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 would like, first of all, to express my profound sympathy to Mrs. Ida Brown and the children of my former mentor, Professor William O. Brown. Also to the Center and this our University for the loss of its founder Director of the African Studies Program and pioneer scholar in the field of African studies. I feel very honoured indeed that I have been invited to give this memorial lecture.

I first met Professor William Brown in September, 1951 when, as part of a tour of European centres of learning with programmes on Africa, he came to the Department of Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University. As the Professor and the lecturer in the Department were both away, it fell to me to show him round the Department and talk about our work; but, as I had only just been appointed to the Department, we spoke more about Africa than about the Department's programme.

This acquaintance was deepened into a lasting friendship when, in the Spring of 1953, I had the privilege of entertaining him as my house guest when he visited Sierra Leone. In the evenings we spent together in Freetown, I got to know Bill Brown; I got to know him as a man dedicated to and genuinely interested in the advancement of Africa. His was not merely an antiquarian interest; nor was he only interested in the kinship structures and anthropological tidbits of the African societies. He saw the Africans as personalities, as human beings, pursuing the same goal as others, and wanting for themselves the same rewards out of life. Those were the colonial days but, even in those days, Bill Brown was already deeply interested in the development of the African countries into viable nation states. It is not surprising, therefore, that this Center, under his leadership as its first Director, did not develop any narrow parochial interest, but studied Africa from a broader dimension, giving equal importance to historical, economic, political, as well as sociological factors in the development of Africa from traditionalism to modernity.

All of my work in the last fifteen years has been influenced by my association with Bill Brown. But it is perhaps especially appropriate that this piece be included in this tribute to him, for it is the first paper which I wrote after joining him, and it focused on what was always of prime concern to him: the clarification of concepts. I still recall some of our discussion when I showed him the first draft: he was with it, at least insofar as the limits of space permitted development of the topic. Perhaps I remember this because this paper was in a way an earnest of what my stewardship in his institution should be.

The paper was read at the American Anthropological Association annual meetings in Detroit, December 1954, in the Symposium on Economic Factors in Stability and Change. I made no effort then to submit it for publication in any of the appropriate journals because I had taken time out from writing my dissertation to do the paper and returned my attention to that urgent task (it was also my first year of teaching a survey course on African ethnography), and the paper was soon out of mind. Now, after a lapse of time, the question arises, should it be brought up to date? Two quite different things can be implied by this question. First, should more recent data be adduced? To do so would be to write a new paper which would have none of this one's association with W. O. Brown. Furthermore, this paper now has a certain historical value as a contemporary description of some aspects of late colonial conditions. Second, should the interpretation and conclusion be modified in the light of more recent writings? I feel that both can stand. Therefore, no change has been made in the text.

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.

On the evening of March 20, 1828, a group of free men of color organized a society that had as its purpose “the mental improvement of the people of color in the neighborhood of Philadelphia.” This organization was to be known as the “Reading Room Society.” Immediately a library was established and the librarian instructed to lend books to members for no longer than a week. Books were to be withdrawn or returned at the society's weekly meeting. Freedoms Journal, the earliest Negro newspaper, the first issue of which appeared in March, 1827, and Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation, an antislavery publication, were among the first works circulated. In May, 1833, the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons appealed for “such books and other donations as will facilitate the object of this institution.” By 1838, this library had 600 volumes. Since Negroes could not enjoy the same privileges as whites in libraries, they established for themselves some 45 literary societies between 1828 and 1846 in several large cities, mainly in the East, most of which maintained reading rooms and circulating libraries.

As a consequence of these activities many Negroes were stimulated to assemble private libraries. In 1838, in Philadelphia and nearby cities, there were 8333 volumes in private libraries. In New York City, David Ruggles, a Negro abolitionist, pamphleteer, and printer, was probably the first Negro book collector. He maintained a circulating library and made antislavery and colonization publications available to many readers. He charged a fee of less than twenty-five cents a month for renting books relating to the Negro and slavery.

This is a two-year survey of bibliographical work completed in the Republic of South Africa. Recent developments in current and retrospective national bibliography are outlined. The South African National Bibliography has been mechanised and good progress has been made with the retrospective volume for 1926-1958. Attention is drawn to the State Library's work on the documentation of banned books. Catalogues of important collections completed are briefly described, and recent developments in the field of periodical lists and indexes are outlined. Special attention is paid in the review to Africana indexes and bibliographies. The author concludes that despite lacunae which remain to be filled, the bibliographical scene in South Africa is satisfactory and full of promise.

This review, like its forerunner covers a two-year period and is based on information derived from a questionnaire sent to the major libraries of South Africa. The interim period has also been covered to some extent by a number of informal bibliographical progress reports published in the South African Library Association Newsletter.

Ever since the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, 1956, Soviet interest in the countries of Africa has steadily increased. This interest has manifested itself in a growing number of books and articles published in the Soviet Union dealing with the peoples and problems of the “Dark Continent.” A prolific contributor to this body of literature has been the noted Soviet Africanist I.I. Potekhin, whose works first appeared in 1932 and continued until his death in 1964. Potekhin survived and continued to publish during the repressive Stalinist years of the thirties, post-World War II Stalin-Zhdanov period of foreign policy, the years of transition, and the period of reassessment and innovation in Third World policy under Khrushchov. This general review of the life and works of I. I. Potekhin is intended to provide information and insights which may prove of value to students of Soviet policy toward the countries of Africa.

Born in 1903 to peasant parents, Ivan Izasimovich Potekhin worked in a Siberian factory at the age of fourteen. From 1921 to 1929 he attended a provincial school and was extremely active in local party activities, becoming a Communist Party member in 1922 at the age of nineteen.

In 1930, following the 1928 Comintern decision to opt for an “independent native republic” in South Africa, Potekhin was sent to study in the African studies program of the University of Leningrad. This opportunity was probably a result of Potekhin's Siberian successes as a party worker, and the party's need for active members with some knowledge of Africa. Potekhin's main area of interest, as reflected in the majority of his works published between 1932 and 1935, was, not unexpectedly, South Africa, more specifically, the problems of class structure and of agriculture. He contributed sixteen pieces to various publications during this period. Six of these were in English and appeared in the Negro Worker (Hamburg). Interestingly enough, he frequently used the pseudonym John Izotla and on one occasion, H. Jordon. Potekhin spent the next several years preparing his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1939, on the agrarian relations of the eastern Bantu.

In March 1962, France and Algeria, parties to seven years of conflict, agreed upon the need to destroy an illusion. For more than a century Algeria had been regarded as an integral part of metropolitan France, despite the patently non-Gallic character of its indigenous population. Bloody insurrection and the realization in France that the Mother Country could not undo the wrongs of previous generations brought the illusion into disrepute; it was interred in July 1962 with the acquisition of full independent status by Algeria. This separation restored France to a reasonable semblance of well-being; Algeria, on the other hand, suffered a far less happy fate.

At independence Algeria found itself on the threshold of renewed conflict. The principals in this second act of violence were not the European settlers (colons) who had dominated Algeria's political life for generations as baronial overlords. The vast majority of settlers, approximately 850,000 out of a total of one million, had scuttled and run out of fear of vengeful retribution by Algeria's nine million Muslims. Nor were the half-million French soldiers remaining on Algerian soil participants in the new drama; the overwhelming majority were anxious to depart this melancholy land without molestation. The principals were the founders and leaders of the Algerian revolution, men who, at the hour of triumph, fell into disagreement over the distribution of power and ignored a more compelling imperative - - the rehabilitation of a wartorn society.