R. G. Abrahams - The Peoples of Greater Unyamwezi,Tanzania (Nyamwezi, Sukuma, Sumbwa, Kimbu, Konongo): East Central Africa Part XVII (Ethnographic Survey of Africa)

ETHNOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF AFRICA

Volume 17

THE PEOPLES OF GREATER
UNYAMWEZI, TANZANIA
(NYAMWEZI, SUKUMA, SUMBWA,
KIMBU, KONONGO)

East Central Africa
Part XVII

R. G. ABRAHAMS

INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN INSTITUTE 1967
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE SIDNEY PRESS LTD, BEDFORD

MAP

The 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 Research 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 organization 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 organization 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.

While the available published sources have usually provided the basis for the Survey, authors have in many cases been able to use unpublished reports and records in government files and in the archives of missionary societies as well as field notes and special communications from anthropologists and others which have been generously made available. Increasingly, as the work of the Survey has progressed, it has been possible to obtain contributions from field workers who have been recently engaged in research among the peoples concerned. Such volumes have accordingly provided a first short account of the results of new studies.

In addition to the initial British grants, which have been subsequently continued by the Department of Technical Co-operation and the Ministry of Overseas Development, contributions towards the preparation and publication of volumes relating to Francophone Africa were generously made by the governments of Afrique Occidentale Franaise, the Cameroons and Afrique Equatoriale Franaise, through the good offices of the Ministre de la France dOutre Mer and the Institut Franaise de lAfrique Noire. The late Professor M. Griaule, Professor Th. Monod, Mme. G. Dieterlen and Professor H. Deschamps have greatly assisted the survey in securing the services and guiding the work of the French ethnologists who have contributed these volumes.

The Commission dEthnologie of the Institut Royal Colonial Belge and the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale, which were established after the war, co-operated in the preparation of the earlier Parts relating to the Congo at the Centre de Documentation of the Muse du Congo Belge, under the direction of Professor Olbrechts and Mlle. Boone. The Institute is indebted to the Museum for its continued collaboration in the publication of further Parts in association with their series of Monographies Ethnographiques.

Over fifty Parts of the Survey have so far been published, but considerable areas and a number of important peoples remain to be covered. Meanwhile the first editions of the earlier Parts have in many cases gone out of print. Since it has often been difficult to arrange for revised editions which would incorporate more recent research, they have sometimes been reprinted without change, with the addition of supplementary bibliographies, as a record of the earlier ethnographic information on the people described and provide a background for subsequent studies.

This Part, The Peoples of Greater Unyamwezi, Tanzania, by Dr. R. G. Abrahams, is the third in a series relating to Tanzania. The first two Parts, The Fipa and Related Peoples of South-West Tanzania and North-East Zambia, by Roy G. Willis, TheMatrilineal Peoples of Eastern Tanzania, by T. O. Beidelman, have already been published, and further Parts on the Hehe, Bena and Gogo of Tanzania are in preparation. The authors of all these have recently carried out field research in the areas of their studies, and have been able not only to present the results of their own research but also to make critical evaluations and more effective use of earlier writings on the peoples concerned.