ABSTRACT
Th e preparation and publication of the Ethnographic Survey of Africa began in 1945. Proposals for a survey of this kind had been considered by the Council of the Institute before the war and a memorandum setting out the contributions that an authoritative series of concise and comprehensive ethnographic studies could make in connection with the prospects for development, education and research in Africa was presented on behalf of the Institute to the British Colonial Office in 1944. Grants from the British Colonial Development and Welfare Fund allocated on the recommendation of the British Colonial Social Science Council in 1945 made it possible to initiate this work. A committee set up under the Chairmanship of Professor Radcliffe-Brown considered the detailed proposals for its scope and organisation which had been prepared by the Director who undertook to direct and edit the Survey. It endorsed the main objective, namely to provide in readily comprehensible form an outline of available knowledge concerning the peoples of Africa in a series of short systematic studies of the location, environment, economy, crafts, social systems, political organisation and religious beliefs of each people or group of related peoples. Publication was planned in a continuing series of separate Parts to be grouped within broad regions, each of which would conform to a general scheme of coverage envisaged for the Survey as a whole and would include a comprehensive bibliography and an ethnographic map. The generous collaboration of a number of research institutions and of officials in Europe and in Africa was secured as well as the services of senior anthropologists who were good enough to supervise and amplify the drafts.
