For those of us who have been members of the African Studies Association since its founding in 1958, it is hard to believe that Bill Brown will no longer be with us at our annual meetings and as an ever willing member of our committees. We became so accustomed to calling on Bill for advice and guidance at moments of crisis that we are just a bit at a loss when we realize we can no longer turn to him in need.

Bill was a founding member of the ASA, a member of its board, and its past President. These offices, to which Bill was overwhelmingly elected, were no more than fitting tributes to his qualities as a scholar and a leader in his field of study -- qualities which the members of the Association recognized and to which they gladly paid tribute. But Bill was much more than a founding father; he was one of the small group who saw in the early fifties that African studies were to grow from the concern of a handful of devoted men to a major branch of area studies in the American academic roster. Bill was a member of the small committee which met from time to time in 1956 and 1957 to lay out the goals and purposes of the future association. Bill's wise counsel then, as it has so often since, prevented us from making irretrievable errors. I can remember sitting in several long and confused planning meetings in the Spring of 1958 in which alternative forms of the Association were brought up, one after another, and at the end, the group turned to Bill, who, seemingly, had absorbed all the confusing threads of the discussion. He was able to weave them together into a series of decisions which sounded much more intelligent than they ever were, I am sure, during our discussion; and out of them came the Association as it now is.

I was in the Netherlands between November 1, 1966 and May 15, 1967, investigating the manuscripts concerned with the Dutch presence on the Gold Coast. My work involved research into the political and social influences of the Dutch at Elmina during the first half of the eighteenth century. Patricia Carson's book, Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, served as an initial basis for my research; this article is primarily intended to supplement her citations.

Miss Carson's guide has provided students of West African history with an initial indication of the vast amount of manuscript material existing in the Netherlands. I would, therefore, like first to pay tribute to Miss Carson for the magnitude of her effort and the strength of her trailblazing work. Her guide to the manuscript materials in the Netherlands is accurate and displays a great amount of painstaking effort on her part. The fact that I am able to supplement her book, I believe, is based on my growing knowledge of the Archives of the Second West India Company and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. I also had the good fortune in that the staff of the Algemeen Rijksarchief was most helpful in suggesting inventories of which Miss Carson may not have been aware or which she might have missed. In addition, I was able to check other manuscript repositories, one or two of which yielded useful citations.

It was decided during the Fifth Panafrican Congress on Prehistory and Quaternary Studies, held at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in September 1963, to follow the example of theInventaria Archaeologica edited by the International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, and to publish similar illustrated cards devoted to pre- and protohistoric closed finds and type-series from the African continent. The series is to be calledInventaria Archaeologica Africana (I. A. A.). It was thought by members of Congress that it might be possible in this way to have rapidly in condensed and standardized form, the most significant results of new excavations. As only very few specialized journals are prepared to take even preliminary excavation reports, this method was suggested as being both convenient and rapid to publish new material. On the other hand, important old material, already published in scientific periodicals, could possibly be redrawn and uniformly re-issued in the series.

To implement this resolution, Congress appointed a committee consisting of Messrs. L. Balout, J.D. Clark, O. Davies, R. Inskeep, J. Nenquin and M. Posnansky. Since these persons are also members of the Standing Committee on Terminology, the necessary close collaboration between those two bodies is guaranteed. It was further decided that all matters relating to the practical side of editing the material should be centralized by one person, so as to ensure a maximum of uniformity in section drawing, general presentation of the cards, etc. The Patrimoine du Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale at Tervuren (Belgium), through its Chairman Prof. Ir L. Cahen, very kindly offered to provide the financial backing necessary for this enterprise.

President Eisenhower's timely proposal for aid to African education through the family of United Nations organizations is potentially one of the great ideas of the twentieth century. It comes at a point in history when the need for mutual understanding between the United States and Africa has never been greater.

Aware of this growing need, the United States National Commission for UNESCO decided two years ago to devote its Eighth National Conference in 1961 to the vital task of fostering better relations between the United States and Africa. The National Commission was established by Act of Congress in 1946 to further the aims of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization. It is composed of 100 members, 60 of whom represent national organizations having a total membership of over 30,000,000. The Commission believes that the Eighth National Conference can best achieve its objectives by concentrating on relevant educational, scientific, and cultural issues, with emphasis on education. The Conference will focus primarily on Africa of the Sahara.

The problem of obtaining permission of national governments for field research in Africa has been frequently documented. The Research Liaison Committee of the African Studies Association was formed in 1966 with the purpose of serving as a center for collection and dissemination of information on U.S. scholars and their research in Africa, communications on the role and mode of research in Africa, referral of questions it was unable to answer itself, collection of files on research clearance regulations, establishing of contact on behalf of researchers going to Africa, and maintaining liaison with African studies groups outside the United States. In interviews conducted in East Africa for the Committee in 1967, Vernon McKay learned that control procedures associated with foreign scholars in Africa were only partially security oriented. Officials, especially those in the national capitals, were being inundated by would-be researchers. Although the value of research was not denied, officials suggested to McKay that research be directed toward needs of the host country -- toward studies that would aid its economic, social, and development planning. Local officials issued a plea that research results be made available to the host as soon as possible.

Research clearance problems in Tanzania are better structured than elsewhere in Africa. Applications are directed through the University College in Dar es Salaam. In Tanzania, as in other countries, even the clearance successfully completed must be followed by establishment of contacts and working relationships “upcountry.” Field research circumstances, especially pertinent to geographers, demand the tolerance, if not the active encouragement of local (subnational) government.

During the past few years, there have been many changes in orientation and in nomenclature among former Belgian “colonial” institutions. The tendency has been to extend an interest in the Congo and in Central Africa more generally to the entire “Third,” or developing, World. This tendency is reflected both in the assistance activities of public and private bodies and in the organization of research and documentation.

The checklist that follows attempts to describe the present situation in the field, though it is by no means exhaustive. The material is based on a short trip to Brussels by the compiler, extensive correspondence, and the helpful cooperation of the various institutions. Any errors are the responsibility of the compiler alone.

Information for the entries is arranged as follows (any nonrelevant categories are dropped out):

Name of institution (former name), address.

Person responsible for documentation.

(a) Size of collection on African subjects.

(b) Special subject fields.

(c) Bibliographical publications.

(d) Periodicals and serials; other publications of interest.

(e) Projects in process or planned.

(f) Further information of interest to Africanists.

The second Pan-African Psychiatric Conference was convened in Dakar, Senegal, from the 5th to the 9th of March, 1968, under the cochairmanship of Professor Henri Collomb, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, University of Dakar, and Professor T. A. Lambo, Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Among the 230 participants in the conference less than ten had been present at the first Pan-African Psychiatric Conference which was held in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1961. The total number of participants at the second conference was far greater than that at the first, reflecting the rapid development of scientific interest in African psychiatry and the concomitant rapid increase of mental health facilities and psychiatric personnel working in Africa. Other differences between the two conferences were the exclusion of neurology from the program of the present conference and the extremely limited participation by British psychiatrists in the second pan-African conference, whereas the earlier conference had been largely dominated by the British school of neurology and psychiatry, prominently represented by Sir Aubrey Lewis and Lord Brain. The second Pan-African Psychiatric Conference, receiving as it did an important element of financial support from the French government through its technical assistance branch, was largely dominated by the French school of psychiatry. Senior French participants included Professor P. Castaigne, Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Paris, and Professor Roger Bastide, Professor of Social Psychiatry at the Sorbonne.

This report on American university programs on Africa is concerned with the types of programs developed during the past decade, the accomplishments of the program and their impact on Africa, the United States and elsewhere in the world. Finally, some suggestions for future action on the part of American universities toward Africa are offered.

The material for this report is based on documents and on interviews with well over a thousand informants, over half of them in Africa. Data were gathered mainly during the latter half of 1958, although new material continued to be gathered less systematically up to the moment of writing. The study was one of a world-wide series, others having been concerned with Europe and Turkey, Latin America, India, Indonesia, and Japan and Korea. The series was undertaken by The Institute of Research on Overseas Programs, Michigan State University, and supported by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Russia's interest in Africa can be traced back to the fifteenth century. Not until the eighteenth century, however, does Russian interest become significant and important, especially through the writings of M. G. Kokovtsev on Tunisia and Algeria. Although these works seemed to be based largely on Kokovtsev's personal experiences in these areas, more formal academic efforts emerged also during this era. In 1790-1791, the Russian Academy of Sciences published The Comparative Dictionary of World Languages. This publication contained information mostly on the North African languages of Arabic, Coptic, Berber, and Fulbe, and some others of the western Sudan. Under the Czarist regime, in the nineteenth century, works by Russian travelers and ethnological and biological studies by scientists appeared. Likewise linguistic studies continued apace through scholarly interest in the ancient Ethiopian language, Geez. Thus, the thrust of systematic scholarship on Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries centered on linguistics.

The triumph of the Bolsheviks, in 1917 and subsequently, greatly altered the thrust of scholarship about and interest in Africa. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to examine the institutional and disciplinary efforts of the Soviets to understand and interpret Africa in the context of their established ideology. Emphasis has been placed on the institutions of higher education involved in African studies and the types of concern each has for the continent, especially after World War II.

In late 1966 and early 1967 this writer spent four months in Angola doing research into the development of education there during the period 1878-1914. The following report is meant to give an indication of the contents of the archives there and the procedure for gaining access to them. It supplements the information available in C. R. Boxer's Portuguese Society in the Tropics (Madison, 1965), pp. 220-224.

There are indications that historians will encounter less difficulty than scholars of other disciplines in acquiring visas for Angola. Though such visas may be obtained in the United States, they are more easily acquired directly from the Portuguese International Police (PIDE) in Lisbon. While in Lisbon it would be helpful to make contact with some of the professors at the Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Política Ultramarina (Rua da Junqueira, 86). Besides providing information about any current regulations and research, they will no doubt provide letters of introduction which may prove invaluable in Angola.

The best source for historical information in Angola is the Angola Historical Archive (AHA), located in the Museum of Luanda. Permission to use it is granted by the director of the Instituto de Investigaçao Científica de Angola (IICA) located in the University (Estudos Gerais) building. The IICA, in charge of most research in the province, has been cooperative with properly identified foreign scholars.

The University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland has announced the following teaching program available to American college graduates for the course commencing in March 1964.

Bursaries: Graduates selected are offered bursaries of 350 pounds to enable them to take the one-year course leading to the Postgraduate Certificate in Education of London University. Tuition fees (50 pounds) and residence fees (115. 10.0 for the three terms) are payable to the College.

Fares: Sea and rail (or air) fares to Salisbury will be paid, and a reasonable allowance can be claimed for excess baggage.

Agreement: Graduates selected will be required to teach for two years on completion of the P.C.E. course. At the time of application for a bursary, graduates will be asked to indicate whether they wish to join the Northern Rhodesia or the Southern Rhodesia Ministry of African Education.

Salaries: Commencing salaries in Northern Rhodesia are 1, 070 pounds for both men and women. In Southern Rhodesia, the commencing salary of General graduates is 1,100 pounds for men and 915 pounds for women; good Honours graduates receive somewhat more.

The three books under review converge around state fragility, security concerns, and governance deficits as their organizing theme. This theme, which can be deployed to describe the current cadence of politics in several sub-Saharan African countries, proceeds from the nature of African states and the dynamics of political power as exemplified in the cases of Ghana and Nigeria in the three books. The first, edited by Usman Tar and Bashir Bala is a twelve-chapter anthology on rural violence in Nigeria. The second, which is edited by David Ehrhardt, David Alao, and Sani Umar, is also composed of twelve chapters and explores traditional authority and security in contemporary Nigeria. The first two works illuminate the dimensions of ecoviolence, including farmer-herder violence, banditry, terror, and other forms of conflicts in Nigeria. The third book by Barry Driscoll is focused on Ghana and concentrates on power relations in the decentralized local state. Ghana is a stable state with a subtle but deep-running powerful clientelist network that weaves its operations around party politics.

The International African Institute is organizing a seminar on the Impact of Christianity in Tropical Africa, to be held from Tuesday, April 6, to Friday, April 16, 1965, at the University of Ghana.

This will be the third in a second series of International African Seminars arranged with the aid of a grant from the Ford Foundation: it follows the completion of the first series of four seminars in the year 1959-61. These seminars are being devoted to research problems of significance for further social, economic and educational development in Africa. An important aim is to provide opportunities for research workers and other scholars holding posts in various parts of Africa to establish closer contact with each other and with their colleagues overseas, and to exchange views on problems and methods of research.

The Accra seminar will be held under the chairmanship of Professor C. G. Baëta, Head of the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Ghana. Fifteen to twenty specialists from different parts of Africa and from overseas are being invited to participate. They are asked to contribute papers and to assist in preparing a study report on some aspect of the work of the seminar. It is also hoped to be able to admit a small number of observers to the meetings of the seminar. Travel and accommodation expenses cannot be provided for observers, but as far as possible accommodation will be secured for them.

This article, the first of a series of three, is a checklist of French institutions outside of Paris which undertake research or documentation activities on the African continent. The second article will list institutions in the Paris area; and the third, unaffiliated periodicals.

Although many of the scholars and librarians interviewed expressed a growing interest in other parts of the continent, the major focus of activity remains “Afrique francophone,” i.e., the former French colonies south of the Sahara and Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. A few centers, following the lead of the Secrétariat d'Etat chargé de la Coopération, are also interested in the former Belgian colonies.

The material is based on a series of field trips to Le Havre, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, and Bordeaux between September 1965 and April 1966, extensive correspondence, and research in relevant reference works when necessary. The centers visited were without exception extremely helpful and were interested to know more about research on Africa in the United States.