Attempts to promote closer relations among the states of Southern Africa in the third quarter of the nineteenth century were thwarted inter alia by intense rivalry between the two British coastal colonies, Natal and the Cape. The sources of this struggle have usually been sought in the strenuous efforts made by each colony to monopolize the transit trade to the interior and in their attempts to develop in the hinterland those markets which the metropolitan countries of Europe did not offer them. But Natal's geographical situation tempted her also to seek economic salvation in the Indian Ocean. At various stages of the colony's history, Natal's businessmen and politicians showed considerable interest in the commercial potential of the region, in its labour resources, and in the creation of steamship and telegraphic lines of communication through the Ocean to the East and Europe. These, it was believed, would not only be of economic advantage to Natal but would also afford her greater independence in many ways from the older-established and far wealthier sister colony. Yet these conflicting ambitions and policies—particularly the commercial connexions of each colony with Mauritius—did much to exacerbate relations between them. Both in 1866 and in 1876, proposals merely for a free trade treaty in each other's produce were easily defeated. The divergence of interests and sympathies between the two colonies, so evident at the National Convention in 1909, stemmed from a great variety of sources—political, economic, geographical and others. Their rivalry had a long history, but was seldom so pronounced as in the earliest years of their relationship.

I rejoice with Messrs Gleave and Prothero in the opportunity for interdisciplinary discussion of a problem which is of interest to both historians and geographers. Before replying to their lengthy ‘Comment’ I feel that an explanatory note regarding the genesis of my article might remove any misapprehensions that it was done as a simple exercise in cavil.

Catholic school alumni played a crucial role in shaping Senegal and Benin in the first decades after independence.1 Though they came from a variety of religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, they nevertheless strongly identified with their Catholic schooling experience. Indeed, these West African alumni composed a distinct social group that had been inculcated in the habits and values of ‘Catholic civism’, an ideology based around public service, self-discipline, moral restraint, honesty, and community. While many studies of educated youth emphasize their political activism, Catholic school youth engaged in the subtler process of shaping their new countries by transforming colonial-era institutions from within. Beyond politics, students who graduated in the early independence era used Catholic civism as both a social marker and an implicit social critique.

I Shall not attempt to repeat or even to summarize the excellent discussion of glottochronology by Dr D. H. Hymes (Current Anthropology, I, I, January 1960), but shall to some extent base my remarks on it. It seems to me that glottochronology is one method of analysis among many. It sheds a certain light of its own which is most useful when related to other kinds of study. The method of common innovations, for example, gives a much more precise picture of the genetic relations of a set of languages, and it does not depend on so many controversial assumptions. But the chronology which it gives is always a relative one. Furthermore, it depends for its success on quite deep studies of the languages in question, since it is always hazardous to say that a particular form or construction is not present in a language. Further study may often reveal it. It is, of course, also true of glottochronology that it depends for its full success on the deep study of the languages under consideration and of their cognate interrelations. It appears that we shall have to wait quite some time for those conditions to be satisfied in African studies, and field workers have had to go ahead and use these methods as best they can in order to make some kind of sense out of the vast mass of data before them. It seems to me that this is legitimate if all the conclusions of such exploratory ventures are firmly held to be subject to change without notice. We can at least get some idea of the time depths with which we are dealing. Language relationships which are recent enough to be of historical interest are fairly easy to handle even with crude methods. It is with respect to the older relationships that technique is stretched to its uttermost limits. Even here glottochronology can establish a ground against which recent borrrowings, containing the traces left by historical process, can be more readily distinguished.