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.
- ISBN10 1785339842
- ISBN13 9781785339844
- Publish Date 7 September 2018
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Berghahn Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 328
- Language English
- URL http://berghahnbooks.com/title/StroekenMedicinal