African Studies and Race Relations

Abstract

St Antony’s interest in African studies originated in the appointment of Kenneth Kirkwood as the inaugural Rhodes Professor of Race Relations in the university. This chair, the first to be attached to St Antony’s, was endowed by the Roan Selection Trust Group of Copper Mining Companies, and was set up in 1953 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Cecil John Rhodes. Initially there had been moves to attach the chair to Oriel, Rhodes’ old college, but it was ultimately decided to ask St Antony’s, the new graduate college with an interest in international studies, if it would take it. The scope of race relations was broadly defined by Oxford as the impact of western jurisdiction upon non-western peoples. The donors requested that special attention be paid to Africa and to the relations between indigenous and immigrant peoples. The chair was placed under three faculties – modern history, social studies, and anthropology and geography – and the professor was an official member of the board of the faculty of anthropology and geography.¹ The post was managed by the university’s Commonwealth Studies Committee, a successor to the Colonial Studies Committee. Other places in the university concerned with African studies were Rhodes House, which housed the Bodleian Library’s African collection, and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at Queen Elizabeth House.