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.

Previous listings of African Studies offered at American universities have appeared each year in the Bulletin, the last one being in March 1964. The Editors thank all those who kindly supplied the information on which this summary is based, and they welcome any suggestions for improving the usefulness of this annual presentation or of extending the coverage. Later numbers of the Bulletin will include summaries of African Studies in Canada, Africa, Western Europe, the USSR, and Asia.

The summary divides institutions into two main classes. First, there are those with a formally constituted Program, Center, or Committee, where African Studies has some institutionalized existence. Second, there is a group of universities which, while having no formal African Studies Program, nevertheless offer, through their regular departments, courses dealing with Africa. The latter list does not pretend to be exhaustive; there are many other institutions which might have been included, but we have no information on them at the present time.

Students who are deciding to which school they should apply might bear in mind such factors as caliber of faculty, availability of fellowships (though the closing date for most applications for 1965/66 is already past), library facilities, other institutions in the vicinity, and research opportunities. Most scholars now agree that the area studies approach cannot exist without the more theoretical comparative approach, so that the presence of certain other scholars becomes very significant: in political science, for example, it would be advantageous to have available faculty who specialize in the comparative study of processes of modernization, or of revolutions, as well as those who concentrate on Africa as an area. Therefore, this guide merely outlines some of the main features of African Study Programs in the United States.

The following highly selective list was compiled for presentation at the October 1964 meeting of the African Studies Association's Libraries-Archives Committee in Chicago. It was designed to illustrate preliminary findings of the ASA's National African Guide Project in the area of private (i.e., nongovernmental) papers, and particularly to emphasize their wide variety and distribution. The entries, by individuals and organizations, are grouped under the following broad “activity” categories: Politicians; Diplomats; Naval Officers; Humanitarians; Missionaries; Businessmen and Businesses; Authors, Journalists, and Travelers; and Scholars and Scientists. In several cases there is a further breakdown into subcategories. Within their respective categories or subcategories the entries are arranged alphabetically. An effort has been made throughout this list to complement--rather than duplicate--the coverage of the Collins and Duignan guide, Americans in Africa (Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution, 1963).

The American Geographical Society, Broadway at 156th Street, New York, N. Y. 10032, has an African collection of approximately 5,000 volumes, with emphasis on exploration, travel, description, history, and geography, and an estimated 137 linear feet of shelf space of government documents and 100 feet of shelf space for periodicals. The Society holds sets of maps for most African countries as well as numerous single maps for individual countries. The maps date from 1500 to the present time. Subjects covered include geology, soils, population, ethnography, economics, history, and transportation. The approximate number of single maps is 7,000. In addition, the Society has approximately 70 atlases, and a unique catalogue of maps published in periodicals and books is maintained.

Area studies at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., embrace Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. There is also interest in Near Eastern, Indie, and Commonwealth studies. Each area has a curator or adviser to the Library who ensures that all important publications issued in or about his area are secured.

Although the Council on African Studies at Yale goes back only to 1957, interest in Africa extends much further into the past. Individual members of the faculty have pursued Africanist researches from the beginnings of such studies. African history and the African collections in the Yale Library owe much to Professor Harry Rudin. Professor G. P. Murdock and associates founded the Cross Cultural Survey at Yale, out of which grew the Human Relations Area Files. (The complete files of both are housed in the Sterling Memorial Library.)

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.

During the past few years, there have been many changes in orientation and in nomenclature among former Belgian “colonial” institutions. The tendency has been to extend an interest in the Congo and in Central Africa more generally to the entire “Third,” or developing, World. This tendency is reflected both in the assistance activities of public and private bodies and in the organization of research and documentation.

The checklist that follows attempts to describe the present situation in the field, though it is by no means exhaustive. The material is based on a short trip to Brussels by the compiler, extensive correspondence, and the helpful cooperation of the various institutions. Any errors are the responsibility of the compiler alone.

Information for the entries is arranged as follows (any nonrelevant categories are dropped out):

Name of institution (former name), address.

Person responsible for documentation.

(a) Size of collection on African subjects.

(b) Special subject fields.

(c) Bibliographical publications.

(d) Periodicals and serials; other publications of interest.

(e) Projects in process or planned.

(f) Further information of interest to Africanists.

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.

This bibliography is a revision of a mimeographed copy which I compiled several years ago and which has been circulated privately on request. Continued interest has now prompted me to revise and publish it here. It deals mainly with the Pastoral or “Rift Valley” Masai of both Kenya and Tanzania. But it also includes many important references to other Maa-speaking peoples--such as the Samburu and Njemps (Tiamus) of Kenya and the Arusha and Baraguyu of Tanzania--who are referred to variously in the early literature as the Wakwavi, Wahumba, or Iloikop or simply as the Agricultural Masai.

Although by no means exhaustive, the bibliography is designed to include all the major works dealing with the history, language, and traditional social, political, and economic life of the Pastoral Masai. Other important items, not included here, may be found in the following:

(1) Colonial Office Files, Public Record Office, London; (2) Secretariat Archives, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Dar es Salaam; and (3) Regional and Area Administrative Office Files, Kenya and Tanzania.

During 1964 the External Research Staff of the Department of State took the initiative in efforts to achieve better coordination of government contracting for foreign area and foreign policy research. With the enthusiastic support of some 20 government agencies, the Staff has established a mechanism for more systematic coordination: the interdepartmental Foreign Area Research Coordination Group (FAR). The FAR Group seeks to ensure cooperative effort in research activities, prevent duplication among agencies, encourage maximum use of research results, and promote efficient use of nongovernment research. The Group's activities focus on research in the social sciences related to U.S. foreign policy--political, economic, and cultural. FAR meetings during 1964 have concentrated on research problems in the fields of China, Latin America, and Africa. Out of these meetings have emerged interagency subcommittees of research specialists charged with identifying substantive research problems and recommending courses of action to the parent FAR Group. The External Research Staff serves as executive secretariat of the Group.

Two of the papers which were presented at the third meeting, in December 1964, are likely to be of particular interest to members of the African Studies Association, and they are reproduced here by the kind permission of the writers and of the FAR Group. The two papers summarize some of the problems concerned with private research on Africa and with government-sponsored research on Africa.

Although the quantity of children's literature about Africa has been increasing rapidly in recent years--probably more has been published since 1960 than in the preceding three decades--the total volume is small and mediocre. Children's literature in this discussion refers to books written especially for children up to twelve or thirteen years of age. Somewhat over half the books which have been written for this age group are geographies, animal stories, and factual compendia with titles like First Book of Liberia, Getting to Know Tanganyika, Land and People of South Africa, and so on. Young persons are likely to use such books in connection with school assignments or purely for pleasure (in the case of animal stories), but they will gain little understanding of African peoples and cultures from them.

The smaller segment of children's books about Africa is comprised of storybooks and factual presentations of African history and contemporary African life. Some of these books are sufficiently attractive to catch the attention of library users and of children whose parents are affluent enough to buy books for them. But do these books help create an understanding of the peoples and cultures of Africa? This question is especially pertinent since school curricula still devote relatively little attention to Africa, despite its increased importance on the world scene, and television, radio, movies, and other mass media to which children have access often do little or nothing to promote an understanding of Africa and its people.

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.

It is the purpose of this paper to summarize briefly the nature of current and prospective social science research on Africa conducted by the nongovernment research community. Part I is devoted to a brief description of the attitudes and aims of the private researcher and to some general considerations about his past accomplishments and present concerns in the field of African Studies. Part II discusses African research in each of five disciplines: political science, anthropology, economics, psychology, and education.

Chief sources for the paper are the relevant chapters of the forthcoming book The African World: A Survey of Social Research, edited by Robert A. Lystad for the African Studies Association (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., April 20, 1965). This paper is reproduced by the kind permission of Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. The authors of the chapters used as references in this paper are: Political Science, Harvey Glickman, Haverford College; Anthropology, Philip Gulliver, School of Oriental and African Studies; Economics, Andrew M. Kamarck, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development; Psychology, Leonard Doob, Yale University; Education, David Scanlon, Columbia Teachers College. The present writer is solely responsible for the presentation and interpretation of their materials as they appear in this paper.

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.

African studies in Canada are still relatively in their early stages, but university interest in the African continent is being developed by three types of approach: by the Comnnittee on International Studies of the National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges (an organization of university administrations), by the Committee on African Studies in Canada (an association of scholars and students, assisted by the Humanities Research and Social Science Research Councils of Canada), and by the efforts of individual universities across the dominion.

The earliest coordinated effort was that of the Committee on African Studies in Canada, which was formed by some ten scholars from seven universities, meeting informally in Montreal in December 1962. A semiannual Bulletin, appearing simultaneously in French and English, business and academic meetings in June of each year, and affiliation, with assistance, to the research councils, were agreed upon. Dr. Ronald Cohen, then at McGill University, and Dr. Donald C. Savage of Loyola College were elected chairman and secretary-treasurer respectively. In 1963, Dr. Donald L. Wiedner, then of the University of Alberta at Edmonton, succeeded to the chair for two years and, with the help of that university and the councils, edited the Bulletin throughout that time. In 1964, Professeur Bernard Charles (Université de Montréal), M. Louis Bérubé (Collège Sainte-Marie), and Dr. E. Palmer Patterson (University of Waterloo) were added as vice-chairman, secretary, and treasurer respectively.

There is an increasing need of the government to know more about Africa. Trying to look ahead, many of us can see, for example, continued instability on the continent, with weak, fragile states grappling with the problems of achieving national cohesion. As we confront the problems arising from this instability, the gaps in our knowledge and understanding are vast and our need to know will probably continue to be much greater than our capacity to find the answers.

The African Studies Association's forthcoming book The African World: A Survey of Social Research has symbolic as well as substantive value for FAR insofar as it demonstrates how a group with widely diversified disciplines, interests, and missions can devise effective channels of communication to share a clearer understanding of each participant's special problems and objectives. The ASA asked the specialists in each of the 18 disciplines represented in this book to discuss, in relatively simple language and for the benefit of those in other disciplines, the problems they study in Africa, their methods, successes, and major failures.

In September and October of 1964, I visited the various centers once forming links in the archival system of French West Africa. Contrary to what occurred in Equatorial Africa, the French left these archival holdings in place, except for current material which was shipped to the rue Oudinot (Ministry of Colonies) in Paris. The center of the West African system was the Archives of the Government-General in Dakar (later the High Commission). Based originally on the Senegalese holdings, this archive became an independent agency of the federal government and was the parent organization of subsidiary archives for Senegal, Mauritania, Soudan, Upper Volta, Niger, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. It was parallel in structure to the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (IFAN), which also had its headquarters in Dakar and maintained subsidiary centers for each territory. In some cases, the archives and IFAN centers were amalgamated (during World War II) and the history of the two organizations is often inseparable. This survey is an attempt to describe the establishment and development of these archival centers, how their material was organized and can be used for research, and their current status in the independent countries.