In discussing these three papers as they relate to history, it is an essential starting point to realize that the discipline of history is changing and has changed considerably in the last quarter century. History began as an account of the great deeds of our own ancestors, a record of the past that was essentially a backward extension of our own group personality. It long ago outgrew its concern with our tribal past and came to be concerned with the past of other peoples who share our Western culture. More recently, historians have become increasingly concerned with the past of other cultures as well. Some remnants of the older historical tradition are still around, but broadly speaking history now can be defined as the study of change in human society.

With this shifting focus inside the discipline itself, some of the barriers that used to surround history have also begun to disappear. One of these barriers was a distinction between history and pre-history, made according to the kind of evidence that each used. Historians worked with documentary evidence, leaving the pre-historians to worry with the kind of problem that could be solved only through the combined use of archaeology, oral tradition, linguistic evidence, and the like. In African history no such distinction is possible, and it is now generally abandoned. Documentary evidence about the history of Africa south of the Sahara begins about the ninth century, but it has to be used alongside non-documentary evidence. Documentary evidence, used by itself, only begins to tell the whole story when we come to the twentieth century, and even here it overlaps with the oral evidence of people still alive. African history is thus dominantly a history based on mixed data. The old line between history and pre-history is no longer useful, and the Journal of African History recognized this fact when, for convenience, it set a new division between history and pre-history at the beginning of the Iron Age — a date which will, of course, be somewhat different for different parts of Africa.

The grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to the Library of Congress in December 1959 for the purpose of establishing and operating for five years an African studies unit resulted in the formation of the Africana (since changed to African) Section within the General Reference and Bibliography Division of the Reference Department of the Library. Activation of the unit came in March 1960 with the transfer of Miss Helen F. Conover to the African Section as area specialist. Dr. Conrad C. Reining was appointed head of the section in April of 1960. The position of editorial clerk was provided for by the initial grant and has had three incumbents. Mrs. Audrey A. Walker, of the Manuscript Division of the Library, was appointed to fill the position of bibliographer-reference librarian in June 1961.

The section has gradually built up a collection of reference works comprised of bibliographies, directories, atlases, guides, and surveys which is of prime importance for its work and invariably of interest to visitors. The current issues of fifty or so periodicals selected for display are also constantly used by both staff and visitors. About fifty boxes of ephemeral reference material have been assembled. The section maintains a card file of current publications on Africa, which is a continuation and refinement of one originated by Miss Conover some years ago. About twenty entries per week are made from Library of Congress preliminary catalog cards and from notices of new books. Most of the entries are for publications of the past three years. The file is consulted several times a day by the staff and research workers, and is currently forming the basis of Miss Conover's major task of revising the general bibliography Africa South of the Sahara. We have also started reference card files for addresses of organizations concerned with Africa, biographical materials, pertinent abbreviations, and special issues of periodicals on Africa.

This list of fellowship opportunities was originally compiled by Professor Rhodes to accompany the May issue of this Bulletin, which was devoted to African arts and humanities. It was not published at that time due to pressures of space. It may be noted that many of the fellowships listed are available to Africanists in other disciplines. Also, not all of these are tenable in Africa; many awards are for work in African studies in the United States or Europe.

The study of Africa has helped to further several healthy trends in the development of the discipline of political science. Confrontation with the rich variety of structural forms and modes of human expression of contemporary Africa has compelled the political analyst to look beyond the narrow “political” realm and conventional “political” structures for a more complete understanding and explanation of political phenomena. This African impact upon the discipline has come at a most propitious time—a time of intensive self-criticism from which at least three new emphases in research are beginning to emerge. One is the holistic approach reflected in efforts to classify and to compare political systems as wholes. A second approach, obviously related to the first but independently pursued by its proponents, is an ever-increasing explicit concern with non-political factors (e. g., the family, voluntary associations, the economic system, the social stratification system, cultural values, and so forth) as they may be related to and effect the political system and political behavior. Here, the impact of other disciplines, and particularly sociology, anthropology and psychology, is clearly manifest not only in the type of data gathered but in such neologisms as “political socialization” and “political acculturation.”

Carving, raffia weaving, and appliqueing are the main art forms of the northern Anang of Calabar Province, Nigeria. A great variety of carved and woven objects is produced by numerous Anang artisans, many of whom exhibit a high order of talent, especially when creating artifacts for traditional (rather than tourist) usage. Unfortunately, the appliqueing of funeral cloths for ritualistic purposes is a rapidly disappearing art, while the painting of funeral murals to serve the same end, which preceded and for a time was practiced concurrently with appliqueing, has disappeared altogether.

Both-carvers and weavers serve the nineteen Anang voluntary associations, of which seven are religious groups, five are social, five are orchestral, and two are dramatic. Four of the associations employ wooden masks, four raffia masks and costumes, and two wooden puppets, and all utilize an assortment of minor carved and woven articles produced by professional artisans. This paper will be concerned with the use of wooden masks, puppets, and figurines by one of the drama associations——in plays which are presented to amuse audiences by ridiculing the motives and actions of well-known individuals and groups. All of the Anang associations have social control functions as regards their membership or the larger community, or both, but , through its system of rules governing the behavior of members and through its plays acted by humans and puppets, exerts the broadest measure of social control of any association-over individuals, kinship and political groups, other associations, and even the missions and, at one time, the colonial government.