Northcote W. Thomas West Africa Wax Cylinder Collection

From the [Re:]Entanglements Project

Curated by Paul Basu

Northcote Whitridge Thomas lived between 1868-1936 and was a British Anthropologist born in Oswestry Shropshire. He studied history and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with a BA in 1890 and an MA in 1894. Throughout his life he has published over fifty articles in academic journals and over thirty books. He served on the councils of the Folklore Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute and was the first trained anthropologist to be appointed to the post of ‘Government Anthropologist’ by the British Colonial Office.

This appointment was an early experiment in the use of the emerging discipline of anthropology as a tool in colonial governance in the British colonial context. Unlike a subsequent generation of government anthropologists, who were members of the Colonial Service trained in anthropology. He was engaged on a tour by tour basis to gather anthropological data, including information about local customs and laws that would be disseminated to colonial administrators and policy makers with a view to refining practices of ‘indirect rule.’

Whilst in post, he conducted four anthropological surveys in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. He studied the Edo and Igbo people in Southern Nigeria, and worked mainly with Temne and Limba communities in Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915. During the course of his anthropological surveys in West Africa, Northcote W. Thomas assembled collections of artefacts and local arts and crafts, ‘specimens’ of language, and botanical species. With the aid of local assistants, he documented many aspects of contemporary life in Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone through thousands of photographs; recorded songs, stories and music on wax phonograph cylinders (which the collection on this page focuses on). Northcote W. Thomas has also conducted household surveys. His collections are currently stored at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

(Details sourced from the [Re:]Entanglements site and Wikipedia)

For further information visit the [Re:]Entanglements website.

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A big thank you to,

Curator, Paul Basu

for his extensive work on Northcote W. Thomas

and allowing permission to feature his collection.

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