Ebook: Kingdoms of the Savanna: A history of Central African states until European occupation

Kingdoms of the Savanna: A history of Central African state until European occupation
Jan Vansina

Published by
The University of Wisconsin Press
Box 1379, Madison, Wisconsin 53701
The University of Wisconsin Press, Ltd.
27-29 Whitfield Street, London, W.1

Copyright © 1966 by the
Regents of the University of Wisconsin
All rights reserved

Published 1966; reprinted 1968, 1970

Printed in the
United States of America
SBN 299-03664-2; LC 65-16367

Preface
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This book grew out of a set of three Knaplund lectures in Tropical History given at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1961. I was asked to publish them and promised to do so, but I felt that more detail and a small bibliography might be useful. By the time the present version was completed, I came to wonder if I should have kept that promise at all, for the gaps in the data are little short of appalling and because of that any synthesis is out of the question. This indicates how little work has been devoted to the history of Central Africa. On the other hand, reports keep coming in about fieldwork (especially among the Lozi, Bemba, and Lunda) and archival research is also being pushed, which is a sign that historians are becoming aware of the task which awaits them there. Because of this situation, a work like this cannot be more than a modest introduction to the field, a tool for the convenience of other historians.

Apart from place names, for which the official spelling has been retained, an attempt has been made to unify the spelling of all other Bantu words by the use of the African alphabet. In this spelling the letter _c_ stands for the English sound _ch_. The other symbols are close to standard usage in English. The combination _ng_ should always be uttered as _ng_ in English at the end of a word, for example, as in sing.

Without the persistent interest of Dr. Philip D. Curtin in the fruition of this study, the work would never have been written. I am also grateful to M. F. Crine, M. le Chanoine L. Jadin, and Fräulein Dr. E. Sulzmann for their help in providing materials from their unpublished research about the Lunda, the Kongo, and the Bolia. Miss L. Marmor has been my research assistant on this project, and I wish especially to thank her for her unstinting cooperation. Finally, I also want to thank the staff of the Me­morial Library of the University, which has been of great help in locating some published materials in foreign libraries.

The Rockefeller Foundation, the Graduate School, and the In­stitute for Research in the Humanities of the University of Wis­consin have provided the necessary funds and created time for research. I am grateful to all of them for their support.

]. Vansina
Gooreind, 1963
Madison, 1964