Democratic Republic of the Congo

Unruly Ideas
A History of Kitawala in Congo
By Nicole Eggers

In this conceptual history, Nicole Eggers argues that practitioners of the Congolese religious movement Kitawala can be understood as intellectuals, innovators, and vital participants in the construction and use of power. Eggers also explores the relationship between healing and violence in their frequently gendered central African manifestations.

Authentically African
Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture
By Sarah Van Beurden

Together, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ) in the Congo have defined and marketed Congolese art and culture. In Authentically African, Sarah Van Beurden traces the relationship between the possession, definition, and display of art and the construction of cultural authenticity and political legitimacy from the late colonial until the postcolonial era.

Patrice Lumumba
By Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja

Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the country’s first democratically elected prime minister. After a meteoric rise in the colonial civil service and the African political elite, he became a major figure in the decolonization movement of the 1950s.

The Land beyond the Mists
Essays on Identity and Authority in Precolonial Congo and Rwanda
By David Newbury
· Foreword by Jan Vansina

The horrific tragedies of Central Africa in the 1990s riveted the attention of the world. But these crises did not occur in a historical vacuum. By peering through the mists of the past, the case studies presented in The Land Beyond the Mists illustrate the significant advances to have taken place since decolonization in our understanding of the pre-colonial histories of Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Congo.Based

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa
Edited by Henri Médard and Shane Doyle

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa is a collection of ten studies by the most prominent historians of the region. Slavery was more important in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa than often has been assumed, and Africans from the interior played a more complex role than was previously recognized. The essays in this collection reveal the connections between the peoples of the region as well as their encounters with the conquering Europeans.

Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880–1940
By Samuel H. Nelson

This exceptional study of the Mongo people of the upper Congo River basin focuses on the evolution of Mongo work patterns from the period of the late nineteenth century to 1940, the high-water mark of the colonial period. It brings new evidence from oral histories, anthropological research, and archival records to build on or to correct colonial ethnographic accounts.

Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880–1940
By Samuel H. Nelson

This exceptional study of the Mongo people of the upper Congo River basin focuses on the evolution of Mongo work patterns from the period of the late nineteenth century to 1940, the high-water mark of the colonial period. It brings new evidence from oral histories, anthropological research, and archival records to build on or to correct colonial ethnographic accounts.