ABSTRACT
The first step in the institutional development of British anthropology was taken when the study of primitive peoples gained academic status at Oxford University. This was achieved in 1883 when Tylor, the curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, was made a lecturer, and was reinforced in 1896 when he was appointed, at the age of sixty-four, to a professorship. In 1895 a degree in anthropology was awarded for the first time, in 1910 Tylor’s successor Marett was granted a readership in social anthropology, and in 1914 a small independent department was opened. At Cambridge University Haddon, the leader of the Torres Straits Expedition, became a lecturer on his return to Britain in 1900. From 1904 the University offered anthropology teaching consisting of courses in prehistory, sociology, ethnology, and physical and psychological anthropology. Haddon was promoted to a readership in 1909, but remained the university’s only salaried teacher of anthropology (Leach, 1984: 5). In 1907 Liverpool University endowed an anthropology chair for Frazer, but after only half a year he gave up this post. From 1904 the London School of Economics (LSE) of London University offered an anthropology course aimed at colonial civil servants and missionaries ( Firth, 1963: 3). Teaching was provided by Haddon, Radcliffe-Brown and Seligman (1910), who obtained a part-time professorship in anthropology in 1913, while from 1907 Westermarck held a new sociology chair. It was only when Malinowski was appointed alongside Westermarck at the LSE in 1923 that British social anthropology began to expand its scope. Malinowski soon also took charge at the International African Institute, benefiting from Rockefeller Foundation funding, and most of his students became Africanists.
