ABSTRACT
Collectors utilized social connections within the white sector of the community to guide them, with plantation managers, patrol officers and missionaries providing direction, advice and the contacts through which objects came. The Scramble for Art in Central Africa is a study of a group of collectors, such as Torday, Frobenius and Schweinfurth who worked in the Belgian Congo at the tum of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on how objects such as carved figures or metal items reflected local social forms. Collectors utilized social connections within the white sector of the community to guide them, with plantation managers, patrol officers and missionaries providing direction, advice and the contacts through which objects came. The comparison of value across time is difficult but allows an examination of the changing perception of value and changes in the ‘hierarchy’ of valuables, by both locals and collectors.
