The basic operation in the comparative method is an arrangement of social or cultural conditions observed among existing peoples into a series that is then taken to represent a process of evolution. This procedure has been used to depict the whole sweep of human history, a limited period of development, or the growth of a particular social or cultural element or group of elements. The method has been applied most commonly, perhaps, in a search for origins of specific cultural items.

The existence of a widespread religious phenomenon in Africa appearing under many names, in corporate manifestations as new groups and in individual form as new prophets, is evidenced in many ways. Even the most casual observer driving through a large African town cannot fail to notice the succession of exotic names on sign boards or to meet a white-robed religious procession, and if he tries to trace the bell-ringing, drumming, and chanting that fill the night air for hours on end the chances are that he will be led to one of these sign boards and to some humble structure filled with tireless worshippers. Occasionally the bizarre behaviour of a prophet or “sect’ provides material for the journalist seeking sensation, or leads to an appearance in the police courts, or even to military action, as in Northern Rhodesia in 1964 against the Lenshina movement. Strange churches apply for membership of Christian councils, and ministers and missionaries are perplexed when some of their members secure spiritual help from a semi-literate prophet, or transfer their allegiance to an unknown church with an outlandish name.

In recent years, American scholars have begun to search for the uniqueness of the American institution of Negro slavery, by contrasting it with the experience of the other colonizing nations of Europe in the New World. Even as far back as the 17th century, a sharp difference in slave institutions was noted between English, French and Spanish possessions, yet few historians until recently have attempted to analyze the causes and consequences of these distinctions.

In writing his article, Mr. Klein clearly intended his particular evidence about the influence of different religions to be taken as a proof of general conclusions which would explain the different characteristics of Negro slavery in different parts of the Americas. Quite early, he suggests that his aim is to assess previous comparative studies of American slavery empirically “by subjecting to detailed analysis the slave systems of two colonial powers in the New World … through detailing the operation of one crucial aspect of the slave system, the relationship between infidel Negro and Christian Church, in two highly representative colonies, those of Cuba and Virginia” (p. 295).

A major problem in the civic integration of new states is the quickening of “primordial attachments” based on ties of blood, race, language, region, religion or custom. These attachments give rise to separatist, irredentist or factional groupings whose claims to recognition and autonomy cut across the claims of civic unity based on a common national territory.

In 1957, when William Langer called the attention of professional historians to the “urgently needed deepening of … historical understanding” by means of the application of modern psychoanalytic theory to the problems of history, he seemed to have in mind the use of these constructs in the writing of biography and for the analysis of obviously irrational movements. In half praise, a critic found it interesting that this suggestion was not extended to the “study of the psychic foundations of civilization and the historical process as a whole”. While encompassing less grand designs than these in this paper, I would like to add a further, but simpler, extension of my own. I would like to use psychoanalytic understanding in an attempt to shed light upon some aspects of a well-known problem in American historiography, the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner.