The Barolong belong to the Western cluster of the Sotho group of the Bantu-speaking tribes of South Africa. The Western Sotho, who are commonly called the Tswana, are scattered over a considerable portion of South Africa, including the whole of Bechuanaland Protectorate, the portion of the Cape Province known as British Bechuanaland, the western Transvaal and a portion of the Orange Free State. Although the Barolong are to be found mainly in British Bechuanaland, they are in the peculiar position of being strongly represented in all the political divisions of Southern Africa referred to above, for they have important settlements in the Lobatsi district of Bechuanaland Protectorate; in the Lichtenburg district of the Transvaal, and in the Thaba Nchu district of the Orange Free State as well as in the Vryburg and Mafeking districts of British Bechuanaland (Cape Province).

Généralitiés. Aucune société ne peut vivre sans une organisation judiciaire, sans juridictions qui tranchent les différends surgissant entre ses membres et punissent leurs transgressions des règles impératives édictées par ses dirigeants. On trouve de nos jours une confirmation assez curieuse de cette vérité dans la multiplication des tribunaux privés fonctionnant dans toutes ces grandes fédérations sportives qui sont une des manifestations de notre civilisation. Mais cela est vrai aussi pour les populations dites non civilisées, et par exemple pour les indigènes du centre-africain.

For many years colonial governments in Africa have made occasional use of the services of trained social anthropologists. Sometimes they have employed them directly as ‘Government Anthropologists’, sometimes they have subsidized students in the employ of scientific bodies for particular pieces of research. But it was left for Sir Hubert Young, as Governor of Northern Rhodesia, to set up in 1937 the first institute for systematic sociological research in colonial Africa.

The Sudan falls into two distinct cultural parts: the Arabicspeaking Islamic peoples of the north and the heterogeneous pagan peoples of the south. This note is intended as a short guide to those who, while not themselves specialists, desire to know what ethnological research has been done in the Southern Sudan, where the results of this research are to be found, and the point investigations have reached at the time of writing.