FÜRER-HAIMENDORF, Christoph von. Himalayan Barbary. London: John Murray. [1955].
8vo. Original cloth with illustrated dust-wrapper designed by Brian Wildsmith, retaining price; pp. xiv, 241, numerous leaves of plates after photographs, double-page map; apart from light offsetting from lower paste-down and spotting to fore edge a fine copy.
First edition of this groundbreaking report of living among the tribes between Assam and Eastern Tibet, by the Austrian anthropologist who carried out this field work in 1944 and 1945. Although an enemy alien and cut off from his homeland Austria, 'in his fourth year of stay in Hyderabad, he was curiously offered the post of Special Officer and Assistant Political Officer to the North East Frontier Agency, and was thereby permitted to do field-work among the remote and warlike Apa Tanis of the Arunachal Pradesh area of Assam. Although the brief of his official position was to monitor the security threat posed by the partial occupation of neighbouring Burma by Japan, the posting really afforded Haimendorf the opportunity of conducting in-depth field-work for two whole years' (obituary by the Royal Anthropological Institute, online).
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