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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
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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.

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