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Genealogy
Origins & roots
in Neuchâtel county
Other
researched Junod origins
Junod in Lignières before 1535
Neuchâtel
or Bishopric ? In 1636
Allied families in Bevaix
Allied
families around the world
Informations on surnames
Missing
ascendants
Personalities
Emigration
About
the author
History
Weights & Measures in 1834
History & more
on Lignières...
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Henri
Alexandre Junod
(1863 - 1934)
Born
May 17, 1863 in St Martin (Neuchâtel),
son of Pastor Henri Junod (1825 - 1882)
and of Marie Adele born Dubied (1833 -
1907), Henri Alexandre is the 4th (first
son) of six children.
On March 18, 1889 he marries in Couvet Emilie Julie born Biolley (with whom
he had 4 children). Following the death of Emilie on July 10, 1901 in Shilouvane,
Transvaal, South Africa, Henri Alexandre remaries on March 15, 1904 in Zürich
to Sophie Helene born Kern (with whom he had 3 children). He died in Geneva
on 22 April 1934.
The
Ba-Ronga map by H.-A. Junod as well as
the text below are reproduced with the
kind authorization of the author Mr Serge
Reubi as well as Revue Historique Neuchâteloise No
4 - 2004, text extracted from the excellent
French article "Aider l'Afrique et
Servir la science: Henri Alexandre Junod,
Missionnaire et ethnographe (1863-1934) » |
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(click
on the map to enlarge): Ba-Ronga country in 1898. Lourenço
Marques is located at the end of the bay (Junod 1998:9)
Note:
the text below was translated by me (Nicolas Junod) and while I will
fine tune the result also through your comments (by Email to my attention),
the French version
(accessible
selecting "Version
française" on
the top left of this screen) remains the official version.
From
Europe to Africa, a missionary ethnographer
©
Copyright 2004 - Serge Reubi & Revue Historique Neuchâteloise
Henri-Alexandre
Junod was born on May 17, 1863 within a family of pastors from Neuchâtel.
In spite of his marked interest for
natural science during his school years, he decides to perpetuate
the family
tradition and enters the faculty of theology in 1881. At the
end of his studies, during which he spends a six-month period in Basel
and another
in Berlin, he is admitted in the Swiss-French speaking Mission
in
1886.
In
1887, the Mission sends him to Edinburgh where he receives a basic
training in medicine and surgery. This stay is undoubtedly
crucial
in the training of the young Junod, because he does not only get
acquainted with medicine.
He seems to have met Henry Callaway, a former bishop
of the Natal country, who is then famous for his research
on the Zulus and whose scientific course enlightens Junod to some extend.
Callaway
started by working on the Zulu language, in the intention
to
translate
the Bible in the local idiom, before its interest gets lost
in some proselytism
dimension.
At
this point in time Callaway is devoted to the study of the Zulus from
an anthropological point of view. For Callaway indeed,
the
control of
the language is necessary to understand the natives well, so
as to correctly seize what they say (FRIESEN: 38): from an aim in
itself,
the linguistic
analysis becomes a means of understanding the natives. More generally,
the interest of Callaway goes from the language to the Zulu oral
literature - he publishes a book on this subject in 1866 - and,
at the end, to
studying more strictly anthropological issues. While it is true
that an encounter
between the two men is not formally established, the influence
of the first on second is undeniable.
Following
his stay in Scotland, Junod settles during one year in Neuchâtel
before being sent to the Portuguese possessions of the south-east
of Africa, in Lourenço Marques (current Mozambique), where
the Swiss-French Mission was established.
There,
his work of evangelization and teaching with the Mission
prove to be ideal occasions to observe and study the Ba-Ronga
country and
its inhabitants. As a good missionary and for proselytism,
it is with their
language that he is interested initially. His objective is
initially, like Callaway, to translate the Bible. This work of
translation, as his contact with the pupils of the Mission, finally
enable
him to quickly
get a command of the language, and he is able to publish,
in 1896 a Ba-ronga grammar. But, like Callaway, his study of the language
enables
him
to
widen his interest to songs and tales, which he collects
from
the school, then to a monography of Ba-Ronga.
Concurrently
to this influence, the work of Junod is also the result of a conversation
with Lord Bryce in 1895, which
he reports
in
the introduction
of The Life of a South African Tribe. This British politician,
after having lengthily traveled through the Empire, became
aware of the poverty
of Western knowledge on the natives in general and of the
south of Africa in particular. He therefore encouraged
Europeans who live
on the spot
to undertake the scientific study of their primitive life
(…)
(…)
Initially, it his concern of recording the primitive way
of life of Ba-Ronga to keep
it’s trace after their traditions
will have entirely disappeared and replaced by "the
great level from our civilization" (JUNOD 1898:
8) which animates the missionary. But Junod, in the evolutionary
tradition, also makes of his knowledge
on Ba-Ronga (of that time) a means of understanding European
prehistory:
These
primitive people probably arrived at a degree of development by which
we formerly went through once.
I imagine
that Lakeshore
populations of
the stone ages ranked hardly above the Bantus. To some
extend they were probably even lower. It thus seems,
when studying
these primitives
to
decipher their view of the world and life that our
ancient history emerges to our eyes. Certain problems of our
civilized souls,
grown up daughters
of these primitive souls, are explained.
We
take better conscience of ourselves and the mysteries of our evolution." (JUNOD
1898: 8).
Junod thus piles up information on Ba-Ronga while
continuing to work for the Mission until he returns
in Switzerland
the following year,
in 1896.
In
Neuchâtel he continues to collect
the benefits of his first stay. As I already evoked,
in 1897, in line of the work of Callaway,
he makes use of the important quantity of indigenous
accounts consigned, to write a collection of Ba-ronga
songs and tales and, in 1898, he publishes
an exhaustive monography on Ba-Ronga. This constitutes
the third and last part of his trilogy devoted
to this population, trilogy which he
began with grammar and continued with the songs
analysis.
This
work, which is his first ethnographic search of significance and to
which it owes the beginning
of
his celebrity among
the scientists of the metropolis, seals at the
same time the result
of his studies
on the matter. From now on, he will be limited
to increase, supplement and
specify its data, but will not basically change
any more his research plan. Admittedly, he modifies
his
interrogations
so
that his data
provides
better answers to the state of his research,
but, globally, all is there.
This
sudden celebrity and the recognition which he enjoys does not modify
at all his priorities.
The
ethnography perhaps supplanted
entomology, but as he liked to says, more as
a hobby, and he remains before all
a
missionary. Thus, it is not completely astonishing
that
Junod turns over to Africa the following year
as soon as the Mission
names
him
to head
a school in Shilouvane, in current Mozambique.
Nevertheless,
he continues to mix his missionary work and the collection of ethnographic
data
until his
return to Switzerland in 1909. It
is then, as he had done it after his first
voyage, that he works on
his collected
data and works on The Life of a South
African Tribe, which is in reality a
second largely reviewed and
supplemented English
edition
of his Ba-Ronga.
His work, which is regarded as his "great
accomplishment",
was published in 1911 and 1912 and had a
resounding success which got him to be elected
as member
of honor of the prestigious Royal Anthropological
Institute.
Junod
then lived the top of its ethnographic glory. It is indeed at the same
time that
he occupies
his only
official functions
in this
discipline
in Neuchâtel. In 1910, the Faculty
of Arts asks him to give an ethnography
course - which he gives in 1911 - financed
by the “Société neuchâteloise
de géographie”; the following
year, he is named at the commission of
the ethnographic Museum. However, a new
departure
for Africa for the
Mission obliges him to resign as of 1913.
He will remain in Shilouvane until 1920.
As
for his previous voyages, he profits from his missionary activity to
collect
new information,
which he saves
for a new edition
of The Life. As always, it is
upon his return to
Switzerland that
he analyzes
his
data while continuing his work for the
Mission. In fact, the 1920 years, for
Junod, will
be primarily devoted
to the Mission
and
his work at
the “Société des
Nations” (former UN) on behalf
of the international Office for the defense
of natives (H.-P. JUNOD 1936: 63-70).
Nevertheless,
he does not entirely give
up his scientific activity: first,
he writes some articles
in the specialized
reviews in
which he collaborates (Man, Folklore, Anthropos, Africa,
Bulletin of the “Société neuchâteloise
de géographie”).
As such he is in close contact with
the main
actors of the discipline such as Lucien
Lévy-Bruhi and becomes
part of scientific controversies (STOCKING:
335-7). In addition, he gives various
courses at the Universities of Lausanne,
Geneva and London, from
which a part relates to his study of
Ba-Ronga.
He
finally publishes a second edition of The Life, largely improved
by the
additional documentation
assembled
between 1913
and 1920. But this
is his last large work. After that,
his shaking health will not enable
him
to produce but some rare work, until
his death in Geneva
in 1934.
His
life was thus in a constant balance, at the same time geographical,
between
his ground
work
in Africa
and the
drafting of his work
in Switzerland, and professional,
between his life of missionary
and ethnographer.
While it is obvious that his fatherland
was Africa - he asked to be buried
in Rikatla - it seems clear that
he
was also more a missionary than
a scientist.
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