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Kongo in the Age of Empire, 1860-1913: The Breakdown of a Moral Order
Contributor(s): Vos, Jelmer (Author)
ISBN: 0299306208     ISBN-13: 9780299306205
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
OUR PRICE:   $64.35  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: November 2015
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | Africa - Central
- Political Science | Colonialism & Post-colonialism
- Social Science | Black Studies (global)
Dewey: 967.511
LCCN: 2015008826
Series: Africa and the Diaspora
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6" W x 9.1" (1.00 lbs) 234 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
This richly documented account of the arrival of rubber traders, new Christian missionaries, and the Portuguese colonial state in the Kongo realm is told from the perspective of the kingdom's inhabitants. Jelmer Vos shows that both Africans and Europeans were able to forward differing social, political, and economic agendas as Kongo's sacred city of S o Salvador became a vital site for the expansion of European imperialism in Central Africa. Kongo people, he argues, built on the kingdom's long familiarity with Atlantic commerce and cultures to become avid intermediaries in a new system of colonial trade and mission schools.

Vos underlines that Kongo's incorporation in the European state system also had tragic consequences, including the undermining of local African structures of authority--on which the colonial system actually depended. Kongo in the Age of Empire carefully documents the involvement of Kongo's royal court in the exercise of Portuguese rule in northern Angola and the ways that Kongo citizens experienced colonial rule as an increasingly illegitimate extension of royal power.