Board of Trustees, Boston University

Apartheid by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural OrganizationReview by: Christian P. PotholmThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1972), pp. 705-706Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/217296 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 705 BOOK REVIEWS 705

is well illustrated, although the scales on potsherd drawings are omitted (are they full size?) and those for the site plans are most inadequate. The produc- tion job is not worthy of the Oxford University Press. The! numerous mis- prints and misalignments in this monograph are not the author's fault, but those of publisher and printer.

Vogel's report is to be welcomed not only as a valuable contribution but alsol as a systematic attempt to relate the latest research to that of earlier years. I eagerly await the next reports in the series.

BRIAN M. FAGAN

University of California, Santa Barbara

APARTHEID. By the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Or- ganization. New York: Unipub, Inc., 1972, second edition. Pp. 256. $4.00 paper.

The preface tol this second edition of Apartheid clearly states its hypothesis: "The South African Government has not only continued to persecute the opponents of its policies, but it has pursued the widest and severest applica- tion of the measures of racial separation and segregation, thus heightening racial bitterness and increasing the danger of violent conflict inside South Africa." The chapters which follow document the pernicious impact that pol- icy continues to, have on education, culture, science, and the dissemination of information. Although the major emphasis of this work is on the deprivation suffered by non-Europeans, there is also considerable stress on the pejorative impact on the totality of South African society.

The volume is well documented and chock-full of facts. The section on education, for example, compares teachers, teaching methods, pupils, reading material, library and laboratory equipment, and the like across the various racial groups. We learn that the ratio of African pupils to African teachers has steadily deteriorated, from 46.1 to 1 in 1963 to 58.5 in 1967, and that while there are over 68,500 whites enrolled at the university level, there are only 3911 Africans, 1598 Coloureds, and 3354 Asians. There are even detailed comparisons of the percentage of space devoted to, various events and topics in South African history in the books available to the individual ethnic groups. Perhaps the most important portion is that which deals with the cultural effects of apartheid. Although there are some rather childish assertions (as to the importance of interracial jazz groups and the opportunity to attend racially mixed teas), the central themes of the chapter, namely that "cultural isolation is a high price to pay for separateness" and that the totality of South African culture ought too be greater than the sum of its racially compart- mentalized groups, are well taken.

is well illustrated, although the scales on potsherd drawings are omitted (are they full size?) and those for the site plans are most inadequate. The produc- tion job is not worthy of the Oxford University Press. The! numerous mis- prints and misalignments in this monograph are not the author's fault, but those of publisher and printer.

Vogel's report is to be welcomed not only as a valuable contribution but alsol as a systematic attempt to relate the latest research to that of earlier years. I eagerly await the next reports in the series.

BRIAN M. FAGAN

University of California, Santa Barbara

APARTHEID. By the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Or- ganization. New York: Unipub, Inc., 1972, second edition. Pp. 256. $4.00 paper.

The preface tol this second edition of Apartheid clearly states its hypothesis: "The South African Government has not only continued to persecute the opponents of its policies, but it has pursued the widest and severest applica- tion of the measures of racial separation and segregation, thus heightening racial bitterness and increasing the danger of violent conflict inside South Africa." The chapters which follow document the pernicious impact that pol- icy continues to, have on education, culture, science, and the dissemination of information. Although the major emphasis of this work is on the deprivation suffered by non-Europeans, there is also considerable stress on the pejorative impact on the totality of South African society.

The volume is well documented and chock-full of facts. The section on education, for example, compares teachers, teaching methods, pupils, reading material, library and laboratory equipment, and the like across the various racial groups. We learn that the ratio of African pupils to African teachers has steadily deteriorated, from 46.1 to 1 in 1963 to 58.5 in 1967, and that while there are over 68,500 whites enrolled at the university level, there are only 3911 Africans, 1598 Coloureds, and 3354 Asians. There are even detailed comparisons of the percentage of space devoted to, various events and topics in South African history in the books available to the individual ethnic groups. Perhaps the most important portion is that which deals with the cultural effects of apartheid. Although there are some rather childish assertions (as to the importance of interracial jazz groups and the opportunity to attend racially mixed teas), the central themes of the chapter, namely that "cultural isolation is a high price to pay for separateness" and that the totality of South African culture ought too be greater than the sum of its racially compart- mentalized groups, are well taken.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 12:05:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

706 BOOK REVIEWS

But the second editioin is still a disappointment. It contains no index and one is certainly needed to enable the reader to locate the many specifics which the work contains. Further, the concluding chapter is identical with that of the earlier edition despite the five years which have elapsed, and although the authors have compiled an impressive catalogue of the ills of apartheid, they have nowhere proved their initial assumption that the implementation of

apartheid over the last ten years has brought the society closer to racial war- fare than it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And for my part I would like to see the UNESCO method (that is, the juxtaposition of passages from the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Constitution of UNESCO with the facts of a particular situation) applied to a whole spectrum of political systems (such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Liberia, to select but a few African examples). Undoubtedly South Africa

belongs at one end of the continuum of global injustice, but that it aids our

analysis of man's inhumanity to man to put it in an entirely separate category is by no means clear.

CHRISTIAN P. POTHOLM

Bowdoin College

BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS WEST AFRICA. SELECTED DOCUMENTS 1875- 1914 WITH STATISTICAL APPENDICES 1800-1914. Edited by G. W. New-

bury. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. viii, 636.

$14.50.

C. W. Newbury's collection of documents continues his earlier volume, which dealt with the period from 1786 to 1874. It reproduces extracts from about four hundred documents from Colonial and Foreign Office minutes and papers, confidential prints, and parliamentary papers. The statistical tables are ex-

tremely valuable, and should take the place of the messy and disparate sources which historians have hithertol had to use.

Documentary collections are now in vogue (brought on perhaps by the ease with which such things can be processed with new copying aids) and most of us in the profession are fed up with receiving patchy and ill-organized batches of documents used by our colleagues in some teaching situation and then hastily published. Newbury's work is far from this genre, following more in the tradition of the older English collections intended for fellow researchers and for students in British honors "special subjects" classes. Newbury's collec- tion admirably fits that purpose, and represents much patient industry in the skill of collection, the editing, the footnoting and linking passages, and the

organization of the categories. It is cearly intended to be used with consider- able secondary reading.

Faulting such works in terms of the reviewer's own interests is always easy.

706 BOOK REVIEWS

But the second editioin is still a disappointment. It contains no index and one is certainly needed to enable the reader to locate the many specifics which the work contains. Further, the concluding chapter is identical with that of the earlier edition despite the five years which have elapsed, and although the authors have compiled an impressive catalogue of the ills of apartheid, they have nowhere proved their initial assumption that the implementation of

apartheid over the last ten years has brought the society closer to racial war- fare than it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And for my part I would like to see the UNESCO method (that is, the juxtaposition of passages from the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Constitution of UNESCO with the facts of a particular situation) applied to a whole spectrum of political systems (such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Liberia, to select but a few African examples). Undoubtedly South Africa

belongs at one end of the continuum of global injustice, but that it aids our

analysis of man's inhumanity to man to put it in an entirely separate category is by no means clear.

CHRISTIAN P. POTHOLM

Bowdoin College

BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS WEST AFRICA. SELECTED DOCUMENTS 1875- 1914 WITH STATISTICAL APPENDICES 1800-1914. Edited by G. W. New-

bury. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. viii, 636.

$14.50.

C. W. Newbury's collection of documents continues his earlier volume, which dealt with the period from 1786 to 1874. It reproduces extracts from about four hundred documents from Colonial and Foreign Office minutes and papers, confidential prints, and parliamentary papers. The statistical tables are ex-

tremely valuable, and should take the place of the messy and disparate sources which historians have hithertol had to use.

Documentary collections are now in vogue (brought on perhaps by the ease with which such things can be processed with new copying aids) and most of us in the profession are fed up with receiving patchy and ill-organized batches of documents used by our colleagues in some teaching situation and then hastily published. Newbury's work is far from this genre, following more in the tradition of the older English collections intended for fellow researchers and for students in British honors "special subjects" classes. Newbury's collec- tion admirably fits that purpose, and represents much patient industry in the skill of collection, the editing, the footnoting and linking passages, and the

organization of the categories. It is cearly intended to be used with consider- able secondary reading.

Faulting such works in terms of the reviewer's own interests is always easy.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 12:05:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions