This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book.

The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.

This is a two-year survey of bibliographical work completed in the Republic of South Africa. Recent developments in current and retrospective national bibliography are outlined. The South African National Bibliography has been mechanised and good progress has been made with the retrospective volume for 1926-1958. Attention is drawn to the State Library's work on the documentation of banned books. Catalogues of important collections completed are briefly described, and recent developments in the field of periodical lists and indexes are outlined. Special attention is paid in the review to Africana indexes and bibliographies. The author concludes that despite lacunae which remain to be filled, the bibliographical scene in South Africa is satisfactory and full of promise.

This review, like its forerunner covers a two-year period and is based on information derived from a questionnaire sent to the major libraries of South Africa. The interim period has also been covered to some extent by a number of informal bibliographical progress reports published in the South African Library Association Newsletter.

Chronicles of the African Studies Association and of the development of African studies programs give clear evidence that both have achieved substantive progress after a rather late arrival on the academic scene. At the same time, however, mapping of both programs and Africaniste equally clearly indicates their quite restricted distribution. Consequently the impact of African studies programs and scholarship on our academies and on the wider society of which we are a part has been far more limited than is desirable.

The distribution of Africanists is largely related to the location and size of African studies programs, and the distribution of both of these in turn is influenced by population distribution in the United States. Although large parts of the United States are devoid of African studies programs and of dedicated African scholars, they certainly are not unpopulated. Thus, awareness and understanding of African phenomena bypass large portions of the student and general population, and at least some of the responsibility for ignorance about Africa results from the spotty distribution of programs and scholars. It may be argued that little or nothing can be done to remedy this maldistribution of programs and scholars, but such an argument can logically be offered only after an attempt has been made.

Ever since the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, 1956, Soviet interest in the countries of Africa has steadily increased. This interest has manifested itself in a growing number of books and articles published in the Soviet Union dealing with the peoples and problems of the “Dark Continent.” A prolific contributor to this body of literature has been the noted Soviet Africanist I.I. Potekhin, whose works first appeared in 1932 and continued until his death in 1964. Potekhin survived and continued to publish during the repressive Stalinist years of the thirties, post-World War II Stalin-Zhdanov period of foreign policy, the years of transition, and the period of reassessment and innovation in Third World policy under Khrushchov. This general review of the life and works of I. I. Potekhin is intended to provide information and insights which may prove of value to students of Soviet policy toward the countries of Africa.

Born in 1903 to peasant parents, Ivan Izasimovich Potekhin worked in a Siberian factory at the age of fourteen. From 1921 to 1929 he attended a provincial school and was extremely active in local party activities, becoming a Communist Party member in 1922 at the age of nineteen.

In 1930, following the 1928 Comintern decision to opt for an “independent native republic” in South Africa, Potekhin was sent to study in the African studies program of the University of Leningrad. This opportunity was probably a result of Potekhin's Siberian successes as a party worker, and the party's need for active members with some knowledge of Africa. Potekhin's main area of interest, as reflected in the majority of his works published between 1932 and 1935, was, not unexpectedly, South Africa, more specifically, the problems of class structure and of agriculture. He contributed sixteen pieces to various publications during this period. Six of these were in English and appeared in the Negro Worker (Hamburg). Interestingly enough, he frequently used the pseudonym John Izotla and on one occasion, H. Jordon. Potekhin spent the next several years preparing his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1939, on the agrarian relations of the eastern Bantu.

In March 1962, France and Algeria, parties to seven years of conflict, agreed upon the need to destroy an illusion. For more than a century Algeria had been regarded as an integral part of metropolitan France, despite the patently non-Gallic character of its indigenous population. Bloody insurrection and the realization in France that the Mother Country could not undo the wrongs of previous generations brought the illusion into disrepute; it was interred in July 1962 with the acquisition of full independent status by Algeria. This separation restored France to a reasonable semblance of well-being; Algeria, on the other hand, suffered a far less happy fate.

At independence Algeria found itself on the threshold of renewed conflict. The principals in this second act of violence were not the European settlers (colons) who had dominated Algeria's political life for generations as baronial overlords. The vast majority of settlers, approximately 850,000 out of a total of one million, had scuttled and run out of fear of vengeful retribution by Algeria's nine million Muslims. Nor were the half-million French soldiers remaining on Algerian soil participants in the new drama; the overwhelming majority were anxious to depart this melancholy land without molestation. The principals were the founders and leaders of the Algerian revolution, men who, at the hour of triumph, fell into disagreement over the distribution of power and ignored a more compelling imperative - - the rehabilitation of a wartorn society.

Scientific research of African societies and cultures in Czechoslovakia has developed only in the last two decades. Nevertheless, to precede the research there was a relatively extensive background shaped by the tradition of travelers whose interest was centered especially on geography, biology, and descriptive and collective ethnography. The most important of these travelers were Dr. Emil Holub (1847-1902), who crossed South Africa as far as the Zambezi River and published several books, most of which are now available in English, about his experiences; Remedius Prutký, a missionary who visited Ethiopia in 1751-1753 and not only described his travels but even compiled a vocabulary of the Amharic language; and Dr. Stecker and Čeněk Paclt, who traveled in the nineteenth century through Ethiopia and South Africa, respectively. In the twentieth century there was a considerable number of Czechoslovak travelers who acquainted their compatriots with the “Dark Continent.”

Before World War II, three professor of Semitology at Charles University, Prague -- R. Dvořák, R. Ru̇žička, and A. Musil -- started to study Ethiopian languages and history. The well-known Austrian scholar of Czech origin, Dr. Pavel Šebesta (Schebesta) became one of the best specialists in the anthropology and ethnography of the Pygmies.

There has been considerable discussion recently in recognition of the need to develop African studies in this country on a far wider basis than at present, where it is concentrated too narrowly in a few major centers of great academic strength. Such discussion has been exacerbated by the demands of Afro-Americans whose concern for African studies is not less significant for the debatable academic basis upon which it is posited.

The problem with all previous programs to inaugurate new African programs has been that they focused totally upon the training of faculty. There have been a series of summer courses, many of which have in themselves been of high quality and substantially imaginative. Yet they did little to innovate new programs on the campus, owing to the sluggishness of the administrative machinery or the relative indifference to the new faculty interest. The program which the African Studies Center at the University of California at Los Angeles planned for the summers of 1968 and 1969 attempted to remedy this deficiency. The project was financed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under National Defense Education Act funds and was organized and administered by Michael F. Lofchie and John F. Povey, themselves joint assistant directors of the UCLA African Studies Center.