Herskovits opens by refusing two commonplaces: that Africa slumbered in isolation until Europe arrived, and that nothing of economic consequence was ever domesticated south of the Sahara. Agronomists had already traced rice, sorghum, several millets, yams and the oil palm to West African origins. The continent, he insists, gave as well as received in the long exchange that made the Old World.

That correction sets up his complaint about postwar research. Studies of industrialisation, cities, schools, mines and new political parties concentrated on institutions and on what came from outside, losing sight of Africans themselves and of the habits of doing, behaving and valuing that turned out to have far more staying power than talk of detribalization allowed.

Written as colonial rule was ending, the book uses cultural anthropology to hold conservatism and change together, treating the revolutions that produced independence as continuities rather than breaks with the past.