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- Emil Torday
- Also known as
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Emil Torday
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primary name: Torday, Emil
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other name: Torday, E
- Details
- individual; anthropologist; Hungarian; Male
- Life dates
- 1875-1931
- Address
- 32 Rodenhurst Road, Clapham (in 1904)
- Biography
- Anthropologist; born in Budapest, Hungary on 22 June 1875 into a family of landowners in Torda. Educated in Hungary and Germany. He undertook his higher education at the University of Munich but left the institution without completing his degree and subsequently worked in a Brussels Bank. First went to Africa employed in a colonial position under Leopold's government in the south east of Congo Free State in 1900 near Lake Mweru. His administrative position eft him plenty of free time to pursue his love of languages, by the time of his death he spoke 14 fluently, and his growing interest in the Luba culture. When his appointment came to an end in 1904 Torday returned to Europe where he met T A Joyce curator at the British Museum. Their close friendship resulted in Torday acting as an agent for the British Museum on his second period to the Belgian Congo whilst employed by the concessionary company, the Compagnie du Kasai, from late 1904 to late 1906, when resigned in protest. On his third (and last) expedition from September 1907 to September 1909 he had official backing from the BM and diplomatic support. He was accompanied by the artist Norman Hardy (qv) and W H Hilton-Simpson (qv). This expedition surveyed the peoples along the Sankuru River with excursions to the north-east and south-west (the Kwango-Kwilu river basin), making ethonographical record which Torday later published jointly with Joyce. He also made a 3000 strong collection which is now in the British Museum; other groups of his material were acquired by the Pitt-Rivers Museum (as gifts from Torday in 1904, 1907, 1910), and the Wellcome collection (much of the latter was given to the BM and other institutions in 1954). The most celebrated part of this collection came from the Kuba people.
In 1909 Torday returned to Europe and published his expedition's results; he never returned to the Congo. His work was recognised in 1910 when he was awarded the Imperial Gold Medal for Science and Art by the emperor of Austria. He married Gaia Rose Macdonald in 1910 and his daughter was born in 1912. He subsequently went on to Philadelphia to lecture and curate in 1913. After his lectureship at Philadelphia Torday began a medical career in London but it was cut short by the beginning of the First World War during which he cared for prisoners of war. After the war Torday continued his anthropological work publishing his last substantial piece, a bibliographical "Descriptive Sociology African Races" in 1930. He died of heart failure at the French Hospital Shaftesbury Avenue on the 9th of September 1931.
The collections formed by Torday in the Congo and now in the BM consist of some 3,300 objects. They were registered as :
Af1904,0611.1 to 38. From his first employment in Lake Mweru 1900-4, though the objects are a wider-ranging miscellany, many clearly bought from others in the Congo.
Af1907,0528.1 to 536. From his employment with the Kasai Company late 1904-1906, when he had been commissioned by Joyce to collect for the BM. These come from the Basin between the rivers Kwilu and Kwango. It contains works from the Mbala, Yaka, Bahuanga, Bayanzi, Babunda, Bakwese, Pende and others; towards the end are items from areas he had never visited.
The following groups registered between 1908 and 1910 all come from his third expedition of 1907-9, when he was working for the BM:
Af1908,0622.1 to 177. Sold to the BM by Norman Hardy. It belongs with the following group:
Af1908,Ty.1 to 429. These two groups were both brought to England by Hardy when he returned to England in April 1908: they contain objects collected between December 1907 and April 1908 in Batempa and Mokunji at the southern end of the Sankuru; at the market in Lusambo downstream; and at the village of Misumba (inland from Isaka). The works come mostly from the Batetela, Songye, Bushongo, Batwa, Bangongo and Bangendi.
Af1909,Ty.430 to 1067. This group was collected between April and August 1908 on the circular journey by Torday and Hilton-Simpson north-east from Bena Dibele and Lodja, and their return to Idanga. It was sent off in August that year. It has objects from the Bohindu, Bankutu, Akela and others.
Af1909,0513.1-544. This group was collected between September and December1908, mostly from the Bushongo (Bushoong) at Mushenge (Nsheng), the town of the Kuba court, and was sent off from Dima at the very end of 1908.
Af1909,1210.1 to 13 is a separate small group from the Yambinga.
Af1910,0420.1 to 640 come from the final stage of the expedition between February and September 1909, in the south-west Kwilu area, starting at Kikwit (where Torday had been in 1904/6) and walking across country to the upper reaches of the Kasai. There are works from the Bambala[Mbala], Babunda [Bunda], Bapende [Pende], Bakongo [in fact Bawongo], Bashilele [Lele] and the Badjok [Chokwe].
A last group is Af1910,1027.1 to 36, mostly of works from the Topoke (whom Torday had never visited), which he had bought via a middleman.
- Bibliography
- (wrote) The Bushongo (with T A Joyce), Brussles 1910 (review by Balfour in 'Man' 1912, no.25)
M W Hilton-Simpson, ‘Land and peoples of the Kasai, being a narrative of a two years’ journey among the cannibals of the Equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo’, London 1911 (by the man who accompanied Torday on his 1907-9 Kasai expedition; this contains a map of the expedition's route).
John Mack, 'Emil Torday and the Art of the Congo 1900-1909', BMP 1990 (this contains a complete bibliography of Torday's writings).