Schapera, I. Should Anthropologist Be Historians

Should Anthropologists be Historians?
Author(s): I. Schapera
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,
Vol. 92, No. 2 (Jul. - Dec., 1962), pp. 143-156
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2844255
Accessed: 22-04-2017 14:24 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.157 on Sat, 22 Apr 2017 14:24:30 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Should Anthropologists be Historians?
Presidential Address
I. SCHAPERA, F.B.A.
IN HIS MARETT LECTURE, delivered at Oxford in I950 and substantially repeated in his
B.B.C. talks on 'Social Anthropology' the year after, Professor Evans-Pritchard criti-
cized certain features of what he called 'the functional or organismic theory of society'
then dominating British social anthropology. It assumed, he said, that 'societies are
natural systems or organisms which have a necessary course of development that can be
reduced to general principles or laws'; it also claimed that to understand the functioning
of social institutions the person studying them need not know anything about their
history. The assumption he dismissed with scorn, the claim he considered an 'absurdity'.
Social anthropology, he contended, is in fact 'much more like certain branches of
historical scholarship ... than it is to any of the natural sciences'; it should therefore
'proceed along much the same lines as do social history or the history of institutions',
and seek not 'scientific laws' but 'significant patterns' (I950, pp. II9-23; I95ib, pp.
57-60).
The lecture aroused considerable interest and led to a lively controversy in the pages
of MAN and elsewhere. Alleging that some comments showed he had 'run into a bad
patch of anti-historical prejudice', Evans-Pritchard returned to the same theme last
year. In a lecture on 'Anthropology and History', delivered in London, Manchester, and
Paris, he again condemned the so-called 'functionalist' view that 'we can understand
the structure of a society and the functioning of its institutions without knowing any-
thing about its history', and he again suggested that social anthropologists should model
themselves instead on those sociological historians 'who are primarily interested in social
institutions, in mass movements and great cultural changes, and who seek regularities,
tendencies, types, and typical sequences; and always within a restricted historical and
cultural context' (1 96 I, pp. I, 3, I 0) .
As he is universally held to be one of the two leading figures in present-day British
social anthropology, whatever he says about the subject must necessarily command
attention. I propose therefore to discuss with you some of the issues he raises, notably
about the anthropological use of history.
He himself has not always believed social anthropology to be 'closer to certain kinds
of history than to the natural sciences' (I96I, p. I). In I948, for example, he stated in
his inaugural lecture that social anthropology 'uses the methods of the natural, besides'
those of the historical, sciences, seeking to formulate sociological laws of a general kind
and not only to trace particular sequences of events'; and, he continued, 'use of the
methods of the natural sciences implies that societies must be conceived of as systems
analogous to the systems postulated by these sciences' (I948, PP. 5, 8; cf. 1937b, pp. 7':
I43
144 I. SCHAPERA
73). Only two years later he was criticizing his colleagues for having said the very same
thing; in his B.B.C. talks he even declared, 'the postulate ... that social systems are
natural systems which can be reduced to sociological laws, with the corollary that the
history of them has no scientific relevance, ... seems to me to be doctrinaire positivism
at its worst' (I 95 ib, p. 57) .
Why he had by then changed his views he does not say; in his Marett Lecture, and
later pronouncements, he simply ignores what he had written previously in this con-
nexion. He seems at the same time to have ignored the writings of those whom he now
condemns. For example, he describes both Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski as
'extremely hostile to history' (Evans-Pritchard I96I, p. i). Yet it was Radcliffe-Brown
who had in I93I familiarized British social anthropologists with the concepts of syn-
chronic and diachronic study of cultures. The former is concerned with a culture only as
it is 'at any given moment of its history'; the latter is concerned 'with the ways in which
cultures change', and, says Radcliffe-Brown, its data are derived partly from personal
observation of changes taking place over a period of years, and partly from historical
records, 'wherever we have records that are sufficiently reliable and complete' (Rad-
cliffe-Brown I 3ib, pp. 76-7, 84). 'The great value of history for a science of society',
said elsewhere (Radcliffe-Brown I94I, p. 85), 'is that it gives us materials for the study
of how social systems change'. Similarly, in his book on the Andaman Islanders (first
published in I922), he both summarized what was then known of the people's history
and in discussing their social organization repeatedly commented on changes due to the
establishment of an Indian penal settlement on the islands in I858 (I933, pp. 5-I I,
I 7-20, etc.).
What he certainly did reject-because it is 'conjectural' and not 'historical'-was
'ethnology', i.e. the 'hypothetical reconstruction of the past history' of those peoples for
whom 'we have almost no historical data' (Radcliffe-Brown I923, pp. 4-5). Such
'speculative history', he said, 'cannot give us results of any real importance for the
understanding of human life and culture' (I933, p. vii). But this view alone is hardly
good evidence of 'extreme hostility' to history; Evans-Pritchard also believes that
ethnological speculations 'have limited significance for social anthropologists' (195ib
P- 5)-
The accusation is more justified in regard to Malinowski. His failure to investigate
the influence of European contacts on Trobriand society he himself afterwards described
as 'perhaps the most serious shortcoming of my whole anthropological research in
Melanesia'. From about I929 onwards, however, he enthusiastically advocated what he
called 'the anthropology of the changing native'. 'To neglect its study', he said, 'is
definitely to fail in one of the most important tasks of Anthropology'. He nevertheless
believed that such a study could be made with no more knowledge of the tribal past than
what persists in present-day 'culture and tradition'; nor, unless I misrepresent him, did
he even think it necessary to investigate systematically the history of European influences
on the people concerned (1935, vol. i, pp. 480-I; 1938, pp. xxv-xxxii).
His students, by and large, did not share his views about the relative insignificance
of historical reconstruction. Firth's Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori (I929)
describes the pre-European economic organization of the Maori, and also contains a
historical chapter on changes due to European influence; We, The Tikopia (1936)
SHOULD ANTHROPOLOGISTS BE HISTORIANS? 145
contains a similar chapter entitled 'adjustment to civilization'. Hogbin's book on the

Solomon Islands, Experiments in Civilization (I939), has a historical introduction, fou
chapters on 'the past', and six on 'the present'. Of works about Africa the following,
among others, both record the history of the people studied and use historical data to
explain recent changes in various aspects of social life: Wilson, The Constitution of Ngonde
(I939); Richards, Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia (I939); Nadel, A Black
Byzantium (1 942); Fortes, The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi (I945); Kuper, An
African Aristocracy (I 947); and many of my own writings from I928 onwards. All these
products of the 'functional' school had been published at least three years before the
Marett Lecture was given, and they certainly do not reveal a belief that the history of
social systems 'has no scientific relevance'.
Nor was their approach characteristic only of people trained directly by Radcliffe-
Brown or Malinowski. Other functionalists who worked for example in Southern
Africa, such as Hunter (I 936), Gluckman (I 940, 1942), and the Kriges (I 943), did
work of the same kind. The tribes they studied had been so greatly influenced by con-
tact with Europeans that to ignore the resulting changes would have led to an incom-
plete and distorted view of present-day social life; and study of the changes always
included study of when, how, and why, they had come about.
Perhaps I may be allowed to elaborate on this by quoting from a paper I published in
1939, which indicates more fully the reasons why consideration of what Evans-Pritchard
calls the 'social present' demanded, and received, consideration of the 'social past':
'There was a time, not so long ago, when the anthropologist doing-fieldwork in South
Africa concentrated upon what he regarded as the truly Native elements of Bantu
culture, and attempted as far as possible to reconstruct a picture of tribal life on this
basis alone. But, as we all know, Native life has altered considerably since the coming of
the White Man. The traditional manners and customs of the Bantu no longer survive
intact, but have been modified, in varying degrees, by the combined influence of
administrative action, missionary teaching, education, and above all the introduction
the European economic system. As a result, many Natives have been divorced from
tribal rule and tradition, and approximate to the European in standards of living,
occupation, and outlook. Others, still the great majority, retain much of their ancient
culture, but are participating to an increasing extent in the new civilization. Even in the
most "backward" tribal areas one generally finds European magistrates, missionaries,
teachers, and labour recruiters, all symptoms of the new order, and although the
influence they have exercised in the direction of cultural transformation may at times
have been small, it is nevertheless everywhere perceptible. There is hardly a single
Native tribe at the present time which can be considered completely untouched by
European civilization....
'Fortunately, anthropological aims and methods have also changed. The modern
field worker in South Africa studies the life of a Native tribe as it exists at the mome
his visit, and in doing so gives due prominence to elements taken over from the Euro-
peans. He studies the activities, influence and personality of the missionary, the Native
commissioner, the trader, and the labour recruiter, just as he studies those of the chief
and the magician. Where Christianity has been introduced, he investigates its organiza-
tion, doctrines, ritual, and other manifestations, just as he investigates any other form of
146 I. SCHAPERA
religion found in the tribe. He treats the trading store, agricultural show, and cattle dip
as features of the modern economic life, the school as part of the routine educational
development of children, and the administration as part of the existing political system.
He tries to ascertain how far the traditional Native institutions persist, not only in
memory but also in practice; but in addition he tries to ascertain how widespread is the
adoption of European elements of different kinds, what sections of the tribe have been
most affected through contact with Europeans, and to what extent European practices
and beliefs have become substitutes or merely additions....
'The modern anthropologist, however, goes further in his researches. He is no longer
content merely to describe what he finds. He also analyses the culture as it now exists,
and tries to determine why contact with the Europeans has modified Native life along
certain lines, and why the Natives have reacted in certain ways to the new influences
bearing upon them. He studies the history of contact between them and the Europeans,
the order and manner in which different aspects of European civilization were intro-
duced into their lives, the policies that governed the relations of the Government,
missions, and others towards them, the influence of the personal factor in promoting or
hindering the acceptance of new beliefs and institutions, and the attitude of the Natives
themselves towards all these innovations. Basing his conclusions upon investigations of
this kind, the anthropologist tries to explain why some Native institutions seem to have
disappeared completely or lost their vitality, while others still survive, and why on the
other hand some innovations were readily accepted, while others were resisted or
rejected' (Schapera I939, pp. 9I-3).
What I have just said implies that the anthropologist must necessarily supplement
his study of modern tribal life with a study of tribal history. The sources available to him
for that purpose are of several kinds. He may himself visit the people more than once,
and can thus observe and inquire personally into changes that have taken place since he
was there previously. Firth, for example, stayed for a year in Tikopia in i928-9, and
went back for several months in I952; Evans-Pritchard was among the Nuer in I930,
I 93 I , I 935, and I 936; and I myself visited the Kgatla annually from I 929 to I 934 and
the Ngwato (among others) in I935, I940, and I943. However, successive visits such as
these, especially at lengthy intervals, are still fairly rare. As sources of information they
are in any case useful only for the relatively brief period since the anthropologist started
his local fieldwork.
For all that happened previously, and even for much of what happened during and
between his visits, he must inevitably depend on other sources. These include, first,
documentary material, both published and unpublished. The nature and extent of that
material will of course vary according to such factors as the time when contact with
Europeans was first established, the accessibility of the region, and the kinds of Euro-
peans visiting it or settling there. For Bechuanaland, the area of my own fieldwork, it is
both plentiful and extremely diverse. Published sources, for example, date back to I803.
Among them are the accounts of many travellers, publications of missionary societies,
reminiscences and biographies of European officials and missionaries, 'blue books' and
'white books' of official correspondence, reports of Government Departments and special
commissions, proceedings of local Advisory Councils, biographies of tribal chiefs,
newspapers and other periodicals, and compilations by professional and amateur
SHOULD ANTHROPOLOGISTS BE HISTORIANS? I47
historians. Unpublished sources similarly include official records preserved in Govern-

ment, missionary, and tribal, archives; unofficial records such as journals and letters of
missionaries, travellers, and others, some of which are still in private possession; and
manuscript collections of tribal traditions made by literate Africans. This material is
written not only in various European languages (notably English, German, French,
Dutch, and Afrikaans) but also, and increasingly, in the local vernacular. By its very
nature, moreover, much of it cannot be seen by the anthropologist while he is in the
field; if genuinely anxious to study it all, he may also have to work in libraries and
archives at several different centres in both Africa and Europe.
For the period of European contact documentary material is the main source of
historical information. But unwritten sources are also available, most of which can be
tapped only in the field. They include the reminiscences of elderly natives, both about
persons figuring prominently in tribal history (such as chiefs, Government officers, and
missionaries) and about events they have themselves witnessed. The Kgatla, for
example, were at war with the Kwena in i875-82, and also fought against the Boers in
the Anglo-Boer War of i899-i902; and in the early 'thirties I was able to get much
information about those wars from men who had taken part in one or both of them.
European residents of long standing, such as missionaries and traders, can often also tell
much, say about local politics, that will not be found in the written records. Such
evidence must of course be assessed critically according to the informant's status, experi-
ence, and character. But that applies equally to written sources, whether published or
not-which is one reason why I have thought it worth while producing annotated
editions of hitherto unpublished journals and letters of Robert Moffat and David
Livingstone, to supplement and occasionally correct what those two famous missionaries
had said in their books (i842 and I857 respectively).
Personal reminiscences, however abundant and reliable, will seldom provide infor-
mation for more than, say, the past forty or fifty years. For earlier periods the main
unwritten source is oral tradition, which is also the only direct source for the period
before written records begin. Tswana traditions, though not as extensive as those
reported from some other parts of Africa, usually take us back to the first half of the
eighteenth century. Even for relatively recent periods they often contain much detail
not found in the written records. The two, when dealing with the same episode or
incident, sometimes also differ widely. For example, the traditions of the Kaa about
their flight from the Ngwato to the Kwena in I849, of the Kwena about the attack
made upon them by the Boers in i852, and of the Kgatla about their battles and raids
against the Boers during the Anglo-Boer War, are by no means identical with accounts
given by contemporary European observers and participants. That is not surprising if
we remember the bias characteristic of many European history books, especially when
written for use in schools. Tribal traditions do not profess to give a complete and im-
partial account of the events to which they relate. They describe those events as visual-
ized by one particular people or dynasty, who usually tend to represent them as
favourably as possible; they reflect what living persons think about the past, and often
serve mainly to justify existing social relations. Consequently they cannot be accepted at
face value, but must be handled as cautiously as any other source of historical informa-
tion. I need not here enlarge upon this, as the role of tradition in tribal life, and the
148 I. SCHAPERA
proble.m of its evaluation, have recently been discussed in detail by such writers as
Barnes (I95I), Cunnison (I95I, I957), Firth (I96I), and Vansina (I960).
If what I have just said is true of traditions of relatively recent date that can be
checked by written records, we may reasonably conclude that any tradition or series of
traditions for the pre-European period is as likely to be one-sided or suspect. The only
satisfactory method of dealing with this, in a country where we have many different
tribes and where all tribes have a population of mixed origins, is to collect and compare
carefully the traditions both of all the different ethnic groups within a tribe and of all the
different tribes that have been in contact with one another. That should at least ensure a
more balanced and comprehensive account than can be obtained from the traditions of
one group or tribe alone. The anthropologist working within a single tribe may be able
to collect the traditions of all its component groups, but unless he also has available the
traditions of neighbouring tribes his historical reconstruction must inevitably be
defective. My own work in Bechuanaland, for example, has shown the value of such
cross-checking in dealing with, say, tribal splits or inter-tribal wars.
Oral traditions, in any event, may not go back very far. For most Tswana tribes, as
already mentioned, little detail is available about events earlier than the first half of the
eighteenth century. Beyond this little of value can be ascertained, apart from accounts
of tribal origins and the names of ancient chiefs, with occasional bits of information
about their wars and migrations. Such information is nevertheless also of sociological
significance, for example in regard to the reasons for tribal splits or dynastic disputes,
and as giving the now accepted versions for the pre-eminence of certain families or the
inferior social position of certain subject communities.
With the aid of these and other sources, which I have described more fully elsewhere
(i962, pp. I I-I4), the anthropologist can usually obtain at least some information that
will help him to explain the development and present characteristics of the social system
he observes. There are other reasons, too, why he should record and publish what he can
of tribal history, especially from unwritten sources.
As an ethnographer, he is in any case expected to make a comprehensive study of the
people's culture, including their historical traditions. Again, as Lord Bryce told Junod in
I895, thereby diverting him from entomology to ethnography, future generations of
natives may themselves welcome such information. ' "How thankful should we be, we
men of the XIXth century" ', said the distinguished statesman (as Junod calls him),
' "if a Roman had taken the trouble fully to investigate the habits of our Celtic fore-
fathers! This work has not been done, and we shall always remain ignorant of things
which would have interested us so much!"' (Junod I927, vol. i, p. i). The same point
is made by Evans-Pritchard (195 ib, pp. I22-3): 'We would ourselves have been r
and deeply grateful, had some Roman anthropologist bequeathed to us an exact and
detailed description of the social life of our Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors. One day
native peoples all over the world may be glad to have just such a record of the life of
their forbears written by impartial students whose ambition is to give as full and as true
an account as they can.'
Anthropologists of the future may equally regret the opportunities missed by their
predecessors. In I846 Livingstone wrote of the Tswana, who had recently suffered
greatly at the hands of the MaTebele and other invaders from the south-east, 'There are
but few old men now alive to tell the history of bygone years' (Schapera (ed.) I96I,
p. 89). Had he only recorded what those old men could have told him, our knowledge of
the Tswana just before the coming of the white man might have been very much greater.
Nowadays, moreover, professional historians are at last beginning to pay special atten-
tion to the past of African and other 'native' peoples; an example of this new interest is
the Journal of African History, publication of which started in I960. As they are them-
selves seldom able to do intensive fieldwork, especially with single tribes, the anthro-
pologist could surely co-operate by providing them with otherwise inaccessible source
material.
Historical research of the kind so far mentioned is possible for the great majority of
primitive societies; there are relatively few of whom European visitors or residents have
not left some account, often admittedly very inadequate, and there are relatively few
also who do not have historical traditions of some kind. However, Evans-Pritchard tells
us that 'anthropologists generally study societies the history of which cannot be known'
(I950, p. i2o), and names the Australian aborigines and the South Sea Islanders as
examples of those 'who have no recorded history' (195I b, p. 59) -by which he m
presumably, for the period preceding contact with Europeans. Yet, as we have seen, he
criticizes the view, which he attributes to the functionalists, 'that a society can be
understood satisfactorily without reference to its past' (I950, p. i2o); he also quotes
Professor Levi-Strauss as saying that 'historical development alone permits us to weigh
and to evaluate in their respective relations the elements of the present' (I96I, p. I I).
Must we then agree that, because there are societies whose history we do not (or
'cannot') know, we should abandon the hope of being able to understand their structure
and the functioning of their social institutions ?
Evans-Pritchard, if I understand him rightly, does not draw that seemingly obvious
conclusion and regard knowledge of a society's past as absolutely indispensable; all he
does claim is that such knowledge, when available and utilized, 'gives us a fuller under-
standing' of present-day social life (I 95 I b, pp. 38, 6o).
What are commonly held to be the major contributions of modern British anthro-
pology to the understanding of primitive society were in fact written about peoples with
little recorded history. The impact of Western civilization upon such peoples was
occasionally ignored, for instance by Malinowski, or had not yet, at the time of investi-
gation, resulted in far-reaching changes. Firth's publications after his first visit to
Tikopia, and Fortes's two main books on the Tallensi, are examples of those dealing with
societies whose traditional way of life was still to a marked degree almost the only way of
life; consequently social change, though in fact discussed in them, was not as conspicu-
ous a topic as in recent anthropological writings about, say, Southern Africa. This does
not mean that Firth and Fortes were more hostile to history than, say, Gluckman or
Kuper; it means merely that to understand the social institutions found among the
Tikopia in i928-9 and the Tallensi in I934-7 one did not have to invoke as much
historical explanation as was needed to understand those found among the Zulu in
I936-8 or the Swazi in I934-7. Since his second visit to Tikopia in I952 Firth has in fact
published a book on the social changes that had taken place since I928, and another on
History and Traditions of Tikopia, most of the material for which was actually gathered
during his first expedition.
I50 I. SCHAPERA
Some of Evans-Pritchard's own work, notably his classic studies of Zande witchcraft
(I 937a) and of the Nuer, also deals with peoples whose traditional culture was apparently
still sufficiently uniform and well preserved not to require extensive discussion of modern
developments. He was among the Azande in I927-30, but the accounts of Zande history
that he has recently begun to publish (I 956-8) mostly refer to what happened before the
death of King Gbudwe (I 905) . In Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (I 95 i) he says
nothing at all about the history of the institutions discussed. In Nuer Religion (I956) he
does describe borrowings from neighbouring peoples, but virtually ignores the presence
of Christianity; for example, of the three different Christian missions working among
the people, one since I9I3, all he tells us is that their influence 'has been negligible',
despite the fact (mentioned in a footnote, p. 48) that by I 940 they had made nearly five
hundred converts.
The point I wish to make in this connexion is that in all the studies to which I have
just referred (with the exception of Firth's two latest books) relatively little is said about
the recent history of the people concerned. Sometimes there was in fact little to say,
sometimes the evidence was apparently considered irrelevant. In either event, the
marked emphasis on synchronic discussion can hardly be held to have prevented the
writers of those studies from giving us a very adequate understanding of how the insti-
tutions dealt with function in social life.
That applies also to some of the comparative studies made by British anthropologists.
Both Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard agree that the task of social anthropology is
to investigate the nature of human society by the systematic comparison of societies of
diverse types. They agree also that comparisons should be made initially within a given
region or among peoples of similar culture, the common features of which could then
be compared with those of other regions or cultures. As Evans-Pritchard puts it (I 95 I b,
p. I23), 'The social anthropologist aims also at showing, by comparing one society with
another, the common features of institutions, as well as their particularities in each
society. He seeks to show how some characteristics of an institution or set of ideas are
peculiar to a given society, how others are common to all societies of a certain type, and
how yet others are found in all human societies-are universals'.
Work of this kind has been done, for example, by Radcliffe-Brown on Australian
social organization (I93I), Audrey Richards on family structure among the Central
Bantu (I950), and myself on both incest and kinship marriages among the Tswana
(I 949, I 950) . Other comparisons, not confined to a single area, include such we
studies as Leach's 'The structural implications of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage'
(I 95 I), Nadel's 'Witchcraft in four African societies' (I 952), and Fortes's 'The structure
of unilineal descent groups' (I953). Evans-Pritchard has made comparative studies of
both kinds; his paper on 'The political structure of the Nandi-speaking peoples of
Kenya' (I94ob) is specifically localized, whereas the introductory essay by Fortes and
himself to the symposium they edited on African Political Systems (I940) deals with eight
different parts of the continent.
Almost all the writers named proceed on the assumption that it is both possible and
legitimate to compare social institutions as found at a given moment of time-the so-
called 'ethnographic present'-and with little or no reference to preceding developments.
Indeed, Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, in their joint essay, deliberately abstain from
special discussion of those developments, including the changes, described by several of

their contributors, that resulted from 'European conquest and rule'. One reason they
give is that the history of all the peoples they compare 'is not well enough known to
enable us to declare with any degree of certainty what course their political develop-
ment has taken'. But they state also, evidently echoing Radcliffe-Brown, 'We speak for
all social anthropologists when we say that a scientific study of political institutions
must be inductive and comparative and aim solely at establishing and explaining the
uniformities found among them and their interdependencies with other features of social
organization' (I940, pp. I, 5, 9). The statement, it will be observed, does not mention
differences, though surely they also require some sort of explanation. In later writings,
however, Evans-Pritchard does say that the aim of comparative study is 'to construct a
typology of forms', and to determine not only 'their essential features' but also 'the
reasons for their variations' (I95I b, p. 62; Cf. I950, p. I23).
To the anthropologist, the most convenient method of investigating and answering
problems of both uniformity and variation is by comparisons of social change under
European influence. Let me illustrate by quoting from the concluding section of an
essay I published in I943, which dealt with the laws made during the preceding century
or so by about forty chiefs who had ruled in eight different Tswana tribes. Many of those
laws were intended to meet situations due to contact with Europeans, such as the intro-
duction of Christianity (from I845 onwards) and the establishment of British control
over Bechuanaland (I 885).
'I took as my theme a limited topic, the legislative activities of the chief, about which
I had data from a number of allied tribes. I found on analysis that certain laws had
been made by the chiefs of all the tribes, and I showed that these laws could generally
be explained by reference to the policies followed by the Administration, the missions,
etc.... But we saw that other laws, the majority in fact, are more restricted in dis-
tribution, and are often confined to a single tribe. It is here that the importance of
comparative work becomes so evident. A study of one tribe may give us some tentative
conclusions about what happens when a Bantu people is subjected to European influ-
ences of certain kinds. But the real problems of culture contact do not become apparent
until we compare several allied tribes, and discover that their reactions have sometimes
been of the same kind, but more often than not differ, and even widely. Our generaliza-
tions, if adequate, must account for both the similarities and the differences, and such
generalizations cannot be obtained from the study of a single people' (Schapera I943,
p. 65).
Comparisons of this kind can as a rule be most fruitfully made or at least initiated by
the anthropologist. They require knowledge of both the present and the past; know-
ledge of the present can best be obtained by fieldwork, and even knowledge Qf the past,
as already indicated, must be obtained by fieldwork as well as the use of written sources.
It is also these comparisons, if there are enough of them, that will in the long run enable
us to answer decisively one of the controversial questions to which Evans-Pritchard
refers: whether it is possible, as Radcliffe-Brown believes (193Ib, p. 77), to discover
'general laws' of social change, or whether, as many historians maintain, changes are all
unique, and therefore incapable of being reduced to universal patterns of cause and
effect. They will in any event throw much more light upon processes of cultural diffusion
152 I. SCHAPERA
than do the speculative reconstructions formerly attempted by the so-called 'historical

school' of anthropologists.
So far I have been speaking about the primitive societies to which our research was
at one time confined, and which still constitute the main objects of our study and re-
search. I have tried to show that, on the whole, British functional anthropologists
writing before I950-and I have deliberately spoken about them only, since it is they
who were criticized by Evans-Pritchard-did not display specific 'anti-historical preju-
dice'. Most of them did investigate the history of the people they studied, even if only
because they considered it a routine part of their fieldwork. Some, working in societies
greatly influenced by contact with Europeans, also paid special attention to resulting
developments in social life, and occasionally also made comparative studies of social
change. Others, working in societies less appreciably affected, concentrated instead on
basically synchronic studies, which nevertheless did succeed in telling us very much
indeed about the structure of the society and the functioning of its social institutions.
Nowadays much fieldwork is also being done by professional anthropologists in more
advanced societies, for example of Europe, Asia, and North Africa-literate societies,
records of whose history sometimes go back two thousand years or more. Of them
Evans-Prichard says we 'can no longer make a virtue of necessity [because their history
is unknown] but must choose deliberately to ignore or to take into consideration their
social past in making studies of their social present' ( I 95 i b, p. 59) .
His own book about the Sanusi (I 949) is not an account of the Sanusiya Order as it
was during his residence in Cyrenaica, but deals explicitly with the origin and develop-
ment of that Order; consequently we do not know what he would have said about its
'social past' had he written instead a study of its 'social present'. Among the few other
studies of advanced societies made by British anthropologists before I950, Little's
Negroes in Britain (I947) did what Evans-Pritchard desires: in order to explain ce
features in the present-day life of the coloured community in Cardiff, it gives a lengthy
history of racial relations in Britain as a whole. On the other hand, Firth's Malay
Fishermen (I 946), a discussion of how a peasant economy was actually functioning at the
time of investigation, contains no more than an outline history of the community
studied (pp. 64-7), and refers occasionally to recent developments in trading conditions;
it does not, for example, describe in detail the growth of the fishing industry in Malaya
since written records begin. In that respect it is analogous, shall we say, to studies like
Jennings's Parliament (I957), Mackenzie's British Political Parties (I955), and Field's
Governments in Modern Society (I 95 I). These do not review the entire history of the insti-
tutions described; they give only such historical data, mostly from recent times, as serve
directly to account for and illustrate modern forms and practices. Much of Jennings's
material, for example, corresponds to the 'case-histories' found in many fieldwork
monographs.
The moral surely is that the relevance of history, and the kind of history used, depend
upon the nature of the problem with which we are concerned. As Radcliffe-Brown puts
it, 'if you want to know how England comes to have its present system of constitutional
monarchy and parliamentary government, you will go to the history books, which will
give you the details of the growth of the system.... But if you ask, not how the English
kinship system or the English political system came into existence, but how it works at
SHOULD ANTHROPOLOGISTS BE HISTORIANS? 153
the present time, that is a question that can be answered by research of the saine kind as
anthropological field-work, and historical considerations are relatively, if not absolutely,
unimportant' (Radcliffe-Brown I 94I, pp. 85-6).
With that statement I am in broad agreement, except that I would stress the rela-
tive, not absolute, unimportance of history. If one insists that the modern English family
cannot be understood without reference to its social past, one should not also discuss the
Nuer family in a purely synchronic framework; and if we nevertheless believe, and
successfully demonstrate, that the Nuer family can be studied and understood without
knowledge of its history, I see no reason in principle why we should not be able to make
a similar study of the English family. However, Firth's Malay Fishermen shows that even a
minimum of historical information gives meaningful perspective to a picture of how a
peasant economy 'works at the present time'. On the other hand, I do not think that
Jennings fails to explain satisfactorily the constitution and working of the modern
British parliament, even though he does not discuss fully the development of parlia-
mentary institutions from the time of King Alfred onwards.
The historian, if one may judge by what professional historians themselves say, is
interested primarily in human affairs and activities of the past (cf. Carr I96I, p. 42;
Collingwood I946, p. 9; Powicke I955, p. I72; Renier I950, p. 5). The anthropologist,
so long as fieldwork continues to be considered an essential part of his personal research
activity, must of necessity be concerned mainly with the present, with the description
and discussion of social institutions as they occur nowadays, whether in a primitive
society or, say, Western Europe. His understanding of those institutions will admittedly
be more complete if he can learn not only how they now function but also how they
developed. But he seeks knowledge of the past for the specific, if not sole, purpose of
illuminating the present-of trying to explain, for example, the position of the chief in
modern African society, the role of Christianity in tribal life, or the effects of labour
migration. Consequently he is interested more in relatively recent developments than in
what might have happened many centuries ago, and the extent to which he considers it
necessary to discuss those developments is generally determined by the extent to which
they have occurred. Most of the anthropologists who have made special studies of social
change, and here I include myself, did so not because they believed that the historical is
the only appropriate method of study, but because it was virtually forced upon them by
the conditions prevailing in the societies with which they had to deal.
The historian, moreover, depends for the whole of his source material upon written
records of the past, supplemented where possible by archaeological and other relics, and
normally he cannot tell us more than those sources permit. I have already mentioned
Lord Bryce's lament about our inadequate knowledge of Celtic England. To quote
another, admittedly extreme, example, Marc Bloch says that for the study of feudalism
in England before the Norman Conquest 'we must do as best we can with a few most
fragmentary scraps of evidence, or the indirect witness of archaeology, place-name study,
or the study of the meanings of words'; he mentions also 'our desperate ignorance of the
fundamental structure of whole sections of the Roman world, and in particular of
Eastern Europe, in imperial times' (I94I, p. 226).
The anthropologist is not, or need not be, similarly circumscribed. By means of
fieldwork he can usually obtain most of the information he needs about present-day
154 I. SCHAPERA
social institutions; and indeed it was primarily because earlier accounts of primitive
peoples, by missionaries, administrators, travellers, and others, were often in many ways
inadequate that professional anthropologists themselves began to do intensive fieldwork.
With the aid of oral tradition and such written records as are available, he may also be
able to enrich his interpretation of those institutions by showing when and how they
came into existence, and why they feature as they do in modern life. He would be a poor
scholar were he to ignore that additional information if it is in fact available. But even if
it is not, or even if he neglects to make full use of it, he is still able to tell us much more
about Trobriand or Nuer society than historians can about, say, Celtic or Anglo-Saxon
society. His field observations, and the conclusions he draws from them, are his main
contributions to knowledge of human society.
The time may yet come when some anthropologists, unable or unwilling to do
intensive fieldwork, or content with what they have already done, may, like economic or
social historians, pay special attention to social systems of the past-or at least to those
social systems of which, to quote Radcliffe-Brown again, 'we have records that are
sufficiently reliable and complete'. Their theoretical training, as Evans-Pritchard
suggests (I96I, pp. 12-14), may even enable them to throw new light upon problems
that are still of primary interest only to the historian. Having myself once ventured to
discuss fratricide among the Biblical Hebrews (1955), I am certainly not averse to such
an extension of the field of anthropology. To understand the nature of human society
generally, we must study all forms of human society, including those of 'bygone years' as
well as those of the present. But I do not imagine that we shall ever abandon com-
pletely the study of the social present, and in a study of that kind history is at best an aid
to understanding, and not the only means of understanding.
REFERENCES
BARNES, J. A. 195 1. History in a changing society. J. Rhodes-Livingstone Inst., " p,

BLOCH, M. 1941. The rise of dependent cultivation and seigniorial institutions. Cambridge Economic
History, vol. i, pp. 224-77.
CARR, E. H. I96I. What is History? London.
COLLINGWOOD, R. G. 1946. The Idea of History. Oxford.
CUNNISON, I. 195 I. History on the Luapula. Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, No. 2 1.
CUNNISON, I. 1957. History and genealogies in a conquest state. Amer. Anthrop., 59, pp. 20-3 1 .
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. I937a. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. I937b. Anthropology and the social sciences. Further Papers on the Social Sciences
(ed.J. E. Dugdale), pp. 61-74. London.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. I94oa. The Nuer. Oxford.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. I94ob. The political structure of the Nandi-speaking peoples of Kenya. Africa,
13, PP. 250-67.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1948. Social Anthropology [Inaugural Lecture]. Oxford.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1950. Social anthropology: past and present [Marett Lecture]. MAN, 1950, 198.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 195 I a. Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer. Oxford.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 195 Ib. Social Anthropology [B.B.C. lectures]. London.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1956a. Nuer Religion. Oxford.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. I956b. A history of the kingdom of Gbudwe. Zaire, Io, pp. 45I-9I, 675-710,
8i5-6o.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1957. The origin of the ruling clan of the Azande. Southwestern J. Anthrop., 13,
PP 322-43.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1958. An historical introduction to a study of Zand

pp. 19-33.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. I96I. Anthropology and History. Manchester.
FIELD, G. L. 1951. Governments in Modern Society. New York.
FIRTH, R. W. I929. Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori. London. (New ed., Wellington, N.Z.,
1959).
FIRTH, R. W. 1936. We, The Tikopia. London. (ed. 2., 1957).
FIRTH, R. W. 1946. Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy. London.
FIRTH, R. W. 1959. Social Change in Tikopia. London.
FIRTH, R. W. I96I. History and Traditions of Tikopia. Wellington.
FORTES, M. 1945. The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi. London.
FORTES, M. 1949. The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi. London.
FORTES, M. 1953. The structure of unilineal descent groups. Amer. Anthrop., 55, pp. 17-41.
FORTES, M., & EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (eds.) 1940. African Political Systems. London.
GLUCKMAN, M. 1940a. The kingdom of the Zulu in South Africa. African Political Systems (ed. Fortes &
Evans-Pritchard), pp. 25-55. London.
GLUCKMAN, M. 1940b. Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand. Bantu Studies, 14, pp. 1-30,
147-74.
GLUCKMAN, M. 1942. Some processes of social change illustrated from Zululand. African Studies, I,
pp. 243-60.
HOGBIN, H. I. 1939. Experiments in Civilization. London.
HOGBIN, H. I. 1958. Social Change. London.
HUNTER, MONICA. 1936. Reaction to Conquest. London. (ed. 2., I96I).
JENNINGS, I. 1957. Parliament. (ed. 2.) Cambridge. (First ed., 1939).
JUNOD, H. A. 1927. The Life of a South African Tribe. 2 vols. London. (First ed., 1913).
KRIGE, EILEENJ. & J. D. 1943. The Realm of a Rain Queen. London.
KUPER, HILDA. 1947. An African Aristocracy. London. (New ed., 1961).
LEACH, E. R. 1951. The structural implications of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. J. R. ANTHROP.
INST., 8I, pp.23-55. (Reprinted in Rethinking Anthropology, pp. 54-104. London, I96I.)
LrrTLE, K. 1947. Negroes in Britain. London.
LIVINGSTONE, D. I857. Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. London.
MACKENZIE, R. T. 1955. British Political Parties. London.
MALINOWSKI, B. 1935. Coral Gardens and their Magic. 2 vols. London.
MALINOWSKI, B. 1938. The anthropology of changing African cultures. Methods of Study of Culture Contact
in Africa (L. Mair, ed.), pp. vii-xxxviii. International African Institute, Memorandum XV.
MOFFAT, R. I842. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa. London.
NADEL, S. F. 1942. A Black Byzantium. London.
NADEL, S. F. 1952. Witchcraft in four African societies. Amer. Anthrop., 54, pp. 18-29.
POWICKE, F. M. 1955. Modern Historians and the Study of History. London.
RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1923. The methods of ethnology and social anthropology. Reprinted in
Radcliffe-Brown 1958, pp. 3-38.
RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 193Ia. The Social Organization of Australian Tribes. Melbourne ('Oceania'
Monographs, No. I).
RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 193I b. The present position of anthropological studies. Reprinted in Radcliffe-
Brown 1958, pp. 42-95.
RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1933. The Andaman Islanders (Reprinted with additions). Cambridge. (First ed.,
1922).
RADCLIFFE-BRowN, A. R. 1941. The study of kinship systems. Reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown I952, pp.
49-90.
RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. London.
RADCLIFFE-BROwN, A. R. 1958. Method in Social Anthropology: Selected Essays (M. N. Srinivas, ed.). Chicago.
RENIER, G.J. 1950. History: its Purpose and Method. London.
RICHARDS, AUDREY I. 1939. Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia. London.
RICHARDS, AUDREY I. 1950. Some types of family structure amongst the Central Bantu. African Systems of
Kinship and Marriage (A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and D. Forde, eds.), pp. 207-51. London.
SCHAPERA, I. I928. Economic changes in South African Native life. Africa, I, pp. 170-88.
SCHAPERA, I. 1936. The contributions of Western Civilization to modern Kxatla culture. Trans. R. Soc.
S. Afr., 24, pp.221-52.
SCHAPERA, I. 1937. Cultural changes in tribal life. The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa (I. Schapera,
ed.), pp. 357-87. London.
156 I. SCHAPERA
SCHAPERA,I. 1939. Anthropo

SCHAPERA,I. 1942a. A Short History of the BaKgatla-bagaKgafela. Communications, School of African
Studies (Cape Town), No. 3.
SCHAPERA,I. 1942b. A short history of the BaNgwaketse. African Studies, I, pp. I-26.
SCHAPERA, I. 1943. Tribal Legislation among the Tswana of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. L.S.E. Monographs
on Social Anthropology, No. 9.
SCHAPERA,I. 1 945. Notes on the history of the Kaa. African Studies, 4, PP. 109-21.
SCHAPERA,I. 1 947. The political annals of a Tswana tribe. Communications, School of African Studies, No.
I8.
SCHAPERA,I. 1949. The Tswana conception of incest. Social Structure: essays presented to A. R. Radcliffe-
Brown (M. Fortes, ed.) pp. IO4-20. Oxford.
SCHAPERA,I. 1950. Kinship and marriage among the Tswana. African Systems of Kinship and Marriage
(A. R. Radcliffe-Brown & D. Forde, eds.), pp. 140-65. London.
SCHAPERA,I. 1952. The ethnic composition of Tswana tribes. L.S.E. Monographs on Social Anthropology,
No. II.
SCHAPERA,I. 1 955. The sin of Cain. J. R. ANTHROP. INST., 85, PP. 33-43.
SCHAPERA, I. I962. The anthropologist's approach to ethno-history. Historians in Tropical Africa (T. 0.
Ranger, ed.), pp. I I-I5. Salisbury (S. Rhodesia).
SCHAPERA, I. (ed.) 1934. Western Civilization and the Natives of South Africa. London.
SCHAPERA, I. (ed.) 1940. Ditirafal6 tsa Merafeya BaTswana. Alice, C. P. [Vernacular histories of eight
Tswana tribes.]
SCHAPERA, I. (ed.) 1951. Apprenticeship at Kuruman, being the journals and letters of Robert and Mary Moff
I82o-8. London.
SCHAPERA, I. (ed.) 1959. David Livingstone: Family Letters, I84I-I856. 2 vols. London.
SCHAPERA, I. (ed.) I960. Livingstone's Private-Journals I85I-I853. London.
SCHAPERA, I. (ed.) I96I. Livingstone's Missionary Correspondence I84I-I856. London.
VANSINA,J. I960. Recording the oral history of the Bakuba.J. Afr. History, I, PP. 45-53, 257-70.
WILSON, G. 1939. The Constitution of Ngonde. Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, No. 3.

Schapera, I. Should Anthropologist Be Historians

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Schapera, I. Should Anthropologist Be Historians

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Should Anthropologists be Historians?

contains a similar chapter entitled 'adjustment to civilization'. Hogbin's book on the

historians. Unpublished sources similarly include official records preserved in Govern-

special discussion of those developments, including the changes, described by several of

than do the speculative reconstructions formerly attempted by the so-called 'historical

BARNES, J. A. 195 1. History in a changing society. J. Rhodes-Livingstone Inst., " p,

EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1958. An historical introduction to a study of Zand

SCHAPERA,I. 1939. Anthropo

Você também pode gostar