Medicinal Rule by Stroeken, Koen;

Short description:

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 (as Europeans have long assumed) the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man.

Long description:

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.

Table of Contents:

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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