ABSTRACT
WE have suggested in previous pages that the incorporation of Western institutions would be slow during the earlier phases of Afro-European contact. This was particularly the case with the schools, and initial demand for formal education was limited to very specific groups. Interest in Western education was closely correlated with two other aspects of European influence; these were the extension of an exchange economy and the gradual extension of European political control. The association of these factors was not fortuitous, since we regard the growth of early educational demand as necessarily correlated with economic change and shifts in political control. Stated briefly, the effect of these two factors was to introduce a number of European-type functions and roles which operated independently of the traditional status structure. Only within such a changing social framework could the demand for formal education begin to be manifest at all. To state the hypothesis alternatively: although formal education has come to operate as a significant factor in affecting the distribution of power and status within African society, in the initial phases of contact at least there will be virtually no demand for formal education unless some changes have already occurred in the traditional structures. If, for example, there had been an attempt to offer Western education in vacuo, and if it had not been associated with significant changes in the economy or the system of political control, it is likely that educational demand would have remained minimal; educational institutions by themselves would not have constituted powerful factors in social change.
