholars have found themselves in fierce competition for scarce materials on African subjects. Simultaneously, booksellers, at pains to meet this tremendous increase in demand, have found the supply of Africana dwindling and near depletion. However, because of the proliferation of publishing houses specializing in scholarly reprints, the solution to this problem seems to be close at hand.

If one may judge by the number of works which have already appeared and by those known to be in the planning stages, it would not seem very long before nearly all the most important works are republished. The following does not purport to be an exhaustive listing, but will serve to indicate the very large number of reprints recently published or forthcoming.