Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-09T16:18:40.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Deep-Down Time: Political Tradition in Central Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Around 1850 the peoples of central Africa from Duala to the Kunene River and from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes shared a common view of the universe and a common political ideology. This included assumptions about roles, statuses, symbols, values, and indeed the very notion of legitimate authority. Among the plethora of symbols connected with these views were the leopard or the lion, the sun, the anvil, and the drum, symbolizing respectively the leader as predator, protector, forger of society, and the voice of all. Obviously, in each case the common political ideology was expressed in slightly different views, reflecting the impact of differential historical processes on different peoples. But the common core persisted. The gigantic extent of this phenomenon, encompassing an area equal to two-thirds of the continental United States, baffles the mind. How did it come about? Such a common tradition certainly did not arise independently in each of the hundreds of political communities that existed then. However absorbent and stable this mental political constellation was, it must have taken shape over a profound time depth. How and as a result of what did this happen? Is it even possible to answer such queries in a part of the world that did not generate written records until a few centuries ago or less?

This paper addresses this question: how can one trace the social construction of such a common constellation over great time depths and over great regional scale? All the peoples involved are agriculturalists and the political repertory with which we are concerned could not easily exist in its known form outside sedentary societies.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 16 , 1989 , pp. 341 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1989

References

Notes

1. This paper has grown out of research in progress to trace the past of the peoples living in the rainforest of equatorial Africa. Hence I concentrate more on this portion of central Africa than on the southern savanna. I am grateful to Roderick J. and Susan Keech Mcintosh for their comments and editorial work on this paper.

2. Craemer, W. De, Fox, Renée, and Vansina, Jan, “Religious Movements in Central Africa: A Theoretical Study,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18 (1976): 458–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Leadership (*-kúmú in Common Bantu) was a role bolstered by both beneficial and malevolent forces, the 7power by day and the power by night.’ The role was interconnected with those of witch, healer, magician, and prophet (or diviner) in a stable intellectual pattern. Hence power was at the same time legitimate and illegitimate. It was the power of a ‘big man’ even if the leadership passed to a relative. Moreover, this view was accompanied by a perception of the community as a bilateral family writ large established over a ‘land’ or district. From that perspective the leader was a ‘father’ who should protect his ‘Offspring’ even while he governed them with a firm hand. This image also justified why considerable autonomy should be left to local units in the ‘land.’ Overlords should arbitrate relations only between such units, never intervene directly between local ‘fathers’ and their ‘families.’

4. Vansina, , “Western Bantu Expansion,” JAH, 25 (1984): 129–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Vansina, , “Esquisse historique de l'agriculture en milieu forestier,” Revue Muntu 2 (1985)Google Scholar

6. Murdock, George P., Africa. Its Peoples and Their Cultural History. (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

7. Bamwele, Mumbanza mwa, “Histoire des peuples riverains de l'entre Zaire-Ubangi: évolution sociale et économique,” (PhD, UNAZA/Lubumbashi, 1980), 909–26.Google Scholar

8. van Leynseele, P., “Les Libinza de la Ngiri: l'anthropologie d'un peuple des marais du confluent Congo-Ubangi,” (PhD, Leiden, 1979).Google Scholar

9. Maes, J. and Boone, O., Les peuplades du Congo belge: nom et situation géographique. (Brussels, 1935)Google Scholar; Dugast, I., Inventaire ethniaue Cameroun (Dakar, 1949)Google Scholar; Boone, , Carte ethnique du Congo--quart sud-est (Tervuren, 1961)Google Scholar; Redinha, J., Distribuçâo etnica da Provincia de Angola (Luanda, 1969)Google Scholar; Boone, , Carte ethnique de la République du Zaire–quart sud-ouest (Tervuren, 1973)Google Scholar; Atlas du Cameroun, ed. Laclavère, G. (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar; Atlas du Congo. ed. Vennetier, P. (Paris, 1977)Google Scholar; Atlas du Gabon, ed. Perrois, L.(Nancy, n.d.).Google Scholar

10. Dupré, M.C., ““Naissances et renaissances du masque Kidumu: art, politique et histoire chez les Teke (tsaayi)” (Doctorat d'état, Université de Paris V., 1984): 43–70.Google Scholar

11. Bulletin Officiel, quoted in Buell, R., The Native Problem in Africa (2 vols.: New York, 1928), 2:568.Google Scholar

12. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (Oxford, 1940).Google Scholar

13. Olbrechts, F., Ethnologie. Inleiding tot de studie der primitieve beschaving (Antwerp, 1936), 276–79Google Scholar; Vansina, , “Knowledge and Perceptions of the African Past” in African Historiography, ed. Jewsiewicki, B. and Newbury, D. S. (Beverly Hills, 1985).Google Scholar

14. Evans-Pritchard, , Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande (Oxford, 1937).Google Scholar

15. van der Kerken, G., Les sociétés bantoues du Congo belge et les problèmes de la politique indigène (Brussels, 1920).Google Scholar

16. Wolfe, A., In the Ngombe Tradition. Continuity and Change in the Congo (Evanston, 1961).Google Scholar

17. Bastian, A., Ein Besuch in San Salvador (Bremen, 1859)Google Scholar; Loesche, E. Pechuel, Volkskunde von Loango (Stuttgart, 1907).Google Scholar

18. Piskaty, K., “Ist das Pygmäenwerk von Henri Trilles eine zuverlassige Quelle?” Anthropos, 57 (1957): 33–48.Google Scholar

19. Vansina, , The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Congo, 1880-1892 (London, 1973).Google Scholar

20. In the ethnography of North America the critiques of “memory culture,” former ways of life reconstructed from a single informant's recollections have not abated, however. The deficiencies in the quality of the sources more than the principle itself keep reservations about “historical ethnography” alive. Full-scale reconstructions of the ways of life of other peoples of central Africa for a given generation, rather than as general statements, have not yet been undertaken.

21. History of Central Africa, ed. Birmingham, David and Martin, Phyllis (2 vols.: London, 1983)Google Scholar

22. Henige, David, Oral Historiography (London, 1982)Google Scholar; The African Past Speaks, ed. Miller, Joseph C. (Folkestone, 1980)Google Scholar, passim; Vansina, , Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985).Google Scholar

23. Irwin, Paul, Liptako Speaks (Princeton, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Hodgen, Margaret T., Change and History (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; idem., Anthropology, History, and Cultural Change (Tucson, 1974); Vansina, , Le royaume kuba (Tervuren, 1964)Google Scholar; idem., “The Use of Ethnographic Data as Sources for History” in Emerging Themes in African Hisotry. ed. T. O. Ranger (Dar es Salaam, 1968); Historische Völkerkunde, ed. Schmitz, C. A. (Frankfurt, 1967)Google Scholar; Zwernemann, J., Culture History and African Anthropology (Uppsala, 1983)Google Scholar; Kuper, Adam, “Regional Comparisons in African Anthropology,” African Affairs, 78 (1979): 103–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Anttila, R., An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Bynon, T., Historical Linguistics (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hock, H. H., Principles of Historical Linguistics (Berlin, 1986).Google Scholar

26. De Jonghe, E., Les formes d'asservissement dans les sociétés indigènes du Congo belge (Brussels, 1949).Google Scholar

27. Vansina, , The Children of Woot (Madison, 1978).Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 304.

29. Pruitt, William, “An Independent People: a History of the Sala Mpasu of Zaire and Their Neighbors” (PhD, Northwestern, 1973)Google Scholar; Ceyssens, J. H. C., Pouvoir et parenté chez les Kongo-Dinga du Zaire (Meppel, 1984).Google Scholar

30. Murdock, Africa; Baumann, Hermann, Die Völker Afrikas und ihre traditionellen Kulturen (2 vols.: Wiesbaden, 1975)Google Scholar; Baumann, and Westermann, Dietrich, Les peuples et les civilisations de l'Afrique (Paris, 1948).Google Scholar

31. Fraessle, J., Meiner Urwaldneger Denken und Handeln (Freiburg, 1923).Google Scholar