Keith Thomas - History and Anthropology', Past & Present 24 (1963), 3–24

8/20/2019 Keith Thomas - History and Anthropology', Past & Present 24 (1963), 3–24

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HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY*

THERE IS NOTHING NEW OR ECCENTRIC ABOUT THE SUGGESTION THAT

historians might profit from an acquaintance with anthropology.

Professor Taw ney suggested as mu ch in his Inaugu ral Le cture at th e

London School of Economics thirty years ago

1

and it was not often

that the advice of this most influential historian went unh eeded . T h at

it did so in this case can probab ly b e attributed to the firmly em pirical

tradition of British historical scholarship, whose reputation has long

rested upon a rigorous command of the primary sources, a distaste

for theory and speculation, and a proper aversion to the superficiality

which a nodding acqu aintance with other disciplines frequently

brings in its train . T he se qualities in all their streng th and weakness

are best exemplified in th e presen t state of medieval studies — au ste re,

disciplined and profoundly hostile to outside influence.

To some extent, however, the anthropologists have themselves to

blame for this sepa ration. Between the wars social anthro pology

under Raddiffe-Brown was a very ambitious affair indeed and one

whose aims were avowedly unh istorical. T he subject was defined

as th e study of the phenom ena of culture by the same indu ctive

m ethods tha t are in use in the natural sciences . Its basis was

thou ght to be th e experimental m eth od and its object the discovery

of sociological laws, generalizations about hum an society. Radcliffe-

Brown declared categorically that history and anthropology were tw o

quite different m ethods of dealing with the facts of cu ltu re and that

there are many disadvantages in mixing the two subjects together

and confusing them .

1

His insistence upo n the need for generaliz-

ation and his justifiably disparag ing references to the con jectural

histor y of the ethn og rap her s' helped to give British anthropological

studies a frankly anti-historical bias and to make the chances of

co-operation between the two disciplines increasingly remote.

In recent years, how ever, there has been a reaction, led by Rad diffe-

Brown 's successor in th e Oxford Chair of Social Anthropology. In

his Marett Lecture of 1950, Professor Evans-Pritchard asserted that

the differences between the two subjects were those of technique

rather than of aim, and he has subsequently done much to urge a new

rapprochement between them . I n practice, he says, social

• The author of this article is not an anthropologist (as will be obvious to

the attentive reader). H is interest in the subject was first aroused by Professor

Evans-Pritchard's lecture,

Anthropology and history,

(Manchester, 1961) , but

neither Professor Evans-Pritchard nor any other anthropologist is to be held

responsible for any unwitting misinterpretations of their work.


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4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 2 4

anthropologists today generalize little more than historians do.

4

Nowadays it is fashionable to regard the strength of British social

anthropology as lying in the intensity and precision of its field-work,

in the tradition of Malinowski, rather than in the formulation of

general laws along the lines urged by Radcliffe-Brown. It is even

said tha t no such laws have yet been discovered . N or , it is imp lied,

are they ever likely to be.

5

A social anthropologist today does not

set out to produce sweeping generalizations about the whole of

hum an society. H e is more likely to devote a lifetime to the

specialized study of at m ost two or thr ee so cieties, a study in which he

will be as much concerned as the historian with the uniqueness of fact

and situation, a study which is likely to carry with it a certain degree

of emo tional involve m ent,' and wh ich, in its intimac y of acquaintance,

rem inds one of G. M . Yo ung's famous injunction to historians to

go on reading until you can hear people talk ing . Some

anthropologists have even engaged in straightforward pieces of

historical writing, for example Evans-Pritchard's The Sanusi of

Cyrenaica,

the story of the transfo rmation of a religious m ovem ent

into a nationalist one over a period of some hundred years.

7

At the same time there are some indications that historians are

more inclined to seek generalizations tha n they used to be . The y do

not ask universal questions or seek universal laws. B ut, for all their

interest in the individual and the particular, they are more likely to

believe tha t, in th e words of Professor Po stan , th e microscop ic

problems of historical research are and should be made microcosmic

— capable of reflecting worlds larger tha n the m selv es . ' Historical

fashions change slowly, but there has been no lack of support for

M r. E. H. Carr's recent statemen t that th e mo re sociological history

becomes and the more historical sociology becomes, the better for

bo th .

9

Certainly it is m ore representative of opinion in the historical

profession than was Tawney s almost identical assertion thirty years

ago.

10

The whole tendency of recent work in both subjects has thus been

such as to draw together what were always closely parallel lines of

investigation. An thropologists are no longer exclusively concerned

with primitive societies, any more than historians are solely concerned

with advanced ones. N or are anthrop ologists necessarily engaged in

the study of

a

society at one mom ent of time r ather than over a period

of years. Some of them study social change, notably the

W ester niza tion of native societies. Ad m ittedly, the most

characteristic form of anthropological explanation of an institution

is to demonstrate its contribution to keeping a given society in


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HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 5

being, and this sort of functionalism often stands in the way of

formulating intelligible theories of social change.

11

Bu t it is also tru e

tha t historians can sometimes be extremely static them selves. It is

very hard , for exam ple, to extract any sense of movem ent an d change

from the studies of eighteenth-century politics by the followers of Sir

Lewis N am ier; the notion of th e eighteenth-cen tury political

system with which the average undergra duate em erges is certainly

as lacking in dynamic elements as the most austere anthropological

s ys t em .

1

' A great deal of historical writing today is concerned less

with a succession of events than with enduring relationships.

1

* As

for the argument that the anthropologist, unlike the historian, is

concerned with the present, it should not be forgotten that the

normal pattern of an anthropologist's career sees him spending the

remainder of his life writing up his memories of a society he visited in

his you th. Eva ns-Pritcha rd, for exam ple, has until recently been

publishing books about the Nuer, with whom he spent about a year

between 1930 and 1936.

1

* Such an act of reconstruction w ould

seem to involve an effort of what is almost the historical imagination

and there is clearly a sense in which the ethno grap hic pr es en t is

comparable to the historic present.

The basic difference between anthropology and history may

therefore be fairly reduced to this, that in most cases

18

the

anthropolog ist did once live in, or a t least visit, the society which he is

describing, whereas the historian usually has to work exclusively from

docum ents or archaeological rem ains. Th is distinction is hardly

sufficient to justify our dismissing the two subjects as fundamentally

different disciplines.

If we make the initial assumption that anthropologists are engaged

in a roughly similar activity to our own, it becomes easier to see what

we m ight learn from them . In the first place, it is hard to deny th at

modern social anthropology usually exemplifies greater discipline and

precision of thought than is commonly found in historical writing of

the interpretative kind. H ere , the old tradition that anthropology

is a science has been of great advantage. Con tempo rary a nth ro -

pological writing is frequently austere , even jagged, bu t it is seldom

disfigured by the rhetoric and impressionism which is so frequently

encountered in the work of leading practitioners of modern history

(and whose origins may well lie in the educational tradition of

encouraging history undergra duates to produ ce dogmatic and p ersonal

interpretations on the basis of rapid reading in the secondary sources).

It is true that the reader has usually to take largely on trust what the

anthropologist says about another society, for there are few footnotes,


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and sources may have to be disguised or suppressed;

1

' indeed the

only objective test of

a

m ono graph 's reliability seems to be tha t of its

own intern al consistency. Yet, desp ite the reade r's inability to

check sources and the writer's obvious readiness to arrive at

theoretical conclusions on the basis of a single field-study,

17

one

cannot escape the impression that anthropologists do not generalize

lightly and that their conclusions rest upon a sound foundation of

empirical fieldwork, beside which the selective use of incomplete

evidence, upon which the writing of history must necessarily depend,

appears flimsy in the extreme.

1

* T h e studen t of contemporary

anthropology is unlikely to encounter such a rhetorical

tour de force

as Professor Trevor-Roper's pamphlet on

The Gentry;

1

*

neither is he

likely to meet many hypotheses put forward dogmatically as fact, and

substantially discredited largely on the basis of already existing

evidence within five years of their p ub lication . An thropological

tastes change, and the element of subjectivism can never be entirely

absent, but it seldom seems to get out of control.

10

T he caution and

unpretentiousness of most social anthropology may make for dull

reading, particularly when combined with a susceptibility to jargon;

but, at least, such qualities afford an agreeable contrast with the work

of those many modern historians whose urge for self-expression and

for reinforcing a personal view of the world is so often more apparent

than a disinterested wish to find out w hat really happ ened in t i e past.

It would, however, be rash to base the case for social anthropology

upon so unpalatable an assumption as that of the alleged moral

superiority of its practitioners. Inste ad, emph asis may be more

profitably laid upon what would seem to be the most distinctive

feature of anthropological explanation, namely that, in the words of

Professor Fir th, how ever specialized be his study of kinship,

witchcraft, chieftainship or social class, the anthropologist always

makes it against a background of his conception of the social system

to which it is related .

11

T h e importance of the contribution made

by an individual anthropologist is not measured by th e volume of new

facts which he records, for that is mere ethnography, generally

regarded as a much lower-level activity, bu t by the interp retation and

interrelation of those facts. H e must attem pt not just a descriptive

synthesis of events, bu t a theoretical integration of th e m , that is to

say, he should aim at serious analysis rather than that random

impressionism of which Macaulay*s Third Chapter provides the most

famous example and some sections of the

Oxford History of

ngland

the most recen t. Anthrop ologists frequen tly take one small society

and study it as a whole. T hu s Ev ans-Pritchard writes about many


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HISTORY AND ANTHROPO LOGY 7

different aspects of the Nuer — political and social structure, kinship

and m arriage, religion. Bu t historians still specialize by subject-

matter — economic history, legal history, military history — as the

titles of their professional journals indicate. Fo r a historian to write

about both eighteenth-century religion and eighteenth-century

agriculture would be highly eccentric.

The consequence for history of this specialization by subject-matter

is that many of a topic's socially most important aspects go unnoticed.

Fo r all the activity of W eber, Taw ney an d Ch ristopher Hill, the study

of ecclesiastical history, for example, is still largely conducted in

a vacuum, where liturgy, ritual, theology and church government are

isolated from the influence of more secular preoccup ations. Similarly,

the study of economic history is much concerned with proving or

disproving current economic theories, to the consequent neglect of

the social aspects of the su bj ec t. If, as a reaction to this segm ented

approach to the facts of history, many historians now subscribe, if

only implicitly, to a brand of vulgar Marxism, this may be taken to

indicate less the seductive effects of tha t particular doctrine th an then-

lack of acquaintance with any other theoretical attempts to effect that

interrelation and mutual explanation of social facts which they would

so mu ch like to see. For such person s, the attraction of anthropology,

whether functional , struc tura l or cu ltura l , is that it does

constitute such an attempt to explain things in terms of each other,

rather than treating them separately, like patients in a hospital.

Marxism has had many beneficial effects, and the possibilities latent

in the explanation of social facts by their relation to economic ones

are by no means exhausted. But economic wants are themselves

culturally determined, and it is only some form of anthropology which

holds out the hope of providing that sociological explanation of

economic life which the economic interpretation of social life has

come to requ ire. One of the great anthropological lessons is that th e

study of economics cannot be isolated from the study of society.

In a primitive society there is no relationship which is of a purely

economic character .

If applied to church history, the conclusions of the anthropologist

are just as interesting as are the suggestions of Marx, who, with

M achiavelli, offered the only social interp reta tion of religious life with

which most of

us

are familiar. A calen dar, says Durk heim , expresses

the rhythm of society's collective activities and assures their

reg ula rity . Arm ed with this dictum , we can recognize that the

hagiography of the Middle Ages was linked with the festivals of the

Church year, which, in turn, closely reflected the rhythms of


6/22


agricultural life, as Mr. Homans, a sociologist turned historian, has

quite definitively sh o w n . Conversely, the Pu ritan attack on saints'

days and their emphasis on the Sabbath would seem to be connected

with the new rhythm s of a comm ercial soc iety . One of the functions

of ritual, says Radcliffe-Brown, is to maintain and reinforce the

system of sentiments upon which society de pe nd s. Viewed from

this angle, the feelings aroused by the various Protestant attacks upon

Roman Catholic ceremonies at the Reformation become more

intelligible. So do the Puritan objections to the churching of wo me n,

when we recall Raddiffe-Brown's statement that taboos fix the social

value of certain occ asio ns. T he knowledge which can be gained

from the anthropologists concerning the importance of dancing as

a bon d of com munity life tells us something about the possible

implications of the Puritan attack on maypoles and Sabbath sports.

Indeed so many new sidelights upon Puritanism appear when it is

seen from this point of view that historians may yet come to regard

its true significance as lying less in any support of capitalism, of

which so muc h has been m ade , than in its implacable hostility to what

can be seen to have been features of a more primitive society — not

just community dancing, but ritual sports bordering on animal

sacrifice (such as bear-baiting and bull-baiting), the attachment of

magical qualities to certain places, instruments of worship or days

of the year, taboos surro und ing wom en after childbirth, sexual orgies

at key periods of the year (May M orning, M idsumm er and Christmas),

ritual and ceremony generally.

In addition to teaching this first and most essential lesson that

historians should study topics in relation to society as a whole,

anthropologists can also provide the inestimable advantage of direct

experience of matters about wh ich historians have only read in b ooks.

Such features of primitive society as witchcraft or the blood-feud form

a large element of the anthropologist's daily concern, whereas for the

historian they constitute relatively exotic m atter . N ot that the re are

any obvious universal laws about witchcraft to be learned from

anthropolog y, bu t, at least, some acquaintance w ith its findings w ould

prevent historians from succumbing to the temptation of treating

the practice as some extraordinary survival of unreason to be explained

in Voltairean terms of priestly running and popular credulity.

Instead, witch-beliefs can be closely related to the society in which

they appea r. Eva ns-P ritchard's study of witchcraft am ong the

Azande shows, among other things, that it can be a positive form of

social cement, since, if we think bur neighbours may have mngirai

power to do us physical harm, we are likely to take care not to offend


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them.

3 1

Elsewhere , accusations of witchcraft a re norm ally levelled

against those persons whose traits are condemned as anti-social, and

a belief in witches thus becomes a sanction against undesirable social

activity and helps to maintain th e curren t system of values. T his is

not the sort of conclusion which the historian would be likely to

come to w ithout external aid, for h e is not personally ac quainted with

the circumstances which produce displaced aggression of this kind

and has never observed the ways in which tensions in social relation-

ships may resolve themselves in the form of witch-beliefs. Yet it is

clear that the majority of persons accused of witchcraft in sixteenth-

and seventeenth-cen tury E ngland were already regarded as em bodying

values hostile to the com m unity in which they lived, by reason of their

isolation, poverty or ugliness. For the m ost part they were old

wom en — po or e, m ellenchollie, envious, mischevo us, ill-disposed,

ill-dieted , as a contemporary described th e m — and they usually

displayed a frank malevolence to the society in which they lived.

Similarly, charges of witchcraft were usually made as an explanation

for social or economic failure of some sort; they accounted for the

failure of the crop s to grow , or of the cows to give milk. W as it only

coincidence that the peak of the witch-scare in England occurred at

the end of the Civil War when the consequent political and social

instability bred unusual tensions and when the normal means of

social control, notably the ecclesiastical courts, had collapsed

?

W e

are told on good authority that African beliefs about witches are

startlingly like those of Shakespeare's d a y . It seems likely that

the student of the one might learn something from the investigator

of the other.

Similarly, those interested in Anglo-Saxon society, where the

historical study of kinship can hardly be avoided, might well learn

something from anthropological analyses of the operation of the

blood-feud in other societies, some of which suggest conclusions very

different from those which historians have reached on more slender

evidence.

1

* Again, an anthropologist who knows abo ut initiation

rites might well have something fresh to say to historians interested

in the ceremonies surrounding baptism or confirmation, the order of

knighthood, or the admission to medieval gilds or to academic

de gr ee s. T h e majority of m odern anthropological studies have

been concerned with the small, isolated community, and it is upon

analogous historical com mu nities th at one w ould expect their findings

to shed most light. In such a world where ties are personal rather

than anonymous, and where the same individuals appear in a variety

of social roles, social cohesion is greatly enhanced by the absence of


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any conflict of values, such as those between work and church, or

pare nts and em ployer, which a re a feature of larger indu strial societies.

Such must have been the attributes of the medieval village, and

anthropologists have frequently commented upon the resemblances

between this sort of primitive society and that of rural Europe before

the eighteenth ce nt ur y. T o reconstruct the texture of life in such

a world seems a disproportionate burden to throw upon the unaided

historical imagination, when there are rigorous and detailed accounts

of such societies available today. Hard ly any medievalist has

bothered to draw upon the results of anthropological field-work.

Yet, ho w , asks Eva ns-P ritchard, can an Oxford don work himself

into the mind of a serf of Louis the Pi ou s?

3 7

How indeed.

In most cases he is unlikely to try, but will be content to study

labour services and commutations, treating the serf as a convenient

un it in economic histo ry, bu t no more. Yet anthropological studies

of primitive mentality could provide valuable reinforcement for

historians confronted by a paucity of evidence for the mental life of

the lower reaches of the distant society they are studying . T he

extremes of religious activity — trance and ecstasy — which were so

comm on in the M iddle Ages and are so rare now , have been ob served

by m odern students of primitive religion.

88

W hile the anthropological

study of the activities of modern Christian missions in Africa or New

Guinea might throw some light upon the sources of Anglo-Saxon

resistance to the Conversion, as well as upon some of the possible

implications and motives of their surrender.

1

Parallels between the historical experience of our society and the

contemporary experience of more primitive societies can be endlessly

add uce d. Some are superficial; some are not. All are worth

investigating. W here can one find a better explanation of the D ivine

Right of Kings than in Evans-Pritchard's analysis of the kingship of

the Shilluk of Sudan?

4 0

W here is there a closer analogy with the

medieval and Elizabethan world-picture than in the Tikopia

conception of the future life, in which there are divisions of the

heavens corresponding to the social divisions of the Tikopia

themselves ?

4 1

T h e emphasis upon the binding force of oaths among

the Kikuyu is reminiscent of seventeenth-century England, where the

oath provided the sanction for almost every form of legal, official or

ecclesiastical arrangement.

41

T he Cargo cults of M elanesia are

obviously analogous with such miUenarian movements as that of the

Fifth M onarchy Men in England ;

4

' in this co nnec tion, M r. Worslcy*s

interpretation of the ritual defiance of traditional taboos in Melanesia

makes more intelligible the flouting of social and sexual conventions


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HISTORY

AND

ANTHROPOLOGY

II

by the Anabaptists or the Quakers.

44

It is not surprising that

historians like Professor Cohn or Mr. Hobsbawm felt impelled to

employ anthropological findings in their study of such popular

movements of protest.

16

M uch can be learnt from anthropology which could be of service to

economic history, where the assumptions on which Western

economists normally operate are often quite inappropriate for the

study of a primitive society.

48

Accounts of traditionalized price

systems in primitive economies may help us to understand why the

price of monastic land after the Dissolution tended to remain

stubb ornly at twenty years purcha se, despite the fluctuations of supply

and demand.

47

M onograph s on gift exchange in Polynesia may lead

us to pay more attention to the giving and receiving of hospitality as

a means of economic distribution, or to the lavish exchange of New

Year gifts at the court of James I.

4 8

Studies of the social and legal

effects of land hunger upon contemporary African countries can tell

us something about why there was so much litigation in sixteenth-

century England, as well as of the social effects of over-population in

general .

4

' T h e M alayan hab it of avoiding prohib itions on usury by

lending a sum less than that actually recorded as due to be repaid is

strikingly reminiscent of accounting methods which are said to have

been employed in fifteenth-century England.

60

W hile, if de bt was

a form of social cement among the Irish peasantry, it may well have

once served the same purpose in rural England.'

1

The historian interested in the industrialization of eighteenth-

century England would be ill-advised to ignore the many analyses

of the progress of underdeveloped countries to da y. T h e problem s

involved in persuading Africans to adopt the rhythms of an industrial

society in place of the more erratic pace of primitive life are almost

exactly those which confronted Josiah Wedgwood when he

endeavoured to convert the feckless, easy-going populace of

Staffordshire into such machines . . . as cannot er r . T he

preference for leisure over high wages, which stood in the way of the

creation of a labour force in the early days of the Ind ustria l Revo lution,

was presumably broken down only by the appearance of new wants

amongst the labouring classes which provided the incentive for extra

labour. Ho w were these wants crea ted? T h e answer is not easy

to find in cur rent accounts of the early Ind ustrial Revo lution. But

anthropological studies, such as those by Audrey Richards, of the

Southern Bantu and of the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia, help to

suggest some possible answ ers. Have any historians, for examp le,

yet considered the connection between regular meals and regular


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1 2 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 2 4

work, which she demonstrates to be all-important?

1

* More

generally, anthropologists can tell us a great deal about the impact of

industrialization upon older ties of kinship and family, illuminating

further the material contained in such accounts as Miss Pinchbeck's

Women w orkers and the Industrial Revolution.

1

*

W hile anyone who

has wondered whether to follow up the isolated suggestions of Mr.

S. A. Peyton an d Professor Rich concerning the m obility of labour in

Tudor England may gain heart from modern discoveries of the great

distances which African labourers will travel in search of

e m p l o y m e n t .

One great incentive for historians to read anthropology, therefore,

is that the anthropologists can offer detailed analyses of phenomena

roughly comparable to those which the historians are endeavouring

to recon struct w ith a good deal less evidence. It m ay, however, be

reasonably objected that historians are not all medievalists, studying

relatively primitive societies or their break-up, and that it is only a

minute part of English history which is occupied by blood-feuds,

witchcraft or to tem ism . T o this the answer is that it would be

wrong to give the impression that it is only as regards those features

which Western society has or had in common with primitive society

that the anthropologists have anything to teach us.

For it is not only surface resemblances of the kind outlined above

which make it desirable that some acquaintance with anthropology

shou ld form part of the equ ipm ent of every historian. Inste ad, the

real case for anthropology is twofold: first of all, that it can help to

widen the present subject-matter of academic history; secondly, that

it can provide us with the technique to deal, not only with this new

subject-matter, but with some already familiar historical problems.

As Ta w ney drily observed, the re is no reason why savages should

have all the science .

T o take th e second point first. An thropologists are notorious for

adopting paradoxical explanations rather than common-sense ones.

Some of these paradoxes might well be applied by historians with

a view to re-scrutinizing the assumptions behind what is normally

regarded as com mo n knowledge. M ost medieval historian s, for

example, would point to the semi-elective character of the late Saxon

and early Norman kingship, with its corollary of rebellions and

succession wars, as a sign of weakness in the Anglo-Norman state.*

0

But if they read Professor Gluckman's account of a comparable

situation in South East Africa they would be confronted by the

argument that, in a primitive society lacking an integrating network

of communications and a single economic structure, it is essential


11/22

HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 1 3

for the survival of that state that conflict should take the form of

a contest for the control of centralized pow er, for the alternative would

be local sepa ratism . In suc h a situation per iodic civil wars . . .

strengthened the system by canalizing tendencies to segment, and by

stating that the main goal of the leaders was the sacred kingship

itself .*

1

Lack of definition abou t the rules of succession make it

possible for a weak contender to be eliminated and replaced without

the collapse of the monarchy or the setting up of regional states.

T h e very stru cture of kingship thru sts struggles between rival

houses, and even civil war, on the nation; and it is an historical fact

to state that these struggles kept component groups of the nation

united in conflicting allegiance around the sacred kingship.

Struggles over the succession kept the component groups united in

conflict when othe r factors migh t have broken it dow n. A rebellion

against a tyrant or an usurper is a rebellion in defence of the system

of king ship . Sim ilarly, struggles between rival houses for th e

succession help to avert class conflict. A prince can invite

commoners to rebel and attack his kinsman king without invalidating

his family's title. In this situation rulers fear rivals from th eir own

ranks and not revolutionaries of lower status . . . Every rebellion

therefore is a fight in defence of royalty and kingship and in this

process the hostility of commoners against aristocrats is directed to

maintain the rule of aristocrats, some of whom lead the commons in

re vo lt . Th is seems to be a valuable comm entary, not only upon

early English history or the Wars of the Roses, but also upon such

Tudor risings as the Pilgrimage of Grace and such succession rules

as those of the Ottom ans or Oriental despo ts. T he re are some pages

in M r. Jolliffe's Constitutional History which come near to saying

t h i s , but they do not go the whole way.

For a second example of the value of peculiarly anthropological

explanation we may take the study of history itself and the attitud e of

men to claims to social or political authority founded upon the past.

Ever since the pioneering theories of Malinowski, anthropologists

have observed how myth in primitive society serves less as a

historically accurate record of the past than as a validating ch ar te r

for cu rrent relationsh ips. As those relationships alter, so do the

myths, which are adapted and reshaped to suit changing needs.

Thus the value of myths or legends to the historian lies in what they

tell him about the society in which they were composed, not what he

can learn from them about the distant past to which they purport to

relate.*

4

Acting on this principle, Mrs. Bohannan has shown that among the


12/22


Tiv of Northern Nigeria genealogies arc not to be regarded as

historical accounts of the past so much as a summary of existing

relation ships. W hen the relationships change so do the genealogies.

In this way change can take place without society having to recognize

tha t it has occu rred. Soc ial change can exist with a doc trine of

social pe rm an en ce . Th is seems an exact description of why so

many sixteenth-century Englishmen had pedigrees forged for

th em se lv es , why Sir Rob ert Filmer found it necessary to argue that

Charles I was in the direct line of descent from the sons of Noah, and

why the early seventeenth-century House of Commons claimed to be

exercising no more than the rights enjoyed by th eir fourteenth-century

or even Anglo-Saxon ancestors. But, as M rs . Boh annan points ou t,

a lineage system, like that of the T iv , can proba bly only survive in an

illiterate society, since, once the genealogy upholding the

status quo

is put on record, it soon becomes impossible to change it without the

accusation of forgery. Oral trad ition is infinitely mo re malleable fhun

a written one, and popular education and the availability of public

records will unseat a political system which claims to be based solely

on tradition . Perhaps this explains why the seventeenth century

saw the political argument based on historic rights give way to that

based on natural rights.

T he study of historiography from this point of

view

holds out many

possibilities. M r. Barnes has show n how an appe al to history was for

the Ngo ni of N orth ern Rhodesia a means of ma intaining their separate

existence at a time when cultural distinctions between groups were

breaking d o w n . Similarly, the upsu rge of rom antic historical

writing in the early nineteenth century can be interpreted as

a reaction against the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth. Such a

connection between history and nationalism is familiar enough, but

there has as yet been no systematic study of the whole range of

European historiography in the light of such dicta as that of Professor

Fortes tha t the political and social stru ctu re, including the principal

political values of a people, directly shapes th e notions of time and of

history that prevail among th e m . M em bers of the Armales

school of French history have made some passing remarks of great

interest upon the medieval sense of time,

70

but, with some notable

exceptions, the examination of historical myths and narratives for

the light they throw upon the society in which they were composed

has only just begun.

71

T h e same is tru e of the scientific study of

folklore, children's stories and popular fiction, although it is obvious

that the type of story which predominates at any one time can tell

one m uch about the comm unity in which it is pop ular. Even today


13/22

H IST O R Y A N D A N T H R O P O L O G Y 1 5

it might be said that the academic study of history still serves as

a charter validating the assumptions of contemporary society, by

re-interpreting the past in such a way as to find a place there for

problems of economics, sex, class, or whatever our current anxieties

may be.

So much for the way in which anthropology can enhance our

metho ds of historical explanation. As for the need to widen the

subject-matter of history as it is studied and taught in the

universities, a series of Inaugu ral Lec tures has made this a com m on-

place.

7 t

It would be possible, bu t tediou s, to emb ark upon a catalogue

of the wide range of social behaviour on w hich anthropological writing

now exists, but which yet awaits its his tor ian . Some imp ortant

instances, however, may be cited. Domestic and community

relations form the very stuff of social anthropology and, for that

matter, of most people's lives, but one would never deduce this from

the subject-matter of most historical inquiry. Examination

syllabuses, whatever the private interests of those who compile and

administer them, still reflect the primacy of political history and

a disposition to regard all other aspects of the subject as more or less

peripheral or fring e . Yet

How small, of all that human hearts endure

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

The study of the family in English history has simply not begun, and

the historian who now attempts it without consulting the

anthropologists ru ns th e risk of missing m any of the pro blem s, as well

as having to forgo a whole vocabulary designed to cope with the

description of different systems of m arriage, inheritance and descent.

Most students approaching the marriages of the medieval aristocracy,

for example, would be likely to assume that such loveless affairs must

have been unstable. In fact, anthropologists have shown that the

large-scale exchange of property accompanying a marriage is

associated with a low rate of divorce, tho ug h, a dm ittedly, they disagree

as to whether this is because such an exchange gives the kin an

interest in maintaining the union, or because such an exchange would

not occur in the first place unless the kinship structure made for the

stability of marriages.

74

As for the betrothal of children, which the

historian is normally content to deprecate or to explain in terms of

parental avarice, this unfamiliar practice may be partly related to

society's disapproval of illegitimacy. T he re is a huge qua ntity of

interesting work to be done on the fringes of family history and sexual

m orality. Is it tru e, for exam ple, that rom antic love is the pr od uct

of a poorly integrated society, in the way that the literary form of


14/22


tragedy is said to be?

7 6

I n any society , says Professor F irth ,

th e structure of kinship is strongly supported by m or al ity . How

many historians could offer an illustrated commentary upon this

statement? And who knows anything about the relationship

between the norms of sexual morality and the practice; for example,

the working of incest prohibitions in a medieval village ? Where

can one find an explanation of why the number of prohibited degrees

should have been so drastically reduced at the Reformation, or of

why the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries should have witnessed

a brisk discussion on the merits and d e-m erits of polygamy ?

A nother obvious topic is the education of children. M ode rn

pyschology has shown the connection between this and the formation

of social and political attitudes; the popular writings of Margaret

Mead are but the best-known anthropological treatment of the

su bj ec t. Th ere is no shortage of historical material here , bu t it

has never been properly studied, although the results would be most

illum inating a nd m ight, among other thing s, throw a completely new

light upon the origins of well-known religious or political movements.

If there is anything in the F reu dian view tha t the origins of conscience

are to be found in our earliest forms of instruction, then it may be

that the beginnings of Puritanism are better studied at the level of

family education than in sermons designed for adult audiences.

Fr om the un ion of techniques derived from social anthropology a nd

social pyschology there could arise a whole new world of historical

investigation which might illuminate so much of what is most

baffling and most crucial to hu m an existence. T he re would be the

study of social attitudes to birth, adolescence and death, of the

nervous and m ental life of society as reflected in d re am s, attitudes

to pain,

80

suicide,

11

the treatment of animals, drunkenness, and the

changing conceptions of sanity and in sa ni ty . Ne ither the Am erican

study of social pysc holog y nor the historical investigation of the

m ental life of societies pioneered by the F re nc h'

4

have yet struck deep

roots in this country. As a conseq uence , there are whole areas of

human experience which have either not been studied historically at

all or neve r interwoven with the fabric of social history. T her e is,

for exam ple, the history of clothes, which has a chronology of its ow n,

with

circa

1800 as the great turning -poin t, when W estern Europe an

man ceased to be the m ore gaudily dressed of the two se xe s. Or

there is the history of art as a reflection of fundamental changes in

human perception.

88

Ho w mu ch is m ade intelligible when we

recall Professor Firth's observation that a primitive artist reflects the

social rather than the physical proportions of a subject. '

7

Does this


15/22


explain why fifteenth-century women are usually portrayed as

pregnant? Finally, there is the whole history of personal

relationships. Have we not neglected E. M . Fo rster's characteristic

observation that th e true history of the hum an race is the story of

human affections ?

It is perfectly true that not all these topics are much discussed by

contemporary anthropologists, at least not by the British ones, who

constitute a distinct school, with a prescribed system of training,

8

*

and a sharply defined range of interests, both geographical and

topical. T h e concern with Africa and w ith social structure ( the

foundation of the whole social life of any continuing society '

0

) has

prod uced what appears to the outsider as a dispropo rtionate em phasis

on law, government and , above all, kinsh ip, with a consequent neglect

of pyschology, technology and economics.'

1

Anyone whose interest

in the subject has been stimulated by such popular works as those of

M argaret M ead or Ru th B en ed ict is likely to find his initial

acquaintance with British social anthropology something of a

disappointment.

But these are only questions of emphasis, and highly debatable

ones too . W hat is m ore certain is that m odern social anthropology

contains m uch from which the historian can learn. Serious structural

analysis of remote societies can only be done well after the intensive

field-work in which the anthropologist has observed for himself the

inter-connections between social facts. T h e historian has so often

to rely upon his imagination to trace links or deduce consequences

which the anthrop ologist can see before his eyes. Is it too m uch to

suppose that the historian who is familiar with the findings of the

anthropologist is in a better position to ask intelligent questions of his

material and m ore likely to come up w ith intelligent answ ers ?

But it is not only the technique of the professional historian which

is involved; there is also the broader educational question of what

academic history should be abo ut. W hethe r one regards it as the

serious analytic study of human society or whether we prefer to

engage in the imaginative re-creation of past experience, the present

circumscribed character of historical studies would seem equally

unjustifiable. Fro m th e second poin t of view the case was given

classic statement by Macaulay in his essay on

Sir William Temple:

Of that information for the sake of which alone it is worth while to study

remote events, we find so m uch in the love letters which Mr. Courtenay has

published [the letters of Dorothy Osborne], that we would gladly purchase

equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in state-papers taken

at random. To us it is surely as useful to know how the young ladies of

England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far


16/22


their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies, what degree

of liberty was allowed them, what use they nude of that liberty, what

accomplishments they most valued in men, and what proofs of tenderness

delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to know all about the

seizure of Franche Com te and the treaty of Nim ue gen . T h e mutual

relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as important as the mu tual

relations of any two governments in the world."

From the more austere view-point of the social scientist, the

subject-matter of modern anthropology will be recognized as giving

a better impression of what Fhistoire intigrale might be than do the

pages of most historical journals.

The justification of all historical study must ultimately be that it

enhances our self-consciousness, enables us to see ourselves in

perspective and helps us towards that greater freedom which comes

from self-knowledge. T h e artificial limitation of the subjec t-m atter

of m odern history is educationally a tragedy. It can only be a matter

for regret that the university history schools of this country turn out

men and women whose understanding and self-awareness in everyday

m atters are seldom enhan ced by their historical studies . Th ey

may realise that political and social structures change, but they have

little conception of the evolution of human and family relationships

or of the social factors which determ ine them . Yet the historical

study of more immediate aspects of human experience would have

been m ore likely to capture their im agination th an th e endless analysis

of the gymnastics of m inor politicians. F . W. Maitland once

remarked that anthropology must choose between being history and

being nothing. As Professor Evans-Pritchard observes,*

4

the

dictum must also be reversed.

St. John s

College,

Oxford Keith Thomas

NOTES

1

R. H. T awney, " Th e study of economic history", Economka, xiii (1933).

Ta wn ey had already shown his interest in the subject in his Preface to R. Firth ,

Primitive Econom ics of the New Zealand M aori, (London, 1929) .

1

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and function in primitive society, ( Lo ndo n ,

1952),

pp. 122-3 ,154 ,186 n . 1 i

M ethod in social anthropology,

ed. M. N. Srinivas,

(Chicago, 1058), pp. 7, 8.

1

Rad cliffe-Brown, Method in social anthropology, pp. 5-6, 26-8 . In practice,

Radcliffe-Brown's attitude to history was more sympathetic than his theory.

See the editor's introduction to Method in social anthropology, p. jrii.

*

The Marett Lecture is printed as "Social anthropology: past and present",

Man, i (1950). See also E . E. Evahs-Pritchard, Anthropology and history,

(Ma nchester, 1961). T he stateme nt quoted is on p. 2.

'Evans-Pritchard, "Social anthropology: past and present", p. 120, and

Social anthropology, (London, 1951) , p. 117.


17/22


• "An anthropologist has failed unless, when he says goodbye to the natives,

there is on both sides the sorrow of parting", Evans-Pritchard, Social

anthropology,

p. 79.

7

(Oxfo rd, 1949). I. Schapera describes his M arried life in an African tribe,

(Lo ndo n, 1940), as "a social history" (p. 7). Other goo d examp les of historical

writing by anthropologists are S. F. Nadel,

A black Byzantium. The kingdom

of the Nupe in Nigeria,

(London, 1942) , pp. 69-146; E. R. Leach,

Political

systems of Highland Burma . . .

, (Londo n, 1954) , pp. 22 7-63 ; J. A. Barnes,

Politics in a changing society. A political history of the Fort Jam eson Ngo ni,

(London, 1954) .

L

- H- Gann,

The birth of a plural society. The developm ent

of Northern Rh odesia under the British South Africa Company, 1894-1914,

(Manchester, 1958), is by a historian, but commissioned by anthropologists.

The author in his preface and Professor M. Gluckman in his foreword both

comment on the importance of anthropology for the study of African history.

• M . M . Postan, The h istorical metho d in social science . . . , (Cam bridge,

193?).

P. 32-

• E. H. Carr,

What is history ?,

(Lon don , 1961) , p. 59.

10

"T he future of history, and, in particular, of econom ic h istory, dep ends

on its ability to acquire a more consciously sociological outlook", "The study

of economic history", p. 19.

11

See Mr. Leach's comments, Political systems of Highland Burma, pp. 4, 7,

285.

11

Cf. M iss L . S. Su therland's picture of the "intricate political m ach ine"

which "Walpole ingeniously built up and Pelham painfully maintained", which

suffered a "partial breakdown" with the fall of Newcastle, and "creaked

dismally" under George III and his ministers, but was "working again" under

Pitt. It wa s, she says, "a stable if inert political sys tem ". "T he East India

Company in eighteenth-century polit ics",

Econ. Hist. Rev.,

xvii (1947), p. 17.

" Evans-Pritchard'8 description of anthropologists as engaged in composing

"integrative accounts of primitive peoples at a moment of time" ("Social

anthropology: past and present", p. 122) is hard to distinguish from Postan's

picture of historian s " weav ing . . . som e historical facts w ith other historical

facts into a cloth of an epoch" ("Function and Dialectic in Economic History",

Econ.

Hist. Rev.,

2nd ser., xiv [1962], p. 403) .

1 1

The Nuer . . . , (Oxford, 1940); Kinship and marriage among the Nuer,

(Oxford, 1951); Nuer religion, (Oxford, 1956).

" T h o u g h not alL See, for example, the re-working of M alinowski's

material by J. P. Singh Uberoi, Politics of the Kula Ring, (Manchester, 1962).

l i

As is admitted in Schapera, Married life in an African tribe, p. 9.

l7

Cf. E. Gellner, "Time and theory in social anthropology , Mind, lxvii

(1958), p. 185.

" Th ere are important problems relating to the causes of econ om ic and

social change to which anthropological fieldwork has seldom provided the

answer: for example, matters relating to the size of population and its rate of

growtli.

" H. R. Trevor-Roper, The gentry, 1540-164 0, (Econom ic History Review

Supplements, no. 1) n.d. [ i953] -

" T h i s may be wistful . Cf. the critic isms made by M r. E. R. Leach

(Pul

Eliya. A village in Ceylon

. . . , [Cambridge,

1961],

p. 9), who asserts that

"case-history material in anthropological writings seldom reflects objective

description".

11

R. Firth, Social anthropolog y as science and a s art, (Du ned in, 1958) , p. 11.

" Evans-Pritchard,

Social anthropology, p.

95 .

11

Cf. the com me nts of O. R. Mc Gre gor, So m e research possibilities and

historical materials for family and kinship study in Britain",

British Journal of

Sociology,

xii (1961).

14

R. Firth, Primitive economics of the New Zealand Maori, p. 482 . Th ere are

some interesting criticisms of Marxism from an anthropological point of view


18/22


in R. Firth,

Primitive Polynesian economy,

(London, 1939) , pp. 361-364.

" E. Durkheim,

The elementary forms of the religious life,

trans. J. W. Swain,

(New York [Collier Books edn.J, 1961), p. 23.

" G. C . Homans,

English villagers of the thirteenth century,

(Cambridge,

Mass., 1942), chapter 23.

" I hop e to offer a detailed discu ssion of this point on another occasion. It

is made by C. Hill ,

The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714,

(Edinburgh, 1961) ,

pp. 84-5 .

" A . R. Radclif fe-Brown,

The Andaman Islanders,

(Cambridge, 1933), pp.

233-4-

" Radcliffe-Brown,

Structure and function in primitive society, p.

151.

" Radcliffe-Brown,

T he Andaman Islanders,

pp. 246-55; E. E. Evans-

Pritchard, "The dance",

Africa,

i (1928); M. Hunter,

Reaction to conquest.

Effects of contact with Europeans on the Pondo of South Africa,

(London, 1936) ,

PP. 369-70 , 37576. Th ere is interesting medical material in E. L . Bockinan,

Religious danc es in

the

Christian Church and in popular medicine, trans. E. Classen ,

(London, 1952) .

" E. E. Evans-Pritchard,

Witchcraft, o racles and magic amon g the Azande ,

(Oxford, 1937) . P- " 7 -

11

Quoted by K. M . Briggs, Pale Hecate's team . . . , (London, 1962), p. 13.

11

M . Fortes in E . E . Evans-Pritchard e t a ., T he institutions of primitive

society, (Ox ford, 1954), p. 88. Various interpretations of witchcraft are

discussed by S. F. Nadel , Nupe religion, (Lon don , 1954) , pp. 201-6. O n magic

as a remedy for various kinds of social frustration see B. Malinowski, Magic,

science, and religion and other essays,

(Glencoe, 111., 1948), esp. pp. 60-1, and

on witchhunting as displaced aggression see C. Kluckhohn and D. Leighton,

The Navaho,

(Camb ridge, Mas*., 1946), pp . 172-81. Th ere is a discussion of

the relationship between witchcraft and economic circumstances in

M. Gluckman,

Custom and conflict in Africa,

(Oxford , 1955), chapter 4. See

also M. S. Marwick, "The Social context of Cewa witch beliefs",

Africa,

xxii

(1952)-

1 4

On the b lood-feud as an instrument of cohesion see Gluck man ,

Custom

and c onflict in Africa,

chapter 1, esp. pp. 21 -2, where the fallacy, com m on amon g

me diev alists, that the feud led to incessan t private warfare is exp osed . (T h e

substance of this chapter is to be found in Professor Gluckman's article, "The

peace in the feud",

Past and Present,

N o . 8 [1955)). H is observations do not

seem to have been heeded by the latest historian of Anglo-Saxon society,

H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman C onquest, (London, 1962) ,

pp. 206 , 294-7. Th ey were profitably employe d, how ever, by J. M . Wallace-

Hadrill in his account of the frankish blood-feud, The long-haired tangs and

other studies in frankish history,

(L ond on, 1962), pp. 121-47.

•• Cf. M . E liade,

Birth and rebirth . . . ,

trans. W. R. Trask, (New York,

1958). Anthropo logical theory is put to ingeniou s use by W . J. O ng , "La tin

language study as a Renaissance puberty rite",

Studies in Philology,

lvi (1959).

• 'E . g . R . H . Lo w ie , Social organization, (London, 1950) , pp. 19-22;

M . J . Herskovits , The econom ic life of primitive peoples, (New York, 1940), p. 12.

On some of the features said to be common to all peasant societies see

R. Redfield, Peasant society and culture . . . , (Chicago, 19 56), p. 108.

• '

Anthropology and history,

pp. 13-14.

" E. Norbeck,

Religion in primitive society,

(New York, 1961), chapter 6.

" Cf. I. Schapera's com m ents o n the all-important role of the

chief,

in

I. Schapera (ed.) ,

T he Ba ntu-speaking tribes of S outh Africa . . .

, (L ondo n,

I

937)> P- 362. Th er e are som e interesting remarks on the results of Chr istian

inf luence m M. Hunter,

Reaction to conquest,

p. 355.

" E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 77K divirte kingship of tht SM lluk of the Nilotic

Sudan, (Cambridge, 1948), p. 36.

4 1

R. Firth , Elements of social organization, (Lon do n, 1951), p. 236 . Cf.

E. M. W. Til lyard, The Elizabethan world picture, (London, 1948) .


19/22


41

H. E. Lam bert , Kikuyu social and political institutions, (London, 1956) ;

some impression of the importance of oaths in seventeenth-century England

can be gained from (R. Garnet),

The book of oaths, and the several forms

thereof,

both antient and modem . . . . ( L o nd o n, 1 64 9).

41

S ee P. W orsley,

The trumpet shall sound . . .

, (Londo n, 195 7); K. Burridge,

Mam bu. A Melanesian millennium, (Londo n, i9 60 ) ; I. Leeson, Bibliography

of cargo cults and other nativistic movements in the South Pacific,

(Sydney [South

Pacif ic Commission] , 1952) .

44

Tile trumpet shall sound, pp. 249-50.

44

N . Coh n , The pursuit of the Millennium, (London [Mercury Books

edn . ] ,

1962): E. J. Hobsbawm,

Primitive rebels

. . . , (Manchester, 1959).

44

See Professor Firth's c om m ents,

Primitive Polynesian economy,

pp. 7,

2 2 - 9 ,

360-1.

47

R. Thurnwald, Econ omics in primitive comm unities, (Londo n, 1932), p. 264 ;

Herskovits ,

The econom ic life of primitive peoples,

pp . 210-2; Fir th ,

Elements of

social organization,

p. 134. Cf. H . J. Habakkuk, "T he market for mo nastic

property, 1539-1560 ,

Econ. Hist. Rev.,

2nd ser.,

x

(1958) , esp. p. 372.

41

B. M ahnowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific . . . , (Lo ndo n, 1922);

M. Mauss ,

The gift

. . . , trans. I . Cunn ison, (Lon don , 1954). M r.T . H. Aston

has drawn my attention to the discussion of "dark age" gift exchange by

P. Grierson, "Commerce in the Dark Ages: a critique of the evidence", Trans.

Roy. Hist. Soc., 5th ser., ix (1959), pp. 137-9.

41

Firth,

Elements of social organization,

pp. 102-6.

" R. Firth,

Malay fishermen: their peasant economy,

(London, 1946) , p. 169.

Cf. K. B. McFarlane, "Loans to the Lancastrian Kings: the problem of

inducement" , Cambridge Historical Journal, ix (1947) , pp. 65-8.

41

C. M . Arensberg,

The Irish countryman. An anthropological study,

(L on do n, 1937 ), pp . 170-6 . Cf. a rather different case of social bo nd s created

by indebtedness in J. C. Holt,

The Northerners. A study in the reign of King

John, (Oxford, 1961), pp. 72-7.

41

There are useful bibliographical guides to this subject in Current Sociology,

>> 4 ( 953)> i"> 1 (i954"

I

955) and vi- 3 (1957) and in M. Mead (ed.),

Cultural

patterns and technical change, (N ew Y ork, 1955), pp. 333 f.

41

Quo ted by N . M cKendrick, "Josiah W edgwo od and factory d iscipline",

Historical Journal, iv (1961) , p. 46.

44

A. I. Richards,

Hunger and work in a savage tribe . . . ,

(London, 1932) ;

Land, labour and diet in Northern Rhodesia

. . . , (London, 1939).

1 1

1 .

Pinchbeck, Women workers and the Industrial Revolution,

IJ$O-I8SO,

(Lon don, 1930). Cf. H. I. Ho gbin, Transformation scene. The changing

culture of a New Guinea village,

(London, 1951) and

Social Chan ge . . . ,

(London, 1958) , pp. 168-73; Hunter,

Reaction to conquest, p.

4 80; W . W at son ,

Tribal

cohesion

in a mon ey economy. A study of the Mam bwe people of Northern

Rhodesia, (Manchester, 1958) .

44

S. A. Pey ton, " T he village population in the Tu do r lay subsidy rolls",

Eng. Hist. Rev.,

xxx (1915); E. E. Rich, "The population of Elizabethan

England", Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., ii (1950). Cf. M . Rea d, "M igrant labour

in Africa and its effects on tribal life", International Labour Review, x lv (1942) ;

I. Schapera,

Migrant labour and tribal life

. . . , (Lo ndo n, 1947) , esp. p. 7 5 ;

D . Niddrie, "The road to work: a survey of the influence of transport on

migrant labour in Central Africa", The Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, xv (1954) ,

esp. p. 36.

4

' O n totemism cf. G. L . Gom me, Folklore as an historical science . . . ,

(London, 1908) , pp. 274-96.

14

"The study of economic history", p. 20.

" See G ellner*s com m ents, " Ti m e and theory in social a nthropo logy",

p.

183.

40

E .g . H. W. C. Davis , England under the Norma ns and Angevtns, 1066-1372,

(Lo nd on , 13th edn ., 1949), pp . 5-6. "S o long as social duties are envisaged


20/22

22 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 24

in the form of personal obligations, monarchy is the one practicable form of

government, and it is better that the monarchy should be hereditary .

Harold's failure was a result of his attempt to induce the nation to tamper with

the principle of hereditary succession (p. 6); G. O. Sayles,

The medieval

foundations of England, (London, 2nd edn., 1950), p. 179: Indeed, it is unlikely

that monarchy would have survived as the effective institution it was if it had

been mainly elective, for this would have opened the way to such civil war and

anarchy as was to come later in Stephen's reign .

M. Gluckman, Rituals of rebellion in S.E. Africa, (Manchester, 1954), p. 25.

Ibid.,

pp. 25, 23-4. See also Gluckman,

Custom and conflict in Africa,

chapter 2, and P. M. Worsley, The analysis of rebellion and revolution in

modern British social anthropology , Science and Society, xxv (1961). Professor

Gluckman, whose analysis obviously owes much to Evans-Pritchard, The

Divine kingship of the Sfriltuk of the Nilotic Sudan,

esp. pp. 37-8, stresses that,

once the kingdom is integrated by a complex economy and more rapid

communication, the ritual of rebellion is no longer safely enacted, for divergent

class interests are likely to convert rebellion into revolution.

J. E. A. Jolliffe, The constitutional history of medieval England . . . ,

(London, I937)> PP- 155-65 (on the ritual character of feudal rebellion). The

medieval historian who seems to come nearest to Gluckman's notion of unity

in conflict is, interestingly, W. Stubbs, The Constitutional history of England . . . ,

(Oxford, 4th edn., 1883), voL i, pp. 319, 366 and 585.

•

4

B. Malinowski, Myth in primitive pyschology , first published in 1926

and reprinted in Magic, science, and religion and other essays. See also

C.

Kluckhohn, Myths and rituals: a general theory , Harvard Theological

Review,

xxxv (1942); S. F. Nadel,

A black Byzantium,

p. 72; M. Fortes,

The

dynamics of kinship among the Tallensi . . . , (London, 1945), pp. 21-7; R. Firth,

History and traditions of Tikopia, (Wellington, N.Z., 1961), esp. chapters 1 and

10.

This is the principle animating Mr. M. I. Finley's

The World of Odysseus,

(London, 1956). Cf. his criticisms of continuing attempts by ancient

historians to reconstruct history from orally transmitted materials in the face of

what the anthropologists have repeatedly taught,

New Statesman,

6 July 1962,

pp. 19-20.

'• L. Bohannan, A genealogical charter, Africa, xxii (1952), p. 314.

••

See, e.g., J. H. Round,

Family origins and other studies,

ed. W. Page,

(London, 1930), pp. £-6.

C. Hill, Puntamsm and revolution . . . , (London, 1958), p. 75.

• J. A. Barnes, History in a changing society , The Rhodes-Livingstone

Journal, xi (1951).

*•

The dynamics of

clanship

among the Tallensi,

p. xi.

70

M. Bloch, Feudal society, trans. L. A. Manyon, (London, 1961), pp. 72-5.

L. Febvre, Le probleme de I

incroyance

au XVI siicle. La religion de Rabelais,

(Paris, 1942), pp. 426-34.

71

Some of the possibilities in the study of historical myth are shown in

Mr. Hill's investigation of The Norman Yoke , Puritanism and revolution,

chapter 3. Mr. E. R. Leach's reminder {Political systems of Highland Burma,

chapter ix) that there may be rival versions of the same myth, reflecting

contradictory claims by different social groups, might possibly help to resolve

the lively controversy on the origins of Robin Hood (Past and Present, Nos. 14,

18, 19 and 20). Instead of assuming that the real Robin Hood was the hero,

cither of the gentry or the peasantry, one might reasonably conclude that (in

different versions) he was both, as Mr. Holt suggests (No. 18 [1960], p. 99 and

No. 19 [1961], p. 18). It is common for ballads of aristocratic origin to be

unconsciously adapted by the lower social groups who take them over, e.g.

M. J. C. Hodgart, The ballads, (London, 1950), p. 102. Anthropologists might

have much to say about the Robin Hood question. Apart from some raised

eyebrows at Mr. Holt's talk of a good yarn (No. 18, p. 92) and at Mr. Keen's

assertion that the memory of the common people is the longest on the earth


21/22


(The outlaws of medieval legend, [London,

1961],

p. 36), they would be

sympathetic to the attempt to study the ballads as the embodiment of popular

values and aspirations, while their belief in the connection between myth and

ritual might lead them to devote more attention to the R obin H ood gam es,

which Mr. Keen

(op. at.,

pp . 221-2 ) dismisses rather briefly. (M iss B riggs,

how ever , argues that the gam es and ballads ran on different lin es ,

Pale

Hecate's team, p. 216.)

" R. W . Southern,

The shape and substance of academic history,

(Oxford,

1961) and J. S. Bromley,

History and the younger generation,

( So ut ha m pt o n ,

1962).

" A useful guide to the sort of questions asked by anthropologists is

Notes and Oyurxes on anthropology,

by a com mittee of the Royal An thropological

Inst itute, (London, 6th edn. , 1951) .

7 1

M . Gluckm an in A. R. Raddiffe-Brown and D . Forde (eds .) ,

African

systems of kinship and marriage, (London , 1950) , pp. 190-3. Cf. M . Hunter,

Reaction to conquest, p. 212.

" Z. Barbu, Problems of historical psychology, (Lo ndo n, i96 0) , pp . 166 n,

167-79. F

O T a

cruder theory of the social origins of one kind of tragedy see

L . Go ldm a nn, Le dieu cachi. Etudes sur la vision tragique dans les Pensies de

Pascal et dans le Thiatre de Racine, these, (Paris, n.d. [1956]).

"


p. 210.

" Som e of the relevant texts are cited by A. O. Aldr idge, "Polygam y in early

fiction: Henry Neville and Denis Veiras",

Publications of the Modem Language

Association of America,

lxv (1950) and "Polygamy and Deism",

The Journal of

English and Germanic Philology,

xlviii (1949).

"

Coming of age in Samoa,

(London, 1929) ;

Growing up in New Guinea

. . . ,

(London, 1931); (with M. Wolfenstein [eds.] ) .

Childhood in contemporary

cultures,

(Chicago , 1955). Th ere is an older general treatment in N . M iller,

The child in primitive society, (London, 1928), and a history of the study of

primit ive childhood in O. F. Raum,

Chaga childhood

. . . , ( Lo nd on , 1940),

pp . 1-54. P. Ar ies, Centuries of childhood, trans. R. Baldick, (London, 1962),

is a recent historical study.

" B. M alinowski, Sex and repression in savage society, (London, 1927) ,

p p . 92-7; J . S. Lincoln, T he dream in primitive cultures, (London, 1935) ;

E . R . D o dds , The Greeks and the irrational, (Berkeley and Lo s An gele s, 1951),

chapter 4; G. D. Kelchner, Dream s in O ld Norse literature and their affinities

in folklore

. . . , (Cam brid ge, 1935). Th er e is some inter esting material in

P . Goodw in,

The mystery ofdreames, historically discoursed

. . .

>

(London, 1658) .

" M . Zborow ski, "Cultural comp onen ts m response to pain" , Journal of

Social Issues, viii (1952) (a modern sociological study).

" A brief guide to the anthropological literature on this subject is provided

by the footnotes to R. Firth, Suicide and risk-taking in Tiko pia so ciety" ,

PysMatry, xxiv (1961).

1 1

R. Linton,

Culture and mental disorders,

(Springfield, 111., 1956);

M. Foucault , Folie et dtraium. Histoire de la fohe a Page classique, these ,

(Paris, 1961).

" Particularly A. Kardiner, The individual and his society . . . , ( N e w Y o rk ,

1939) and (et al.), The pyschological frontiers of society, (New York, 1945) .

• ' Urged by L. Febvre (e.g . Combats pour /'histoire, [Paris,

1953] ,

pp. 207-38) ,

and exemplif ied by R. Mandrou, Introduction a la Prance modeme. Essm de

psychologie historique, 1500-1640,

(Paris, 1961). Cf. A. Du pro nt, "Pr oblem es

et method es d'une histoire de La psycho logie co llective",

Annales,

i 6

e

annee

(196 0 .

•• O n w hich see J . C. Flugel , The pyschology of clothes, (Lond on, 1930),

p p . 110-3. Th ere are som e remarks on the implications of the subject b y

H. J. Perkin in H. P. R. Finberg (ed.) ,

Approach es to history. A symposium ,

(London, 1962), pp. 69-70, and by R. Barthes, "Histoire et sociologie du

vitement: quelques observat ions methodologiques",

Annales,

I 2

e

annee (1957) .


22/22

24 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 24

Q. Bell, On hitman finery, (London, 1947)1 is largely an application of the

theories of Thorstein Veblen.

11

P. Francastel,

Peinture et sodtti

, . . . (Lyon, 1951).


p. 175. On the comparable moral values

of Victorian art and that of the New Zealand Maori see E. R. Leach in

Evans-Pritchard, The institutions of primitive society, p. 37.

Quoted by Iris Origo in J. L. Clifford (ed.).

Biography as an art . . . ,

(London, 1962), p. 213.

•• Briefly outlined by Evans-Pritchard, Social anthropology, p. 76.

•• M. Fortes, The structure of unilineal descent groups , American

Anthropologist, lv (1953)) p. 23.

'' Though, as far as economics go, the work of Professor Firth constitutes

an obvious exception. Mr. E. R. Leach makes some strong criticisms of the

exaggerated emphasis laid on descent as the fundamental principle of social

organization to the exclusion of more obvious economic considerations in Pul

Eliya. A village in Ceylon, p. 301, and Rethinking anthropology, (London,

1961), p. 122.

R. Benedict, Patterns of culture, (London, [Routledge paperback

edn.] ,

1961) (first published in England in 1935).

Lord Macaulay's Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome, (London, 1886), p. 424.

•

4

Anthropology and

history, p. 20.

The ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

of the

Past and

Present Society will

be

held

at 12.15 p.m. on

Thursday

n

July

1963

in

Birkbeck

College, London,

at the

conclusion

of the

morning session

of

the Annual

Conference.

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Keith Thomas - History and Anthropology', Past & Present 24 (1963), 3–24

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