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

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

. He was the father of the romance novelist

Ursula Torday Ursula Torday (; 19 February 1912 in London, England – 6 March 1997), was a British writer of some 60 gothic, romance and mystery novels from 1935 to 1982. She also used the pseudonyms of Paula Allardyce (), Charity Blackstock, Lee Blackstock, ...

Biography

Emil Torday was born on 22 June 1875 in Budapest. He studied at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's List of universities in Germany, sixth-oldest u ...

, 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 Thomas Athol Joyce OBE FRAI (4 August 1878 – 3 January 1942) was a British anthropologist. He became an acknowledged expert on American and African Anthropology at the British Museum. He led expeditions to excavate Maya sites in British Hond ...

, who worked at

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. In 1907, he undertook an expedition on behalf of the British Museum in the

Kwango River The Cuango or Kwango ( pt, Rio Cuango) is a transboundary river of Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the largest left bank tributary of the Kasai River in the Congo River basin. It flows through Malanje in Angola. The Kwango River ...

Basin in the Belgian Congo, when he amassed a collection of 3000 objects from the

Kuba Kingdom The Kuba Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Bakuba or Bushongo, is a traditional kingdom in Central Africa. The Kuba Kingdom flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries in the region bordered by the Sankuru, Lulua, and Kasai rivers i ...

for the museum. The expedition also known as Torday-Hilton-Simpson expedition produced a large collection of photos depicting every day life in villages of the

Congo Basin The Congo Basin (french: Bassin du Congo) is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It con ...

. Photos from his expedition are held at the Museum Of Ethnography in Budapest. Other outstanding pieces of the collection are three royal

Ndop Ndop is a town and a commune in the northwest of Cameroon. It comprises four villages: * Bambalang (village) * Bamali * Bamessing * Bamunka See also *Communes of Cameroon The Arrondissements of Cameroon are the third-level units of admin ...

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

, 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

. 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 The Budapest-Bamako or Great African Run is a charity car race in Africa, and the largest amateur rally in the world. It is a low-budget version of the Dakar Rally, and goes from Budapest, Hungary to Bamako, Mali through t ...

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

) * ''George Grenfell and the Congo'' (1910) (with

Harry Johnston Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston (12 June 1858 – 31 July 1927), known as Harry Johnston, was a British explorer, botanist, artist, colonial administrator, and linguist who travelled widely in Africa and spoke many African languages. He publishe ...

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 philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...

, David Duncan and

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...

)

References and sources

External links

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