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.

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.

The following is a list of all known theses on African subjects accepted by Howard University up to and including June 1968. The earliest is dated 1936. The main sources of information were Howard University Library, whose lists are incomplete, and individual departments, most of which have inadequate records. There may, therefore, be omissions and inaccuracies. The arrangement here follows as closely as possible that in United States and Canadian Publications on Africa in 1965, Hoover Institution, Bibliographical Series, XXXIV, Stanford University, 1967. Theses are listed in alphabetical order by country, and, under each country, in alphabetical order of the writers'names.

It is hoped that other African Studies Centers will follow the lead of this article and make available lists of theses produced by their graduate students.

The literature and documentation relating to the study of colonial Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) is quite considerable, and is increasingly being augmented by the annual output of monographs and articles, by the continuous unearthing of private collections and papers, and by governmental archival records gradually becoming available for public inspection. The purpose of this essay is to provide a guide to some of the more important works and material concerning selected aspects of Malawi's political history during the colonial period, presenting the literature in terms of the comparative analysis of political change in colonial Africa. Research work in progress is also cited, and some of the various gaps that require to be filled are mentioned.

The study of political and social change in colonial Malawi must take into account both the indigenous society and the external forces that have stimulated change, as well as the actual process of development. It is therefore necessary to have, first, some understanding of those features of the traditional environment and historical setting of precolonial Malawi which have a bearing on subsequent developments. Two useful discussions of the patterns of intertribal relations before colonization are offered by M. G. MARWICK (1963) and J. G. PIKE (1965). CLYDE MITCHELL (1960) provides a good general sketch of the African peoples and cultures, while another brief account of the tribal background appears in MARY TEW (1950). More detailed ethnographical studies relating to specific tribal groups are contained in the writings of J. CLYDE MITCHELL (1956), MARGARET READ (1956), J. M. SCHOFFELEERS (1966), J. VAN VELSEN (1964), and GODFREY WILSON (1939). These last five works also provide brief discussions of intertribal relations, the slave trade, and the early contacts of European explorers and missionaries with the African peoples. Two further important treatments of early race relations in Central Africa are the industrious volumes of A. J. HANNA (1956) and H. ALAN C. CAIRNS (1965), which are based on a vast variety of well known and obscure published sources. But, in the absence of African-derived records the story remains European centered, although the collection and assessment of African oral tradition should do much to redress the balance. For a critical analysis of Dr. Hanna's approach and interpretations, including a wealth of further material and insight, see the fine long essay by GEORGE SHEPPERSON (1958).

American scholars doing research in African literature sometimes have trouble locating the books they need. It is easy enough to get one's hands on African literary works published in England or America, but how does one get hold of material published in Africa -- e.g., Onitsha market chapbooks, early Lovedale or Morija press publications, or works in vernacular languages published by literature bureaus and small mission presses? Fortunately, for the older titles once can search through several published library catalogs -- Library of Congress (1942-1952), UCLA (1963), Berkeley (1963), the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library (1962), the African collection in the Moorland Foundation at Howard University (1958), Northwestern University's African collection (1962) -- and for the newer titles one can consult the National Union Catalog or the Joint Acquisitions List of Africana issued since 1961 by the Northwestern University Library. However, because these reference works do not list the older titles which libraries have acquired in recent years, one can never be certain that a particular African literary work is unavailable in the United States.

In the summer 1963 issue of Africana Newsletter (pp. 38–39), I reported on the then sad state of public records in the Gambia. Since that time the Gambian government has acted to preserve and catalogue the materials which prior to independence had been so carelessly handled. This reconstruction was made possible by a substantial gift by Nigeria on the occasion of independence. With these funds a trained Library Records Officer, J. M. Smyth, was brought from the Colonial Office to Gambia. From November 1965 to February 1966 he planned and did the preliminary work necessary for a functioning archive. Before he left Gambia the bulk of collecting, sorting, and cataloguing had been done and the framework for future growth had been created (see Smyth’s Report, Sessional no. 10, 1966).

In October 1968, the University of Ghana commenced an extensive program in African archaeology. Graduate students from overseas are eligible to enroll for courses at the University, though no scholarships are presently available for non-Ghanaians.

The Department of Archaeology of the University of Ghana was established in 1951 under the professorship of A. W. Lawrence. It presently has a senior teaching establishment of four together with a curator and two senior research fellows under the chairmanship of Professor Merrick Posnansky. The Department has a small specialist library, a museum, laboratory, dark room, workshops, and a team of trained technical staff.

Most of the Department's research work is normally conducted in the dry season from November to May each year. In the past Professor Oliver Davies, author of the Quaternary of the Guinea Coast (1964) and West Africa before the Europeans (1967), conducted extensive fieldwork relating to the Stone Age and neolithic periods of Ghana's past and made large surface collections from all parts of Ghana which provide a rich topographical source of information on archaeology in Ghana. The Department has conducted extensive excavations in Ghana and its research fellows are presently engaged in writing up the results of the Volta Basin Research Project, in which more than thirty sites have been excavated since 1963 in advance of the formation of a large lake consequent upon the construction of the Volta Dam. The majority of the excavated sites have been of Iron Age date. In September 1968, Mr. C. Flight commenced a new season of excavations at “Neolithic” rock shelter sites at Kintampo, where occupations and burials dated to the middle of the second millennium B.C. were uncovered in 1967. Other excavations conducted during 1968 included work by Mr. D. Calvocoressi at the funerary terracotta site of Ahinsan and by Mr. Duncan Mathewson at the seventeenth-century A.D. Gonja site of Jakpasere. In 1969 a training excavation will be conducted at Elmina on the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century A.D. town in the vicinity of the Portuguese castle.

It is a well-known saying that Africa begins at the Pyrenees. What is also obvious is that due to historical, cultural, and geographical reasons, Spain constitutes a unique bridge between Africa and Europe. Within Spain itself, as it advances toward the south, one can appreciate how the north of Africa gradually penetrates into Europe. Hence the African root in Spain is a logical consequence of the geographical reality and the evolution of social historic facts, which throughout the centuries have strongly related Spain and Africa, particularly its northwestern regions; so that when Africa is mentioned in Spain the Maghreb often comes to mind. For the same reason Arabic and Islamic studies occupy a privileged position in Spanish Africanism.

Historically speaking, since the end of the nineteenth century, coinciding with the last impulse in exploration and delimitation of areas under European influence in the sub-Saharan continent, an Africanist movement in research and study has always been manifest in Spanish cultural life. Four definite phases can be traced in its development.

1. The first phase, dating from the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one, is characterized by deep social and political instability (the Spanish-American War, the civil wars, etc.). The ever increasing gap between West Europe and Spain, and the consequent feeling of isolation, created a favorable “Africanist atmosphere” in intellectual milieux. In that time, institutions such as the Real Sociedad Geográfica or the Liga Africanista Española, to mention the most important, did away with the first major obstacle: the emphasis on scientific dedication to Hispanic-American and Arab studies. The above mentioned institutions promoted with success a systematic work in widespread African investigation.