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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Rural Protest: The Mbole against Belgian Rule, 1897-1959
Author:Likaka, Osumaka
Year:1994
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:27
Issue:3
Pages:589-617
Language:English
Geographic terms:Congo (Democratic Republic of)
Belgium
Subjects:Mbole
anticolonialism
colonialism
History and Exploration
Religion and Witchcraft
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/220760
Abstract:This paper examines the opposition of the Mbole in colonial Zaire to the Belgian administration and economy and the domination of the Lomami Company. It demonstrates that the activities of the Atama-Atama traders prior to the Belgian colonization undermined the social reproduction of Mbole communities and determined subsequent peasant opposition. The memory of violence exercised by the Atama-Atama at the end of the 19th century molded the perception of colonial intrusion and fuelled opposition to the collection of rubber, production of palm oil and palm kernels, the cultivation of rice and 'urena lobata' (a textile crop), carefully bred palms, coffee, and hevea rubber. The author argues that everyday forms of resistance, such as the raiding of company posts and flight to the forests, the sabotage of agricultural calendars, the refusal to pay taxes, and migrations, were not expressions of irrational peasant economic behaviour, but were the efforts of men and women to define the terms under which they wanted to work within the colonial economy. Although these acts fell short of striking at the very foundation of colonial exploitation, they caused colonial officials to negotiate with the Mbole peasants, expanding the latter's free social space. Notes, ref.
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