History: African and Contemporary

Extract

By a regrettable anomaly in our Association's practice, now removed, two distinguished historians who preceded me in this office — Roland Oliver and John Fage — were never called upon to deliver Presidential Addresses. So, with the exception of our first President (Dame Margery Perham) — whose historical writing achieves a distinction which few of us can hope to emulate, but who has been so much else besides — I find myself the first historian to discharge this duty. I feel somewhat as Lepidus must have done when invited to speak on behalf of the Triumvirate.

I suppose I should begin by claiming — as I think I can justly do — that historians have played a distinctive and important part in the development of African Studies during the last quarter century, and in the affairs of our own young Association.