Archival report : Northwestern University’s neglected sources on partnership organisations in “British Central Africa”

Abstract

This archival report tracks two collections at Northwestern University (USA) which contain significant, albeit underutilised material on two organisations (the Capricorn Africa Society and the Inter-racial Association of Southern Rhodesia) which played a notable role in attempts to implement the “Partnership” philosophy that ostensibly underpinned the governing credo of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the 1950s. A unique and notable component of the material are the significant first-hand observations and field notes by a contemporaneous American academic, Vernon McKay, with a scholarly interest in both organisations. Additionally, while the academic literature on the Society and the Association typically emphasises the role of white liberals, material at Northwestern also delineates both the role of those who would shortly play a leading role in the anti-colonial liberation struggle (such as Herbert Chitepo) as well as that of their reactionary white opponents. The report also provides a brief historiographical review of extant work on the organisations and other archival repositories that have traditionally informed this scholarship.