Emil Torday (22 June 1875 – 9 May 1931), was a Hungarian

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

. He was the father of the romance novelist Ursula Torday.

Biography

Emil Torday was born on 22 June 1875 in Budapest. He studied at the University of Munich, but without completing his degree started to work at a Brussels Bank. During his stay in the Congo, he developed his interest in anthropology. After his return to Europe, he met Thomas Athol Joyce, who worked at

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. In 1907–1909, he undertook an expedition on behalf of the British Museum in the Kasai River Basin in the Belgian Congo where he amassed a collection of 3000 objects for the museum, the most acclaimed of which are from the Kuba Kingdom. The expedition also known as Torday-Hilton-Simpson expedition produced a large collection of photos depicting everyday life in villages of the Congo Basin. Photos from his expedition are held at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. Other outstanding pieces of the collection are three royal Ndop figures he collected. Torday also recorded folk songs by gramophone on his successive journeys to West Africa. He spoke eight local languages. The centre point of Torday's ethnographic work was his engagement with the Kuba peoples in the Kuba Kingdom, and especially his relationship with the Nyimi (king) KotaPe (or Kwete in Torday's spelling). Always an advocate of indigenous views, Torday found in the Kuba a sophisticated kingdom with a sumptuous artistic tradition, and in KotaPe an impressive ruler. Furthermore, the Kuba had a dynastic history which could be related to European chronologies: it was founded in the early seventeenth century, dated in oral tradition to a known passage of Halley's comet. In the Congo, the very heart of Conrad's 'Heart of darkness', Torday believed he had 'discovered' a kingdom on a parallel with European dynasties. On 17 March 1910, he married Gaia Rose Macdonald, a Scot, and on 19 February 1912, they had a daughter, the novelist Ursula Torday. On 9 May 1931, he died of heart failure at the French Hospital Shaftesbury Avenue, at 55. His work was recognised in 1910 when he was awarded the Imperial Gold Medal for Science and Art by the emperor of Austria. In 2020 participants of the Budapest-Bamako charity rally named a school after him in Sierra Leone. Andrew G Szabo of the Budapest-Bamako names Emil Torday Elementary School in the village of Magbondoline in Sierra Leone

Andrew G Szabo of the Budapest-Bamako names Emil Torday Elementary School in the village of Magbondoline in Sierra Leone

Bibliography

* ''On the ethnology of the South-Western Congo Free State'' (1907) (with Thomas Athol Joyce) * ''George Grenfell and the Congo'' (1910) (with Harry Johnston and Lawson Forfeitt) * ''Camp and tramp in African Wild'' (1913) * ''The New Congo Collection'' (1913) * ''On the Trail of the Bushongo'' (1925) * ''Causeries Congolaises'' (1925) * ''Descriptive sociology, or, Groups of sociological facts, classified and arranged by Herbert Spencer'' (1925) (with

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...

, David Duncan and Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie)

References and sources

External links

* 1875 births 1931 deaths Writers from Budapest Hungarian anthropologists Employees of the British Museum Expatriates from Austria-Hungary Expatriates in the Belgian Congo {{Anthropologist-stub