Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa

Voids and Blinders, Words and Things
Preamble
Words as History
Historical Linguistics
Words and Things
Glottochronology
Information and Evidence
The Pivotal Role of Writing
Tribes and Space
Time
The Question of Authorship
Special Contents
Reliability of Bodies of Evidence
Research Design
Chapter Two
 The Land and Its Settlement
The Landscapes
Physical Geography
Mythical Jungles and True Rainforests
Western Bantu Expansion
Early Inhabitants
Western Bantu Expansion
Dynamics of the Expansion
Farmers and Autochthons
V
 vi Contents
 From Ancestral to Forest Tradition
The Adoption of Metals
The Arrival of the Banana
New Neighbors
Equatorial Africa by A.D. 1000
Chapter Three
 Tradition: Ancient and Common
Reality and Reality
Communities and Big Men
The House
The Village
The District
Making a Living
Farming
Finding Food
Industries
Exchange and Trade
The Meaning of the World
A Historical Watershed
Chapter Four
 The Trail of the Leopard in the Inner Basin
Inventing Lineages
Dominant Houses
Lineage and District
Expansion and Counterinnovation
Continued Expansion I
Dividing the Sacred Emblems
Nkumu
Spread of the Nkumu Complex
Chapter Five
 Between Ocean and Rivers
The Northwest
Early Developments
The Sanaga-Ntem Expansion
Bioko
Contents
The Southwest: The Growth of States
Chiefdoms Emerged
Principalities Appeared
The Invention of Matrilinearity
Kingdoms Arose
North of the Kingdoms
Original State Formations in the Lower Kasai Region
Chapter Six
 The Eastern Uplands
Uele and Ituri
A Congress of Traditions
Birth of a New Tradition
From Big Man to King
The Southeast: Associations and Brotherhoods
A Rule of Wealth and Wisdom
Ministates in the Mountains
Brotherhoods in Northern Maniema
Dynamics of Tradition
Chapter Seven
 Challenge from the Atlantic
The Atlantic Trading System in Equatorial Africa
The Formative Phase: c. 1550-c. 1660
The Heyday of the Slave Trade: c. 1660-c. 1830
The Industrial Age: c. 1830-1880
The Economic Impact
Trade Routes and Agricultural Innovation
Complementary Regional Specialization
The Atlantic Trade and Population Losses
Equatorial Societies in the Days of the Atlantic Trade
The Fate of the Kingdoms
Firms and Towns in the Inner Basin
The Northern Coasts
Conclusion: Tradition Under Stress
Chapter Eight
 Death of a Tradition
Conquest and the Four Horsemen
The New Rural Colonial Society
viii Contents
 Chapter Nine
 On History and Tradition
The Probable Past
History, Habitat, Evolution
Properties of Tradition
Comparative Anthropology and Tradition
Appendix
 Comparative Lexical Data
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Maps and Figures
 Maps
 1.1 Equatorial Africa
1.2 General orientation
1.3 The quality of the evidence
1.4 Western Bantu languages of the rainforests
2.1 Orography
2.2 Rainfall
2.3 Seasons
2.4a The rainforests: a simple view
2.4b The rainforests: a complex reality
2.5 Vegetation
2.6 Older Stone Age sites
2.7 Western Bantu expansion in equatorial Africa
2.8 The major Bantu language groups in equatorial Africa
2.9 Neolithic sites
2.10 The early Iron Age
2.11 Banana plantain (AAB): *-kondo, -bugu
2.12 Major outside influences on the equatorial African
 tradition
4.1 The inner basin
4.2 Early expansion in the inner basin
4.3 Later expansion north of the equator
4.4 Nkumu expansion
5.1 Communal building, *-banja
5.2 The Sanaga-Ntem expansion: c. A.D. 1400-1600
5.3 Bioko
5.4 The spread of the term nkani meaning \"chief
5.5 The southwestern quadrant before c. A.D. 1200
5.6 The three main kingdoms: Kongo, Loango, Tio
5.7 Southern Gabon
5.8 Northern Congo
5.9 Lands of the lower Kasai
ix
 x Maps and Figures
 6.1 The eastern uplands
6.2 The northeast and the Mangbetu kingdom
6.3 Associations in Maniema
6.4 Circumcision rituals in Maniema
7.1 The Atlantic trade before 1830
7.2 The Atlantic trade: 1830-1880
7.3 Economic specialization in the Atlantic trading area
7.4 Lemba and Nkobi
7 .5 The inner basin in the age of the slave trade
7.6 Western equatorial Africa: 1830-1880
8.1 Sudanese and Zanzibari trading area: 1869-1894
8.2 Equatorial Africa in 1910
Figures
 2.1 The western Bantu family of languages
4.1 Scimitars