Ever since the discovery there of gold and diamonds in the last half of the nineteenth century, South Africa has engaged the rapt attention of the Western world. The saga of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, perhaps the last of the “gentlemen's wars,” and now the refurbished accounts of the gallant defense of Rorke's Drift in the AngloZulu War of 1879 have been fascinating material for both novelists and film scriptwriters. In addition, the history of South Africa is replete with titanic figures who rank with, or perhaps even above, those from the rest of the continent: the aggressive architect of empire, Cecil J. Rhodes; the redoubtable Zulu warrior, Chaka; the dour, stern-willed President of the South African Republic, “Oom” (Uncle) Paul Kruger; the world-renowned statesman and philosopher, Field Marshal Jan C. Smuts; the founding father of Indian independence, Mohandas K. Gandhi; the compassionate and courageous writer, Alan S. Paton; and the dignified, modest Zulu Nobel Laureate, Albert J. Luthuli. By any standard, South Africa and its leaders of all races have made far-reaching and impressive contributions to the continent, the British Empire, and the world at large.

The origin of wars is to be found … in the minds … of men,” said Frederick S. Dunn in the course of his argument that the United Nations should improve educational opportunities and raise living standards throughout the world. Such reforms, he believed, would alleviate ignorance and mass dissatisfaction, two of the principal causes of war. But Dunn's statement, in the light of recent research, also lends itself to a totally different interpretation.

International bargaining and negotiation are subjects about which there has long been much speculation and the offering of much advice. Accounts of bargaining experiences, as well as the assembly and ordering of real-world data and inferences drawn therefrom (particularly when they lead to the maxims of a Callières, a Nicolson, or a Lippmann) raise questions that require investigation by all available means, including experimentation in laboratories when feasible. Laboratory investigation can be confined to overt behavior—proposals, arguments, threats, outcomes, and so on—or the laboratory can be employed to seek data on attitudes, intentions, expectations, and perceptions, and thereby to probe where historical data seldom penetrate. Computer technology adds flexibility, control, and efficiency to laboratory data collection. It permits, during the course of an experiment, questions that probe the subjective aspects of a negotiation without the distortion that results from the presence of an interrogator.

These seven recent works typify a cross section of scholarly publication on the Chinese People's Republic, its history, present operation, and prospects. Taken together, they provide the basis for some remarks on the study of Chinese “political culture.” Rather than attempt a full review of the individual works, this brief article will examine some of their assumptions and indirectly comment on the literature they represent. Each book reflects a prodigious scholarly effort and has received in various other journals a complete appraisal of its intellectual value. In general it may be fairly said that these volumes do not constitute significant breakthroughs of knowledge. They do, however, bring together and analyze important bodies of data on Communist China.

In his presidential address to the American Political Science Association in 1956, Harold Lasswell anticipated many of the scientific and technical developments of the ensuing years. Students of politics have been slow to accept the challenge he posed. The advance of science and technology is leading to notable realignments within the nation. No less, the relationships of nation-states are undergoing substantial alteration. These changes raise two questions with increasing urgency. What adjustments in our political institutions are necessary to accommodate the scientific revolution? What purposes is the growing power of technology to serve? From very different perspectives the three books under review face these questions. The Scientific Estate is concerned with constitutional balance among the elite groups of American society. The New Utopians seeks to moderate the Utopian tendencies of the systems scientists. Empire Revisited suggests that technological power be used positively to maintain order throughout the world.

On November 1, 1963, the Ordinary Professor for Physical Chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, Robert Havemann, included the following remarks in his lecture on conceptual thinking: “The vital source of our cultural development … is the many-sided, increasingly comprehensive information of all members of society concerning all knowledge, all problems and questions of our time. Every impediment to and limitation of information paralyzes the activity of the members of society and thereby the development of social conditions, and only puts a brake on development. At all times reactionary regimes have attempted to keep the people in ignorance. … A government can only succeed in its so very important tasks if it can rely on the active and energetic cooperation of all members of society.… Whoever is afraid of the consequences of general unlimited information and, on account of this fear, impedes it, creates thereby precisely the conditions for fateful development” (p. 52).

The impulse to question the conventional wisdom about world problems has in recent years reflected the perfectly normal dissatisfaction with the way things were going. The temptation has been great to question the rationality of a system preserved against disastrous collapse only, it seemed, by shared knowledge of how disastrous the consequences of collapse would be. (One is reminded of the young lady at the ball who was asked by her escort what it was that held up her strapless evening gown. When she replied that it was “gravity”, he queried the principle. “Gravity”, he said, “should make it fall down.” Her response perhaps describes the contemporary dilemma: “sOh, I don't mean Newton's gravity, but the gravity of my situation if the darned thing doesn't work.”) The phenomenon is, perhaps, described as “self-preventing prophecy.” The fact that the phenomenon has seemed to work thus far is hardly an adequate response to those who are uneasy about its reliability, as no one can fail to be.

Many students of world politics take their subject so seriously that they often mistake their conception of reality for reality itself. There may be an objective truth about any given event or trend in world affairs, but the observer must use some method to comprehend it and, in so doing, he inevitably renders the truth subjective. The “established facts” of world politics are, in effect, no more than widespread agreement—what I shall call an intersubjective consensus—among actors and experts as to the existence and relevance of particular phenomena. Total comprehension of the realities of world politics can thus only be approximated. The greater the intersubjective consensus, the greater the comprehension and the more “real” the reality.

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy became President of the United States in January 1961, many Americans, and probably an even greater number of other people, believed that an entirely new chapter had begun in American political history. People tend to read into contemporary events the trends they wish to see. For many, hopes and expectations about domestic and foreign policy alike were quickened by the impressive signs of youth, vigor, liberalism, and a broad outlook on the outside world.

The outstanding characteristic of the French political system is its historical instability. Constitutional monarchy was overthrown by a revolution, replaced by a republic, which in turn quickly evolved into a dictatorship, and when it too was dismissed by an armed uprising, the interminable squabbles among the monarchist factions allowed another republic to come into existence by default. But for an “accident” of history this republic too would have given way to a dictatorship through the bloodless medium of the coup d'état, but while the republic tottered on in the interwar period the life-span of its governments was calculated in terms of months rather than years, and with its “collapse” under the coup de grâce of military defeat a new dictatorship immediately sprang up to take its place, to be succeeded by another republic lasting for thirteen years amid constantly recurring cabinet crises, then falling in the wake of an eminently successful revolution, out of which emerged the present regime. Here we have what sociologists might label the “institutionalization of instability”, interpreted by a number of leading writers on French politics as the product of a deep-seated conflict between the “two Frances”, whether these two political subcultures are viewed as the parties of mouvement and of I'ordre établi, or as the “administrative and representative traditions.”

The Zulu kingdom is not extinct. It survives in the imaginations of many Bantu people, and remains latent in their social practices. Historically, it is as old as modern France, but it remained an independent state for a brief seven decades, its glory ending in the Zulu War of 1879. The period is spanned by the reigns of five monarchical figures: Dingiswayo (c. 1808–1818), who laid the foundations; Shaka (1816–1828), who established the kingdom and ruled at the zenith of Zulu power; Dingane (1828–1840), who continued the despotism as European settlers began to entrench upon the Zulu domain; Mpande (1840–1872), whose sovereignty was limited by accommodation first to Boer, then to British, power; Cetshwayo (1872–1884), who sought to break free but lost independence in a war against the British. Shaka stands out as the greatest of them all—both Romulus and Napoleon to the Zulu people—and his legend has captured the imaginations of both European and African writers, inspiring novels, biographies, and historical studies in several tongues. As a violent autocrat he is both admired and condemned: admired by those who love conquerors, condemned by those who hate despots. The internal transformations wrought by his regime were accompanied by enormous devastation and dislocation throughout South and Central Africa, disrupting a third of the continent. Some estimates of the slaughter in Shaka's total wars and in the mass migrations caused by them have placed the number of dead at close to two million. It is also estimated that by 1820 Shaka had deprived some three hundred tribes of their independence, had commanded a force of more than a hundred thousand warriors, and had brought half a million souls under his rule. Several of his generals fled with their armies to make empires of their own. Thus, even after his day had passed, Shaka's influence remained, for his model of military despotism was replicated in kingdoms such as the Matebele under Mzilikazi in Southern Rhodesia and the Gasa (Shangane) under Soshangane in Portuguese East Africa, and in several groups of Ngoni north of the Zambezi River. These kingdoms for some years preserved the Zulu pattern, coupling internal despotic power with external military terrorism.

AS the revived study of the politics of tropical Africa by Americans enters its second decade,1 scholars have on the whole tempered youthful enthusiasm with an adolescent awareness of the complexity of their subject.