The University of Wisconsin Press

African Studies / Anthropology / History / Sociology

 

Naming Colonialism
History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870—1960
Osumaka Likaka

Africa and the Diaspora: History, Politics, Culture Thomas Spear, David Henige, and Michael Schatzberg, Series Editors


Matcho Kali: "Angry Eyes." Simba Bulaya: "Europe's Lion."—African names for European colonizers

What's in a name? As Osumaka Likaka argues in this illuminating study, the names that Congolese villagers gave to European colonizers reveal much about how Africans experienced and reacted to colonialism. The arrival of explorers, missionaries, administrators, and company agents allowed Africans to observe Westerners' physical appearances, behavior, and cultural practices at close range—often resulting in subtle yet trenchant critiques. By naming Europeans, Africans turned a universal practice into a local mnemonic system, recording and preserving the village's understanding of colonialism in the form of pithy verbal expressions that were easy to remember and transmit across localities, regions, and generations.

Methodologically innovative, Naming Colonialism advances a new approach that shows how a cultural process—the naming of Europeans—can provide a point of entry into economic and social histories. Drawing on archival documents and oral interviews, Likaka encounters and analyzes a welter of coded fragments. The vivid epithets Congolese gave to rubber company agents—"the home burner," "Leopard," "Beat, beat," "The hippopotamus-hide whip"—clearly conveyed the violence that underpinned colonial extractive economies. Other names were subtler, hinting at derogatory meaning by way of riddles, metaphors, or symbols to which the Europeans were oblivious. Africans thus emerge from this study as autonomous actors whose capacity to observe, categorize, and evaluate reverses our usual optic, providing a critical window on central African colonialism in its local and regional dimensions.

"This innovative work offers rare access to African perceptions and interpretations of colonialism. Based on thorough research and creative analysis, Likaka's book will have widespread scholarly and classroom appeal."—Thomas Spear, series editor and professor emeritus of African history at the University of Wisconsin—Madison

Osumaka Likaka is associate professor of history at Wayne State University. He is author of Rural Society and Cotton in Colonial Zaire, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

The cover of Likaka's book is brown, with an inset sepia photo of a colonialist in a pith helmet meting out justice.

December 2009
LC: 2009008138 DT
216 pp.   6 x 9  
3 b/w illus., 2 maps
ISBN 978-0-299-23364-8
Paper $26.95 s

This is our e-book logo. It is green and represents an open book, with an e rising from it. ISBN 978-0-299-23363-1
e-book $19.95 s





To purchase, add print or e-book titles to your shopping cart by clicking on the "Add this book to cart" link above. You will then be able to be pay with your credit card and send your order to our distribution center in Chicago.
Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature.

 

This is our e-book logo. It is green and represents an open book, with an e rising from it.Naming Colonialism will soon be available through Amazon.com on the Kindle wireless reading device.

Institutional Vendors:
e-book editions of Naming Colonialism, will soon be available from Ebrary, Follett Digital, MyiLibrary, and NetLibrary. Click here for an explanation of these e-book formats.

 

 

 

Home | Books | Journals | Events | Textbooks | Authors | Related | Search | Order | Contact

If you have trouble accessing any page in this web site, contact Kirt Murray, Web manager.
E-mail: kdmurray@wisc.edu or by phone at 608-263-0733.

Updated November 23, 2009

© 2009, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System