Some precolonial background

Historians generally acknowledge that the eastern part of Zambia during the 19th century, particularly the central Luangwa Valley, was contested ground as contending groups of warlords sought hegemony over its resources and its people. Gangs of enslavers and elephant hunters supported by foreigners (Yao, Arab, Swahili, Chikunda) and by more powerful neighbours (Bemba, Ngoni) preyed upon the resources within this region. Residents were few, mobile, and associated with powerful outsiders who provided them with important trade goods, enabling some to cope within their open and chaotic circumstances. Slaves, skins, wild meat, ivory, cloth, iron goods, and salt, separately and together, provided the wealth that stimulated trade, captures, and warfare between varying groups. Prior to the assumption of colonial hegemony, some historians characterise this landscape as a ‘rising tide of violence’ perpetuated by an increasing demand for slaves and ivory. On such a ‘scourged frontier’, political and social orders were challenged and created as the status and identities of residents remained nebulous and fluid (Hanna 1956; Cunnison 1960; Birmingham 1976; Langworthy 1983).

I mention these chaotic circumstances for two reasons. First, Valley Bisa survivors of these earlier experiences assimilated and passed on what they had learned from these successive waves of protagonists and warlords. From the elephant hunters (particularly the Chikunda) and slavers (Swahili and Yao), they learned new techniques and technologies for hunting and warfare, participated in wide ranging trade networks and incorporated novel products and plants, while acquiring innovative survival strategies from their subordination under other-directed political structures (Alpers 1975; Isaacman and Rosenthal 1984; Isaacman and Isaacman 2004). These experiences gave residents new exposure to information and to means by which they interacted with diverse people and within different environments. Such knowledge and skills became useful later in dealing with Europeans and their colonial institutions, which presented residents with different and protracted challenges.