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Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa
Vansina’s scope is he reconstructs the history of the forest lands that cover all or part of southern Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Congo, Zaire, the Central African Republic, and Cabinda in Angola, discussing the original settlement of the forest by the western Bantu; the periods of expansion and innovation in agriculture; the development of metallurgy; the rise and fall of political forms and of power; the coming of Atlantic trade and colonialism; and the conquest of the rainforests by colonial powers and the destruction of a way of life.
“In 400 elegantly brilliant pages Vansina lays out five millennia of history for nearly 200 distinguishable regions of the forest of equatorial Africa around a new, subtly paradoxical interpretation of ‘tradition.’” —Joseph Miller, University of Virginia
“Vansina gives extended coverage . . . to the broad features of culture and the major lines of historical development across the region between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1000. It is truly an outstanding effort, readable, subtle, and integrative in its interpretations, and comprehensive in scope. . . . It is a seminal study . . . but it is also a substantive history that will long retain its usefulness.”—Christopher Ehret, American Historical Review
“In 400 elegantly brilliant pages Vansina lays out five millennia of history for nearly 200 distinguishable regions of the forest of equatorial Africa around a new, subtly paradoxical interpretation of ‘tradition.’” —Joseph Miller, University of Virginia
“Vansina gives extended coverage . . . to the broad features of culture and the major lines of historical development across the region between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1000. It is truly an outstanding effort, readable, subtle, and integrative in its interpretations, and comprehensive in scope. . . . It is a seminal study . . . but it is also a substantive history that will long retain its usefulness.”—Christopher Ehret, American Historical Review
448 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 1990
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About the author
Jan Vansina
41 books6 followersJan Vansina was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 30, 2018
a classic work of African history
A few years ago I read John Womack Jr.'s "Zapata and the Mexican Revolution" which struck me as being the ultimate book on the subject. While Vansina?s PATHS IN THE RAINFORESTS bears little similarity to the former book, it does resemble it in one way: it must change the way people look at its subject, it is an earth-shaking work in tropical African history. As an interested, but non-specialist reader, I found PATHS IN THE RAINFORESTS extremely hard going, though the writing is clear. The volume of unfamiliar names of peoples, rivers, and other geographical features is overwhelming, despite the many excellent maps provided. Vansina backs up his arguments about political evolution in rainforest Africa with an enormous array of facts, Bantu linguistic transformations, and difficult kinship terminologies. The system of using semantic innovations and transformations over centuries to "excavate" knowledge about economic and political changes in tropical African societies is extremely impressive, but must have been incredibly hard to do. Except for serious students of history or African history, the volume will not appeal to many. However, if you are a reader of challenging books, rather than those which take the "easy path", then you will find this particular path through the rainforests both rewarding and eye-opening.
After first contact with African cultures in the equatorial forest zone of central Africa, Westerners tended to regard them as 1) being cut from a single cloth, 2) unchanging. Albert Schweitzer's view of Africans as sick, poor, primitive, and never-changing permeates Western thinking beyond academia. "Tradition" meant that they had no history, but had lived the same way for thousands of years. As no written records existed, scholars tended to write central Africans off, saying that they were people without history. Vansina shows, in a most scholarly way---mustering thousands of facts, using every possible technique except DNA research (which didn't exist when he wrote)---that these presumptions are all products of ignorance and prejudice. New crops, new technologies, political and social innovations abounded. The first two chapters explore the rainforest environment and the original Bantu tradition, several millennia old. The following three chapters show how the tradition changed in separate regions of the equatorial forest region. The changes encompass an amazing variety of political innovation. Chapter Seven deals with the arrival of the Europeans on the Atlantic coast and the challenge that their slave trading and new material goods posed to the African societies of the time. The next chapter, most grim, describes the destruction of the African societies during the colonial period---wars conducted by colonial armies exterminated over half the population, while missionaries who scorned everything African tried to erase the culture of the survivors. The region's suffering today stems from this history. The last section of the book discusses trends and patterns in history and tradition in general. While historians have often written as if the process of political development in the world, from tribe to empire, is known and set, Vansina questions that assumption. If major kingdoms appeared in the Kongo area, but did not elsewhere, should we regard their absence as a case of abnormal or arrested development? Or should we presume that many roads are possible? This and many other questions abound in this seminal book. I cannot imagine the amount of work and accumulated scholarship necessary to complete it. It is surely a masterpiece.
A few years ago I read John Womack Jr.'s "Zapata and the Mexican Revolution" which struck me as being the ultimate book on the subject. While Vansina?s PATHS IN THE RAINFORESTS bears little similarity to the former book, it does resemble it in one way: it must change the way people look at its subject, it is an earth-shaking work in tropical African history. As an interested, but non-specialist reader, I found PATHS IN THE RAINFORESTS extremely hard going, though the writing is clear. The volume of unfamiliar names of peoples, rivers, and other geographical features is overwhelming, despite the many excellent maps provided. Vansina backs up his arguments about political evolution in rainforest Africa with an enormous array of facts, Bantu linguistic transformations, and difficult kinship terminologies. The system of using semantic innovations and transformations over centuries to "excavate" knowledge about economic and political changes in tropical African societies is extremely impressive, but must have been incredibly hard to do. Except for serious students of history or African history, the volume will not appeal to many. However, if you are a reader of challenging books, rather than those which take the "easy path", then you will find this particular path through the rainforests both rewarding and eye-opening.
After first contact with African cultures in the equatorial forest zone of central Africa, Westerners tended to regard them as 1) being cut from a single cloth, 2) unchanging. Albert Schweitzer's view of Africans as sick, poor, primitive, and never-changing permeates Western thinking beyond academia. "Tradition" meant that they had no history, but had lived the same way for thousands of years. As no written records existed, scholars tended to write central Africans off, saying that they were people without history. Vansina shows, in a most scholarly way---mustering thousands of facts, using every possible technique except DNA research (which didn't exist when he wrote)---that these presumptions are all products of ignorance and prejudice. New crops, new technologies, political and social innovations abounded. The first two chapters explore the rainforest environment and the original Bantu tradition, several millennia old. The following three chapters show how the tradition changed in separate regions of the equatorial forest region. The changes encompass an amazing variety of political innovation. Chapter Seven deals with the arrival of the Europeans on the Atlantic coast and the challenge that their slave trading and new material goods posed to the African societies of the time. The next chapter, most grim, describes the destruction of the African societies during the colonial period---wars conducted by colonial armies exterminated over half the population, while missionaries who scorned everything African tried to erase the culture of the survivors. The region's suffering today stems from this history. The last section of the book discusses trends and patterns in history and tradition in general. While historians have often written as if the process of political development in the world, from tribe to empire, is known and set, Vansina questions that assumption. If major kingdoms appeared in the Kongo area, but did not elsewhere, should we regard their absence as a case of abnormal or arrested development? Or should we presume that many roads are possible? This and many other questions abound in this seminal book. I cannot imagine the amount of work and accumulated scholarship necessary to complete it. It is surely a masterpiece.
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October 8, 2022Hou van dit boek.
Het beschrijft heel mooi de opkomst en ondergang van politieke vormen en van macht. Wat zo mooi is, is hoe logisch dit boek het maakt dat de dingen in mekaar overgaan. Van stam tot stam: van een leuk, klein verlangen naar een grote nood, tot totale vernietiging. Het boek focust zich op het grondgebied Congo en Zaïre met de nood aan rubber in het regenwoud als grootste onderwerp. Dit eigenlijk allemaal om uit te leggen hoe het kolonialisme tot stand kwam en de toenmalige levenswijze van de mensen daar totaal vernietigde.
Het beschrijft heel mooi de opkomst en ondergang van politieke vormen en van macht. Wat zo mooi is, is hoe logisch dit boek het maakt dat de dingen in mekaar overgaan. Van stam tot stam: van een leuk, klein verlangen naar een grote nood, tot totale vernietiging. Het boek focust zich op het grondgebied Congo en Zaïre met de nood aan rubber in het regenwoud als grootste onderwerp. Dit eigenlijk allemaal om uit te leggen hoe het kolonialisme tot stand kwam en de toenmalige levenswijze van de mensen daar totaal vernietigde.
September 26, 2020
Demanding but very eye-opening. A work of immense sympathy and erudition.
April 11, 2014
A really tough read, but if anyone is interested in linguistics, anthropology, or Africa, it is an okay book. I think it was well written and the fact that he tried to make it easily accessible to the public was a bonus. It was just not my cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews