John W T Allen
J.W.T. Allen (1904-1974), colonial administrator and Swahili scholar.
Born in Chalfont-St-Giles, Buckinghamshire, in 1904 to Roland Allen, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in North China, J.W.T. Allen grew up a devout Christian. He attended Westminster School before studying Classics at St John's College, Oxford.[1]
Despite his religious upbringing, he did not follow in his father's footsteps, instead accepting a post in 1927 in Sudan as Assistant Inspector of a cotton plantation as part of the Gezira Cotton Scheme Project for the Sudan Plantations Syndicate. His lifelong interest in Islamic culture and thought would be ignited there.
Finding the cotton industry unfulfilling, Allen returned to England in 1929 before entering the Colonial Service as Superintendent of Schools in Tanganyika, a move which led him to learn Swahili and enrol on a distance learning diploma at SOAS. This interest in the Swahili language and literature would define the course of the rest of his life.
Following appointments as Political Officer and Deputy British Agent in the Western Aden Protectorate (1947-1952), Allen returned to Tanganyika but left the Colonial Service in 1958 soon after becoming Secretary of the Inter-territorial Swahili Language Committee. From that point on he focused on the study of the Swahili language and began collecting and editing notable Swahili and Arabic manuscripts assisted by his wife Winifred 'Winkie' Ethel Emma Brooke, whom he had married in 1930.[2]
Allen made extensive collections on the East African coast in connection with his academic post of Research Fellow at the University College, Dar es Salaam, and in conjunction with the East African Swahili Committee. In 1968 he became Director of the newly established Institute of Swahili Research at the University of Dar es Salaam, during which time he catalogued the extensive collection of Swahili writings he had amassed. He continued teaching and publishing once retired and spent three years teaching at the Swahili language programme at the Danish Volunteer Training Centre in Tengeru, near Arusha.[3]
References
External Links
Digitised material from Allen's collection of Swahili texts can be viewed online here
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