Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:53:10.059Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Changing Face of African Studies in Britain, 1962-2002

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Anthony Kirk-Greene*
Affiliation:
St. Antony's College, Oxford
Get access

Extract

Leaving to one side the sui generis Royal African Society, which in 2000 marked its centenary with a special history (Rimmer and Kirk-Greene, 2000), the formalised study of Africa in British academia may be said to be approaching its 80th year. For it was in 1926 that the International African Institute, originally the Institute of African Languages and Cultures, was founded in London, followed two years later by the maiden issue of its journal for practising Africanists, Africa, still among the flagship journals in the African field. Indeed, the 1920s were alive with new institutions promoting an interest in African affairs, whether it be the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1924); the Phelps-Stokes Commission reports on education in British Africa (1920-24), culminating in the Colonial Office Memorandum on Education Policy (1925); the major contribution to public awareness made by the Empire Exhibition at Wembley, however politically incorrect some of its idiom seems today; or the attention generated by the League of Nations’ Mandates Commission, the bulk of whose remit was focused on Africa and whose British representative was no less than Lord Lugard, the biggest “Africanist” of his day.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Paper given at the concluding session of SCOLMA's 40th Anniversary Conference, Oxford 25/26 June 2002.

References

Allen, Chris, “Where is the study of African politics going?” (unpublished), 2001.Google Scholar
Allott, Anthony, “The future of African studies”, pp. [263-275] in Progress in African bibliography: papers and proceedings of the SCOLMA Conference, Commonwealth Institute, London, 17-18 March 1977. London, SCOLMA, 1977.Google Scholar
Bundy, Colin, “Continuing a conversation: prospects for African studies in the 21st century”, African affairs, 101(402), 2002, 61-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canadian Association of African Studies, Into the 80s: the proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies, ed. Ray, Donald et al. Vancouver, Tantalus Research, 1981. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Cell, John, Hailey. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowder, Michael. “Us and them: the International African Institute and the current crisis of identity in African studies”, Africa, 57,1987,109-122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fage, J.D. “African studies: the UK”, pp. 397-413 in Encyclopaedia of Africa, ed. Middleton, John. New York, Scribner's, 1997, vol. 4.Google Scholar
Fage, J.D. “British African studies since the Second World War: a personal account”, African affairs, 88,1989, 397-413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fieldhouse, D.K., Merchant capital and economic development: the United Africa Company 1929-1989. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Fyfe, C, African Studies since 1945: a tribute to Basil Davidson. Proceedings of a seminar in honour of Basil Davidson's sixtieth birthday at the Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh. London, Longman, 1976.Google Scholar
Fyfe, C, “The emergence and evolution of African studies in the UK”, pp. 54-61 in Martin, W.G. and West, M.O., eds. Out of one many Africas: reconstructing the study and meaning of Africa.Google Scholar
Goody, J., The expansive moment: anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Britain, Great. Foreign Office. Report of the Interdepartmental Commission of Enquiry on Oriental, Slavonic, East European & African Studies. [Chair: Lord Scarbrough]. London, HMSO, 1947. (The Scarbrough Report)Google Scholar
Britain, Great. University Grants Committee. Report of the Sub-committee on Oriental, Slavonic, East European & African Studies. [Chair: Sir William Hayter]. London, HMSO, 1961. (The Hayter Report)Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane, African studies in the United States: a perspective. Atlanta, GA, African Studies Association, 1996.Google Scholar
Hailey, W.M., 1st Hailey, Baron, An African Survey. London, Oxford University Press for Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1938 (rev. ed. London, 1956).Google Scholar
Hodder-Williams, R., “African studies: back to the future”, African Affairs, 85, 1986, 593-603.Google Scholar
Hodder-Williams, R., A directory of British Africanists. 3rd ed. Bristol, University of Bristol on behalf of the Royal African Society, 1996.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J., A modern history of Tanganyika. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk-Greene, A., The emergence of African history at British universities. Oxford, World View Publications, 1995.Google Scholar
Kirk-Greene, A., “West African historiography and the underdevelopment of biography”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 21,1986, 39-52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuczynski, R.R., Demographic survey of the British colonial empire: I: West Africa, II: East Africa. London, Oxford University Press for Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1949.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, John, “African Studies in the United Kingdom”, African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific review, 22, 2000,13-20.Google Scholar
Peel, J.D.Y., Religious encounters and the making of the Yoruba. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence O., Voices from the rocks: nature, culture and history in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe. Oxford, James Currey, 2000.Google Scholar
Rimmer, Douglas & Kirk-Greene, A., The British intellectual engagement with Africa. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000.Google Scholar
Smuts, Jan., Africa and some world problems. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1930.Google Scholar
Sternberg, Ilse & Larby, Patricia, eds. African studies: papers presented at a colloquium at the British Library, 7-9 January, 1985. (British Library Occasional Papers, 6) London, British Library in association with SCOLMA, 1986.Google Scholar
Stockwell, Sarah, The business of Decolonisation. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Tignor, Robert, Capitalism and nationalism and the end of empire: state and business in decolonising Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya, 1945-1963. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Twaddle, Michael, “The state of African studies”, African-Affairs, 85,1986,439-445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Onselen, Charles, Chibaro: African mine labour in Southern Rhodesia. London, Pluto Press, 1976.Google Scholar
White, Luise, review in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies, 29, 2001, 148-150.Google Scholar
Worthington, E.B., Science in Africa: a review of scientific research relating to tropical and southern Africa. London, Oxford University Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Zeleza, Paul T., Manufacturing African studies and crises. Dakar, Codesria, 1997.Google Scholar