Author

Publication

2018 - Berghahn Books, Incorporated

Language

English

Word Count

79,000 words, Guess

Page Count

316 pages

Identifiers

Classifications

  • LCCGN492.55 .S77 2018

Description

As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings - and found them. The resulting misunderstandings last 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.

Subjects

Other Editions

  • Medicinal Rule: A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central AfricaBerghahn Books, Incorporated2018-01-01

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