 Thus
while ethnologists may have formulated their aim as documenting the structures and characteristics of cultures under threat (from Western colonial contact)
of destruction, a salvaging operation on a dying culture, they themselves helped to bring about that death or, at the very least, massive changes.
At
the same time as areas were being appropriated by one colonial power or another, they were ethnologised and infiltrated by missionaries. Sometimes
all the aspects came together in one person. Viscomte Charles de Foucauld (1856 - 1916) was trained as a soldier and became a monk, a missionary to the
Tuareg of North Africa. |
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