The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics

Macola’s new book about the history of guns traces the diverse ways in which societies of the central African savannas domesticated or rejected foreign technology in pursuit of local concerns between the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars have long recognized that guns were essential trade goods in the nineteenth century, but Macola argues that debates about guns’ relative historical significance often suffer from a technological determinism, focusing on the values imagined by European gun producers rather than African gun users. In contrast, Macola selects several well-documented regions to demonstrate the range of engagements with guns over time—the instrumental value of guns within Msiri’s violent Yeke trade polity, Nguni warriors’ rejection of guns in favor of long-standing technologies of honorable warfare, Kaonde communities use of guns in hunting as well as social payments, and the incorporation of guns into the growing symbolic repertoire of the recently restored Lozi monarch. The...