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Kongomania and the Numbers Game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2023

John Thornton
John Thornton*
Affiliation:
Boston University Boston, Massachusetts jkthorn@bu.edu
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Extract

In response to two pieces I wrote in the 1990s, and a section of my book Cultural History of the Atlantic World (2012), David Geggus has charged me with fomenting “Kongomania.” I am a specialist in the history of the Kingdom of Kongo, it is true, and in both pieces, Kongo's history was an important part of the argument. In spite of my own fondness for Kongo and its role in the world, I plead not guilty.

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Type
Article
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The Americas , Volume 81 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 265 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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References

1 Thornton, John, “‘I am the Subject of the King of Congo’: African Ideology in the Haitian Revolution,” Journal of World History 4 (1993): 181–214Google Scholar.

2 de Lacroix, François-Joseph-Pamphile, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la révolution de Saint-Domingue, 2 vols. (Paris, 1819), 1:25Google Scholar.

3 Cuvelier, Jean, ed., Nkutama a mvila za makanda (Tumba, Democratic Republic of Congo: Imprimerie de mission, 1934), 73Google Scholar.

4 MacGaffey, Wyatt, “Constructing a Kongo Identity: Scholarship and Mythopoesis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58 (2016): 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Thornton, John, A History of West Central Africa to 1850 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 38–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 43.

6 John Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo,” Journal of African History 54 (2013): 53–77.

7 David Geggus, “Haitian Voodoo in the Eighteenth Century: Language, Culture, Resistance,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 28 (1991): 21–52.

8 John Thornton, ““The Kingdom of Kongo and Palo Monte: Reflections on an African American Religion,” Slavery & Abolition (2015): 1–22; John Thornton, “African Traditional Religion and Christianity in the Formation of Vodun,” Slavery & Abolition 43 (2022): 730–757.

9 Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire de l'Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue, 2 vols. (Paris: Hippolyte-Louis Guerin, 1730-31), 2:196

10 Thornton, “African Traditional Religion,” 15–17.

11 Thornton, West Central Africa, 272–274. All the languages in the region are part of the larger Bantu group..

12 Thornton, West Central Africa, 177–178, 249, 305.

13 Thornton, West Central Africa, 305.

14 This famous quotation appears in translation in Geggus, David, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014), 86–88Google Scholar.

15 For further description, see Thornton, John, “Was There a Military Revolution in Africa?” in Global Military Transformations: Change and Continuity, 1450–1800, Black, Jeremy, ed. (Rome: Nadir, 2023): 507–528Google Scholar.

16 Edwards, Sean J. A., Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present, and Future (Washington, DC: RAND, 2000)Google Scholar.

17 Madiou, Thomas, Histoire d'Haiti, 8 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Courtois, 1847), 2:322Google Scholar.

18 For more on the tension between these two systems, see Gonzalez, Johnhenry, Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary Haiti (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.