The recent conference on the History of the Transkei and Ciskei held at the University of Rhodes, Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape, in many ways marked a new step in the development in South Africa of African studies in general and African history in particular. Out of a total of some seventy-five participants, more than half were historians, ten were anthropologists or enthnologists, and the remainder were drawn from a variety of academic disciplines including archaeology, economics, politics and medicine, and from the non-academic world, including representatives of some of the major museums and libraries. Sponsored by the Transkei and Ciskei Research Society, and organised by Robin Derricourt, a Cambridge-trained archaeologist at present working at the University of Fort Hare, the conference discussed a wide range of problems in the history of the area in the precolonial and colonial periods.

The closure of the office of the Oxford Colonial Records Project, the retirement of J. J. Tawney who had been its director for the ten years of the Project's existence and the disbanding of the Project's Committee were an important stage in what had always been seen as a task of limited duration, the searching out, collection and deposit in Rhodes House Library, Oxford of the private papers of people who had served in the colonial empire. At the end of 1972, the Committee saw its work as having reached a point where it could be more closely integrated with the work of Rhodes House Library, the Commonwealth African and American section of the Bodleian Library which undertook to continue any uncompleted work of collection alongside the task it had had from the beginning of making the collections available to scholars and preserving for future use in conditions of adequate security those groups of papers which had been given on the understanding that they were not immediately accessible.

Recently I was able to describe briefly the collection of the papers of James Phipps housed in the Chancery Masters Exhibits collection in the Public Record Office. At that time it was not possible to do more than suggest the salient characteristics of this collection since the materials were completely unorganized and in exactly the same condition as when they were deposited some two centuries ago. This collection has now been organized, albeit in a somewhat inchoate form, and some further assesment of its contents and value can be attempted. The reorganization of these materials has resulted in their being reclassified — unfortunately still within the Chancery Masters Exhibits classification rather than the T70 series — and this note is intended to introduce the new system and to enumerate its contents more fully.

James Phipps spent more than twenty years on the Gold Coast in the service of the Royal African Company.

The Centre for Overseas Pest Research (COPR) exists to help overseas territories, particularly the developing countries, solve pest problems in the field of agriculture and public health. It concentrates on pest species which are of international or regional significance either because they migrate between countries, for example, locusts and weaver birds (Quelea), or because they are widespread and endemic, for example, termites and mosquitoes. COPR undertake laboratory research and overseas field investigations into the biology, ecology and pest status of pre-harvest pests of agriculture and certain public health pests. It is also concerned with the development and application of modern pest control techniques, as well as the long-term environmental effects of the use of pesticides in the tropics. It is a new organization in name only, since it has the experience and knowledge gained from over 30 years of pest research and control in overseas territories, as it was formed in June 1971 from already existing scientific units of the British Government's Overseas Development Administration.

The Land Resources Division, located in Tolworth Tower, Surbition, Surrey, England, is part of the Overseas Development Administration, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and assists developing countries, mainly tropical, in mapping, investigating and assessing land resources. It makes recommendations on the use of these resources for the development of crop and animal husbandry and forestry; it also gives advice on related subjects to overseas governments and organisations, makes scientific personnel available for appointment abroad, and provides lectures and training courses in the basic techniques of resource appraisal. The Division works in close co-operation with government departments, research institutes, universities and international organisations concerned with land resources assessment and development planning.

The information services are provided by the three units that form the Publications/Information/Library Section.

From the foundation of the order in Algiers in 1868 the White Fathers (more properly Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa) focussed their efforts on Africa. Although the first missions were established in the Kabyle Mountains and the Sahara the professed long-term commitment was to the proselytization of black Africa. In 1878 the first White Fathers arrived in the Uganda region and in the course of the next fifty years the order established dioceses and Vicariates Apostolic throughout the continent but the greatest denisty of their stations always remained central Africa.

The African Studies’ Program of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, combines building up a library and archival collecting with sponsoring research on modern Africa.

The African collection concentrates on the period from 1870 to the present and on the fields of history, politics, government and economics. The collection is especially strong on European colonialism in Africa and on African nationlist movements. (For a detailed description of the library holdings see African and Middle East Collections: A Survey of Holdings at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Hoover Institution Press, 1971.)

The research program is based on the library resources. There are four types of publications: bibliographies include: Peter Duignan, Guide to Research and Reference Works on Sub-Saharan Africa (1,102 p.); Robert L. Hess and Dalvan M. Coger, A Bibliography of Primary Sources for 19th Century Tropical Africa, as Recorded by Explorers, Missionaries, Traders, Travellers, Administrators, Military Men, Adventurers and Others (800 p.); and Harold G. Marcus, The Modern History of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa: A Select and Annotated Bibliography (641 p.)

Dr. Carter spoke of the plans of a group of American scholars with primary interests in southern Africa research to undertake, with the aid of a small Ford Foundation grant, a systematic program of identifying, classifying and micro-filming scattered and fragile southern African documentary resources held in the United States which have previously been largely inaccessible, and to co-ordinate this program with on-going efforts in South Africa, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. These plans build on discussions held at Northwestern University during the fall of 1971, when a score of American and South African scholars met twice to consider the most promising means of overcoming the existing difficulties in undertaking basic research in significant aspects of the complex South African experience. These difficulties have led in the past, with rare exceptions, to partial and often seriously unbalanced interpretations of historical and contemporary developments in southern Africa.