In a brilliant analysis of Kalahari religion, Robin Horton has suggested that ‘Kalahari readiness to identify their unitary tamuno with the Christian God, and to give it active worship in such a guise’, may be explained by the fact that ‘Christian evangelism coincided with a growing irruption of the wider world outside into the narrow enclave of village life, and hence with a growing need to come to terms with this wider world’. Mr. Horton may not have meant to draw this conclusion, but this assessment could be read to suggest that among the Kalahari there had been no ‘active worship’ of the Creator God until Christian missionaries arrived with the European trader and consul, that it was this irruption of the outer world that gave the Kalahari villager a reason for seeking actively to worship tamuno, the missionary arriving at the opportune moment to teach him how. The following account of a Creator festival and ritual among the Nembe or Brass people, living adjacent to the Kalahari in the Niger Delta, should serve to confirm that active worship of a supreme being antedated the establishment of Christian missions. As with the Kalahari, there was a later identification of the Nembe God with the Christian, but this did not mark the beginning of active worship. The impact of the new forces has, however, resulted in the giving up of traditional modes of worship for the new Christian procedures which are thought to be more effective, and the idu festival described here has not been performed for over a decade.

Many accounts of African tribal societies lack information concerning the role of women in social control and political organization. Social control is seen largely as the prerogative of males, even in societies where matriliny serves as a basis for establishing rules of succession to positions of authority. Of course, there are exceptional cases where authority and political leadership has been vested in women, e.g. the Lobedu of the Transvaal, but generally speaking, the establishment and maintenance of law and order by legitimate authority, within a specific territory, has been considered by many anthropologists to be almost exclusively the preoccupation and franchise of the male members of a society.

The phenomena variously described as ‘nativistic’, ‘messianic’, or ‘reform movements’ have usually been very dramatic, have brought about important culture change, and have often occasioned some disquiet on the part of the authorities. One has only to think of the Ghost Dance, the Sudanese Mahdi, the Taiping Rebellion, and Mau Mau—among recent examples—to say nothing of the birth of Christianity and Islam. For these dynamic cultural innovations Anthony Wallace (1956) has suggested the term ‘revitalization movements’, of which there are thousands of documented cases throughout the world. Such movements are conscious, deliberate, and organized; they emerge out of acute social and economic dissatisfaction and as an attempt to create a more satisfactory culture.

This essay is based on a review of the documentation on tribal economies in Africa. It attempts (i) to outline reported economic development within and outside the subsistence sector in traditional African societies; (ii) to assess tribal economic attitudes disclosed; (iii) to appraise, in the light of these, probable reactions towards further economic development with reference to the technological, industrial, and commercial dimensions of urbanization.

In 1825, António Candido Pedroso Gamitto, a cadet aged nineteen in one of the Lisbon regiments, was sent to Africa as an ensign. He himself was well aware of how this course of events interfered with his education:

At a period of life when a youth who is his own master and not lacking in means dedicates himself to studies, that is what happened to me. As I grew older I realised that I had lost the best time and opportunity for study; and when I wanted to remedy this it was already too late for in Africa there are no teachers, nor even libraries, and it was difficult to have enough books sent from Europe.

Lamenting my lost time, I was obliged to content myself with what instruction I could obtain through reading, and this was done at an advanced age in a life which seventeen years in the African climate had ruined.

In saying these things I am speaking on my own behalf and I do so with the sole object of procuring the indulgence of my readers (vol. i, p. 22).

Statements such as this reveal immediately that Gamitto, even if he lacked formal education, had an ingenuous insight into his own limitations, and it may have been this quality that made him a successful ethnographer.