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Description area
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History
Born in Budapest, Hungary, 1875; educated in Hungary and Germany; worked for a time in a bank in Brussels; travelled and worked in equatorial Africa, 1900-1910; colonial administrative post at Lake Mweru in the south-east of Congo Free State, 1900-1904; employee of the Compagnie du Kasai, Belgian Congo; increasingly came to act as an agent of the British Museum; undertook ethnographic surveys of the people of the Kwango-Kwilu river basin and of the Kasai, formed comprehensive ethnographic collections, and created photographic and phonographic records; the centre point of Torday's ethnographic work was his engagement with the Kuba peoples; Torday was an excellent linguist who learned to speak fifteen languages, eight of them African; mounted his own expedition in the Belgian Congo, 1907; returned to Europe, 1909; awarded the Imperial gold medal for science and art by the Emperor of Austria, 1910; died, 1930.
Publications:
On the Trail of the Bushongo (1925)
Descriptive Sociology: African Races (1930)