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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Government in Kasai before the Lunda
Author:Vansina, JanISNI
Year:1998
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:31
Issue:1
Pages:1-22
Language:English
Geographic term:Congo (Democratic Republic of)
Subjects:Lunda polity
history
traditional polities
History and Exploration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/220882
Abstract:The Lunda Empire, stretching from Kwango to Luapula, has been the dominant feature of the political history in inner Central Africa from the late 17th century onwards. Its core consisted of the nuclear Lunda (or Rund) Kingdom that took shape at the latest not long after 1600. The Kingdom itself emerged through the coalescence of a set of small chiefdoms in the heartland along the Nkalany River (Kasai, Zaire). Given the ethnographic situation in the area around 1850, and the vague proposal by Rund historians that there was a federation of villages headed by a ritual leader, the question is whether the early Rund chiefdoms on the Nkalany arose from an acephalic type of society where government was in the hands of an association. The author examines this question by applying a comparative historical semantic method known as 'Words and Things'. This comparative linguistic analysis confirms that the Lunda Kingdom developed from a strikingly different sociopolitical system in which government was collective. Notes, ref.
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