The Races of Central Africa

Record summary

C. W. Hobley’s The Races of Central Africa is an early colonial survey containing descriptions of peoples, religious beliefs, origin traditions, and ritual practices. It may provide documentary leads for fire origin stories, thunder and lightning beliefs, sun or moon traditions, and sacred specialists in East and Central African societies. Its value is primarily archival and bibliographic rather than interpretively authoritative. The survey’s broad racial taxonomy, uneven source quality, and colonial terminology make it essential to verify every motif against community-specific ethnographies and oral-history work.