A dance of assassins : performing early colonial hegemony in the Congo / Allen F. Roberts.

By:

Roberts, Allen F, 1945-

Material type: Text

TextPublisher number: MWT11529030Series: African expressive culturesPublication details: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2013.Description: 1 online resourceContent type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780253007599
0253007593

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: No titleDDC classification:

325.3493096751 23

LOC classification:

DT654 .R63 2013eb

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

The "emperor" strikes back. Invitation to a beheading -- A conflict of memories -- Histories made by bodies -- Tropical gothic -- Storms the headhunter. Remembering the dismembered. The rise of a colonial macabre -- Art évo on the Chaussée d'Ixelles -- Lusinga's lasting laughs -- Composing decomposition -- Defiances of the dead.

Summary: A Dance of Assassins presents the competing histories of how Congolese Chief Lusinga and Belgian Lieutenant Storms engaged in a deadly clash while striving to establish hegemony along the southwestern shores of Lake Tanganyika in the 1880s. While Lusinga participated in the east African slave trade, Storms' secret mandate was to meet Henry Stanley's eastward march and trace "a white line across the Dark Continent" to legitimize King Leopold's audacious claim to the Congo. Confrontation was inevitable, and Lusinga lost his head. His skull became the subject of a sinister evolutionary treatise, while his ancestral figure is now considered a treasure of the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Allen F. Roberts reveals the theatricality of early colonial encounter and how it continues to influence Congolese and Belgian understandings of history today.

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A Dance of Assassins presents the competing histories of how Congolese Chief Lusinga and Belgian Lieutenant Storms engaged in a deadly clash while striving to establish hegemony along the southwestern shores of Lake Tanganyika in the 1880s. While Lusinga participated in the east African slave trade, Storms' secret mandate was to meet Henry Stanley's eastward march and trace "a white line across the Dark Continent" to legitimize King Leopold's audacious claim to the Congo. Confrontation was inevitable, and Lusinga lost his head. His skull became the subject of a sinister evolutionary treatise, while his ancestral figure is now considered a treasure of the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Allen F. Roberts reveals the theatricality of early colonial encounter and how it continues to influence Congolese and Belgian understandings of history today.