Into the Primitive Environment. Survival on the edge of our civilization

(London: George Philip, 1972) 0540009555. From the library of historian John Wright, author of various works on the Zulus, and signed by him on the front free endpaper. 4to; original red rexine, lettered in gilt on spine and upper cover; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pp. 128, incl. index; lavishly illustrated in colour and monochrome, with some maps. Dustwrapper a little foxed to reverse side; trace of foxing to edges. Good to very good condition. "In his opening chapter Dr Brain writes: 'A major purpose of this book is to ask whether it is in fact feasible to help isolated, exotic cultures to survive in a modern world ... or whether all minority people of this planet must now radically change their way of life, or die.' This book looks at the colonizing process from the side of the many simple societies that were forced to undergo the traumatic experience of contact with European culture. It looks at what happened then (extinction in Tasmania ad Tierra del Fuego) and at what is happening now (extinction and enforced change in Brazil, North America, Australia and elsewhere). In conclusion Robert Brain puts the case for a new world of the future, in which differences between peoples would not only be tolerated, but encouraged. Time, however, is short. 'Most of the groups which we commonly call 'primitive' will have disappeared within one generation from now unless drastic measures are taken." .