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The Bells of Kings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. Vansina
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Extract

Much speculation has been devoted to the possible connexions between the different clusters of kingdoms in Africa. Scholars have been puzzled for over half a century by the similarities in organization and ideology between different African states. They have tried to explain them either as the product of the diffusion of a common pattern, the ‘Sudanic State’ or the ‘Sacral Kingship’, or by maintaining that similar functional needs led to parallel independent inventions in many different areas. In Central Africa the specific positions taken have been that the Katanga states diffused their model of government to the Lower Congo cluster, or, as I myself have claimed, that these were independent. Dittmer links the Lower Congo with Katanga, and derives the latter cluster itself from the interlacustrine and Ethiopian clusters

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 1969 , pp. 187 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 Birmingham, D., Trade and Conflict in Angola (London, 1966), 8–10, is the most recent statement of this position.Google Scholar

2 Dittmer, K., Afrika Südlich der Sahara — Saeculum Weltgeschichte, IV (Freiburg, 1967), 600–4; map, 602–3.Google Scholar

3 Much help was received from many authorities. We thank Messrs Alagoa, Vrijdagh, Wachsmann, Fielder, Hiernaux, Willett, Hartle, Shaw, Fagan, Anderson, Maesen, Laurenty, Isaacman, Schechter, Leroy-Vail and Lamm for new data. A complete presentation of the materials with the relevant documentation in full, which we think is necessary when distribution studies are made, and a full linguistic treatment, cannot be attempted here. A monograph is in preparation. Since it may be a year or even more before this is published, it seemed worth while to give the most general results now.

4 Wrigley, C., ‘Speculations on the economic prehistory of Africa’, J. Afr. Hist. I, no. 2. (1960), 201–3, stresses the spear.Google Scholar See Dittmer, K., Afrika Südlich der Sahara, 593–4,Google Scholar and Davidson, B., Old Africa Rediscovered (London, 1960), 82–3.Google Scholar

5 von Hornborstel, E., ‘The ethnology of African sound instruments,’ Africa, VI, no. 2 (1933), 130–57, no. 3, 277–311;Google ScholarMontagu, J., ‘Gongs and bells’, Man, LXIV, (1964), no. 144, 120–1.Google Scholar

6 Sachs, C., The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), 456.Google Scholar

7 Ankermann, B., ‘Die afrikanische Musikinstrumente’, Ethnologisches Notizblatt, III, Heft I (Berlin, 1901), 101.Google Scholar

8 Wachsmann, K. and Trowell, M., Tribal Crafts in Uganda (London, 1953), Pt 2, p. 327, plate 77 I, for edge welded but not conic shaped and not flanged bells in Acholi and Buganda.Google Scholar

9 Holas, B., Cultures matérielles de la Côte d'Ivoire (Paris, 1960), p. 86, fig. 25.Google Scholar

10 Coart, E. and de Haulleville, Z., ‘La musique’, Annales du Musée royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Sciences humaines, série in 4 to, 1 (Brussels, 1902), 32–4.Google Scholar

11 Personal communication from Professor K. Wachsmann.

12 Pigafetta, F. and Lopes, E. (trans. Bal, W.), Description du royaume de Congo et des contrées environnantes (Paris, 1965), 42, 178.Google Scholar

13 Walton, J., ‘Iron gongs from the Congo and Rhodesia’, Man, LV (1955), no. 30, pp. 20–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 De Hen, F. J., Beitrag zür Kenntnis der Musikinstrumente aus Belgisch Kongo und Ruanda Urundi (Tervuren, 1960), 38–45, map V.Google Scholar

15 Jones, A. M., Africa and Indonesia (Leiden, 1961), 161–7.Google Scholar

16 Ankermann, B., ‘Die afrikanische Musikinstrumente’, 66–70, 101–3; 131, map II.Google Scholar

17 Personal communication and photographs from Professor F. Willett. We thank him for this most important information.

18 Fagan, B., Southern Africa (London, 1965), p. III, fig. 36. Dating incipient Period IV, p. 108.Google Scholar

19 Cf. Inventaria Archaeologica Africana, e.g. CL4 6 (6) Sanga (J. Nenquin), Z 2 22 (18) and Z 2 22 (20) Ingombe Ilede (B. Fagan). Note bent handles in Ingombe Ilede specimen. For Katoto we had a personal communication from Professor Hiernaux.Google Scholar

20 Personal communication by Professor D. Hartle with a date (GXO 942).

21 See Fagan, B., Southern Africa, 746,Google Scholar for a summary of the evidence for migrations from Congo to Central Africa and page 149 for flange-welding and the making of midribs as the novelties in ironwork brought by Congo smiths. On the date of the Malawi migration though, see Alpers, E. A. in Oliver, R. (ed.), The Middle Age of African History, 81, as the late thirteenth century.Google Scholar

22 Ankermann, B., ‘Die afrikanische Musikinstrurnente’, 102.Google Scholar

23 Hall, R. N., Great Zimbabwe (London, 1905), 121, states that double bells were used in ‘Zambesia’ to announce the arrival of chiefs and the appearance of the new moon. An inquiry by A. Isaacman in the Tete/Sena area in 2968 has failed so far to turn up any bells of this type or even single bells. The closest single bells are the Ambo bells of Zambia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Willett, F., Ife in the History of West African Sculpture (London), (1967), p. 117 plate 84, p. 148. The plate clearly shows a clapperbell which the author thinks represents a metal prototype.Google Scholar