Lineages, ideology, and the history of slavery in Western Central Africa

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Book chapter

Title:	Lineages, ideology, and the history of slavery in Western Central Africa
Author:	Miller, J.C.
Book title:	The ideology of slavery in Africa
Year:	1981
Pages:	41-71
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Angola Congo (Democratic Republic of) Zambia
Subject:	slavery
Abstract:	Lineage structures provided the basic ideological framework for most societies in what is now soutern and western Zaire, northwestern Zambia, and Angola, probably since the earliest farmers settled the area during the first millenium A.D. It is possible to speculate advantageously on the history of slavery and ideology in this region by comparing broad patterns of economy and society there over very long periods of time, nearly the entire millenium since c. 1000 A.D. By adding historical data were possible and other ethnographic material as an empirical base, the theoratical literature on lineages, ideology, and slavery fills in many missing elements of the past. Such a combination of historical reconstruction and inference reveals demographic and economic condition that may combine generally to influence methods of labor recruitment through the mechanism of descent, enslavement, serfdom, and wages. Map, notes, ref.