It is useful to review existing ethnographic writings from time to time in the light of advancing theory. The data considered here are contained in an impressive body of first-rate material collected in accordance with the best descriptive methods on which French ethnographers rely. This paper is in no sense a summary of the data collected by the various Missions Griaule; it is an ‘analytical commentary’ dealing only with the social system of the Dogon of Sanga that a structural analysis of the material reveals. Its purpose is to direct attention to some problems of structure for which further investigation is needed. It can most usefully be read side by side with the principal works on this people so far published.

Most of the problems of Nyanja orthography are simple and capable of a straightforward solution. What is needed is a revision and clarification of the existing rules and usages rather than any basic reform. The need for such revision has long been felt in Nyasaland as well as in Northern Rhodesia.

Les populations du cercle de Natitingou sont sans doute, au Dahomey, celles qui ont été le moins profondément affectées par l'influence européenne. Au moins l'apparance extérieure de leur vie a-t-elle fort peu changé. On les presente comme un cas extrême de résistance aux influences étrangères, et c'est en partie exact. Leurs contacts avec les cultures africaines voisines ont été assez réduits dans la période historique récente, et il n'en est pas autrement, jusqu'ici, avec la culture européenne. Mais alors que nul peuple voisin n'avait réussi à s'installer chez eux pour tenter de leur imposer une administration centralisée, les Européens l'ont fait. Ils demeurent, en tant que groupes, réticents devant ces formes nouvelles. Mais les individus ont vite recouru à l'administration et à la justice nouvelles lorsque leurs solutions semblaient permettre, dans tels cas particuliers, de faire échec à l'ordre ancien qui allait à l'encontre de leurs intérêts. Ainsi se sont produitès les premières failles dans la structure traditionnelle. Elles se sont étendues de proche en proche et l'action des conceptions et des solutions nouvelles, par leur seule présence virtuelle, a déjà été grande. Dans le domaine du mariage, en particulier, on peut en constater les effets étendus. C'est l'étude du problème du consentement, familial et individuel, au mariage, qui sera abordée ici dans un de ces groupes, habitant les environs de Natitingou. On verra que l'équilibre très délicat des institutions anciennes pouvait être aisément bouleversé, et l'a été déjà.

Les formes mêmes du mariage et les règles de l'attribution des enfants seront seulement décrites dans la mesure où leur connaissance est nécessaire à notre propos.

To give the first Lugard Memorial Lecture upon Lord Lugard himself is at once a task of great honour and of great difficulty. I need not explain to this audience why it is an honour: we know that we are here to recall the life and work of a great man, who was a creator of our Institute and for nearly nineteen years (1926-45) its Chairman. But the difficulty does need some explanation. I must attempt at least a preliminary evaluation of a life that was immense in the period of time covered and in the range, both in space and in character, of its activities. Yet I cannot assume that you have a full knowledge of that life since its story has yet to be told. Some here knew him in his later years; there are, indeed, some still alive who worked with him in the vigorous days of his prime. There is also his own vivid account of four of his most adventurous early years, and there is the impressive documentation of his governorships. But there are large areas in his youth and even in his manhood which are still quite unknown. And when these have been explored the parts have still to be put together to form a biographical whole. Here is my difficulty: I cannot, in the time we have this evening, attempt both to tell the story, even in outline, and to comment. Yet how can the story and the comment be divorced? I must attempt a compromise. I must offer you something not much more than a chronology of his life, and tell you a little—and how little it must be—of some of his earlier, less known achievements; and then, assuming your knowledge of his later life, offer, in all humility, my first provisional evaluation. I emphasize provisional because my biography is only half drafted and there is much, especially between his leaving Nigeria in 1906 and the latest part of his life when I knew him, that is still, for me, a subject for research.