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As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings – and found them. The resulting misunderstandings have lasted until this day. Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa the model of rule has been medicine – and not the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man. In a wide area populated by speakers of Bantu and other languages of the Niger-Congo cluster, both cult and dynastic clan draw on the fertility shrine, rainmaking charm and drum they inherit.
“Koen Stroeken has developed an argument that is subtle and profound… [He] covers immense territory historically and geographically, but without sacrificing rigorous empiricism, deep ethnography, or conceptual sophistication.” • Journal of Anthropological Research
“Admirably clearly written… [the volume exhibits] high scholarship, methodological ingenuity, and sound use of history.” • David Parkin, University of Oxford
Tables and figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Language
List of Abbreviations of Referenced Works
Introduction: Endogenous Kingship
PART I: DIVINATORY SOCIETIES
Chapter 1. The Forest Within
Chapter 2. Beyond Turner’s Watershed Division
PART II: MEDICINAL RULE
Chapter 3. A Sukuma Chief on Medicine
Chapter 4. Endogenizing Vansina’s Equatorial Tradition
Chapter 5. From Cult to Dynasty: Nilotic and Niger–Congo Extensions
Chapter 6. Magic and the Sole Mode of Production
Chapter 7. Tio Shrines of the Forest Master
PART III: THE CEREMONIAL STATE
Chapter 8. Kuba, Kongo and Buganda ‘Miracles’: Reversions in Transition
Chapter 9. From Divinatory to Ceremonial State: Narrative Proof from Rwanda
Conclusion: Reversible Transitions
References
Index