Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence [1st ed.] 9783030468231, 9783030468248

Citation preview

William P. Kiblinger  Editor

Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence

Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence

William P. Kiblinger Editor

Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence

Editor William P. Kiblinger Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Winthrop University Rock Hill, SC, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-46823-1    ISBN 978-3-030-46824-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

The collection of essays in this volume derives largely from ongoing research that has been presented by a variety of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and paleo-anthropologists around the globe at the biennial Warfare, Environment, Social Inequality, and Peace Studies (WESIPS) 2015 Conference held at the Center for Cross-Cultural Study in Seville, Spain.1 From this group of connected scholars, a call for similar-minded scholars to contribute to the volume was made, yielding the collection of chapters in this volume. The scholars involved in this volume recognize that warfare, environmental degradation, and social inequality have brought much suffering to humankind, but that too often scholarly attempts at understanding the nature of these problems have been conducted through the prisms of their respective disciplines. In order to facilitate interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, the conference and the scholarship that grows from it address the underlying causes of warfare, environmental degradation, and social inequality from a host of interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives with the ultimate goal of uncovering effective solutions to foster peace, altruism, cooperation, social equality, and sustainable use of natural resources. To that end, the essays in this volume aim to satisfy the most demanding standards and expectations of scholarly research for anthropologists, but they also aspire to connect the anthropological inquiry into human conflict to broader modes of inquiry beyond the field. The scholars providing the substantive research in the volume represent an extensive variety of subfields in anthropology, ranging widely in the time periods, cultures, and geographies that they study. However, all share a common concern to understand the roots, causes, and effects of human conflict as well as ways to address those problems. The editor of the volume, Dr. William Kiblinger (Winthrop University), brings an outside perspective to the entire project, casting the questions in new light and opening up connections for scholars to recognize in other disciplines such as sociology, religious studies, psychology,

1  Since 2017, the WESIPS acronym stands for “Warfare, Environment, Social Inequality, and Pro-Sociability.”

v

vi

Foreword

evolutionary biology, and philosophical ethics. Because of this innovative interdisciplinary approach, the volume has the potential to reach a broad audience of scholars and non-scholars alike. Winthrop University Rock Hill, SC, USA

Richard J. Chacon,

Contents

Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 William P. Kiblinger  The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals����������������������������������������������������������   11 Valerius Geist  The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case Study from the Settlement of Shir, Syria����������������������������   23 Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich  Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins of the Irish Medieval State��������������������������������������������������   39 D. Blair Gibson  Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   57 Douglas Hayward  Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment and Agency in the City of Manaus, Brazil ������������������   81 Ana Luiza M. Soares  Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965������������������������������������������������������������  105 A. C. Roosevelt  Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors��������������������������������������������  175 Bilinda Straight, Amy Naugle, Jen Farman, Cecilia Root, Stephen Lekalgitele, and Charles Owuor Olungah Conclusions and Commentary������������������������������������������������������������������������  193 William P. Kiblinger

vii

Introduction William P. Kiblinger

Why has there been so much human conflict throughout history, and why does it persist? What causes it, and what can we do about it? These are seemingly simple questions, but easy answers are difficult to find. Part of the problem has to do with the complex nature of the concepts involved: human conflict and human nature. When we think of conflict, we may readily imagine violent warfare, but what kind of warfare precisely? In political terms, we may ask whether it is internecine, intertribal, or interstate; whether it is endemic warfare, a mercenary war, or a proxy war; and so forth. To complicate matters further, we must ask whether the violent conflict necessarily involves warfare per se. A survey of violence of all types will also find instances of bodily injury, verbal assault, cultural destruction, political oppression, and even injurious magic. Thus, human conflict may be personal, interfamilial, or coalitionary; it may be economic, psychological, or spiritual; and so forth. The concept of human nature is, if anything, even more vexed. When we seek causes and explanations for human conflict, two tendencies often arise: an overemphasis on the empirical in an effort to stay grounded in the reality of human experience but often at the expense of useful explanatory power or an overreaching into metaphysical territory that promises to give the true ground of a genuine explanation but often becomes too speculative to verify. In the first case, when we concentrate on producing detailed descriptions of particular phenomena such as a single historical instance of human conflict, we risk losing sight of the connections among events in other times or places and what this instance might mean for future events. In the second case, we may explicitly or implicitly ground our insights in some universal category like “human nature” in the attempt to rectify the problem, but here we may find that our answers can become untethered from empirical fact, as W. P. Kiblinger (*) Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_1

1

2

W. P. Kiblinger

when a dogmatic account of human nature (e.g., strict versions of Rousseauan or Hobbesian perspectives) is assumed and then counterevidence in the data must be distorted or ignored to fit the metaphysical preunderstanding (Gat 2015). To avoid either extreme, the chapters in this volume attempt to offer “thick descriptions” and “interpretive explanations” of various human conflicts throughout human history and across the globe. Following Clifford Geertz, the authors endeavor to provide the reader with enough cultural context to navigate the “webs of significance” in which these forms of human conflict occur so that our analysis can be an interpretive one in search of meaning (Geertz 1973). However, to avoid the problem of frontloading our search for meaning with metaphysical assumptions, the essays in this volume follow the advice of Max Weber: “That an interpretation possesses a particularly high degree of evidence does not itself prove anything about its empirical validity…. Rather our ‘understanding’ of the context must always be checked by the usual methods of causal correlations as far as possible, before an ever so ‘evident’ interpretation becomes a valid ‘understandable explanation’” (Apel 1987:131). If this volume is to make progress in understanding human conflict, its interpretations must always be checked by the usual methods of anthropology, but its interpretations must nevertheless endeavor to find meaning in events that can easily seem senseless. Without trying to do so, we forfeit the opportunity to learn. Furthermore, the disparate authors assembled in this volume endorse an interdisciplinary approach as affording the best opportunity to accomplish this learning. Rather than apply a single method or focus on a single form of evidence, the essays combine the methods of archaeology, ethnography, cultural anthropology, psychology, and history, and their subjects span the globe and the timeline of human history. A common theme running through each research focus is the “web of violence” that the researchers have uncovered, described, and explained (Turpin and Kurtz 1997; Hamby and Grych 2013). This concept of a “web of violence” is designed to capture and integrate the full extent of both discrete acts of overt violence and forms of systemic violence that permeate a culture in ways that agents in the culture do not fully recognize or understand. As Turpin and Kurtz argue, there is a “dialectic between macro- and microlevels of violence” such that interpersonal and collective forms of violence are connected in complex ways. The task of identifying and interpreting this dialect of human conflict requires the multifaceted set of integrative techniques presented in this volume, which follow the examples of researchers who have sought the optimal way to frame such complex situations (e.g., Goffman 1974; Snow et al. 1986). Various frames for analyzing violence have risen to prominence in the scholarly literature. The authors in this volume eschew straightforward biological or physiological theories of violent behavior and opt for a frame in which social factors retain the power to override innate tendencies or traits. The authors do not deny that some form of natural aggression may be endemic to human beings (e.g., Lorenz 1966; Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1979), but the ascription of a “violent nature” to human beings requires commensurate attention to the macrolevel conditions that frame the situations in which these natural characteristics manifest themselves.

Introduction

3

Within the framework of the social sciences, the notion of a “web of violence” has gained support as a means of defining the situation of human conflict. By thinking of violence as a web, this concept underscores the interconnectivity of microand macrolevels of violence (e.g., domestic violence and warfare) and its consequences for individuals, groups, communities, and nations (Turpin and Kurtz 1997:12). Such links between the levels of violence have been observed and reported by gender scholars, whose research reveals a connection between, on the one hand, microlevel violence against women and children in patriarchal cultures and, on the other hand, macrolevel violence such as gang violence or warfare in the same cultures (Engel Merry 2009). To amplify this point, researchers have discovered that intrafamilial violence against women and children can be linked to the broader society’s laissez-faire attitude toward the household (Elias 1997:141). The framing employed in a “web of violence” approach recognizes “structural violence” (the way social structures can foster a system that causes harm to individuals or subgroups within the society), as is often found in theorizing about violence in criminology (Pepinsky 1991; Elias 1993; Turpin and Kurtz 1997:10). In its broadest framing, such structures can create a “pathological cosmology” that underlies the action-guiding norms of an entire culture (Galtung 1997). The authors in this volume examine a range of these deep structures as they evolve in history, and yet they attempt to treat the agents within them as sufficiently sui generis to make consequential choices that can affect the course of history. To elaborate on this point, the concept of a web of violence may seem to suggest a position in the well-known structure/agency debate, implying that the structure of a web determines the actions—or, at least, the meaning of the actions—that occur within it. The rise in the popularity of evolutionary and genetic models to explain human behavior has fostered this preference for “structure” over “agency.” However, the present volume resists the attempt to treat agency as an epiphenomenon or, worse, a psychological or ideological illusion. Any model that so discounts agency will have to reckon with the question as to why its privileging of a particular set of “objects” of study is relevant, why the proposed explanations matter, and for whom they purport to matter (Keane 2003:242). For this reason, the scholars in this volume follow an alternative trend in anthropology found in the work of Marshall Sahlins (Sahlins 1976, 1985, 2000[1988]), which resists the turn away from agency and self-interpretation toward entities, forces, and causalities (Keane 2003:238), instead appealing to the concept of agency (i.e., the order of autonomy within the context contingent events) to describe the kinds of self-realization and opposition to oppression that are fundamental to situations of human conflict (High 2010:766; Mahmood 2005; Kockelman 2007; Carter and Sealey 2002).

The Studies of Human Conflicts Arguably, the best place to begin is with the first form of “human conflict,” which occurred between two species of humans, the Neanderthals and the modern human beings, as they coevolved during the extreme Riss glaciation between 300,000 years

4

W. P. Kiblinger

ago (300 ka) and 130,000 years ago (130 ka), Neanderthals in rich ecosystems in Europe, moderns in the deserts of Africa. According to the research of Valerius Geist (University of Calgary), the two groups were destined to meet after Neanderthals and the northern fauna moved south into the Levant area of the eastern Mediterranean following the Riss Ice Age, at the same time that the first modern humans were migrating north from Africa into the same region. They remained in contact for over 30 thousand years, without one besting the other. Meeting Neanderthals must have been a terrifying challenge for modern human beings. The Neanderthals could not be defeated militarily due to their brute strength, speed, and agility as well as their apex predator adaptations of stealth and nocturnalism, which robbed modern humans of the protection of darkness. Furthermore, the Neanderthal proclivity for cannibalism only made confrontations with them more ominous. Only during daylight could groups of moderns hold off Neanderthals using throwing spears. While modern humans could not occupy the living space of healthy Neanderthals by force, the Neanderthals could not follow the moderns into the resource poverty of deserts. These boundaries maintained the separation of the two populations for the most part, though some hybridization occurred during times of Neanderthal decline. Neanderthals kept moderns out of Europe for at least 20 thousand years. The stalemate continued as long as both species had similar economies, hunting the same prey. The turning point came about 40 thousand years ago when moderns crossed the huge east-west mountain chain of the Zagros Mountains and entered the interior of Europe during a time of Neanderthal misfortune. At that time, Europe and Asia had become the world’s most extensive biome known as the “mammoth steppe,” making it home to a variety of large mammals. Significantly, this lengthy radiation of moderns into Europe generated a luxury economy based largely on reindeer that lasted to the end of the Wurm glaciation. This economic flourishing is reflected in the exceptional phenotype, cultural developments, and population growth of these hunters. Their activity overlapped minimally with the Neanderthal economy, which was that of an apex predator of all other megafauna. However, moderns could interfere with the seasonal migrations of the megafauna out of the mammoth steppe, denying Neanderthals access to the supply of the all-important fat in spring time that otherwise would be provided by pregnant mammoths, rhinos, or horses. As evidence of the effects of such interference, terminal Neanderthal populations exhibit starvation diets. The mammoth steppe limited the expansion of Upper Paleolithic hunters throughout Eurasia for the duration of the Wurm glaciation and allowed entry into the Americas only after the mammoth steppe fragmented and gave way to taiga at the end of the glaciation. The work of Geist explores the evidence of these early encounters between Neanderthals and moderns, and it characterizes the types of conflicts—both direct and indirect—that arose between the two groups. His conjecture about the nature of this long-term conflict suggests a “web of violence” approach to the study of warfare and violence. Such an approach provides a needed corrective to the account of human conflict that is too focused on the single dramatic event rather than the slow, pervasive impact of systemic violence.

Introduction

5

Picking up where Geist’s work leaves off, coauthors Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich (German Archaeological Institute) explore the changing nature of human conflict in the late Neolithic period. This topic has received little attention in the field until now, much of which has focused on the identification of markers for hostilities in the archaeological record in the Late Neolithic, e.g., site abandonments, the existence of fortifications, or the presumed alliances of settlements, all of which indicated generalized, intergroup conflicts. Their chapter, “The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case Study from the Settlement of Shir, Syria,” explores the possibilities of inferring the functions of Early Neolithic projectile points, made from flint and bone, from the settlement of Shir, Syria. The chapter draws on recent archaeozoological studies to classify the newly developed nonhunting weapons of the period, and they focus on their uses in conflicts that related to the individuality and personhood of warriors in the Late Neolithic. Both use-wear and metrical values are applied to determine possible functionalities of arrowheads for darts and spears, followed by a discussion focusing on their use for hunting or as weapons for intrapersonal conflict. They observe that weapons get larger and more visible exactly in the moment when hunting declines as basis for subsistence. This transformation would have produced considerable change regarding the social roles of individuals who before defined themselves through their role as hunters. They reason that the best explanation for the development of personalized “prestige weapons” is that interpersonal conflict gradually replaced the social practice of hunting as a means to form and perpetuate identities. The next chapter shifts the focus from the role of personal identity in human conflict to the strategies of interpolity conflict in the political context by examining the developing forms of human conflict in the medieval era of Ireland. In “Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins of the Irish Medieval State,” Blair Gibson (El Camino College) addresses the patterns of warfare in early medieval Ireland, which seems at first glance to have been awash in a random and unceasing web of violence among warring chiefdoms. These chiefdoms seem to fit the “cycling” repetition of ceaseless coalescence and collapse as observed by many scholars of these political systems. However, Gibson finds that the Irish ethnohistorical sources pertaining to the province of Munster reveal that their warfare was highly patterned. During the period 600 to 900 C.E., political violence was employed to attack neighboring chiefdom confederacies. Victories were followed by the replacement of the ruling lineages of individual chiefdoms of the losing confederacy with those of the victor. Following the appearance of the Vikings in Munster, warfare assumed a new character that here is termed hegemonic. From 900 to 1100 C.E., the paramount leaders of powerful confederacies followed a strategy driven by status rivalry whereby they waged war in combination with alliance formation in order to elevate their personal power above that of rivals of similar stature. Though Irish chiefdoms retained their traditional character in the first phase, during the hegemonic phase Brian mac Cennétig (nicknamed Bóroihme) and his descendants were able to enact internal organizational changes in the core of their Dál Cais polity that supported the intensification of warfare. This

6

W. P. Kiblinger

intensification in turn led to qualitative changes to power relationships within their polity that would eventually result in the emergence of a true state system. The following chapter continues to ask many of the same questions about the sources and resolutions of interpolity conflict, examining the practices of the Western Dani people who reside in the highlands of what is now known as West Papua, Indonesia. In “Seeking Justice—Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani,” Douglas Hayward (Biola University) draws on decades of firsthand experience as well as a considerable body of research to address three key questions: (1) why the Dani live in a nearly constant state of conflict; (2) how often and for what duration this general condition sparks pronounced incidences of aggression; and (3) how the Dani forge a sustained peace in the aftermath of these outbreaks. He then concludes with some broader observations about the nature of conflict in stateless societies. As a point of departure, Hayward refers to the work of Marshall Sahlins (1963), who describes the Western Dani as living in constant state of “warre” prior to the arrival of missionaries in the mid-twentieth century. In this condition, all members of the society were expected to pursue justice and defend their honor from the smallest infractions up to those that required large-scale alliances. As a result, the Western Dani formed graduated social alliances with appropriate levels of conflict resolutions culminating in full-scale war if peace and honor could not be resolved earlier. This state of warre continued to exist up and until the arrival of “third party interventionists” first in the form of missionaries who promoted peace-building, offered up an alternative to conflict management, and whose role and influence was later replaced by the arrival of civil authorities and the presence of an Indonesian police and military deployment. His research provides instructive criticism of the Hobbesian conception of the “state of nature”—a war of all against all, revealing instead the notion of “peaceful warriors” who stand ready to deter aggression but do not seek it. The next chapter shifts the focus to a different kind of conflict but also one that occurs at the margins of a colonial society in its interactions with the native population. Ana Luiza M. Soares studies the Amazonas region of Brazil, especially the city of Manaus, during the nineteenth century as the country transitioned from a monarchy to a federal republic, and her work reveals the often untold story of the Indigenous people who underwent systematic marginalization and lived in a web of violence that included routine abuses, arbitrary arrests, sexual violations, kidnappings, and forced labor. According to the “elite” version of the history of Manaus, the nineteenth century was the so-called Belle Époch of the city—a period of “modernization” and progress to “embellish” the city’s culture and institutions—and this account of the history tends to minimize the presence of Indigenous people, much less their plight and resistance in an oppressive system. To counter this sort of narrative, Soares carefully documents the laws, policies, and institutions that created these conditions of invisibilization and violence, and she exposes the reality of this hidden social system through an exploration of news reports, court records, and hospital archives. Her work shows that understanding human conflict often requires meticulous investigation of hidden histories as a first step in recognizing that and

Introduction

7

how certain kinds of violence have arisen. Only with such exposure can we understand the web of violence and begin to address it. The final two chapters extend the analysis of contemporary forms of human conflict by focusing on different areas of Africa. Anna Roosevelt (University of Illinois at Chicago) presents an African case within the full geopolitical context of the web of violence that modern Africans have experienced in the colonial and postcolonial eras. As with the previous chapter on the history of Indigenous peoples of Brazil, Roosevelt seeks to correct some common misunderstandings about supposed character traits by clarifying the historical record and the distortions in it that have undergirded these misconceptions. In “Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965,” Roosevelt analyzes the aftermath of colonial rule in Central Africa, specifically in the former Belgian Congo. During the disastrous violence that followed the end of Belgian rule, a series of coups, political assassinations, civil wars, and mass killings caused disorder, inequality, and economic failure there, with global ramifications of epidemics, displacements, and degraded environments. Western literature tends to attribute such trends to Africans’ supposed political inexperience, radicalism, corruption, tribal divisions, and innate violence. Roosevelt argues that a significant part of this literature, however, was covertly underwritten by Western security services in order to frame Africans for crimes that Western functionaries carried out to maintain white political control as well as a monopoly of the region’s rich minerals. Furthermore, she notes the epistemological problems in asserting such unfalsifiable claims about the “African character” as the underlying cause of these problems. To undergird her claims, Roosevelt draws on extensive research of declassified documents, media, academic studies, memoirs, diaries, and interviews with witnesses on the mid-twentieth century Congo crisis, all of which reveals clear Western, not Congolese, perpetration in the coups and killings of the period. Very different cultures, alliances, funding, communications, and technology were at work in the actions of Western state functionaries compared to those of the Congolese with and against whom they worked. Working within their countries’ NATO alliance, Western agents employed bribery, prevarication, forgery, press suborning, and false flag operations and, when these failed their goals, extrajudicial detentions and murders of Congolese politicians they opposed and massacres of their supporters. In contrast, Congolese leaders followed much less violent strategies, combining negotiation, collaboration, and delay with propaganda, deception, graft, and, finally, armed resistance against the secessions set up by Western governments in the mining areas. Some Congolese originally employed by the security service of the Belgian colony did serve as fronts and sometimes collaborators for some Western operations and puppet regimes, but there is no clear evidence they took the initiative in the coups, murders, and mass killings. Roosevelt’s chapter illustrates these contrasting patterns of behavior and resources in the mid-twentieth-century decolonization process in the large, central African state of the Democratic Republic of Congo, revises old explanations with the new evidence, and highlights the implications for future policy to lessen instability, violence, poverty, and environmental degradation there in the future. Many lessons can be learned from this case study, not the least of which

8

W. P. Kiblinger

is the pernicious effect of flawed essentialism in explaining the roots of a web of violence. In “Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors,” Bilinda S.  Straight (lead author from Western Michigan University) draws on the work of a team of researchers to examine the empathetic experiences of Samburu warriors in a small-scale society in northern Kenya. This study provides a complement to the study of “peaceful warriors” in the Western Dani context. In the Samburu case, Straight et al. argue that empathy is a prosocial emotion implicated in the evolution of cooperation but is insufficiently addressed with respect to warfare. Straight’s chapter aims to rectify that shortcoming in the research, presenting findings of an empathy experiment conducted with Samburu warriors (lmurran), who are young unmarried men universally initiated into warriorhood in their teens and twenties. Using realistic narratives of injury during organized raiding, the study elicited self-ratings of empathy toward fellow Samburu in comparison to ethnic enemies. The results showed no statistically significant differences between Samburu empathy toward their fellows versus enemies. However, the study did find a statistically significant association between affective-emotional self-ratings (putting oneself into another’s shoes) and the number of raids the warrior had experienced. Straight situates these results within anthropological, psychological, and neuroscientific studies of empathy and cooperation, and she also highlights Samburu ambivalence toward killing as evidenced in oral traditions and cleansing practices, drawing attention to the behavior of warzone mercy—sparing enemies during coalitional lethal violence. Pointing to empathy’s Janus-faced nature of potentially inducing altruistic helping for any human or, conversely, motivating individuals to harm one individual or group in the name of protecting another, her chapter concludes that some degree of empathy toward enemies is unsurprising. Empathy is at the core of warfare’s moral conflict. Humans kill, but they do so at a cost to themselves that encompasses the psychological, culturally metaphysical, and physiological. Empathy studies can reveal the mechanisms for the emotional costs of warfare and their physiological entailments. This study corrects some of the misguided understandings of human conflict, particularly those that assume intrinsically aggressive traits in those engaged in forms of human conflict. As a collection, these essays provide numerous lessons for engaging the debate about human conflict. By tracing back to the earliest roots of human conflict in the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, questions about evolutionary forces and selective adaptations arise, and we begin to think about the deep-seated traits that have been forged in human beings over thousands of generations. The relation of evolutionary explanation to moral theory also emerges as a source of further debate, especially in connection to the cultural influence of “honor ideology” as it emerges as a potent force in human behavior. The essay focused on medieval Ireland turns our attention geographically and historically to the European context, but it also introduces a different method of study: ethnohistory. Throughout each of these studies, the web of violence approach provides a useful way to understand the historical events and to recognize some of the adaptations that persevere from earlier generations. Meanwhile, the study of Ireland brings the political dimension to light, showing

Introduction

9

how conflicts may generate new forms of power relations as the conflicts grow in size and complexity. Turning to Indonesia, the essay on the Western Dani emphasizes cross-cultural comparisons by analyzing native forms of conflict and the results of later contact with Europeans. This essay also adds methodological lessons to the study of human conflict, providing ways to challenge previous interpretations of the history. Finally, the essays on Brazil and Africa bring us into contemporary times, and they explicitly raise a set of complex moral questions about human conflict: What role does emotion play in moral action? How does moral agency operate within a system of cultural and historical forces? How do subjects justify assigning blame for moral failings? What are the prospects for moral improvement? The essays in this volume raise these questions and many more, and they offer rigorous scholarly methods for addressing them.

References Apel, Karl-Otto. 1987. Dilthey’s Distinction Between “Explanation” and “Understanding” and the Possibility of Its “Mediation.”. Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (1): 131–149. Carter, Bob, and Alison Sealey. 2002. Language, Structure and Agency: What Can Realist Social Theory Offer to Sociolinguistics? Journal of Sociolinguistics 4 (1): 3–20. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus. 1979. The Biology of War and Peace: Men, Animals and Aggression. New York: Viking. Elias, Robert. 1993. Victims Still: The Political Manipulation of Crime Victims. Newbury Park: Sage. ———. 1997. A Culture of Violent Solutions. In The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Engel Merry, Sally. 2009. Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Galtung, Johan. 1997. Is There a Therapy for Pathological Cosmologies? In The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Gat, Azar. 2015. Proving Communal Warfare Among Hunter-Gatherers: The Quasi-Rousseauan Error. Evolutionary Anthropology 24: 111–126. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: BasicBooks. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hamby, S., and J.  Grych. 2013. The Web of Violence: Exploring Connections among Different Forms of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse. Amsterdam: Springer. High, Casey. 2010. Warriors, Hunters, and Bruce Lee: Gendered Agency and the Transformation of Amazonian Masculinity. American Ethnologist 37 (4): 753–770. Keane, Webb. 2003. Self-Interpretation, Agency, and the Objects of Anthropology: Reflections on a Genealogy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2): 222–248. Kockelman, Paul. 2007. Agency: The Relation between Meaning, Power, and Knowledge. Current Anthropology 48 (3): 375–401. Lorenz, Konrad. 1966. On Aggression. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pepinsky, Harold E. 1991. The Geometry of Violence and Democracy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1963. Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (3): 285–302.

10

W. P. Kiblinger

———. 1976. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2000[1988]. Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of “The World System.”. In Culture in Practice: Selected Essays, 415–469. New York: Zone Books. Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford. 1986. Frame Alignment Process, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation. American Sociological Review 51: 464–481. Turpin, Jennifer, and Lester R.  Kurtz, eds. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. William P. Kiblinger is an associate professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies.  

He holds a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on continental philosophy and theology as well as issues in religion and science. He has published work on evolutionary theory and subjectivity in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science as well as on religious imagination in the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology. He teaches courses in philosophy and religious studies, and he has co-taught interdisciplinary courses in biology, anthropology, and political science.

The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals Valerius Geist

The displacement of a settled population of humans by an invading one has been all too common, and the displacement of Neanderthals by modern human beings in the Upper Paleolithic is merely one such example, albeit an unusual one. This research is thus illustrative of the systematic violence that permeates all cultures, an example of what Turpin and Kurtz (1997) have termed the “web of violence.” Why did it take so very long for moderns to dominate in this web of violence? Neanderthals went extinct with the colonization of Europe by Aurignacian people, although Neanderthals and moderns had been in at least periodic contact for over 130,000 years, stretching from the Riss glaciation (Marine Isotope Stage 6) to the middle of the Würm glaciation (MIS 4) (Franciscus and Holliday 2013:45–88). Modern human beings evolved during the Mindel/Riss glaciations in Africa during the period between 196 and 154 thousands of years ago (kya). During the latter glaciation (170–180 kya), pre-Neanderthals moved into the eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, as part of the periglacial fauna of glaciated Europe. They were replaced in the Levant by moderns during the following warm interglacial (81–127 kya, MIS 5) but returned to the Levant (61+/−3.6 kya) after the climatic collapse following the Toba super-volcanic eruption (73 kya) and the onset of the Würm glaciation (Storey et  al. 2012). There followed alternating shifts between moderns and Neanderthals in the Levant (Shea 2001; Niewoehner 2001). Neanderthals withdrew from the Levant some 52–58 thousand years ago, during which time it came to some limited hybridization (Fu et al. 2014).1 Further declines may have been caused by climatic calamities precipitated by massive volcanic eruptions in Italy and again in the Caucasus about 40,000 years ago (Golovanova et al. 2010; Pinhasi et al. 2011),  However, there may have been some hybridization later (Callaway 2015).

1

V. Geist (*) University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_2

11

12

V. Geist

although these claims remain controversial (Ghose 2014). The Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption (near Naples) cooled the climate by 5–10 degree Celsius, enough to cause ecological havoc. There followed a drying trend in the Levant (Bocherens et al. 2014), which would have favored the frugal economies of modern people. At this point, Neanderthals met moderns of the Upper Paleolithic culture. The moderns were initially an impoverished and struggling culture (Scott and Marean 2009), but art soon bursted forth from it about the same time (41,000–43,000 calendar years) it moved north across the massive east-west mountain ranges into Europe’s and Western Asia’s cold, periglacial interior (Kuhn et  al. 2001). The appearance of art suggests improved economic conditions. Neanderthal populations, meanwhile, shrank and withdrew to Western Europe. This has been corroborated by genetic studies showing that about 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals suffered a sharp population reduction with loss in genetic variation (Castellano et al. 2014), followed by only a modest recovery prior to their extinction (Dalen et al. 2012; Riel-­ Salvatore 2010). Neanderthals manifested themselves in the Châtelperronian culture. Archaeology reveals in some areas an inter-stratification of the two cultures, Aurignacian and Châtelperronian, on the very same cites (Mellars 1993). Thus, there was a co-existence of moderns and Neanderthals in Western Europe for 2600–5400 years (Higham et al. 2014). Neanderthal extinction then occurred some 40,000  years ago when moderns had begun to colonize the interior of Western Europe (Zilhão et  al. 2010; Jöris et  al. 2011). Clearly, the displacement of Neanderthals was a slow process, which raises the question: why did modern human beings not eliminate Neanderthals “militarily” as moderns have so often done when meeting other moderns? The displacement of Neanderthals by modern human beings is unique because a military conquest of one by the other was virtually out of the question. Moderns could not eradicate Neanderthals and vice versa. A balance of terror almost certainly marked their relationship, based on crucial differences in their respective combat abilities. These differences originate in variances in adaptation by our two species. And these adaptive variances arose from their distinct hunting practices of large mammals (Geist 1978:284–300; Geist 1981). Neanderthals, like apex predators, appear to have developed nocturnal grab and kill tactics that put severe strains on their bodies and thereby selected for great strength, agility, and brutal courage. Moderns, by contrast, tended to hunt with multiple throwing spears (half of which shattered upon hitting bone) requiring a hunting party of 6–10 individuals. Modern human beings were thus hopelessly outclassed in close combat by the brutal strength, speed, and precision of movement of Neanderthals. That included female Neanderthals. However, a small Neanderthal party—and we expect such—could be wiped out by a hunting band of 6–10 moderns, all armed with throwing spears and the ability to deliver them accurately. Moderns were probably also the faster and more enduring runners and thus able to disengage effectively. However, Neanderthals’ larger orbits and visual cortex (Eiluned et al. 2013) imply nocturnality, a typical apex predator ability that would likely render moderns helpless at night. Any Neanderthal party could sneak in at night and decimate a group of

The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

13

moderns. Night offered no protection for moderns, who consequently had to be far beyond reach of Neanderthals to camp safely with or without fire. Any campfire— day or night—would reveal their presence, inviting an attack from Neanderthals who had a penchant for cannibalism (Hélène et  al. 2016). Upon sighting a Neanderthal party, it was best for moderns to instantly flee as far as possible to forestall nocturnal surprises. Having dogs would help protect the moderns at night (Shipman 2015:266; Shipman 2014:359–360). The extremely rare incidents of hybridization were probably based on a modern lactating woman, having lost her baby and adopting a Neanderthal baby after its parents had perished. Early modern human beings and Neanderthals had similar technologies (Niewoehner 2001), and in the Levant they operated similar economies. From this basis, the following hypothesis arises: as long as both groups had similar economies (Shea 2001) and technologies (Bar-Yosef et al. 1986; Vandermeersch 1989), moderns would and did fail to dominate Neanderthals. Moreover, granted that Neanderthals evolved as “winter-adapted” apex predators (Richards et  al. 2000; Bocherens et al. 2005; Richards and Trinkaus 2009; Wissing et al. 2015) in fertile, productive Europe while moderns evolved as “desert-adapted” generalists (Geist 1978:309, 302) in Africa during the severe Riss glaciation (Marine Isotope Stages 6/7), moderns had developed the ability to survive in marginal habitats. Moderns could not displace Neanderthals from good, productive habitats, at least not as long as both had similar economies. Trying to do so probably triggered the changes from the Middle Stone Age in Africa to the more advanced (stressful) Late Stone Age, starting the Upper Paleolithic (Klein and Edgar 2002:288). It is highly unlikely that we could displace healthy Neanderthals by conventional fighting, even though violence does work (Ginsberg 2013)! Moderns, however, displace Neanderthals by inventing an effective alternative economy that did not compete with that of Neanderthals.2 Evidence shows that is what happened. Moderns invented a radically different economy based initially on exploiting migratory reindeer (Geist 1978:309, 322). The new socio-cultural form that developed could be called a “luxury economy,” which simultaneously provided the conditions for numerous changes: exceptional phenotypic development and health of individuals, very large brain sizes, a division of labor, and a rather uniform but technologically and culturally innovative culture. This developing culture was characterized by great population increase, the decline into extinction of species of megafuna, very great artistic developments, and sophisticated religious beliefs. Even though the basis was a reindeer economy, the moderns almost ignored this staple food and were completely infatuated with the megafauna for aesthetic and religious reasons, as revealed in their prodigious art (Guthrie 2005:520). Also to be noted is the occupation of colder landscapes of the northern areas of the continent by the modern colonists than by Neanderthals, cutting off the latter from the all-important mammoth steppe.

 A similar independent proposition is made by Paul Mellars (1993).

2

14

V. Geist

Mammoth Steppe A huge realm of northern Eurasia, the home of migratory megafauna, which humans could not enter mainly for lack of firewood, was the mammoth steppe. Covering a vast area of Eurasia and even North America, it was treeless, characterized by the growth of low herbaceous and grassy vegetation, which supported large populations of social, herding ungulates. It was an ecosystem generated by unceasing sunlight (Guthrie 2001). Its soils were formed from very fertile wind-blown glacial dust or loess, were well-drained, had a high soil pH, and allowed deep root penetration by plants. Today’s moist calcareous tundra has many characteristics similar to those of the hypothesized “mammoth steppe,” such as a high biodiversity, few plants with antiherbivory chemicals, and more nutrients. Even today the limited amount of calcareous tundra provides an important range for arctic wildlife (Walker et al. 2001). These forbs steppes had little shrubbery and only a few grasses and sedges, which were of the C3 variety, making them more digestible for the many large migratory herbivores that lived on the mammoth steppe. Among the herbivores populated these grassy landscapes were the woolly mammoth and rhino, horses, onagers, camels, reindeer, saiga antelopes, steppe bison, muskoxen, and yaks and, on the taiga fringes, aurochs, giant deer, wapiti/maral, roe deer, and musk deer. As might be expected, there was an array of complementary carnivores: gray wolves, dholes, cave hyenas, lions, snow leopards, cave bears, brown bears, short-faced bears locally, as well as tigers and leopards on the fringes. The mammoth steppe was remarkably stable throughout the Würm/Wisconsin glaciation, that is, Marine Isotope Stages 4 and 3, despite the significant climatic fluctuations (Jørgensen et al. 2012). It was, however, not habitable for humans as it lacked adequate fuel and wood for tool-making. Mammoth ivory could replace wood, in part, while the dung of horses, bison, mammoth, and woolly rhino could partially replace wood as fuel. However, the archaeological record is clear: human occupation ended at the edge of the mammoth steppe, which is roughly at the 56th parallel in Siberia (Turner et al. 2013:490; Kuzmin 2014). To the south lay taiga forests. However, these were not hostile to large social ungulates, as they contained river valleys and open slopes that supported meadows rich with grasses, sedges, and herbs almost certainly making ideal wintering habitats and thus attracting ungulates to migrate annually out of the mammoth steppe. Also, some glacial termini must have been ideal wintering grounds for ungulates just as they are today in Greenland. That is, humans, occupying the edges of the mammoth steppe, would have experienced the annual migrations of these large social ungulates. The mammoth steppe served as a refuge for the megafauna where they were safe from humans. Also, the treeless mammoth steppe (Wooller 2011) barred the road for humans from Siberia to North America until the first warm interstadial (Bølling-Allerød) advanced through the taiga northward following the last glacial maximum (25–15 kya) of the Würm glaciation (Meiri 2014).

The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

15

The New Surplus Economy and Its Effects The Western Upper Paleolithic hunters’ primary prey (90% or more) was reindeer (Geist 2003). However, reindeer, by being highly mobile, well dispersed, and alert, are quite difficult to hunt. That fact is evidenced in their low abundance in the archaeological remains of classical Neanderthals. Consequently, in classical Neanderthal nutrition, reindeer played a subordinate role compared to bison, mammoth, rhinos, and horses (Bocherens et al. 2005; Balter and Simon 2006; Richards et al. 2008). Their diet was biased toward these beasts, whereas cave hyenas in the same environment preferred reindeer (Bocherens et al. 2005; Richards et al. 2008). In short, modern people after entering Europe developed a diet and then an economy that differed significantly from that of Neanderthals. The most productive way to hunt reindeer is to intercept migrations, kill in excess, and preserve the surplus meat and fat. However, that can only be done by predicting the timing and the locations of the brief but massive migrations. To time reindeer migrations, human hunters required an exact knowledge of chronological time, as timing events in reindeer are set by the decreasing light regime of late summer which stimulates the pituitary gland and times reproduction. This biological clock in reindeer keeps the timing constant from year to year despite the weather. For human beings to time reindeer migrations, they needed to understand chronological time and thus be able to create a calendar (Geist 1978:309, 322). Furthermore, they had to have an understanding of another abstract invention of culture: enumeration or counting. Thus, they needed the idea of numbers, which implies the possession of grammatical language (Mellars 1993). A calendar depends on the invention of time and enumeration, and Upper Paleolithic people appear to have possessed lunar calendars (Marshack 1972a, b, 1976). As further evidence of these conceptual and technological methods of timing, there are also European and Siberian sites showing mass killings of horses (Turner 2005; Hoffecker et al. 2014) and especially mammoths (Shipman 2014). Granted the ability to time migrations, the hunters needed to find river or lake crossings that constrained reindeer into dense streams of bodies, allowing for mass killings. Thereafter, the meat had to be sliced very thin, dried, and smoked, and the fat rendered out into skin bags in order to assure durability. Blade industries erupted with the colonization of Europe some 40,000 years ago by modern people (Eren et al. 2008), a sign that they were probably cutting up and drying meat. Killing reindeer in excess of immediate need and conserving the meat and fat have many advantages. It allowed for joyful gatherings and feasting, and it freed time for art, crafts, and other forms of culture. Further, it provided a secure basis for taking advantage of opportunities to hunt other megafauna for fresh meat and fat. In this way, it advanced the practice of hunting, developing it into an activity for entertainment, for sport, or for social standing. Hunting also became a strategy to eliminate the megafauna between human territory and that of the Neanderthals, thereby serving to keep Neanderthals distant. Because light-weight dry food and shelter could be easily carried, and the lightweight clothing of reindeer furs gave superior protection,

16

V. Geist

it allowed provisioning for long-distance travel, be it for visiting or trading or exploration or collecting rare raw materials. It made possible the diversification of food habits through the procurement of seasonal foods from dispersed, distant localities, such as fat migratory waterfowl and fat fish (Richards et al. 2001). For all of these things, the trick, of course, was to kill an excess of migratory reindeer year in and year out. That modern human beings developed a luxury economy is seen in the excellent phenotypic development of people, including very large brains (Geist 1978:319; Ruff et al. 1997; Formicola and Giannechini 1999), in the increase in population size,3 in the high development of art which requires much leisure (Guthrie 2005), and in taming wolves for fun which requires a lot of meat scraps from butchered reindeer (Germonpré et al. 2012). So much fat was harvested that it served not only to feed people, but it was also used to fuel oil lamps (Guthrie 2005:413). Another notable feature is the lack of evidence for warfare, combat weapons, homicide, or a warrior cult. Such practices followed much later at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, during the Mesolithic (Frayer 1981) with an execrable phenotype development, cannibalism (Bello et al. 2015), a clear indicator of hardship (Geist 1978:378–381; Bello et al. 2015). It appears, therefore, that the modern hunters who developed a luxury economy based on reindeer were not warriors. If not by arms, then how did they damage Neanderthals? The apparent lack of warfare by modern human beings before the end of the Upper Paleolithic can also be related to specific features of their habitat in the mammoth steppe. While reindeer migrations could be timed, their spatial appearance at certain lakes or rivers would be less secure. Consequently, hunters waiting for reindeer at the wrong spot could miss out on the annual kill and face hardship. Meanwhile, others may have been swamped by an overabundance of reindeer and thereby accrued a surplus of meat. This uncertainty could be managed by a culture of sharing, based probably on family ties. The exchange of beautiful, able daughters could have provided an economic basis. That is, a small clan, unlucky in the annual hunt, could disperse to relatives and share in their fortune while accepting relatives when they themselves had a large surplus. Vagaries in ungulate migrations would thus generate a sharing, cooperative society. Moreover, migratory reindeer are not a dependable resource, as, for instance, are salmon rivers and creeks. Thus, a culture of sharing would have served to mitigate the inherent risk in an economy dependent on reindeer. Modern people were geographically between the mammoth steppe and the land occupied by Neanderthals. As opposed to the modern human beings’ practice of storing and sharing surplus meat, the Neanderthals, apparently, lived from kill to kill. Therefore, they depended on the availability of a high density of undisturbed mega-herbivores on the wintering grounds. Secondly, the Achilles’ heel of the Neanderthals was the low availability of fat in springtime. A large amount of fat had 3  That modern people lived in greater density than Neanderthal is suggested by the data of Klein (Klein 1969; Klein 1973). More recent studies suggest that Upper Paleolithic people were a multiple more abundant than Neanderthals (Mellars & French 2011).

The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

17

to be consumed along with muscle meat to survive. Carnivores require a lot of fat along with some protein. They cannot survive on a pure protein diet, such as the meat of emaciated animals. They need plenty of fat, and the same applies to human beings (Speth and Spielmann 1983; Bilsborough and Mann 2006). Neanderthals required probably more food per day than did moderns. Virtually the only source of fat in spring was pregnant females with long gestation periods, i.e., mammoth (22 months of gestation), rhinos (16 months), and probably horses (12 months). However, well-provisioned hunting parties of moderns traveling long distances could easily cause massive disturbances to mega-herbivores on wintering ground. These events would make the location of huntable mega-herbivores unpredictable, causing hardship for un-provisioned or only minimally provisioned Neanderthals. Moreover, generous provisioning also allowed moderns the surplus killing of the megafauna, setting in motion the disappearance of many such species. Consequently, with the entry into Europe of moderns, there began a decline not only in the largest of herbivores (Stuart et al. 2004) but also of the huge cave bear (Stiller et al. 2010). There was a great decline in large-bodied herbivores on the Iberian Peninsula prior to Neanderthal’s extinction (Fa et al. 2013). Also, if pet wolves followed modern hunters, they would defeat Neanderthal’s nocturnal advantage by warning of approaching Neanderthals (Shipman 2015). Thus, moderns could severely disrupt Neanderthal hunting, creating a systemic web of violence that forced the Neanderthals to withdraw. Consequently, controlling the wintering grounds of mega-herbivores, together with surplus killings and depletion of mega-herbivore populations, would be reflected in shrinking geographic distribution of terminal Neanderthal populations (Finlayson et al. 2013). Furthermore, it would have brought about changes of hunting technologies (such as throwing spears, which appeared in Uluzzian culture); food habits involving starvation foods such as rabbits, fish, tortoise, ravens, raptors (Germonpré et al. 2012; Finlayson et al. 2012), clams, or scavenged marine carcasses (Stringer et  al. 2008); and the physical development of individuals. Neanderthals would change their culture trying to cope, which may be the root cause of the Châtelperronian culture (Riel-Salvatore 2010). Their innovations, however, were modest at best (University of Leicester 2007; Riel-Salvatore 2010; Mellars 1993). Large, prosperous, mobile populations of moderns practicing a new surplus economy and residing between the mammoth steppe and Neanderthals thus had the means to starve out Neanderthals. There was no need to fight them.

18

V. Geist

References Balter, Vincent, and Laurent Simon. 2006. Diet and Behavior the Saint-Césaire Neanderthal Inferred from Biogeochemical Data Inversion. Journal of Human Evolution 51 (4): 329–338. Bar-Yosef, O., B.  Vandermeersch, B.  Arensburg, P.  Goldberg, H.  Laville, L.  Meignen, Y.  Rak, E. Tchernov, and A.-M. Tillier. 1986. New Data on the Origin of Modern Man in the Levant. Current Anthropology 27 (1): 63–64. Bello, S.M., P. Saladié, I. Cáceres, A. Rodríguez-Hidalgo, and S.A. Parfitt. 2015. Upper Palaeolithic Ritualistic Cannibalism at Gough’s Cave (Somerset, UK): The Human Remains from Head to Toe. Journal of Human Evolution 82: 170–189. Bilsborough, Shane, and Neil J.  Mann. 2006. A review of issues of dietary protein intake in humans. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism 16 (2): 129–152. Bocherens, H., D.G. Drucker, D. Billiou, M. Patou-Mathis, and B. Vandermeersch. 2005. Isotopic Evidence For Diet and Subsistence Pattern of Saint-Césaire I Neanderthal. Review and Use of Multi-Source Mixing Model. Journal of Human Evolution 49 (1): 71–87. Bocherens, Hervé, Dorothée G.  Drucker, and Stéphane Madelaine. 2014. Evidence for a 15  N Positive Excursion in Terrestrial Foodwebs at the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition in South-Western France: Implications for Early Modern Human Palaeodiet and Palaeoenvironment. Journal of Human Evolution 69: 31–43. Callaway, Ewen. 2015. Early European May Have Had Neanderthal Great-Great-Grandparent. Nature News 13 (5). Castellano, Sergi, G. Parra, F. Sanchez-Quinto, F. Racimo, M. Kuhlwilm, M. Kircher, S. Sawyer, Q.  Fu, A.  Heinze, B.  Nickel, J.  Dabney, M.  Siebauer, L.  White, H.A.  Burbano, G.  Renaud, U.  Stenzel, C.  Lalueza-Fox, M.  Rasilla, A.  Rosas, and S.  Pääbo. 2014. Patterns of Coding Variation in the Complete Exomes of Three Neandertals. Proceedings National Academy of Science USA 11 (18): 6666–6671. Dalen, Love, Ludovic Orlando, Beth Shapiro, Mikael Brandström-Durling, Rolf Quam, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, J. Carlos Díez Fernández-Lomana, Eske Willerslev, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Anders Götherström. 2012. Partial Genetic Turnover in Neandertals: Continuity in the East and Population Replacement in the West. Molecular Biology and Evolution 29(8):1893–1897. Eiluned, Pearce, C.  Stringer, and R.I.M.  Dunbar. 2013. New Insights into Differences in Brain Organization Between Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280 (1758). May 13. Eren, Metin I., Aaron Greenspan, and C. Garth. 2008. Are Upper Paleolithic blade cores more productive than Middle Paleolithic discoidal cores? A replication experiment. Journal of Human Evolution 55 (6): 952–961. Fa, J.E., J.R. Stewart, L. Lloveras, and J.M. Vargas. 2013. Rabbits and Hominin Survival in Iberia. Journal of Human Evolution 64 (4): 233–241. Finlayson, Clive, F. Pacheco, J. Vidal, D. Fa, J. Gutiérrez López, A. Santiago Pérez, G. Finlayson, E. Allué, J. Preysler, I. Cáceres, J. Carrión, Y. Fernandez Jalvo, C. Gleed-Owen, F. Jiménez-­ Espejo, P.  López, J.  López-Sáez, J.  Riquelme-Cantal, A.  Sánchez Marco, F.  Guzmán, and T.  Sakamoto. 2006. Late Survival of Neanderthals at the Southernmost Extreme of Europe. Nature (Letter) 443 (7113): 850–853. Finlayson, Clive, Kimberly Brown, Ruth Blasco, Jordi Rosell, Juan José Negro, Gary R. Bortolotti, Geraldine Finlayson, Antonio Sánchez Marco, Francisco Giles Pacheco, Joaquín Rodríguez Vidal, José S. Carrión, Darren A. Fa, José M. Rodríguez, and Llanes. 2012. Birds of a Feather: Neanderthal Exploitation of Raptors and Corvids. Plos One 7 (9): e45927. Formicola, V., and M. Giannechini. 1999. Evolutionary Trends of Stature in Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe. Journal of Human Evolution 36 (3): 319–333. Franciscus, Robert G., and Trenton W. Holliday. 2013. Crossroads of the Old World: Late Hominin Evolution in Western Asia. In The Origins of Modern Humans, ed. Fred H. Smith and James C.M. Ahern, 45–88. Hoboken: Wiley.

The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

19

Frayer, David W. 1981. Body Size, Weapon Use, and Natural Selection in the European Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. American Anthropologist 83 (1): 57–73. Fu, Qiaomei, H. Li, P. Moorjani, F. Jay, S. Slepchenko, A. Bondarev, P. Johnson, A. Aximu-Petri, K.  Pruefer, C. de Filippo, M.  Meyer, N.  Zwyns, D.  Salazar-Garcia, Y.  Kuzmin, S.  Keates, P.  Kosintsev, D.  Razhev, M.  Richards, N.  Peristov, M.  Lachmann, K.  Douka, T.  Higham, M. Slatkin, J. Hublin, D. Reich, J. Kelso, T. Viola, and S. Pääbo. 2014. Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia. Nature 514 (7523): 445–449. Geist, Valerius. 1978. Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design. New  York: Springer-Verlag. ———. 1981. Neanderthal the Hunter. Natural History 90 (1): 26–36. Reprinted in 1982  in Bulletin of the Southern California Paleontological Society March–April 13(3  +  4):46–49. Reprinted in 1982. The Practical Stylist. 1982. Fifth edition, edited by S. Baker, pp. 201–208. New York: Harper and Row. Reprinted in 1984 in Pennsylvania Game News. April 54(4):3–9. Reprinted in 1984 in Indian Artefact Magazine 2(6). ———. 2003. Of Reindeer and Man, Modern and Neanderthal: A Creation Story Founded on a Historic Perspective on How to Conserve Wildlife, Woodland Caribou in Particular. Rangifer, Special Issue 14: 57–63. Germonpré, Mietje, Martina Lázničková-Galetová, and Mikhail V. Sablin. 2012. Palaeolithic Dog Skulls at the Gravettian Předmostí site, the Czech Republic. Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 184–202. Ghose, Tia. 2014. Did a Volcano Wipe out the Neanderthals? Live Science, Dec. 30. Ginsberg, Benjamin. 2013. Why Violence Works. The Chronicle of Higher Education. August 13. Golovanova, Liubov, Vladimir Doronichev, Naomi Cleghorn, Marianna Koulkova, Tatiana Sapelko, and Steven Shackley. 2010. Significance of Ecological Factors in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition. Current Anthropology 51 (5): 655–691. Guthrie, R.  Dale. 2001. Origin and Causes of the Mammoth Steppe: A Story of Cloud Cover, Woolly Mammal Tooth Pits, Buckles, and Inside-out Beringia. Quaternary Science Reviews 20: 549–557. ———. 2005. The Nature of Paleolithic Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hélène, Rougier, Isabelle Crevecoeur, Cédric Beauval, Cosimo Posth, Damien Flas, Christoph Wißing, Anja Furtwängler, Mietje Germonpré, Asier Gómez-Olivencia, Patrick Semal, Johannes van der Plicht, Hervé Bocherens, and Johannes Krause. 2016. Neandertal Cannibalism and Neandertal Bones Used as Tools in Northern Europe. Scientific Report 6 (29005). Higham, Tom, et al. 2014. The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance. Nature 512 (7514): 306–309. Hoffecker, John, Vance T. Holliday, Vadim N. Stepanchuk, Alexis Brugère, Steven L. Forman, Paul Goldberg, Oleg Tubolzev, and Igor Pisarev. 2014. Geoarchaeological and Bioarchaeological Studies at Mira, an Early Upper Paleolithic Site in the Lower Dnepr Valley, Ukraine. Geoarchaeology 29 (1): 61–77. Jørgensen, T., J.  Haile, P.  Möller, A.  Andreev, S.  Boessenkool, M.  Rasmussen, F.  Kienast, E.  Coissac, P.  Taberlet, C.  Brochmann, N.  Bigelow, K.  Andersen, L.  Orlando, M.  Gilbert, and E.  Willerslev. 2012. A Comparative Study of Ancient Sedimentary DNA, Pollen and Macrofossils from Permafrost Sediments of Northern Siberia Reveals Long-Term Vegetational Stability. Molecular Ecology 21: 1989–2003. Jöris, Olaf, E. Álvarez Fernández, and B.  Weninger. 2011. Radiocarbon Dating the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition: The Demise of the Last Neanderthals and the First Appearance of Anatomically Modern Humans in Europe. In Continuity and Discontinuity in the Peopling of Europe: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology, ed. S. Condemi and G.C. Weniger, 239–298. Dordrecht: Springer. Klein, Richard G. 1969. Mousterian Cultures in Europe and Russia. Science 165: 257–265. ———. 1973. Ice-Age Hunters of the Ukraine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Klein, Richard G., and Blake Edgar. 2002. The Dawn of Human Culture. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

20

V. Geist

Kuhn, Steven L., Mary C.  Stiner, David S.  Reese, and Erksin Güleç. 2001. Ornaments of the Earliest Upper Paleolithic: New Insights from the Levant. Proceedings National Academy of Science USA 98 (13): 7641–7646. Kuzmin, Yaroslav V. 2014. The Siberian Late Pleistocene Mammal Fossils in Numerical Perspective: Review of Animal Teeth and Human Tools: A Taphonomic Odyssey in Ice Age Siberia. Radiocarbon 56 (2). Marshack, Alexander. 1972a. Upper Paleolithic Notation and Symbol. Science 178: 817–827. ———. 1972b. The Roots of Civilization. New York: McGraw Hill. ———. 1976. Implications of the Paleolithic Symbolic Evidence for the Origin of Language. American Scientist 64: 136–145. Meiri, Meirav, A. Lister, M. Collins, N. Tuross, T. Goebel, S. Blockley, G. Zazula, N. van Doorn, R. Dale Guthrie, G. Boeskorov, G. Baryshnikov, A. Sher, and I. Barnes. 2014. Faunal Record Identifies Bering Isthmus Conditions as Constraint to End-Pleistocene Migration to the New World. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 281 (1776). Mellars, Paul. 1993. Archaeology and Modern Human Origin in Europe. Proceedings of the British Academy 82: 1–35. Mellars, Paul, and Jennifer C. French. 2011. Tenfold Population Increase in Western Europe at the Neandertal-to-Modern Human Transition. Science 333 (6042): 623. Niewoehner, Wesley A. 2001. Behavioral Inferences from the Skhul/Qafzeh Early Modern Human Hand Remains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (6): 2979–2984. Pinhasi, Ron, Thomas Higham, Liubov Golovanova, and Vladimir Doronichev. 2011. Revised Age of Late Neanderthal Occupation and the End of the Middle Paleolithic in the Northern Caucasus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108 (21). Richards, Michael P., and Erik Trinkaus. 2009. Out of Africa: Modern Human Origins Special Feature: Isotopic Evidence for the Diets of European Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans. Proceedings National Academy of Science USA 106 (38): 16034–16,039. Richards, Michael, Paul Pettitt, Erik Trinkaus, Fred Smith, Maja Paunović, and Ivor Karavanić. 2000. Neanderthal Diet at Vindija and Neanderthal Predation: The Evidence from Stable Isotopes. Proceedings National Academy of Science USA 97 (13): 7663–7666. Richards, Michael, Paul Pettitt, Mary Stiner, and Erik Trinkaus. 2001. Stable Isotope Evidence for Increasing Dietary Breadth in the European Mid-Upper Paleolithic. Proceedings National Academy of Science USA 98 (11): 6528–6532. Richards, Michael, G.  Taylor, T.  Steele, S.  McPherron, M.  Soressi, J.  Jaubert, J.  Orschiedt, J.  Mallye, W.  Rendu, and J.  Hublin. 2008. Isotopic Dietary Analysis of a Neanderthal and Associated Fauna from the Site of Jonzac (Charente – Maritime), France. Journal of Human Evolution 55 (1): 179–185. Riel-Salvatore, Julien. 2010. A Niche Construction Perspective on the Middle–Upper Paleolithic Transition in Italy. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17 (4): 323–355. Ruff, C.B., E. Trinkhaus, and T.W. Holliday. 1997. Body Mass and Encephalization in Pleistocene Homo. Nature 367 (6629): 173–176. Scott, J.E., and C.W. Marean. 2009. Paleolithic Hominin Remains from Eshkaft-E Gavi (Southern Zagros Mountains, Iran): Description, Affinities, and Evidence for Butchery. Journal of Human Evolution 57 (3): 248–259. Shea, John J. 2001. Modern Human Origins and Neanderthal Extinctions in the Levant. Athena Review 12 (4): 21–32. Turner, Christy G., II, Nicolai D.  Ovodov, and Olga V.  Pavlova. 2013. Animal Teeth and Human Tools: A Taphonomic Odyssey in Ice Age Siberia. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Shipman, Pat. 2014. How Do You Kill 86 Mammoths? Taphonomic Investigations of Mammoth Megasites. Quaternary International 6: 359–360. ———. 2015. The Invaders, How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

21

Speth, John D., and Katherine J.  Spielmann. 1983. Energy Source, Protein Metabolism and Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence Strategies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2 (1): 1–31. Stiller, Mathias, Gennady Baryshnikov, Hervé Bocherens, Aurora G. d’Anglade, Brigitte Hilpert, Susanne C.  Muenzel, Ron Pinhasi, Gernot Rabeder, Wilfried Rosendahl, Erik Trinkaus, Michael Hofreiter, and Michael Knapp. 2010. Withering Away-25,000  Years of Genetic Decline Preceded Cave Bear Extinction. Molecular Biology and Evolution 27 (5): 975–978. Storey, Michael, Richard G.  Roberts, and Mokthar Saidin. 2012. Astronomically Calibrate 40Ar/39Ar age for the Toba Supereruption and Global Synchronization of Late Quaternary Records. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences USA 109 (46): 18684–18,688. Stringer, C.B., J.C.  Finlayson, R.N.E.  Barton, Y.  Fernández-Jalvo, I.  Cáceres, R.C.  Sabin, E.J.  Rhodes, A.P.  Currant, J.  Rodríguez-Vidal, F.  Giles-Pacheco, and J.A.  Riquelme-Cantal. 2008. Neanderthal Exploitation of Marine Mammals in Gibraltar. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (38): 14319–14,324. Stuart, A.J., P.  Kosintsev, T.  Higham, and A.  Lister. 2004. Pleistocene to Holocene Extinction Dynamics in Giant Deer and Woolly Mammoth. Nature 431: 684–689. Turner, E. 2005. Results of a Recent Analysis of Horse Remains Dating to the Magdalenian Period at Solutre, France. In Equids in Time and Space, ed. M. Mashkour, 70–89. Oxford: Oxbow. Turpin, Jennifer, and Lester R.  Kurtz, eds. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. University of Leicester. 2007. Neanderthal Man Was an Innovator. Science Daily. Vandermeersch, Bernard. 1989. The Evolution of Modern Humans: Recent Evidence from Southwest Asia. In The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans, ed. Paul Mellars and Christopher B. Stringer, 155–164. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Walker, D.A., J. Bockheim, S. Chapin, W. Eugster, F. Nelson, and C. Ping. 2001. Calcium-Rich Tundra, Wildlife, and the Mammoth Steppe. Quaternary Science Reviews 20: 149–163. Wissing, Christoph, I.  Crevecoeur, Y.  Naito, P.  Semal, H.  Rougier, M.  Bermonpré, and H.  Bocherens. 2015. Isotopic Evidence for Dietary Ecology of Late Neandertals in North-­ Western Europe. Quaternary International 411 (A): 327–345. Wooller, M.J., G. Zazula, M. Blinnkov, B. Gaglioti, N. Bigelow, P. Sanborn, S. Kuzmina, and C. La Farge. 2011. The Detailed Palaeoecology of a Mid-Wisconsinan Interstadial (ca. 32,000 14C a BP) Vegetation Surface from Interior Alaska. Journal of Quaternary Science 26 (7): 746–756. Zilhão, Joäo, S. Davis, C. Duarte, A. Soares, P. Steier, and E. Wild. 2010. Pego do Diabo (Loures, Portugal): Dating the Emergence of Anatomical Modernity in Westernmost Eurasia. Public Library of Science ONE 5 (1): e8880. Valerius Geist is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Calgary. He is by background an animal behaviorist and wildlife biologist, and author of award winning books. He has published on the behavior, biology, and Pleistocene history of diverse large mammals, humans included, as well as on modern North American wildlife conservation policy. A special interest of his is the application of large mammal ecology and behavior to an understanding of human biology and its evolution. He has published one technical book on this topic and has currently completed another. A current focus of interest is carnivore conservation. Much of his writing is aimed not only at professional but also at lay audiences.  

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case Study from the Settlement of Shir, Syria Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich

Introduction Conflict and warfare studies constitute important research focuses within archaeology in recent years (Guilaine and Jean Zammit 2005; Livingstone Smith 2009; Martin and Frayer 1997; Meller and Schefzik 2015; Thorpe 2005). The origin and genesis of interpersonal conflicts, war, their forms and probable causes, and their traces in the archaeological record are much debated also for the Near Eastern Neolithic (Clare 2010; Müller-Neuhof 2005, 2014a,b, both with further bibliography). Site structures, the existence of fortifications or of defensive buildings, phenomena of site abandonment, spatial analysis of site distribution, and evidence for trauma in bones are between the proposed archaeological markers for conflict (Ferguson 2013; Glencross, Boz 2014; Müller-Neuhof 2005:129–163; Müller-­ Neuhof 2014a). Based on these finds or on ethnographic analogies, generalized as well as small-scale conflicts with mostly economic causes were proposed for this epoch and region (Clare 2010; Müller-Neuhof 2014a). Weapons as conflict marker were taken into consideration to a lesser degree. This is partly due to the difficult in differentiating between weapons used for conflict and those used for hunting (with the exception of maceheads, for which a use in hunting would be less likely) – in an epoch in which hunting still represents a major base of Previously published as Dietrich L., Rokitta-Krumnow D., & Dietrich O. (2019). The meaning of projectile points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant. Documenta Praehistorica, 46, 340-350. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.21 L. Dietrich (*) · D. Rokitta-Krumnow · O. Dietrich German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_3

23

24

L. Dietrich et al.

subsistence (Müller-Neuhof 2014a, b; Scheibner 2016). This is particularly the case for the Early Neolithic (Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN), 9600–7000 BC) of the Levant. A stronger possibility of linking weapons and conflict seems to exist only toward the end of the Neolithic, in the Late PPNB, and Early Pottery Neolithic (PN) (c. 7500 to 6000/5600 BC) (Hours et al. 1994). A supra-regional, general change of the subsistence basis takes place during that period, marked by a declining importance of hunting (and therefore of the use of weapons in this scope) and the completion of the domestication processes both of animals and plants (Abbo et al. 2017; Asouti and Fuller 2013; Vigne 2015), the extended cultivation of plants, animal husbandry and the exploitation of milk (Evershed et  al. 2008; Russell 2010; Scheibner 2016:110–125, 210–218, with bibliography), the invention of pottery (Nieuwenhuyse 2009; Nieuwenhuyse et  al. 2010), and the spread of food storage (Bartl 2004). Archaeozoological records show a decline in the number of bones of wild animals in the finds simultaneously with a raise of bones of domesticated animals (Scheibner 2016:235, Fig. 4.47–48). It is not entirely clear how demography and settlements evolved at the end of the PPNB in the Northern Levant, and most probably major regional differences in their development have to be assumed. Some reconstruction models include a reduction of settlement sizes and densities in the Late Neolithic (Bocquet-Appel and Bar-­ Yosef 2008). Furthermore, regionalization and an interruption of the long-distance trade networks of the PPNB (Asouti 2006) have been postulated (e.g., Watkins 2008). Also, severe climate change (the 8.2 k-event: Verheyden et al. 2008; Weninger et al. 2005) was suggested, followed by a development and spread of pastoralism as subsistence strategy (e.g., Russell 2010). Climate change and subsequent lack of resources are assumed to have caused social stress, resulting in supra-regional, “politically” motivated inter-group conflicts and large-scale migrations through Anatolia, to the West (Clare et al. 2008; Clare and Weninger 2016). The most representative weapons in Neolithic assemblages, including the Late Neolithic, are “projectile points,” pointed weapons, which have been addressed as arrows, darts and spears; sling stones are also numerous (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016; Gopher 1994; Korfmann 1972; Müller-Neuhof 2005:167–207; Rosenberg 2009; Shea 2006; Shea 2013:238–249). The notion of “projectile points” comprises triangular to biconical pieces of flint, usually between 2 and 10 cm long and less than 3 cm wide (Shea 2013:238). The development of the shapes of projectile points from the Epipaleolithic to the Late Neolithic in the Levant does not seem to follow one common, supra-regional line; major differences between the Southern and the Northern Levant were noticed (Shea 2013:238–249). These include discrepancies in shapes, which could have a functional or stylistic meaning (Gopher 1994:22), and a disparity in their sizes, with north Levantine points being generally larger (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016:138). Elongated points were usually associated with the Middle PPNB (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016 with further reading), while for the PN a reduction in length was postulated (Shea 2013:248–249), following a short-time growth in the Late PPNB (Cauvin 1978). Regional and chronological variability and changes of shapes of the projectile points have been explained either by major

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case…

25

changes in hunting techniques, implying morphological and technological transformations, by shifts in weapon technologies and functions, or simply by stylistic reasons (Gopher 1994:22; Müller-Neuhof 2005:177–181). It has also been stressed that some objects, addressed as “projectile points,” based on their shapes in fact, were used for different tasks (Astruc and Russell 2013:338; Müller-Neuhof 2014b with bibliography) and use-wear analyses seem to confirm this hypothesis in some cases (Coşkunsu and Lemorini 2001). Multifunctionality (weapon-tools or tool-­ weapons: Chapman 1999) is very likely, and exclusions of functions cannot be made easily through functional macro- and microscopic analyses of use-wear. These analyses reflect often only the last steps in the biography of an object. Previous analytical approaches focused on typological distinctions and metrical analysis. The latter were used to differentiate between different weapon categories like arrows, darts, and spears by way of comparing the dimensions of archaeological finds to ethnographic data (Hughes 1998; Shea 2006; Shott 1997; Sisk and Shea 2011; Thomas 1978). The present study aims to decipher possible functions and social roles of projectile points from the Late Neolithic site of Shir, Syria. The site is particularly suitable for this analysis due to its long stratigraphical and chronological sequence and a high quantity of projectile points. Also projectile points made from bone, which seem to be very rare, constitute an important part of the analysis.

The Neolithic Settlement of Shir Shir is located ca. 12 km northwest of the city of Hama on a 30 m high, natural terrace above the Orontes tributary Sarut. The site, with an overall size of 4 ha, was discovered in 2005 during the Orontes survey conducted by the Damascus Branch of the German Archaeological Institute under the direction of Karin Bartl in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities. Excavations were undertaken in three areas of the site between 2006 and 2010, accumulating to a total of 2350 m2 excavated (Bartl et al. 2008, 2009, 2012; Nieuwenhuyse 2009; Rokitta-Krumnow 2012). Settlement activities date exclusively to the seventh millennium BC. An earlier settlement phase was excavated in the southern area (7000–6600 BC), a later phase in the central and northern areas (6600–6200/6100 BC). As far as could be reconstructed from the excavations and the geophysical prospections, Shir represents a typical Late Neolithic village from the Northern Levant with several clusters of houses. The site’s special importance arises from an exceptionally long settlement history of nearly 800 years, covering the Late Neolithic period, its very well preserved stratigraphy, the very early occurrence of pottery on site (dark faced burnished ware and later coarse ware: Nieuwenhuyse 2009), and evidence for significant changes in architecture with the appearance of large, specialized buildings for storage (Bartl 2014, 2017; Dietrich in preparation; Dietrich and Lelek Tvetmarken 2015).

26

L. Dietrich et al.

The Southern Area was excavated most extensively. Here, six subsequent layers were noticed, ranging from the early to middle 7th millennium. The earlier layers (I-III) are mainly characterized by single-room buildings, sometimes with annexes and much of daily activities going on outside the houses. The later layers (IV–VI) yielded multi-room buildings with inner courtyards (Bartl 2017; Pfeiffer in print).

The Functional Interpretation of Projectile Points More than 190 projectile points have been found in this area. Most of them were made of flint. Only 48 items are fully preserved of the total number of 172 flint points. Most of the broken pieces show signs of impact, like burin-like blows, hinting at an interpretation as projectile points and not as awls or drills. The types are dominated by large ‘Amuq-1 and ‘Amuq-2 points followed by Ugarit and Byblos points; one Bouqras point and three Levallois points complete the assemblage (Rokitta-Krumnow 2012) (Fig.  1). The persistence of PPN lithic reduction techniques in the PN period is noticeable, and naviform core-and-blade technology

Fig. 1  Flint projectile points from the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (© German Archaeological Institute, photos K. Bartl, T. Urban)

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case…

27

Fig. 2  Size and weight of flint projectile points from the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (Chart by Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow)

Fig. 3  Bone (left) and flint (right) projectile points from the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (© German Archaeological Institute, photos K. Bartl, T. Urban)

producing long bidirectional blades is present at all stages of occupation (RokittaKrumnow 2011). Projectiles of flint show a high variability in size and weight (Fig. 2), ranging from 3.3 g to 26.4 g and 4.2 cm to 11.8 cm. Projectile points made from bone are generally very rare in Neolithic find assemblages, or they have not been recognized as such so far. Experimental studies as well as ethnographic examples have pointed out a high effectivity of bone projectiles (Letourneux and Pétillon 2008; Waguespack et al. 2009), which lends some probability to the latter explanation. Fifteen bone projectile points were identified, and an additionally twelve objects may possibly be addressed as such. Osseous points imitate the lithic projectiles in shapes (Fig. 3). Use-wear traces like broken tips hint at their use as projectiles. This specific use-wear was also observed with objects

28

L. Dietrich et al.

classified as awls based on their shapes but is not typical for that category of tools. Other traces of use-wear include splinters on one end and to a lesser extent fissures along the shaft. Bone projectile points have relatively symmetrical shapes and are well-balanced through their wide blade with pointed ends. Hence, the shape displays aerodynamic characteristics. This is not the case with objects classified as awls, so we consider this specific shape as being diagnostic for an interpretation as projectile points. Typical awls in Shir have tubular shafts, made from an entire or half hollow long bone with one pointed end. It is however difficult to differentiate between fragmented projectile points and awl fragments. It is therefore assumed that among the objects classified as awls, several projectile points are hidden. This is again tentative evidence for the original number of bone projectile points being higher. We are aware that our identification of the tools’ functions as projectile points is based on shapes and macroscopic use-wear analysis and is missing microscopic analyses. Microscopic examination was planned but not possible anymore because of the political situation in Syria. Also, as mentioned above, observable traces often only reflect the last of a long series of uses of any given tool. However, the great quantity of other pointed osseous tools used as drills in Shir and a certain standardization of their forms may constitute arguments to exclude the differently shaped lithic and aerodynamic bone points from this category. As mentioned above, size and weight have been used as indicators to distinguish between different kinds of projectile points. In some mechanical calculations, mass is an important parameter for the distinction between arrowhead and spear (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016; Sisk and Shea 2011). These calculations are based on the assumption that, in the case of the bow and arrow, there is a firm relationship between the arrow shaft, the arrowhead, and the bow. Accordingly, the arrowhead should not exceed 12% of the total weight of the arrow shaft (Beckhoff 1966), in order to hit the aimed target. Korfmann (1972:33–35) confirmed these estimates by applying a relation of 1:7 between arrow and arrowhead. There is also a firm relationship between a bow and the weight of an arrow, with the consequence that the weight of an arrowhead can be estimated, too. The most practical weight for an arrowhead is estimated at ca. 8 g, although this applies only to modern-day bows with complex designs. A weight up to 5 g may be estimated for prehistoric arrowheads; ethnographic studies, and calculations have affirmed such approximations (Bretzke et al. 2006; Cattelain 1997). This value will also be applied in the following discussion. As for projectiles catapulted with spear-throwers, ethnographic studies and experiments on weights define an ideal weight-range between 9 g and 70 g (Bretzke et al. 2006; Hughes 1998). By adding feathers, the weight of a dart can be reduced (Hughes 1998). Following these schemes for interpreting projectile weights, a total of 21 points made from bone and 45 from stone from Shir were analyzed (Figs. 4 and 5). Despite the small numerical basis, an interesting picture emerged about the development of

Weights (g)

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case… 54 52 50 48 46 44 42 40 38 36 34 32 30 28 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

29

“Spears”

“Darts” “Arrows” 0

Layer III

Layer IV

Layer V

Layer VI

Fig. 4  Weight of projectile points from the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (© German Archaeological Institute, chart Laura Dietrich)

400 380 360 340 320 300 280

TCSA (mm2)

260 240 220 200 180 160 140 120 100

“Spears”

80

“Darts”

60 40 20 0

“Arrows” 0

Layer III

Layer IV

Layer V

Layer VI

Fig. 5  TCSA values for projectile points from the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (© German Archaeological Institute, chart Laura Dietrich)

30

L. Dietrich et al.

the projectile points. It can be recognized that in the early Layers III and IV as well as in Layer V, the weights noticeably locate within the lower (especially bone projectile points) as well as median zones, that is, within the range of possible arrowheads and darts for spear-throwers. The weight values for spear-throwers increase already in Layer Vb and even more so in Layer VI (Fig. 4). In order to clarify this picture, reference was also made to size parameters in the analysis. Various studies on projectiles do not pay sole regard to the length, but far more to the surface area of the cross section. This “area” is referred to as the “tip cross-sectional surface” (TCSA), a parameter which basically links size and shape of the projectile with the behavior in the moment of its penetration into animal or human tissue and thus expended energy (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016; Sisk and Shea 2011; Hughes 1998; Shea 2006; Thomas 1978). The TCSA value is calculated with the formula 0.5 × maximum width × thickness. Points with a low value are smaller, thinner, and penetrate tissue more quickly. A higher value, on the other hand, is indicative of wider and thicker points. Based on ethnographic metric data from North America and Australia (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016:140, Table  1; Bretzke et al. 2006:70; Shott 1997; Thomas 1978), TCSA values between 13 and 53 for arrows and 20 and 174, e.g., an average between 57 and 103, for darts can be expected (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016:140, Table  1). Values for thrusting spears range between 79 and 257 (Bretzke et al. 2006:70; Shea 2006) and between 7 and 222 for experimentally produced spears (Borrell and Štefanisko 2016, Table  1). Cycles of recycling and reshaping could not be taken into consideration in the present analysis. The development of TCSA values for Shir results in a pattern similar to that of the development of weights (Fig. 5). Smaller, thinner projectiles that would usually be used as arrowheads and spear-thrower darts appear mainly in Layers III-IV and less so in Layer V, while larger, wider projectiles are represented predominantly in Layer VI.

Prestige Weapons in a Changing World One possible means for interpreting this result based on the above-mentioned weight differences among the darts with and without feathers is to view the lighter, smaller projectiles in the early layers as arrowheads and feathered spear-thrower darts, and the heavier ones in Layer VI and the later settlement as spear-thrower darts without feathers or as spearheads. They are already present in the early layers, albeit only in small numbers, but obviously increase in Layer VI.  According to Shea’s experiments, the values shown in Figs. 3 and 4 (11 g or 79 mm) may represent the lower boundary of the value zone for thrusting spears (Bretzke et  al. 2006:70; Shea 2006), while by contrast, throwing spears may weigh less (Bretzke et  al. 2006:73). These considerations lead to two more interpretational possibilities:

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case…

31

1. During the periods of the earlier layers at Shir (III–IV, partly V), arrowheads, darts, and feathered darts were produced. Thrusting spears were either rarely made or made from perishable material, such as wood. 2. During the periods corresponding to the later layers, especially Layer VI, arrowheads declined, while darts and/or throwing spears continued to be utilized. A change in the basic procurement of raw material cannot be assumed, as the often-­ employed flint was locally available. This “enlargement” of spears could therefore signal an increased utilization of thrusting spears. Thrusting spears can be used as both short-range and long-range weapons. If the coeval development of daggers and maceheads – appearing only in the later layers (Fig. 6) – is considered, which served primarily as short-range weapons and probably had social implications, being used as prestige-weapons (Müller-Neuhof 2005:196), then the development of large projectile points, possibly for spears, is may be to be linked to this process. This development is surprisingly opposed to the general development of other formal lithic tools, which decrease in size (Rokitta-Krumnow 2011) (Fig.  7). Apparently, the projectile points seem to have played an important role in the community, since their development follows the opposite direction. Comparisons to other sites in the Northern Levant with several occupational phases show a general development toward longer points at the End of the Early PN (Rokitta-Krumnow 2011:222, Fig. 12; Mezraa Teleilat: Coșkunsu 2007; Tell el-Kerkh: Arimura 2004; Ain el-Kerkh: Arimura 2007; Tell Halula: Borrell 2006). This is accompanied by a loss of formal tools in favor of ad hoc and expedient tools (Rokitta-Krumnow 2011:290).

Fig. 6  Stratigraphical distribution of daggers, maceheads, and projectile points at the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (© German Archaeological Institute, chart Laura Dietrich)

32

L. Dietrich et al.

Fig. 7  Chronological development of percentage of formal tools at the Neolithic settlement of Shir. (Chart Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow)

How can we interpret the possible appearance of large, probably prestige weapons in Shir? The development of larger projectile points in the Late PPNB in the Northern Levant has been linked with the (possible ritual) hunting of larger animals like aurochs (Cauvin 1978). Deposits of aurochs bones in archaeological finds seem to confirm the special significance of hunt and consumption of these animals in social activities like feasting (Pöllath et al. 2018; Russell and Martin 2005; Russell et  al. 2009). The archaeozoological analyses from Shir are still in progress, but some deposits of aurochs bones were observed. However, as a general trend, a reduction in the percentage of hunted animals is noticeable between the Early and the Late Neolithic in the Levant (Scheibner 2016:235–237, Fig.  4.47; 4.48). Bones of domesticated animals constitute about 70% of the assemblages in the Late Neolithic and hint at a maximum use of domestic animals in this time and at a decrease of the contribution of wild animals to the food spectrum. Also, a constant reduction of game size from Upper Paleolithic to the Late Neolithic is noticeable (Scheibner 2016:212–217). This general development apparently does not coincide with the development of the length of arrowheads and spears. The most characteristic weapon and one of the most characteristic objects of the Early Neolithic (PPNB) are large tanged points made on bidirectional blades (Abbès 2003; Borrell and Štefanisko 2016), used for middle-sized game, while, for example, during the Natufian, small lithic-tipped projectiles coincide with large game in archaeozoological assemblages (Bocquentin and Bar-Yosef 2004; Yeshurun and Yaroshevich 2014). Thus, there is no simple correlation between small projectile points and small animals on one side and large projectile points and large animals on the other side. Additionally, assuming that the large points actually represent darts and/or spears, then their exclusive use for subsistence hunting would

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case…

33

signify a lower range in variation and a lesser ability to adapt hunting techniques than with the combined utilization of spears/sling shots and the bow and arrow. Precisely the latter are far more versatile and possess several technical advantages (Churchill 1993; Whittaker 2013). Taking the association of larger projectile points with other weapons in the later layers from Shir into account, a more complex significance is proposed, centering on representation within (ritual) hunting and interpersonal conflict. In the numerous murals at the contemporary settlement of Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, wild animals and hunting scenes predominate (Hodder 2006:195–204). Depictions at Çatalhöyük show large dangerous animals surrounded by small hunters, who attack them with different kinds of weapons (bows and possibly bolas are visible; spears and other projectile weapons like boomerangs are also present: Hodder 2006:197, Fig. 84, 94, Fig. 38). Such scenes have occasionally been interpreted as attempts to transfer the strength of the large dangerous animals to human beings (Hodder 2006:197–198; Lewis-Williams 2004) or from a perspective of ritually acquiring hunting skills (Hodder 2006:197, Fig. 84), as a successful hunt not only would have an important symbolic meaning but also would bear the bonus for individuals or even dominant groups of gaining social prestige (Hodder 2006:203–204). The weapons depicted at Çatalhöyük (Hodder 2006:94, Fig. 38) are clearly recognizable, as the individuals are habitually shown with their hands raised and their weapons aiming at the animals. Such representations denote a conscious manner of rather depicting the action as the main subject. Along the same lines, it is likewise conceivable that at Shir, weapons were made larger in order to render them more visible. Symbolically, an amplification of human strength in battle with wild animals or human opponents would thus be achieved through an enlargement of the size of the weapons. The later projectile points from Shir would consequently not only reveal specific activities, but also specific groups of agents, with regard to age/ stage of initiation, gender, clan, etc. (Carter 2011). Armed conflict between human beings is not directly archaeologically attested at Shir (for example, through burnt layers, fortified complexes, large depots of sling stones). However, conflict and demonstrations of power by small groups or individuals can be assumed for the period in question on a supra-regional echelon (Clare 2010; Clare et al. 2008). To sum up, at the end of the PPNB and Early PN in the Northern Levant, large visible weapons appear. This phenomenon could have a connection to hunting, but it appears exactly in the moment when hunting declines as basis for subsistence. This transformation would have produced considerable change regarding the social roles of individuals, who before defined themselves through their role as hunters. It seems possible that the social practice of hunting was (at least partially) substituted by prowess in interpersonal conflict as a means to perpetuate and reinforce identities in this situation of change, or transform aspects of them into a new one, that of the warrior, defending the now settlements and their agriculturally used hinterlands. Symbolically charged weapons of impressive size could have played a significant role here. Large-scale conflict on a supra-regional level does not need to be proposed or proven for this scenario, rather an interpretation of the use of these

34

L. Dietrich et al.

weapons especially for conflict on the local level within smaller groups seems probable. These conflicts might be individually motivated and may have had a denotation in the individual development of a single person, generating social status and (new) social identities. Acknowledgments  The settlement of Shir was excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, Damascus Branch of the Orient-Department (project leader Karin Bartl) in cooperation with the Direction Générale des Antiquités et de Musées (DGAM, Damascus). This work was funded by the German Research Foundation. This text was first published in Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019).

References Abbès, F. 2003. Les Outillages Néolithiques en Syrie Du Nord. Méthode de débitage et gestion laminaire durant le PPNB. Oxford: BAR Publishing. Abbo, S., A. Gopher, and S. Lev-Yadun. 2017. The Domestication of Crop Plants. In Encyclopedia of Applied Plant Sciences, ed. B.  Thomas, G.G.  Murray, and D.J.  Murphy, vol. 3, 50–54. Waltham: Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394807-6.00066-6. Arimura, M. 2004. Chipped Stone Artefacts. In Archaeology of the Rouj Basin. A Regional Study of the Transition from Village to City in Northwest Syria, ed. T. Iwasaki and A. Tsuneki, 57–97. Tsukuba: University of Tsukuba. ———. 2007. Néolithisation de la Syrie du Nord-Ouest. L’évolution des industries lithiques à Tell Ain el-Kerkh (Basin du Rouj, 8500-6000 cal. BC). Doctoral Thesis Université Lumière Lyon 2. Asouti, E. 2006. Beyond the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Interaction Sphere. Journal of World Prehistory 20: 87–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-007-9008-1. Asouti, E., and D.Q.  Fuller. 2013. A Contextual Approach to the Emergence of Agriculture in Southwest Asia. Current Anthropology 54: 299–345. https://doi.org/10.1086/670679. Astruc, L., and A. Russell. 2013. Trends in Early Pottery Neolithic Projectiles and Wild Fauna Exploitation at Tell Sabi Abyad I, Northern Syria. In Interpreting the Late Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia, ed. O.P. Nieuwenhuyse, R. Bernbeck, P.M.M.G. Akkermans, and J. Rogasch, 331–343. Turnhout: Brepols. Bartl, K. 2004. Vorratshaltung: die spätepipaläolithische und frühneolithische Entwicklung im westlichen Vorderasien. Voraussetzungen, typologische Varianz und sozioökonomische Implikationen im Zeitraum zwischen 12.000 und 7.600 BP. Berlin: ex Oriente. ———. 2014. Shir, Syrien: Siedlung und Umland des 7. Jts. v. Chr. in der nördlichen Levante. e-Forschungsberichte des Deutschen Archäologischen Institut 1: 115–119. ———. 2017. Shir, Syrien. e-Forschungsberichte des Deutschen Archäologischen Institut 1: 168–173. Bartl, K., A. Haidar, O. Nieuwenhuyse, and D. Rokitta-Krumnow. 2008. Shir – Ein neolithischer Fundplatz am mittleren Orontes. Vorläufiger Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Testkampagne Herbst 2005 und Grabungskampagne Frühjahr 2006. Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 1: 54–88. Bartl, K., M.  Hijazi, J.  Ramadan, and R.  Neef. 2009. Die spätneolithische Siedlung Shir/ Westsyrien. Vorläufiger Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Grabungskampagnen Herbst 2006 und Frühjahr 2007. Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 2: 140–161. Bartl, K., A. Farzat, and W. Wael al-Hafian. 2012. The Late Neolithic site of Shir. New results from 2010. Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 5: 168–187. Beckhoff, K. 1966. Zur Morphogenese der steinzeitlichen Pfeilspitze. Die Kunde N. F. 17: 34–65.

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case…

35

Bocquentin, F., and O. Bar-Yosef. 2004. Early Natufian Remains: Evidence for Physical Conflict from Mt. Carmel, Israel. Journal of Human Evolution 47 (1-2): 19–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jhevol.2004.05.003. Bocquet-Appel, J.-P., and O. Bar-Yosef, eds. 2008. The Neolithic Demographic Transition and Its Consequences. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8539-0. Borrell, F. 2006. La gestión de los recursos minerales siliceous en las primeras comunidades campesinas en el valle medio del Éufrates; VIII-VII milenios Cal. BC. Implicationes socioeconomicas del proceso de producción litico. Doctoral Thesis Universitat autònoma de Barcelona. Borrell, F., and D. Štefanisko. 2016. Reconstructing Projectile Technology During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the Levant: An Integrated Approach to Large Tanged Points from Halula. Journal of Archaeological Science 69: 130–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.04.005. Bretzke, K., A.  Marks, and N.  Conard. 2006. Projektiltechnologie und kulturelle Evolution in Ostafrika. Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 15: 63–82. Carter, T. 2011. A True Gift of Mother Earth: The Use and Significance of Obsidian at Ҫatalhöyük. Anatolian Studies 61: 1–19. Cattelain, P. 1997. Hunting During the Upper Paleolithic: Bow, Spearthrower, or Both? In Projectile Technology, ed. H.  Knecht, 213–240. New  York: Plenum. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1851-2_9. Cauvin, M.-C. 1978. L’outillage lithique. In Les outillages lithiques et osseux de Mureybet, Syrie. Cahiers de l’Euphrate 1., ed. M.-C. Cauvin and D. Stordeur, 3–79. Valbonne: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Chapman, J. 1999. The Origins of Warfare in the Prehistory of Central and Eastern Europe. In Ancient Warfare, ed. J. Carman and A. Harding, 101–142. Stroud: Alan Sutton. Churchill, S. 1993. Weapon Technology, Prey Size Selection, and Hunting Methods in Modern Hunter-Gatherers: Implications for Hunting in the Mesolithic. In Hunting and Animal Exploitation in the Later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of Eurasia, ed. H. Bricker, P. Mellars, and G. Larsen Peterkin, 11–24. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association. Clare, L. 2010. Introduction: Pastoral Clashes: Conflict Risk and Mitigation at the Pottery Neolithic Transition in the Southern Levant. Neo-Lithics 1 (10): 13–31. Clare, L., and B. Weninger. 2016. Early Warfare and Its Contribution to Neolithization and Dispersal of Neolithic Lifeways of First Farming Communities in Anatolia. In Palaeoenvironment and the Development of Early Settlement, ed. M. Reindel, K. Bartl, F. Lüth, and N. Benecke, 29–49. Rahden/Westfalen: Marie Leidorf. Clare, L., E. Rohlin, B. Weninger, and J. Hilpert. 2008. Warfare in Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic Pisidia, Southwestern Anatolia. Climate Induced Social Unrest in the Late 7th Millennium calBC. Documenta Praehistorica 35: 65–92. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.35.6. Coșkunsu, G. 2007. The End of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the Middle Euphrates Valley. The Lithic Assemblages of Mezraa Teleilat, Southeastern Turkey. Harvard: Harvard University. Coşkunsu, G., and C. Lemorini. 2001. The Function of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Projectile Points: The Limits of Morphological Analogy. In Beyond Tools. Redefining the PPN Lithic Assemblages of the Levant, ed. I. Caneva, C. Lemorini, D. Zampetti, and P. Biagi, 145–159. Berlin: ex Oriente. Dietrich, L. in preparation. The Excavations at the Northeast Area. In The Late Neolithic Site of Shir/Syria II. The Excavations at the Northeast and Central Areas 2008–2010, ed. K. Bartl. In preparation. Dietrich, L., and C.  Lelek Tvetmarken. 2015. Shir, Syrien: Die Arbeiten des Jahres 2014. e-­Forschungsberichte des Deutschen Archäologischen Institut 2: 117–123. Evershed, R., S.  Payne, A.  Sherratt, M.  Copley, J.  Coolidge, D.  Urem-Kotsu, K.  Kotsakis, M. Özdoğan, A. Özdoğan, O.  Nieuwenhuyse, P.  Akkermans, D.  Bailey, R.-R.  Andreescu, S. Campbell, S. Farid, I. Hodder, N. Yalman, M. Özbaşaran, E. Bıçakcı, Y. Garfinkel, T. Levy, and M. Burton. 2008. Earliest Date for Milk Use in the Near East and Southeastern Europe Linked to Cattle Herding. Nature 455: 528–531. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07180.

36

L. Dietrich et al.

Ferguson, R.B. 2013. The Prehistory of War and Peace in Europe and the Near East. In War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views, ed. D.P. Fry, 191–240. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof :oso/9780199858996.003.0011. Glencross, B., and B.  Boz. 2014. Representing Violence in Anatolia and the Near East During the Transition to Agriculture. Readings from Contextualized Human Skeletal Remains. In The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict, ed. C. Knüsel and M.J. Smith, 90–108. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315883366. Gopher, A. 1994. Arrowheads of the Neolithic Levant: A Seriation Analysis. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Guilaine, J., and J.  Jean Zammit. 2005. The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory. Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773819. Hodder, I. 2006. The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük. London: Thames & Hudson. Hours, F., O. Aurenche, J. Cauvin, M.-C. Cauvin, L. Lorraine Copeland, and P. Sanlaville. 1994. Atlas des sites du Proche-Orient (ASPRO). Maison de l’Orient méditerranéen, Lyon. Hughes, S. 1998. Getting to the Point: Evolutionary Change in Prehistoric Weaponry. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5 (4): 345–408. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02428421. Korfmann, M. 1972. Schleuder und Bogen in Südwestasien: Von den frühesten Belegen bis zum Beginn der historischen Stadtstaaten. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt. Letourneux, C., and J.-M. Pétillon. 2008. Hunting Lesions Caused by Osseous Projectile Points: Experimental Results and Archaeological Implications. Journal of Archaeological Science 35 (10): 2849–2862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2008.05.014. Lewis-Williams, D. 2004. Constructing a Cosmos: Architecture, Power and Domestication at Çatalhöyük. Journal of Social Archaeology 4 (1): 28–59. https://doi. org/10.1177/1469605304039849. Livingstone Smith, D. 2009. The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War. New York: St. Marti’s Griffin. Martin, D., and D. Frayer, eds. 1997. Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers. Meller, H., and M. Schefzik, eds. 2015. Krieg – eine archäologische Spurensuche. Stuttgart: Theiss. Müller-Neuhof, B. 2005. Zum Aussagepotenzial archäologischer Quellen in der Konfliktforschung: Eine Untersuchung zu Konflikten im vorderasiatischen Neolithikum. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin (microfiche). ———. 2014a. Kriege im Neolithikum Vorderasiens? In Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien, ed. R.  Dittmann, S.  Paulus, H.  Neumann, and A.  Schuster-Brandis, 539–552. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. ———. 2014b. What Did They Need Arrowheads for? Thoughts About Projectile Points and Hunting Strategies in the SW-Asian PPNB. In Settlement, Survey, and Stone. Essays on Near Eastern Prehistory in Honour of Gary O.  Rollefson, ed. B.  Finlayson and C.  Makarewicz, 227–233. Berlin: ex Oriente. Nieuwenhuyse, O. 2009. The Late Neolithic Ceramics from Shir. A First Assessment. Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 2: 310–356. Nieuwenhuyse, O., P. Akkermans, and J. van der Plicht. 2010. Not So Coarse, Nor Always Plain: The Earliest Pottery of Syria. Antiquity 84: 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00099774. Pfeiffer, K. in print. Stratigraphy and Architecture. In The Late Neolithic Site of Shir/Syria I. The Excavations at the South Area 2006–2009, ed. K. Bartl, 35–180. Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern. Pöllath, N., O.  Dietrich, J.  Notroff, L.  Clare, L.  Dietrich, Ç. Köksal-Schmidt, K.  Schmidt, and J. Peters. 2018. Almost a Chest Hit: An Aurochs Humerus with Hunting Lesion from Göbekli Tepe, South-Eastern Tukey, and Its Implications. Quaternary International 495: 30–48. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.12.003. Rokitta-Krumnow, D. 2011. The Lithic Artifacts from the Late Neolithic Settlement of Shir/ Western Syria. Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 4: 212–244.

The Meaning of Projectile Points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant: A Case…

37

———. 2012. Lithikfunde des 7. Jahrtausends v. Chr. in der nördlichen Levante. Die Entwicklung der Steingeräteindustrie der spätneolithischen Siedlung Shir/Syrien. Doctoral thesis Freie Universität Berlin. Berlin. http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/receive/ FUDISS_thesis_000000036609. Rosenberg, D. 2009. Flying Stones – The Slingstones of the Wadi Rabah Culture of the Southern Levant. Paléorient 35: 97–110. https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.2009.5301. Russell, A. 2010. Retracing the Steppes. A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Changing Subsistence Patterns in the Late Neolithic at Tell Sabi Abyad, Northern Syria, c. 6900 to 5900 BC. PhD thesis University of Leiden. Leiden. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/16001. Russell, N., and L.  Martin. 2005. Çatalhöyük Mammal Remains. In Inhabitating Çatalhöyük. Reports from the 1995–99 sEasons, ed. I.  Hodder, 33–39. Ankara: British Institute of Archaeology. Russell, N., L. Martin, and K.C. Twiss. 2009. Building Memories: Commemorative Deposits at Çatalhöyük. Anthropozoologica 44 (1): 103–128. https://doi.org/10.5252/az2009n1a5. Scheibner, A. 2016. Prähistorische Ernährung in Vorderasien und Europa. Eine kultturgeschichtliche Synthese auf der Basis ausgewählter Quellen. Rahden/Westfalen: Marie Leidorf. Shea, J. 2006. The Origins of Lithic Projectile Point Technology: Evidence from Africa, the Levant, and Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 823–846. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jas.2005.10.015. ———. 2013. Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774314000134. Shott, M. 1997. Stones and Shaft Redux: The Metric Discrimination of Chipped-Stone Dart and Arrow Points. American Antiquity 62: 86–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/282380. Sisk, M., and Shea, J. 2011. The African Origin of Complex Projectile Technology: An Analysis Using Tip Cross-Sectional Area and Perimeter. International Journal of Evolutionary Biology. https://doi.org/10.4061/2011/968012. Thomas, D. 1978. Arrowheads and Atlatl Darts: How the Stones Got the Shaft. American Antiquity 43: 461–472. https://doi.org/10.2307/279405. Thorpe, N. 2005. The Ancient Origins of Warfare and Violence. In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, ed. M. Parker Pearson and N. Thorpe, 1–18. Oxford: Archaeopress. Verheyden, S., F.H.  Nader, H.J.  Cheng, L.R.  Edwards, and R.  Swennen. 2008. Paleoclimate Reconstruction in the Levant Region from the Geochemistry of a Holocene Stalagmite from the Jeita Cave, Lebanon. Quaternary Research 70: 368–381. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. yqres.2008.05.004. Vigne, J.-D. 2015. Early Domestication and Farming: What Should We Know or Do for a Better Understanding? Anthropozoologica 50 (2): 123–150. https://doi.org/10.5252/az2015n2a5. Waguespack, N., A.  Todd, T.A.  Surovel, A.  Denoyer, A.  Dallow, A.  Savage, J.  Hyneman, and D.  Tapster. 2009. Making a Point: Wood- Versus Stone-Tipped Projectiles. Antiquity 83: 786–800. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00098999. Watkins, T. 2008. Supra-Regional Networks in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia. Journal of World Prehistory 21: 139–171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-008-9013-z. Weninger, B., E.  Alram-Stern, E.  Bauer, L.  Clare, U.  Danzeglocke, O.  Joeris, C.  Kubatzki, G.  Rollefson, and H.  Todorova. 2005. Die Neolithisierung von Südosteuropa als Folge des abrupten Klimawandels um 8200 calBP.  In Klimaveränderung und Kulturwandel in neolithischen Gesellschaften Mitteleuropas 6700-22 v.Chr, ed. D.  Gronenborn, 75–117. Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums. Whittaker, J. 2013. Comparing Atlatls and Bows: Accuracy and Learning Curve. Ethnoarchaeology 5 (2): 100–111. https://doi.org/10.1179/1944289013Z.0000000009. Yeshurun, R., and A.  Yaroshevich. 2014. Bone Projectile Injuries and Epipaleolithic Hunting: New Experimental and Archaeological Results. Journal of Archaeological Science 44: 61–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.01.019.

38

L. Dietrich et al.

Laura Dietrich is a researcher at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin and Frankfurt. Her research focuses on the Neolithic Era and the Bronze Age and includes extensive work on excavations in the Rotbav archaeological site in Transylvania, Romania. This work, along with other studies throughout the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin, has led to dozens of articles and presentations as well as one book. She has also studied the archaeology of sites in Southern Anatolia (Göbekli Tepe) and the Northern Levant (especially sites in Shir, Syria, and eh-­Sayyeh, Jordan), which produced findings related to the changing social practices involved in identity-formation during the Neolithic. Her research interests further include the archaeology of food, conflict, and landscape archaeology.  

Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow holds a Ph.D. in archaeology from Free University of Berlin. In her postdoctoral fellowship in the Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology at Free University, her research examines the causes and consequences of early social differentiation in the Neolithic of the Levant, by analyzing material findings such as architecture, stone tools, and burial grounds. She is one of the co-editors of Neo-Lithics: A Newsletter of Southwest Asian Lithics Research at the non-governmental organization Ex Oriente and works currently at the German Archaeological Institute examining the lithic finds from two Neolithic sites in Jordan.  

Oliver Dietrich is a researcher at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. He studied Prehistoric Archaeology in Berlin with Professors B.  Hänsel and B.  Terzan. His main research interest lies in the Bronze Age, especially of the Carpathian Basin. His doctoral thesis focused on the socketed axes of Romania. Another focus of his research is the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East. He has worked in the Göbekli Tepe Project at the Orient-Department of the German Archaeological Institute with Professor K. Schmidt.  

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins of the Irish Medieval State D. Blair Gibson

For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad. (Chesterton 1911:2:220)

Warfare among chiefdom-level societies is strongly attested in historical accounts of nineteenth-century Polynesia, early colonial Latin America, the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age, Late Iron Age and Medieval Northern Europe, and nineteenth-­ century Africa. Theoretical analysis of warfare among chiefdoms by anthropologists to date has largely been limited to looking at the manner it had been conducted with respect to constitution and behavior of war bands, leadership, military technology, and its relationship to settlement organization (Allen 2006; Otterbein 2004; Vayda 1960, 1967). Warfare-induced change to the political system is rarely the overt focus of an examination. Most often studies of chiefdom warfare have been situated in a specific region or concerned with a specific ethnic group, e.g., the Māori of New Zealand. Those chiefdoms chosen for analysis are very often situated toward the lower end of the scale within the range of sociopolitical complexity of the chiefdom class of political system or were described while they were simultaneously under pressure from colonialism and collapsed soon thereafter. For these reasons there are few discussions of warfare’s role in the transition from chiefdom political systems to a state-level of political complexity. Chiefdom-level political violence is a worthy topic of enquiry given the prominence that it is accorded in discussions of the rise of social complexity and the origins of the state. Chiefdoms have been characterized as political systems that owe their very existence to incessant warfare (Carneiro 1990; Earle 1997; Feinman and Neitzel 1984), and writers as diverse as Walter Christaller, Gordon Wiley, and Timothy Earle have indicated that defensive settlement configurations and D. B. Gibson (*) Department of Anthropology, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, El Camino College, Torrance, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_4

39

40

D. B. Gibson

chiefdoms are synonymous (Allen 2006; Christaller 1933; Earle 1997:121; LeBlanc and Register 2003; Willey 1956). However, apart from noting warfare’s ubiquity among chiefdoms, with few exceptions (Carneiro 1990; Webster 1975, 1976), anthropologists have not looked into it deeply for patterns of change tied to the reorganization of the political system of chiefdom polities. The prevailing attitude of most anthropologists who have considered the topic of political violence between chiefdoms is that it was incapable of producing any long-term systemic consequences—that is, warfare between chiefdoms was a unvaried maelstrom of violence that lead chiefdoms through endless cycles of coalescence and collapse (Anderson 1994, 1996; Steward 1949; Friedman and Rowlands 1977; Wright 1977). Robert Carneiro has dismissed this premise as irrational, as states must have surely arisen violently and repeatedly out of chiefdoms (Carneiro 1981, 1990:192). This is presumed to have happened through the success of one chiefdom at attaining the defeat and subjugation of its neighbors (Carneiro 1970; Marcus and Flannery 1996:157). There is a modicum of truth in this observation though it is lacking considerably with respect to the details of the process. Enough is known about chiefdoms now to realize that the most immediate result of a conquest of one chiefdom by another is simply a larger, more complex chiefdom (Webster 1976:5). Chiefdoms are also known to have amalgamated themselves into confederacies such as those that confronted the Romans in their campaigns in Northern Europe or those that were encountered by Europeans when they invaded the indigenous American Southeast (Crumley 1974; Gibson 2011; Hudson et al. 1985; Roymans 1990; Smith 2000). Clearly, the road to the attainment of statehood is long and not necessarily straightforward, and so studying the patterns of warfare found among historic complex chiefdoms is critical for discerning the various ways the process of state formation played out. Warfare between complex chiefdoms in the province of Munster in Southwest Ireland will be surveyed here as it unfolded in ethnohistoric records spanning a period of 500 years, from 600 to 1100 C.E. Two successive phases in this violence are apparent. The first phase, preceding the advent of the Vikings in Munster in the ninth century, sees warfare employed in the service of the predatory military expansion by cadet lineages of the dominant composite chiefdoms within a chiefdom confederacy. The second phase ensuing in the tenth century sees warfare expand island-wide and assumes a novel role in enlarging the personal power of the principal leader of the Dál Cais chiefdom confederacy as a strategy amounting to status rivalry among Ireland’s paramount chieftains. It follows then that there were two qualitatively distinct modes of warfare within Early Medieval Ireland that corresponded to the degree to which the complex political systems were integrated: expansionist warfare between chiefdom confederacies aimed at increasing the territorial extent of a chiefdom confederacy by defeating rival composite chiefdoms and detaching territories from them, and hegemonic warfare fought to increase the personal political power of paramount chieftains of chiefdom confederacies both

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

41

within and without the core region.1 The latter form of warfare was accompanied by administrative changes to the governing structure of the Dál Cais chiefdom confederacy, ushering in their transition to a state-level system.

 arfare in Munster 600–976 C.E.: Conflict over Limerick W and Clare Identifying patterns in the violence of Early Medieval Ireland requires an approach which combines sources of written information such as the Munster annals and the chieftain lists—more commonly known as the genealogies—with place name evidence within a framework provided by historical territorial units. This examination builds on a previous study of the structure and dynamics of the medieval complex chiefdoms of County Clare that adopted a geographical approach to teasing out their organizational characteristics and structural changes (Gibson 2012). The present study expands in geographical scope over this prior work to take in the northern and western counties of the province of Munster in Ireland’s south (Fig. 1). The principal reliable record for violence in Munster during the Early Medieval Period is the Irish annals. These records are terse and only begin recording contemporary information in the seventh century. They often note a slaying or a battle by simply referencing the location and/or by naming a leader who won or was killed. The genealogies, which amount to chieftain lists for specific Irish chiefdoms, must then be consulted in order to determine the affiliations of the chieftains who are cited in these annals’ entries. When the identities of named chieftains are ascertained, it becomes immediately apparent that only conflicts or deaths involving the paramount leaders of composite chiefdoms—chiefdoms consisting of a cluster of simple chiefdoms—were recorded. Of these, only the most powerful chieftains within the province rate a mention. At the beginning of the seventh century, it is apparent that the dominant chiefdom confederacy of Munster had split into agonistic factions called Mumu and Iarmumu (West Mumu) (Gibson 2017: Ó Crónín 2005:221–222; Shingurova 2015). These factions were led by paramount chieftains stemming from two lineages: the leadership of Mumu was provided by the Uí Maic Láire (the descendant lineages of which were called Eóganacht Raithlind, Eóganacht Caisel, and Uí Echach Muman), and Iarmumu was led by the Uí Cairpre (a later branch of which became Uí Cairpre Lúachra, and much later was called Eóganacht Locha Léin2) (Ó Buachalla 1952; Shingurova 2015; Sproule 1984:33). The leading chiefdoms of Mumu were situated in present-day County Tipperary and had a ritual center at Caisel (anglicized

1  This distinction seems to mirror a distinction that Webster makes between phases of status rivalry warfare and mature dynastic warfare among the Maya (Webster 1993, 1998:348). 2  In an entry in the Annals of Innisfallen for 803, they are simply referred to as “Eoganacht.” “Eóganacht Locha Léin” does not appear until 1033 in these annals.

42

D. B. Gibson

Fig. 1  Map of the modern province of Munster with the boundaries of the modern counties of Clare, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, and Kilkenny (of the province of Leinster) indicated by solid lines. Medieval chiefdom boundaries are indicated by stippled lines and diocesan boundaries that do not coincide with county boundaries by dotted lines. Composite chiefdom political capitals and ritual centers are indicated by dots, and chiefdom confederacy ritual centers by white circles within black squares

Cashel). Apart from its conflict with Uí Cairpre, Mumu seem to have been principally opposed to chiefdoms of the Connachta alliance. The principal foes of Mumu among the chiefdoms of the Connachta alliance were their immediate neighbors to the north, Uí Fiachrach Aidhne (Fig. 1). Secondarily, they were in conflict with the chiefdoms of the Laigin alliance to the east. The location of the Iarmumu faction in the seventh century would seem to have been in the vicinity of northeastern County Limerick where they were engaged in a contest with the Uí Fidgeinti to the south and west over that district’s smaller chiefdoms. An obituary of the Uí Fidgeinti paramount chieftain in 714 identifies the Uí Fidgeinti with the Mumu coalition: Mors Aeda Duib de Muimneachaib (Death of Aed Duib of those of Mumu) (Mac Airt 1988:104).3 The battlegrounds of the seventh and eighth century of the Uí Cairpre that can be identified are in what is now east-central Limerick, somewhat to the northeast of the early medieval Uí Fidgeinti capital at Dún Eochair Máighe (Fig. 2). In 635 the Uí Fidgeinti were fighting the  Abbreviated AI henceforth

3

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

43

Fig. 2  Map of the County of Limerick showing the locations of parishes and a site (indicated by a sword) where battles named in the text were fought. This county is thought to have been coextensive with the territory of the Uí Fidgeinti. The locations of the early medieval capital of the Uí Fidgeinti at Dún Eochair Máighe and the medieval capital at Cromadh are shown. The label “River Fergus” is actually adjacent to the River Rhine, which the Fergus joins to the north

Araid in eastern Limerick. Iarmumu then fought a battle in the vicinity of Cnoc Áine in Limerick in 645 against a people who would later be called the Eóganacht Áine of Mumu (Fig.  2). One of the chieftains of the Uí Cairpre, Eógnám mac Crunnmael, is killed in 667 at another battle at Áine. In the Annals of Ulster, Eógnám mac Crunnmael is identified as rex Iarmuman (king of Iarmumu) (Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill 1983:152).4 Beginning in 665, the annals establish a pattern of conflict between the Mumu alliance and the Corcu Baiscinn of southern County Clare (Fig. 1). At that time the Corcu Baiscinn would have been allied with or were considered to have been a part of the Connachta alliance, as indicated by the annals’ entry in the Annals of Inisfallen: Cath Locha Fén eter Mumain Chonnachtu i tochair Talmanach mc. Laidcind, (The battle of Loch Fén in which Talamanach, son of Laidcenn, fell) (AI 96–97). The initial battle was fought in northwestern County Limerick at Loch Fén near the River Shannon and directly south of the opening from the Shannon estuary to the River Fergus, the river that allows access to central County Clare (Fig. 2). Talamanach mac Laidcenn was the paramount chieftain of the Corcu Baiscinn. The

 Abbreviated AU henceforth

4

44

D. B. Gibson

physical location of this battle lies within the boundaries of western County Limerick. Modern County Limerick is roughly coterminous with the medieval diocese of Limerick, which in turn was constituted centuries earlier upon the territory of the Uí Fidgeinti. The location of the battle suggests moreover that at this time, Corcu Baiscinn was a chiefdom confederacy that occupied all of southern Clare; otherwise, the location of the battle is unusual as it is somewhat to the southeast of where the Corcu Baiscinn would later be found in the southwestern half of County Clare to the west of the Fergus (Fig. 3). In 705 C.E., the Annals of Ulster record a battle of Corcu MoDruad in which the chieftain Céilechair mac Comán was slain. This entry gives a clear indication of the selectivity of the annals in recording military activity, for Céilechair mac Comán was a scion of the Uí Cormaic, a branch of the Uí Fidgeinti that had established a chiefdom in central County Clare (Bhreathnach 1999:87; Gibson 2012:171–172). The Corcu MoDruad chiefdom was located in the northernmost reaches of County Clare (Fig. 1). For Céilechair to have attacked the Corcu MoDruad presupposes an invasion of Clare across the Shannon where the Uí Fidgeinti would have first had to overcome the Corcu Baiscinn. No seventh-century attacks on the Corcu Baiscinn

Fig. 3  Tuadmumu (modern Co. Clare) showing the territories appropriated by invading Uí Fidgeinti in the eighth century C.E. These include Uí Chormaic, probably detached from Corcu Baiscinn, and a number of chiefdoms carved out of Corcu MoDruad including a territory subsequently dominated by the Uí Dedaid and Tulach Commáin. The resulting rump composite chiefdom was probably called Eóganacht Ninussa. The capital of this chiefdom, indicated by a star, was Cathair Commáin (Angl. Cahercommaun)

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

45

are mentioned in the annals. But in the early eighth century Corcu Baiscinn is clearly under unceasing military pressure. In 721 a son of the Corcu Baiscinn chieftain Talamnach is killed. Two years later the Annals of Inisfallen note the death of his brother Aithechda, identified as chieftain of the Corcu Baiscinn. Shortly thereafter Aithechda’s son and successor, Flann is killed in 725. In 744 the Annals of Ulster record the destruction of the Corcu MoDruad by the Déis, which we may assume refers to the Déis Tuaiscirt (Northerly Vassals, Fig. 3). It is a fair assumption that no self-respecting people would call themselves that, so these must have been chiefdoms that had been detached from the Corcu Baiscinn confederacy by the Mumu alliance and most immediately by the Uí Fidgeinti (Bhreathnach 1999:86). However, this “destruction” was incomplete as the Uí Fidgeinti fought a battle against the allied Corcu MoDruad and Corcu Baiscinn chiefdoms in 763 C.E. More than half of the original territory of the Corcu MoDruad composite chiefdom was used to create chiefdoms whose leaders originated from Uí Cormaic and Uí Caissín, probably as a consequence of losing this battle (Fig. 3) (Gibson 2012:58–60). The capital of this rump composite chiefdom was the large cashel site5 at Cahercommaun. Combat between Uí Cairpre Lúachra and the Uí Fidgeinti enters the annals in 747 C.E. when the Uí Fidgeinti, identified only as “Mumu,” defeat the Uí Cairpre at the battle of Cúil Céisi near the mouth of the Fergus in County Clare and kill their chieftain Cairpre mac Cú Dínisc.6 The Uí Cairpre Lúachra is defeated again in 766 by the Uí Fidgeinti, fighting this time with the Araid, at Énboth Breg which might be near Tralee in present-day County Kerry. The location of this battle is significant in indicating that by this time, the Uí Cairpre Lúachra, or a segment of them, had shifted their location from eastern County Limerick to western County Kerry (Fig. 1).7 From that location, their main protagonists become the Cíarraige Lúachra, the leaders of a composite chiefdom in this region. Again, the violence which must have accompanied their invasion of Kerry is not mentioned, though a military rivalry is strongly featured in two early medieval texts: a legend describing the formation of a chiefdom confederacy by the Cíarraige and the Life of St. Mac Creiche (Gibson 2017). A battle in 803 C.E. between the Uí Cairpre, now identified as “Eóganacht,” and the Cíarraige makes it into the Annals of Inisfallen, which also notes the slaying of the Uí Cairpre chieftain Aed Alláin mac Corpri. The subsequent military pressure applied by the Eóganacht Locha Léin upon the Cíarraige is reflected in the northward movement of their ecclesiastical center from Ráth Teas to Ard Ferta in 1117 C.E. (Fig. 1).

 A cashel (caisel) is a living compound encircled by a stone wall.  Cúil Céisi is the battleground place-name that occurs in the Annals of Inisfallen (AI 108–109). In other annals the place name is Carn Ailche (AU 203). The 19th century historian and Irish scholar John O’Donovan equated Carn Ailche with Carnelly in Co. Clare (modern townland Carrownanelly) (Hogan 1910). This location is one km east of the River Fergus, three km north of the Shannon Estuary. 7  That a split within the Uí Cairpre occurred is suggested by the presence of a chiefdom, the Uí Caipre Áebda, who are presented in the genealogies as a branch of the Uí Fidgeinti. They are said to have been situated in Coshma barony in eastern Limerick (AI 562). 5 6

46

D. B. Gibson

What explains this 200 year stretch of violence? Clearly, there were composite chiefdoms arranged in three fairly consistent alliances: (1) Mumu, led by a chiefdom that would later be called Eóganacht Caisel, and including the Uí Fidgeinti and Déis Tuaiscirt which occupied what is now southeastern County Clare, (2) the Corcu Baiscinn and Corcu MoDruad who allied with each other and more loosely with the Connachta to the north, and (3) Iarmumu who started out in eastern Limerick and was forced to migrate west as an outcome of conflicts with the Uí Fidgeinti, Eóganacht Áine, and Eóganacht Caisel. These alliances seemed to have functioned chiefly as nonaggression pacts but also facilitated occasional joint military campaigns where the objective was to detach the territories of simple chiefdoms that belong to enemy composite chiefdoms. Lineages of the composite chiefdom leaders were then implanted in these districts to create what I have called a chiefdom confederacy (Gibson 1995:123, 2011:216–219). The Uí Fidgeinti seemed to have been successful in this regard as their lineages and allies gained control over half of the territories of the Corcu MoDruad and Corcu Baiscinn in County Clare, which thereafter became known as Tuadmumu (North Mumu) as a result (Fig. 3). Their chief antagonist and competitor in this regard was Iarmumu. This latter chiefdom found its ambitions in Limerick and Clare frustrated and in turn moved west and seized half of the territory of the Cíarraige. The chiefdoms that spawned successful attacks on other composite chiefdoms and confederacies exercised no long-term control over conquered territories, and they did not create an administrative apparatus that would have allowed them to exercise wide-scale hegemony over the polities where kinsmen had been newly installed as rulers. Power remained localized in the composite chiefdoms belonging to these alliances, as evidenced by the emergence of a new power center at Cahercommaun within the chiefdoms separated from the Corcu MoDruad.

 he Advent of the Vikings and the Rise of the Dal Cais T 900–976 C.E. Vikings began raiding north Munster beginning in the late eighth century and established bases at Woodmanstown near Waterford (Irish Loch dá Caech), on the River Shannon at Athlunkard County Clare and on King’s Island at Limerick (Ir. Luimneach) in the mid-ninth century (Harrison 2014:17; Hodkinson 2015:183; Hurley 2014:347; Kelly 2015:65–67; Kelly and O’Donovan 1998; Valente 2008:49). It is presumed that the Vikings planted themselves on King’s Island at the first spot where the Shannon may be forded. Hence they would have effectively controlled not only any commerce traveling up the Shannon, but they also would have hampered interactions of any kind between the chiefdoms of County Limerick with those of County Clare. This location was proximate to the territory of the Uí

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

47

Fidgeinti. Initial contact was most likely agonistic, but to judge from later events, the Norsemen eventually either became allied with them or came to dominate Uí Fidgeinti, and by extension became members of the Mumu alliance.8 The ­Norse/ Mumu alliance becomes explicit in an entry in the Annals of Clonmacnoise of 939, which gives notice of a joint attack on Mide (angl. Meath) (Downham 2007:45). Cut off from their former allies the Uí Fidgeinti, the Déis Tuaiscirt of County Clare, who rechristened themselves the Dál Cais around the same time, went their own way. The Dál Cais paramount chieftain Cennétig mac Lorcan lost the battle of Gort Rotacháin to Cellachán mac Buadachan the rí Caisel (paramount chieftain of Cashel) in 944 (AU 943). When Cennétig died in 951, he was styled rígdamna Caissil (heir apparent of Cashel) in the Annals of Inisfallen. His successor Mathgamain mac Cenétig initiated an attack on Mumu in 963 with a failed amphibious assault. In 967 he defeated the Limerick Norse not at Limerick, but at Sulchait in Tipperary (AI 159). Clearly the Norse had been enlisted by the Eóganacht Caisel of Mumu to block an attack on Caisel itself. As a consequence of their participation in this battle, Limerick was burned. Mathgamain followed up this operation with an assault on the Mumu chiefdom Uí Enna Áine in 968 in the heart of Uí Fidgeinti territory where earlier the Uí Cairpre Lúachra had fought their battles (AI 159). That the annalists considered this assault as an attack on Mumu, and not just on the Uí Fidgeinti is conveyed by noting the death in battle of the prominent Eóganacht dynast Cathal Mac Fogartaich, who is described as a rí-amus (chiefly hireling) in the Annals of Inisfallen (AI 158; AU 413).9 In the following year, another apparently successful hosting occurred against the rí Caisel (chieftain of Cashel) Máel Muad mac Brain of the Eóganacht Raithlind and ended with Mathgamain taking hostages. These military efforts concluded with the capture of Mathgamain by Donnabán mac Cathail of the Uí Fidgeinti in 976 and his subsequent execution by Máel Muad (AI 161). Overall, the appearance of the Vikings had little effect on the political dynamics of Munster except to force a temporary halt to Irish warfare in the environs of County Limerick. Though the Annals of Inisfallen give prominence to successive burnings of Limerick and the Vikings supposed banishment in 972, it is clear that they were secondary actors in a campaign for political supremacy in northern Munster between the Dál Cais chiefdoms of southeastern County Clare and the Eóganacht chiefdoms of Munster. This is a contest that had probably begun before annalistic records were kept and may have originated among the forerunners of these chiefdoms in the Iron Age.

 Hodkinson maps place-names, personal names, and objects of Norse derivation on to a map of Co. Limerick to make a contrast to their absence in Co. Clare. This evidence, however, lacks chronological resolution (Hodkinson 2015:186–187). 9  In an apparently hollow victory, the annalist of the Annals of Ulster refers to Mathgamain as rí Caisel. 8

48

D. B. Gibson

Brian Mac Cennétig and Hegemonic Warfare 977–1100 C.E Mathgamain’s brother Brian, nicknamed Brian Bóroihme (of the cattle tributes), succeeded him as paramount chieftain of Dál Cais. In 977 Brian picked up where Mathgamain left off, killing the Viking leader Ivar and two sons on Inis Cathaigh (Scattery Island) in the Shannon, perhaps where they had relocated following their banishment from Limerick. He is also said to have raided Uí Fidgeinti, killing further Norsemen (AI 163). The very next year at the battle of Belach Lechta he defeated and killed Máel Muad mac Brain, who at this time was referred to by the annals as the rí (chieftain) of Uí Echach and of Desmumu (Southern Mumu) (AI 163; AU 413). This victory brought to a conclusion Brian’s struggle for dominance in Munster. After he became the dominant paramount chieftain in Munster, Brian carried out attacks on the Osraige composite chiefdom and on the Connachta chiefdom alliance which bordered Munster on the east and north (Fig. 1). These complex polities were not geographically contiguous to Dál Cais, so there was no question of a strategy being followed to increase the territorial extent of Dál Cais through annexation. Instead, the intent was to make these polities tributary military allies. In so doing he came into conflict with the dominant paramount chieftain of the east, Mael Sechnaill II of Meath. At the end of 20 years of military campaigns, Brian achieved his goals of dominance over Connacht, Osraige, and the Dési tribe of south Munster and had struck a nonaggression pact with Mael Sechnaill II at Port dá Chaineóc10 in 997 C.E. (AI 173). Strengthened through the defeat of Leinster and Dublin in the year 1000, he undertook military campaigns against the composite chiefdoms of Northern Ireland over the next 5 years (Ó Corráin 1972:124–125). Brian Mac Cennétig’s military successes in Munster and beyond allowed him a relatively free hand in Tuadmumu (angl. Thomond), the region at the core of his influence. The Corcu Baiscinn fought with the Dál Cais as allies—their chieftain fell with him at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. A branch of his lineage was inserted as chieftains of Corcu MoDruad in the far north of the province (Gibson 2012:192–193). Beyond Thomond he contented himself to appoint subordinate paramount chieftains to rule over the defeated composite chiefdoms and chiefdom confederacies (Ó Corráin 1972:127). Although those these acts did not amount to the creation of a state-level political system, they demonstrate how the hegemonic phase of warfare creates the preconditions for state formation. Fighting higher-level chieftains at greater spatial distance from his core region allowed him more freedom to subvert and modify those polities of his core territory. However, his modifications did not rise to the level of a total political transformation. Following his death at the battle of Clontarf in 1014, all subjugated chiefdoms, including those in Munster, reasserted their independence. After Brian’s death, the chiefdoms of the Osraige, Laigin, and the Eóganacht Caisel revived and inflicted a series of defeats on Dál Cais. Dál Cais fortunes revived 10

 Ó Corráin infers that this was held at Cluain Ferta (angl. Clonfert) monastery (1972:123).

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

49

under Tairdelbach Uí Briain, who had “taken” the status of paramount chieftain in 1063 over the Dál Cais with the assistance of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó, chieftain of the Uí Chensellaig chiefdom and paramount chieftain of the Laigin (Ó Corráin 1972:136; Ó Cróinín 1995:278; AI 221). Following this chieftain’s death in battle at Odba in 1072 (AI 229), Tairdelbach swiftly became the paramount chieftain of Southern and Eastern Ireland, creating an alliance spanning the composite chiefdoms of present-day Munster, Leinster, and Meath. The son of Conchobar Ua Maíl Sechnaill (chieftain of Temuir (angl. Tara)), Godfraid, grandson of Ragnall, i.e., chieftain of Áth Cliath (Dublin), and Domnall Mac Gilla Pátrick, chieftain of Osraige, also submitted to Tairdelbach Ua Briain, chieftain of Mumu, and they gave acknowledgment and high chieftainship to him.11 Tairdelbach Uí Briain died in 1086 and was eventually succeeded by his son Muirchertach who had banished his principal rival, his brother Diarmat. After a decade of constant military campaigns, Muirchertach reasserted Uí Briain dominance over Leinster, Meath, and Connacht. The successes of Muirchertach mirrored those of his two dynastic predecessors Brian and Tairdelbach but were temporary (Ó Cróinín 1995:280). Even though he banished hostile dynasties, annexed territories, and partitioned chiefdoms in Connacht and Meath, these chiefdoms were left in place as independent political systems under compliant leaders (Ó Corráin 1972:145–146). The true institutional innovations occurred in Munster. Muirchertach made himself a true king by establishing his capital at Limerick, a town that was geographically removed from his native chiefdom, and by institutionalizing the bureaucratic innovations of his predecessors, discussed further below (Gibson 2012:191).

Political Violence in Complex Chiefdoms Viewing warfare in Irish society over a 600-year span against the backdrop of changes to the complex political systems that perpetuated it allows for the discernment of patterns and goals. At the beginning of recorded history, one can perceive numerous small chiefdoms and larger composite chiefdoms linked into confederate systems. Many of the battles that are noted in the annals are clearly aimed at expanding one chiefdom confederacy at the expense of another. A more subtle trend that can be perceived in the data is the loss of the political autonomy and distinctive identity of smaller chiefdoms as these are absorbed into the larger composite chiefdoms and confederacies (Binchy 1970; Ó Corráin 1978, 1995:41). These smaller  The fact that the chieftains that have gathered to pay homage to Tairdelbach Uí Brian are paramount chieftains of chiefdom confederacies, with the exception of the town Dublin, is signaled by the name of the polity appended to the word rí (chieftain). Taidelbach’s supremacy over them, all is signaled by the appellation ard (high), which is reserved for a leader who was held to dominate a considerable swath of Ireland—in this case an area takes in the modern provinces of Munster and Leinster (AI 229).

11

50

D. B. Gibson

chiefdoms can be shown to have existed through occasional mention in the annals, but their existence is more strongly attested in other categories of medieval Irish literature such as saint’s lives, topographical poetry, and genealogical poems. Though losing their independent corporate identities, simple chiefdoms survived as semiautonomous administrative districts within composite chiefdoms until the end of the middle ages. There were several engines giving shape to the violence that have received notice in the historical and anthropological literature. Aristocratic polygyny is one dynamic that has been frequently cited as a force that propelled violence in chiefdoms in Ireland and around the world. The existence of multiple heirs to chiefly office and of multiple dynastic lineages vying to retain or regain paramount rank has been cited as a cause of frequent “segmentary violence” in Irish political systems (Ó Corráin 1971, 1972:38–40). The violent efforts of the Uí Cairpri to establish themselves in eastern Limerick and then in southern Clare, and finally in southern County Kerry might be seen as an outcome of competition between related aristocratic lineages that originally provided the leadership for a chiefdom confederacy in Tipperary called Mumu, and then after 700 C.E. took on the name Eóganacht. Another facet to the political violence of Medieval Ireland was status rivalry. Irwin Goldman first identified such rivalry as a factor of the political dynamics of Polynesian chiefdoms, but he never described, operationalized, or explored this behavioral complex to any degree (Goldman 1955, 1970). One can safely assume that status rivalry ultimately stems from the innate aggressiveness and competitiveness of males. Further, in complex chiefdoms, leaders were raised with a strong sense of entitlement and were selected for their role by their co-aristocrats on the basis of demonstrated aggressiveness, leadership qualities, charisma, and martial skills (Gibson 2000:241, 2008). They developed a fervent understanding that their personal status and survival depended upon advancing the political fortunes of their composite chiefdom through warfare. Furthermore, they viewed fulfillment of their aspirations for success as relative to others at their same position in the region-wide status hierarchy, not to those below them (Webster 1998:341–342). Hence chieftains initially aspired to rise higher vertically within a local regional hierarchy, but those at the top of a composite chiefdom further aspired to surpass their peers through the horizontal territorial expansion of their composite chiefdom through the annexation of neighboring chiefdoms led by non-kinsmen. The resulting political entity became a chiefdom confederacy (Gibson 1995:123). As multiple chiefdom confederacies developed into permanent political features of a province, paramount chieftains of confederacies sought to dominate rival confederacies, first by dismantling them, and then by controlling their leadership through the replacement of chieftains or dynasties, or through subordination achieved by force within interprovincial alliances. This process of confederation brings up a facet of the strategy involved with status rivalry that the sources make clear was of equal importance to warfare to the achievement of elevated political prominence: alliance building. The careers of successful leaders such as Brian Bóroihme or his grandson Muirchertach Ua Briain of the Dál Cais make clear that alliance creation held equal importance to battlefield

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

51

success. Moreover, alliance creation was often also the product of battlefield success. The history of the conflict between the Uí Fidgeinti, Uí Cairpri, and Araid provides a case in point. In 635 C.E., the Uí Fidgeinti fought the Araid of eastern Limerick in the battle of Cúil Óchtair, though the outcome is not stated. The Uí Fidgeinti was already part of the Mumu alliance, and so the Araid could not expect help from that quarter. In 766 the Uí Fidgeinti and Araid were fighting together to defeat the Uí Cairpri Lúachra, the leaders of Iarmumu. The apparent consistent failure of Iarmumu in multiple battles may have resulted from their estrangement from Mumu, a fact revealed both by the battles they fought against various members of the Mumu alliance and by their failure to attract allies to their cause. An etiological poem, said to date to the seventh century, presents the common kinship of five Eóganacht branches representing their ancestors as pups but then goes on to highlight the agonistic relationship of Eóganacht Locha Léin, the later identity of Iarmumu, to the other branches by having their ancestor washed in blood (Ó Corráin 1985, 2005:222). Forty years ago David Webster looked anew at the topic of warfare’s role in the evolution of the state, and the paradoxes inherent in Robert Carneiro’s model for state evolution. He established a number of preconditions for social evolution to occur: a large land area characterized by variability in agricultural capacity, potential for intensification in the agricultural economy, and demographic pressure from a constantly rising population. He argued that warfare first served to add additional farmland to polities’ holdings. For warfare to lead to further changes in the complexity of polities, it would have to be accompanied by changes to the internal social structure and norms of the chiefdom concerning the circulation of property acquired through successful warfare (Webster 1975, 1976). Early Medieval Ireland was in many ways analogous to Classic Period lowland Maya Yucatan. Ireland’s land area is about one third the size of lowland Yucatan with both regions having extensive tracts that were marginal for agricultural use. There are also stark contrasts: there was little or no potential for agricultural intensification in medieval Ireland, livestock were an important focus of the subsistence economy, and there were no unused or uninhabited areas for people to migrate into, or for chiefdoms to annex as a response to stress on resources. This being said, the objectives of medieval Irish warfare beyond cattle raiding surpassed merely adding to a chiefdom’s land area or producing booty for followers. Rather, the objective was to place one’s own kinsmen at the head of distant chiefdoms by detaching them from the composite chiefdom to which they belonged. The bifurcation of both the composite chiefdom of the Corcu MoDruad by the Uí Chormaic and of the Cíarraige by the Uí Cairpre demonstrates this objective. The intensification that mattered to Irish political evolution was the intensification of warfare itself. In order to carry out risky campaigns to attempt the defeat and subjugation of leaders of paramount rank in places like Connacht or Mide, men had to be compelled into military service for the greater part of a month or more. Just marching an army from the Uí Briain capital of Killaloe to Dublin would require over a week. Signs of Uí Briain chieftains being able to wrest multi-week commitments from their followers can be seen in the Annals of Inisfallen by searching

52

D. B. Gibson

under the word tinól—muster. Not coincidentally, the first occurrence of this word is an entry pertaining to Brian Bóroihme for 1002 C.E.: A muster of the men of Mumu, the Connachta, the men of Mide, the Laigin and of the foreigners of Áth Cliath (Dublin), and Port Láirge (Waterford) by Brian Mac Cennétig, against the Ulaid12 to take their hostages (AI 175). In contrast to pre-Viking Irish warfare with its emphasis on local battles not requiring more than several day’s march (e.g., the Uí Cairpre would require less than a week to walk from Limerick to Killarney), Brian was attempting the coordinated massing of troops from the maximal polities of Southern Ireland to be marched to Ulster—an expedition requiring 2 month’s minimum commitment by all involved. He would do this three more times over the next 9 years (in 1005, 1007 and 1011 C.E.). The institutional changes that underlay this greater scope for military undertakings can be likewise glimpsed from contemporary written sources. An adjutant of a chieftain called a rechtaire figures in early medieval sources. The ninth-century story “The Cíarraige Chiefdom Alliance” tells of the intent of a paramount chieftain to situate a rechtaire accompanied by attendants on the boundary between two composite chiefdoms, one chiefdom figuring as the client of the other, to collect payments from the subordinate for the patron (Gibson 2017; Shingurova 2015). The Annals of Ulster record the death in 1073 of Cormac Ua Clothagán moer Muman (steward of Mumu) (AU 508–509). Cormac died during the reign of Tairdelbach Uí Briain. As this chieftain had become the paramount chieftain of Munster, the traditional tribute collector had become elevated with a brief that now took in the entire province and had acquired a new title. In this same period, the irregular tributes collected by superior chieftains from their chiefly subordinates had made a transition to a more arbitrary tax (Gibson 2012:192). All of these institutional alterations, amounting to the creation of a primitive state administration, transpired from the reign of Brian through to his great grandson Muirchertach. They constitute a feedback loop wherein military success by Brian led to creation of interprovincial political alliances, which in turn led to both changes to the institutional framework for carrying out war and then to military undertakings becoming island-wide in scope. The most likely fate of these innovations would have been their dissolution had Brian’s political successes not been replicated by his grandson and great-grandson. These intergenerational successes allowed sufficient time for the novel creations of Brian to become institutionalized and accepted as part of the normal political fabric of Ireland.

12

 A chiefdom alliance that gives the modern province of Ulster its name

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

53

References Primary Sources Mac Airt, Seán (ed and trans). 1988. The Annals of Innisfallen. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. (Abbreviated AI) Mac Airt, Seán and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (ed). 1983. The Annals of Ulster. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. (Abbreviated AU)

Secondary Sources Allen, Mark W. 2006. Transformations in Māori Warfare, Toa, Pa, and Pu. In The Archaeology of Warfare, ed. Elizabeth N. Arkush and Mark W. Allen, 184–213. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Anderson, David G. 1994. Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Prehistoric Southeast. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ———. 1996. Chiefly Cycling and Large-Scale Abandonments as Viewed from the Savannah River Basin. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeast United States, ed. John F. Scarry, 150–191. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Bhreathnach, Edel. 1999. The Construction of the Stone Fort at Cahercommaun: A Historical Hypothesis, Discovery Programme Report 5, 83–91. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. Binchy, Daniel. 1970. Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Kingship. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Carneiro, Robert. 1970. A Theory of the Origin of the State. Science 21 (169): 733–738. ———. 1981. The Chiefdom: Precursor to the State. In The Transition to Statehood in the New World, ed. G.D. Jones and R.R. Kautz, 37–79. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1990. Chiefdom-Level Warfare as Exemplified in Fiji and the Cauca Valley. In The Anthropology of War, ed. Jonathan Haas, 190–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chesterton, Gilbert K. 1911. The Ballad of the White Horse. New York: John Lane Company. Christaller, Walter. 1933. Die Zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer. Crumley, Carole L. 1974. Celtic Social Structure: the Generation of Archaeologically Testable Hypotheses from Literary Evidence. Anthropological Papers, University of Michigan No. 54. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Downham, Clare. 2007. Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press. Earle, Timothy. 1997. How Chiefs Come to Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Feinman, Gary, and Jill Neitzel. 1984. Too Many Types: An Overview of Sedentary Prestate Societies in the Americas. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory vol. 7, ed. Michael Schiffer, 39–102. New York: Academic Press. Friedman, Jonathan, and Michael J. Rowlands. 1977. Notes Towards an Epigenetic Model of the Evolution of ‘Civilization’. In The Evolution of Social Systems, ed. Jonathan Friedman and Michael J. Rowlands, 201–276. London: Duckworth. Gibson, D.  Blair. 1995. Chiefdoms, Confederacies and Statehood in Early Ireland. In Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State, ed. Bettina Arnold and D.  Blair Gibson, 116–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Nearer, My Chieftain, to Thee: Central Place Theory and Chiefdoms, Revisited. In Hierarchies in Action, Cui Bono? ed. Michael W. Diehl, 241–263. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University. ———. 2008. Celtic Democracy. Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 28:40–62. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

54

D. B. Gibson

———. 2011. Chiefdom Confederacies and State Origins. Social Evolution and History 10 (1): 215–233. ———. 2012. From Chiefdom to State in Early Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2017. The Cíarraige Chiefdom Confederacy. Eolas 10:16-32. Goldman, Irving. 1955. Status Rivalry and Cultural Evolution in Polynesia. American Anthropologist 57: 680–697. ———. 1970. Ancient Polynesian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harrison, S.H. 2014. Historical Background. In Woodstown: A Viking-age Settlement in Co. Waterford, ed. I. Russell and M.F. Hurley, 11–19. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Hodkinson, Brian. 2015. Viking Limerick and Its Hinterland. In The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond, ed. Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson, 183–188. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Hogan, Edmund. 1910. Onomasticon Goidelicum. Dublin: Hodges Figgis. Hudson, Charles, Marvin Smith, David Hally, Richard Pohlhemus, and Chester de Pratter. 1985. Coosa: A Chiefdom in the Sixteenth Century United States. American Antiquity 50 (4): 723–727. Hurley, M.F. 2014. Discussion and Conclusions. In Woodstown: A Viking-age Settlement in Co. Waterford, ed. I. Russell and M.F. Hurley, 347–357. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Kelly, Eammon P. 2015. The Longphort in Viking-Age Ireland: the Archaeological Evidence. In The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond, ed. Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson, 53–92. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Kelly, Eammon P., and E.  O’Donovan. 1998. A Viking Longphort near Athlunkard, Co. Clare. Archaeology Ireland 12 (4): 13–16. LeBlanc, Steven A. with Katherine E.  Register. 2003. Constant Battles. New  York: St. Martin’s Press. Marcus, Joyce, and Kent Flannery. 1996. Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. London: Thames and Hudson. Ó Buachalla, Liam. 1952. Contributions Towards the Political History of Munster. Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 57: 67–86. Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. 1971. Irish Regnal Succession: A Reappraisal. Studia Hibernica 11: 7–39. ———. 1972. Ireland Before the Normans. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. ———. 1978. Nationality and Kingship in Pre-Norman Ireland. In Nationality and the Pursuit of National Independence, ed. T.W. Moody, 1–35. Belfast: Appletree Press. ———. 1985. Irish Origin Legends and Genealogy: Recurrent Aetiologies. In History and Heroic Tale, ed. Hans Bekker Nielsen et al., 51–96. Odense: Odense History Press. Ó Crónín, Dáibhí. 1995. Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200. London: Longman. ———. 2005. Ireland, 400–800. In A New History of Ireland, ed. Dáibhí Ó. Crónín, 182–234. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Otterbein, Keith F. 2004. How War Began. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Roymans, Nico. 1990. Tribal Societies in Northern Gaul: An Anthropological Perspective. Amsterdam: Cingula. Shingurova, Tatiana. 2015. West Munster Synod. Appendix to Dell’oblio di un Ancestrale Monaco Irlandese: Brendano di Birr, Detto “il Vecchio.” Finzione, Contaminazione o Reductio Funzionale? Studia Monastica 57 (1): 25–67. Smith, Marvin T. 2000. Coosa: The Rise and Fall of a Southeastern Mississippian Chiefdom. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Sproule, David. 1984. Origins of the Éoganachta. Ériu 35 (3): 31–37. Steward, Julian H. 1949. Cultural Causality and Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development of Early Civilizations. American Anthropologist 51: 1–27. Valente, Mary A. 2008. The Vikings in Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Vayda, Andrew P. 1960. Māori Warfare. Wellington: Polynesian Society Monograph No. 2. ———. 1967. Māori warfare. In Law and Warfare, ed. Paul Bohannan, 359–380. Garden City: Natural History Press.

Was There a Method to Their Madness? Warfare, Alliance Formation, and the Origins…

55

Webster, David. 1975. Warfare and the Evolution of the State: A Reconsideration. American Antiquity 40: 464–470. ———. 1976. Warfare and the Evolution of the State: A Perspective from the Maya Lowlands. Museum of Anthropology Miscellaneous Series 19. Greely: University of Northern Colorado. ———. 1993. A Study of Maya Warfare: What It Tells Us About the Maya and About Maya Archaeology. In Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century AD, ed. Jeremy A. Sabloff and J.S. Henderson, 415–444. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks. ———. 1998. Warfare and Status Rivalry: Lowland Maya and Polynesian Comparisons. In Archaic States, ed. Gary M.  Feinman and Joyce Marcus, 311–351. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Willey, Gordon R. 1956. Problems Concerning Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Maya Lowlands. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the New World, ed. Gordon R. Willey, 107–114. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Wright, Henry. 1977. Toward an Explanation of the Origin of the State. In Explanation of Prehistoric Change, ed. James N. Hill, 215–230. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. D. Blair Gibson is a professor of anthropology at El Camino College in Torrance, Ca. His research concerns the evolution of political systems, and he has worked with both historical and archaeological materials from the Copper Age through the Middle Ages of Ireland. He is the author-editor of three books: Tribe and Polity in Late Prehistoric Europe (with Michael Geselowitz), Celtic Chiefdom/Celtic State (with Bettina Arnold), and From Chiefdom to State in Early Ireland. In addition to Ireland, he has conducted archaeological fieldwork in the USA and is currently working with Anabel Ford on a survey of Late Classic Maya settlement connected to the center at El Pilar, Belize.  

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani Douglas Hayward

In this study I shall seek to demonstrate the basic premise of these chapters regarding the prevalence and impact of webs of violence. In this case, I show that a web of violence can exist in a primarily egalitarian culture such as the Western Dani in West Papua, Indonesia, as a social response to individuals who fail to participate in those activities that contribute to the common good of the members of that society. Punishment or control over such individuals is graded in severity according to the nature of the offense while at the same time seeking to control the adverse aspects of war and violence in their desire to pursue a state of relative peace. The Dani reside in the highlands of what is now known as West Papua, Indonesia. They divide into two general categories. Perhaps the best known branch of the Dani (at least in the Western world) are the Grand Valley Dani made famous by the film Dead Birds (Robert Gardner 2004) and by the ethnographic studies of Heider (1970, 1979) and Bromley (1972). The larger but more widely researched branch of the Dani are the Western Dani who have been described in ethnographic studies by Ploeg (1969), O’Brien (1969), Larson (1987), and Hayward (1997). The Western Dani reside in the Western highlands beginning with the upper regions of the Grand Valley of the Baliem, including the upper Baliem region, and in the watershed regions for all the rivers that flow to the north, including what is now known as the Bokondini-Kelila area, the Swart Valley area, the Yamo Valley area (including Mulia), and the Ilaga and Sinak valleys. The Western Dani are united by a common dialect that has become more standardized since contact with missionary linguists who have since translated the Bible into Western Dani, but at the time of contact their language differed from East to West largely due to the use of five vowels instead of seven. The Western Dani had D. Hayward (*) Biola University, La Mirada, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_5

57

58

D. Hayward

Fig. 1  Map of Western Dani region

further ties to one another due to kinship ties and ongoing trading partnerships. In spite of these ties, the Western Dani were sharply divided into warring alliances that made travel from one area to another either impossible or highly dangerous. My introduction to the Western Dani began in 1967 several years after they were first contacted by a small band of missionaries and just a few years after a major “peace movement” had swept through the entire Western Dani region as part of a larger movement of conversion to the Christian faith. I lived at Mulia in the Yamo District for 20 years with three short one-year breaks during which time I pursued graduate studies in anthropology. Most of the details of this study come from that time with the Mulia Valley Dani (Fig. 1).

The Path to War At the time of contact with the outside world the Western Dani lived in what Marshall Sahlins has described as a perpetual state of “warre,” which is a concept that he expanded upon and significantly modified from its original usage by Hobbes (1651). This state of warre as Sahlins expounds (1968) can best be understood as a state wherein every man is prepared to fight even while seeking to keep the peace. In this state of warre, Sahlins declares every man has the legitimate right “to secure

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

59

by force their safety, gain and glory” (1968:7). In fact, in a state of warre, it is “every man against every man” (1968:7). This opposition creates a problem, though, inasmuch as the potential for conflict is ever present as a threat that could tear apart the very social structure that makes life possible. Therefore, some way to regulate conflict must be constructed, and the pursuit of peace must also be the duty as well as the right of every man. People who live in cultures governed by a state of warre must therefore determine how to respond appropriately to conflicts of interest and how to minimize conflicts of interest. In choosing to respond to conflicts of interests, each culture, therefore, has the need to establish its own approach to retaliation that among other things seeks to serve a sense of justice. For many cultures this standard exists in a form similar to the Code of Hammurabi of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life” or some such agreeable standard of justice enforceable by retaliatory or compensatory demands up to and including the threat of retaliatory force. In the Western Dani case and indeed in many such cultures, retaliation for an offense can be transferred to any or all members of the offender’s patriclan under a principle sometimes identified as social substitution (Kelly 2000). In respect to minimizing war, conflict can sometimes be minimized by any of the following actions: choosing to move further away from potential antagonists; building economic ties; forging reciprocity in the form of gifts, women, kinship ties, or assistance in labor; or by creating formidable war alliances. All of these strategies can then be strengthened and extended through ongoing acts of generosity, respect, and honor. For the Western Dani, responding to conflicts of interest followed a graduated sense of appropriate responses, beginning with what might normally fall into what we know as tort-level offenses and ranging upward to retaliatory homicides. A graduated list of offenses arguably takes the following form: failure to fulfill social expectations, accidental physical injury or loss of assets, conflict over women, theft, accidental deaths, homicides within a confederacy, homicides between confederacies, ritual warfare, and total (non-ritual) warfare.

Failure to Fulfill Social Expectations This type of offense includes individuals who failed to contribute to the well-being of the entire community, who failed to support community activities, or who failed to engage in reciprocal gift-giving and were subject to public censure. Punishments could be meted out in the following forms: Public insult through gossiping. Reputations were built or destroyed by the simple process of people sharing news through their daily activities. Actual physical assault. In one instance I witnessed, a pig owner who failed to keep his pig from getting into a neighbor’s garden was assaulted by the owner of the garden, who bit off a portion of the man’s ear declaring, “You don’t need that ear,

60

D. Hayward

you never listen anyway.” Likewise, brothers or other close kinsmen might physically assault one of their own who was proving to be quarrelsome or excessively troublesome. Denying an offender the right to participate in the distribution of public resources. Food was always shared, but a freeloader who failed to contribute to the food supply would be denied food or only given the smallest portions. Likewise, a freeloader who had not participated in the work of preparing and opening a new garden would be denied a portion of the garden for his own use or, if given a section, would be given the least desirable one. Among many such instances, one such incident that stands out in my experience involved a student who had received a scholarship to go to school in Makassar, and upon his return to his village he failed to bring any gifts for his family and refused to share any of the clothes he brought back in his suitcase. Within two weeks, his social ostracism was so severe that he was forced to give his lovely blue school blazer to his older brother as well as virtually everything else in his suitcase. However, the prospect of going back to being a dirt farmer was too daunting for him, and he ended up returning to the city where he could live the lifestyle he had learned to appreciate, free from the social obligations of his tribal relatives. Destruction of assets. Someone who failed to share or to contribute magnanimously to the well-being of the community might find not only withdrawal of support and increased isolation from the life of the community but also dispossession of their physical assets. In a notable instance from my experience, a young man was sent out to the coast by a sympathetic missionary to become an apprentice to a local tailor. When he returned, he brought with him a treadle sewing machine, with the entrepreneurial goal of becoming a tailor in his own village. Unfortunately, this capitalist venture was not appreciated by the reciprocitybased villagers who considered his plans exploitative. Eventually, while the young man was away from his village, his entire house, including the sewing machine which he had hid in his outhouse, mysteriously caught fire and was completely destroyed. House burning was a regular leveling practice on several other occasions I witnessed. Seizure of assets. If an individual or family failed to fulfill the obligations of an economic agreement, or failed to make a requisite payment (i.e., bridewealth, funeral payment, negotiated compensation, or other obligation), the offended family might (with arms) forcibly seize a pig or other assets to meet the required payment. Resistance from the offending party might be possible, but such a response could very well lead to a major feud and an escalation of the conflict into death or injuries, even a breakup of the confederation into warring factions. Stick and stone fights. Occasionally, inequality between communities could result in a stick and stone fight. At one Dani feast intended simply as a harvest festival, several pigs were killed along with one cow that had been introduced by the missionaries. The cow had been raised by local villagers, but it was understood by the inhabitants of the whole valley that the distribution of its meat was to be equal among everyone. Unfortunately, the meat distribution by the local villagers

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

61

was not done equally, and the majority of the beef went to the locals, causing the inhabitants from the valley to feel slighted. Accordingly, an argument broke out, insults were traded, then someone threw a club. The response was immediate with sticks and stones going both ways with the retreat of all participants. There were no serious injuries in this confrontation, but it was obvious to all that access to goods, money, and employment by those living closest to the airstrip where government officials and missionaries lived gave those inhabitants greater access to economic advantages and that these were not being shared or redistributed out to those who lived further away. This stick and stone fight was emblematic of this pent-up sense of unfairness.

Accidental Physical Injury or Loss of Assets Arguments or disagreements might escalate into physical shoving or blows. Bad decisions might result in unexpected injuries. Whatever the motivations, physical injury to another person needed to be compensated with some form of payment (ame’nggo). The amount of compensation depended upon the seriousness of the loss. If the injury resulted in bruising or a small wound, the payment might be a cowrie shell. If the injury required recovery time, then assistance with food and firewood during convalescence was often incorporated into a compensation payment.

Conflict over Women Adultery, rape, and running away with another man’s wife were serious offenses. Retaliation was always expected, but remuneration was not always the same. A cuckolded husband might choose to pursue his wife’s lover and shoot him in the leg or otherwise inflict a nonlethal wound on him as a warning to stay away from his wife. Payment of a pig might be required. For rape, the penalty might be several pigs and the threat of further violence. If a woman left her husband and ran away with her lover, the offended husband could choose to pursue her or demand the return of at least a portion of his bridewealth. Whatever his course of action, the level of support he could expect from his own kinsmen depended upon several factors: whether the wife’s desertion was deemed justified because her husband had not treated her well, whether the new man was well supported by strong set of kinship ties, and whether she was deemed worthy of rescuing. It was even possible that in combination with other social tensions a dispute over a woman would escalate into full-scale warfare between confederations. Whatever the consequences, conflicts of interest over women were a major source of discord.

62

D. Hayward

Theft Theft was a fairly rare event in Dani culture for several reasons, although Ploeg claimed that pig thefts in the Bokondini area were common (1967). For one, people rarely possessed goods that were not readily available to everyone as long as they were willing to commit themselves to make or produce those goods for themselves. Secondly, reciprocity was so common that anyone with a need could count on a kinsman to share. Sharing and borrowing were so common place that exclusive ownership of an item was exceedingly rare. Weapons and axes could be borrowed but only judiciously because they were so essential to a man’s ability to defend himself. By contrast, items such as gourds, hunting dogs, and net bags were regularly made available to those in need. Pigs, however, were sometimes stolen and carried off into the jungle to be cooked and eaten in secret. Perpetrators in such situations, if found, were expected to compensate the original owner with a pig of equivalent value, and the public shaming of such behaviors would reduce the perpetrator to what the Papuans call a “rubbish man.” In this respect, any individual who was guilty of persistent or repeated offenses against the community, who by his behaviors was a threat to communal well-being, and whose own kinsmen were repeatedly asked to pay for his offense might be forced to go into exile, which would mean having to move to a distant location to live with relatives or even having to find uninhabited territory to build his own residence and start his own gardens. Such territories were rare and either existed on the frontier of Dani territories or were situated in less desirable locations for gardening and habitation.

Accidental Deaths On occasion a joint venture would go awry and result in the death of one or more of the participants, in which case all those who were part of a venture were expected to contribute to a compensation payment. Payment to the family of the deceased was usually determined to be the standard compensation for a human life, typically from 8 to 30 pigs. On two occasions, I was asked to participate in such compensation payments or at least to give my opinion. In the first case, I had trained a man to be a carpenter and had sent him to the lowlands north of the Highlands to build a clinic in a Duvele village. While he was working in the village square, a feud broke out between two Duvele brothers over a woman, prompting the one brother to pull his bow to shoot his own brother (in a nonlethal area), but the arrow missed its intended mark, instead hitting and killing the carpenter. As a consequence, I had to make a payment to his widow of cash as well as a 100 kilogram sack of salt, plus airfare back to her village of origin to live with her own kinsmen. (By this time, police had been assigned to live in the Mulia region, so the killer was arrested and sent to the Coast to serve several years of detention and hard labor.)

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

63

On the second occasion, a local village had called for a work party to prepare a new garden, and at the end of the work day several young men went down to the river to bathe before eating and returning to their homes. At the river, the young men found a large rock from which they could jump into the river and then swim back to the beach. One of the young men was reluctant to jump, so the others taunted him into doing so in order not to look like a coward in front of his girlfriend who was washing potatoes nearby. The young man jumped in the water but never resurfaced. All of the boys and even the village that had called for the work party were now obliged to make a death payment compensation, but the father of the boy made what sounded like a reasonable request. He proposed that inasmuch as he was a widower, had only this one son, and could not use a great number of pigs with no one to care for them, he would be satisfied if instead of the standard compensation payment, the village elders should arrange for him to take his son’s “fiancée” as his own wife and through her to bear more children for the future. This request was so logical, but unusual that the village elders came to me to hear my thoughts on what they should do. Their deliberation was further complicated by the fact that the girl herself was not interested in such an arrangement. In consultation I pointed out that while compensation was indeed due to the father, it was also contrary to Dani customs to force a girl to marry a man she did not want, further noting that when such marriages had occurred, the new wives often ran away, creating further trouble in the long run. Thus, I recommended not forcing this girl to marry someone who was to be her future father-in-law, but instead that they seek another woman, possibly a still nubile, childbearing widow who wished to remarry, and that the village elders could together pay her bridewealth payment at a level much less than normal. (That option seemed reasonable to them and was carried out.)

Homicides Within a Confederacy Sometimes anger over serious offenses, usually the uncompensated death of a relative, would lead to a retaliatory act of murder. Death within a confederacy was, of course, a serious matter because under the Dani system of justice every death had to be compensated with either a death payment of pigs or a death of someone from the offender’s clan. In other words, it was a life for a life, but even when a murder was committed to balance an uncompensated earlier death, the new murder needed to be compensated. Justice was not a zero-sum game; rather, it was a matter of mutual respect and honor. Whenever a homicide did occur, compensation by the offending kinsmen or retaliation by the offended kinsmen inevitably followed. If no compensation was forthcoming, the subsequent retaliation could threaten to break up the alliance and thereby raise the prospects of war. In order to hold the alliance together, kinsmen of the offender would make the required payment and move to assure the offended parties that the offender himself would be constrained from further actions, which could be done by sending him into exile or shaming him from any influential roles in the life of the village.

64

D. Hayward

Another form of homicide was death by black magic. Both men and women were capable of practicing black magic, but it was the fear of women’s black magic that concerned the Dani most. In fact, when men were angry, they were expected to express their anger physically through the use of their weapons, but for women their weapon of retaliation was black magic. When a normally healthy man took sick quite unexpectedly and died within days of the onset of his symptoms, the death was considered to have been the product of black magic. As a consequence, surviving relatives immediately began to search for the suspected witch, seeking a woman in the area with whom he was having a dispute. A divination ceremony might point them to the home of the witch, and a suspect could then be forced into confessing her guilt under painful interrogation. If a woman was identified as a witch, her kinsmen would normally come to her defense. However, suspects were usually women from weaker kin groups or were somehow socially marginal so that an effective protective response was often not available. In one case that I followed, two women accused of killing through the use of black magic refused to confess, so they were bound and blinded by rubbing limestone into their eyes. In another case, a woman was charged with using black magic to kill a man whose pig kept getting into her garden and who would not restrain it or pay compensation, but she was able to muster sufficient support from her kinsmen that she was allowed to live after her kinsmen paid a death payment to the victim’s family. In a third case, the woman was charged with the crime. After being stripped naked, made to stand on a pole, and jabbed with arrows if she stepped off, she finally confessed that she had done it to avenge the death of an uncle that was still without compensation. Following her confession, the woman was thrown bound into a raging river where she drowned. There was no compensation for a woman killed for black magic witchcraft. Among the Ilaga Valley Dani, Larson records that out of his study of 53 disputes that led to violence, accusations of witchcraft were attributed as the immediate cause of a conflict in 12 cases. Further, he also recorded that during a 20-year period when he was resident in the Ilaga Valley, armed confrontations occurred at least 20–30 times and at least four women were executed for witchcraft (1987:190).

Homicides Between Confederacies The Yamo political district in its pre-Indonesian government days consisted of five distinct confederacies: (1) the Mulia Valley and Yembi Valley confederacy, (2) the Yamo Valley confederacy, (3) the Upper Nugguragi Valley confederacy, (4) the Central Ngguragi Valley confederacy, and (5) the Mebagoluk Valley confederacy. At the time of contact (1957), the first four confederacies were living in relative peace with one another. There was a fragile state of truce between them and the Mebagoluk Valley confederacy that broke down with the murder of a Yamo Valley confederacy man by a man who sought revenge for the death of one of his own kinsmen in a prior conflict. As background to this conflict, peace between villages

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

65

(which I called hamlets) led to cooperative work parties with neighboring villages to form parishes, and they in turn worked cooperatively with other parishes to form confederations. A confederation could grow in size to include 1000–1500 people, and peace between these hamlets and parishes was sustained and strengthened through marriage ties, the formation of trading partnerships, participation in work parties to open new garden plots, and in sponsoring and participating in ritual ceremonies including the grand feast held every five years or so during which marriages were arranged, boys were initiated, and the dead were memorialized. Sahlins articulates the underlying principle behind how these activities hold a society together when he states: “The norm of reciprocity makes two interrelated minimal demands: (1) people should help those who have helped them, and (2) people should not injure those who have helped them” (1968:88). When these principles were violated, the perpetrators would be treated as enemy combatants, provoking a call for armed responses. Such armed responses could take place in one of three different forms: (1) armed skirmishes provoked by unauthorized intrusion into home territory, (2) raids and ambushes, and (3) murders of convenience. At the time of contact, Dani men always travelled fully armed and ready to defend themselves against possible intruders or even raiders from a hostile confederation. The first missionaries to enter the Dani territory were travelling overland from the Moni region into the Ilaga Valley and were actually driven back by armed Dani warriors who seized all their equipment and forbade them to go any further. A similar hostile response was also demonstrated toward the first party of missionaries who entered the Mulia Valley. At that time, most of the adult males in the Mulia district were involved in a war reparation feast away from their territory when the missionaries arrived. Upon hearing that strangers were camped in the center of their valley, they quickly formed a war party and rushed back to kill them. Fortunately for the missionaries, the trip back to the Mulia Valley took a whole day, and on the way runners kept telling them enough stories about the strange ways of these unwanted visitors that the leaders of the party decided to wait and see what these strangers really represented before killing them. In the end, a group of Dani elders decided to let the spirits decide the future of the strangers, and in an act of divination they planted a small sapling outside of the missionary’s camp, sealed it with the blood of a sacrificed pig, and then waited to see whether it would live or die. If it lived, this was a sign from the ancestors that the missionaries should live; if it died, then the missionaries would be treated as harbingers of death and evil and therefore should be killed. (In this case, the tree lived, and so did the missionaries.) The fear concerning all such intrusions was that such persons would bring evil presences with them from the spirit world or that they would offend the guardian spirits of the Dani people themselves or maybe that they would not pass peaceably but rather stir up trouble. Raids and ambushes were not uncommon, especially in border areas and no-­ man’s lands. Small war parties would lie in wait for, or sneak up on, a lone woman, a careless youngster, or a working man to kill in revenge for an earlier death or grievance. In contrast to the ritual phase of warfare, raids and ambushes could be done at night. In one instance, a fight captain from Mulia once shared with me how

66

D. Hayward

members of the Mulia Valley confederation came to the aid of their allies in the Central Ngguragi Valley confederation who were experiencing increasingly bold raids from an opposing confederation who lived east of the Ngguragi Valley. The fight captain by the name of Wagariapmban called upon a band of his men to lie in wait for an approaching raiding party. They chose a spot most likely for the raiding party to use and where the path would lead them along a sharp cliff edge but where it was so narrow they would have to march near the cliff. Wagariapmban and his men spent a cold and miserable night in their hiding places, but they held out until morning when the raiding party appeared. They came confidently because the spider webs and undisturbed dew on the path showed no evidence of an ambush. Once they were fully in the trap, Wagariapmban called for an attack. His men rose up and rained arrows into their adversaries, catching them totally off guard and unable to retreat or hide. Their only possible escape route was to jump off the cliff where several died, were injured, or were shot at from the victors on the cliffs above them. This ambush strategy put an end to these raids and brought the Ngguragi Valley confederation a measure of peace for a while. Armed responses also took the form of murders of convenience. Violent encounters might be expected by contact between hunting parties, trading parties, or other ventures outside of one’s own safe territories. On one occasion, I was unable to send a young man to help support a team of Dani workers to the Lowlands region known as Fawi (Faowi) because Dani workers from a still belligerent kin group from the Sinak Valley were working further upstream and contact with them may have led to a vengeance death. A major conflict between the Mebagoluk Valley confederation and the Mulia Valley confederation flared up again over just such a murder of convenience. A Dani man, married to a woman from the Mebagoluk Valley confederation, was in the Mebagoluk Valley visiting his wife’s relatives, fully expecting the protection of his in-laws, when another villager, not related to the woman who had married the Yamo Valley Dani, entered the village compound and saw this representative of his hated enemy. This villager walked over to the man who was sitting on the ground with his head bowed down in the process of grooming his hair, took the man’s new steel axe, and brought it down on his exposed neck, killing him instantly. This flagrant violation of peace expectations immediately provoked one of the most violent battles of ritual warfare.

Ritual Warfare When a conflict arose between two confederations involving the death of one or more individuals, the Dani could choose to call for an opportunity to engage in battle in an attempt to extract vengeance and pursue justice by killing someone from the opposing confederation. As chronicled by Larson, formal warfare broke out between the Western Dani 17 times over a 70-year period or one war on average every four years (1987:322). The calls to battle were motivated predominantly by

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

67

the desire for revenge or other significant offenses (usually economic) against the honor of the members of a confederation. Larson’s study of 179 disputes among the Ilaga Dani (1987:177) found that 41% (73) were over women; 26% (47) were over loss of life; 22% (39) were over property rights such as stealing, unpaid indemnification or compensation payments, or unequal distribution of such payments; and 11% (20) were over land such as farming rights, communal responsibility for fencing, tree ownership, etc. Out of these 179 disputes, only 53 led to violence ranging from brawls to feuds to warfare.1 In Ploeg’s study of the Bokondini Valley Dani, he recorded 131 cases of trouble over a 25-year period, resulting in 142 deaths from bow-and-arrow fighting (1969:135). The cases of trouble he cited were due to conflicts over domestic duties (14 times); thefts, mainly of pigs (63 times); women (39 times); and conflicts over compensation payments (22 times), leaving four unknown cases. If the case was one of adultery and the offense involved individuals residing in the same hamlet or parish, a payment of a single pig (ayooga) could be made. (In point of fact, in all disputes within the same hamlet, parish or even confederation great effort was made to settle the dispute with a compensation payment in order to preserve the harmony of the confederation.) However, when the adultery involved individuals from more distant communities, there would be loud protestations including brawling, stick/ stone fighting, and larger compensation payments of up to four pigs and perhaps strings of cowrie shells. If an acceptable ayooga payment were not made, then the jilted husband and his clansmen would threaten violence, which could result in injury or death and the possibility of full-blown war between confederacies. In respect to fights over land, Larson states that “it is paradoxical that, although land is never the immediate cause for warfare or even feud, it is always what winners acquire as the result of war” (1987:209). “Individuals and groups who move in to occupy deserted territories as the result of routing during warfare or emigration following warfare, do not necessarily do so immediately. Often the deserted land…remains unsettled for years” (1987:209). Ploeg also notes that among the Bokondini Dani there was no shortage of land and quarrels over land were rare (1969:20). In essence, what happens during a war is that the losing party will often move further away from their enemies, and their former land will become a kind of no-man’s land for several years, following which the land will be resettled either by allies of the losing party or the winning party depending upon the outcomes for continuing peace. In the case of the 1955 war (Larson’s 14th war), warfare that began in the Ilaga Valley spread to the North Baliem Valley when a growing series of confrontations escalated into full-scale total war. According to my sources, the local version of this wider conflict began when a party of traders travelling through the Kwiyawagi Valley (North Baliem) on their way to Ilaga stopped long enough at a far garden to gang rape a lone woman working in her garden. Her angry kinsmen then attempted to seize the pigs from several new groups of traders coming through 1  In respect to the number of violent outbreaks, Larson records that, during an 18-month period of “peace,” only two incidents of violence were recorded in which a man died (1987:215). However, during the following 18 months, tensions rose as 19 disputes broke out into violence.

68

D. Hayward

their valley, who would not give up their pigs easily so that violence escalated leading to injuries and a death. Thus, the rape led to violence, then to death, and trade between the Upper regions of the Baliem and their trading partners in the Ilaga Valley was shut down. The war leader in the Ilaga Valley, a man by the name of Taganit, was already engaged in a strong warfare alliance, so flexing his power and authority he rallied his troops to punish the Kwiyawagi residents. In a total war scenario, they burned the villages, killed the pigs, destroyed the gardens, and drove the entire population of the Kwiyawagi Valley into exile. Perhaps as many as 1500 people fled the area, many into the Sinak Valley and the Mulia Valley. This war led to the death of 168 people, far beyond the normal number of fatalities (one or two dozen people) for Dani wars. The Kwiyawagi Valley lay fairly desolate for years until about 1974 when refugees living in the Mulia Valley announced that they wanted to return to the Kwiyawagi Valley to reclaim their land and their pandanus trees because further abandonment of their land would make it vulnerable to resettlement by immigrants from the Upper Baliem regions who were already moving into the Ilaga Valley. When the Dani initiated a formal state of ritual warfare, the desired outcome was limited to blood vengeance. Thus, if the primary motivation for the battle was blood vengeance for one or two members of a confederation, then in this ritual battle the goal was to take the lives of the same number of warriors from the opposition. Calling for such combat was not something that a confederation did easily inasmuch as such engagements might very well result in multiple injuries to their own allies and even more deaths, thereby increasing the need to keep fighting. In calling for what anthropologists have labeled as ritual warfare (i.e., warfare in which religious specialists engage in war magic, sacrifice pigs to the ancestors, and engage in other religious rituals to affect the outcome of the fighting), a chosen location is selected and in some cases the battlefield may even be prepared by building a fence at each end of the field marking the boundaries of the fighting. Such sites were typically located in no-man’s territories that separated warring confederacies. Then, the day for battle was determined and on that day, a limited number of warriors (possibly 200) would enter the field, each from opposite ends of the site. This form of ritual warfare resembled that which was observed about fighting among the Grand Valley Dani, which was documented in the film Dead Birds. In this phase of fighting, young men would stand at the front seeking to provoke their adversaries with taunts, challenging them to shoot, moving tantalizingly closer and closer, but often at the limits of arrow range or sufficiently far enough back that they could see and dodge incoming arrows. They also sought to tempt one of their adversaries to come too far forward in an attempt to make him vulnerable to their assault. In the course of several daylight hours of this exchange of taunts, bravado, and arrows, some injuries would occur, and the wounded would be carried off to the rear to be treated. In the case of a severe wounding, the battle might even take a rest while they determined whether the wounding was potentially lethal. If so, they might decide to call off fighting for a while to see about the outcome. After all, the goal of fighting was to avenge the death of a kinsman, and an equal number of

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

69

deaths on the other side would accomplish that. It was not necessary to risk further wounding or potential deaths if justice and revenge were near. In such battles, inclement weather might provoke a postponement of fighting. Furthermore, scores were kept in respect to the number of injuries and deaths until satisfaction was assured and each side could retreat to the safety of their own territories. This was controlled fighting perhaps closer to what I would designate as tribal dueling or, to use the words of Otterbein, “dueling battles” (2004:216). In traditional dueling as practiced in European and early American cultural contexts, offense against someone’s honor was restored by calling for a duel with closely guarded rules for engagement. For the Dani, however, offenses against one’s honor could escalate to such a scale that an entire patrilineage or even alliance of patrilineages would call for an opportunity for revenge and the restoral of their honor through a ritualized battle. Once the battlefield deaths were relatively balanced and sufficient opportunity to reassert their honor had been demonstrated, then peace or at least some form of truce could be negotiated. These tribal duels or ritualized forms of fighting were not in any way similar to medieval tournaments. They were not sportsmanlike competitions to show off; they were deadly engagements with the intention of inflicting deadly consequences on the members of their opposition, and any failure to secure a return of their honor would lead to a state of total war. When a sense of satisfaction was realized by either or both sides, a truce to the fighting could be called, creating a relative state of peace. During the course of a day’s fighting, there would be several skirmishes lasting from 30 to 45 minutes followed by periods of resting, regrouping, and strategizing. In respect to the length of fighting, battles during the ritual warfare cycle normally do not last more than three months and occur only on their stipulated battlefields. During this time, each side keeps tally of the number of killings, and, as Larson has observed, they “do not declare truces until losses suffered by the contenders are equal or nearly equal. Organized, ritual warfare, thus, is a device to bring order out of political chaos; a means whereby settlement of unbounded and unpredictable local feuding is shifted from the community or alliance to the whole valley” (1987:246). If the score in a ritual warfare phase becomes too imbalanced, one side may also choose to engage in sneak attacks or ambushes in a desperate attempt to even the death counts.

Non-ritual Warfare (Total Warfare) If the ritual stage of war only led to an increase in mortality rates for one side over another, or if the prospects for peace were not good, an alliance of confederations might be formed and a major battle planned. The goal of this stage of warfare was to pacify dangerous neighbors by annihilating them, expelling them from their land, or intimidating them. This form of warfare was described to me as being a “blind man’s battle” (enegen mbuk) in which an attacking party sought to shoot anyone they came upon including men, women, or children. After the slaughter or

70

D. Hayward

expulsion of its residents, villages were burned to the ground, pigs were killed, gardens are destroyed, and goods were plundered. The vanquished, having been fully humiliated, usually had no choice but to flee. If they remained, they would face short-term hunger and likely long-term famine as they sought to rebuild their lives. Larson’s study documented that during the period of his 70-year history of warfare among the Ilaga Valley Dani, total warfare broke out only twice. The first of these was in the 1940s, and the second was in 1955 (1987:271ff).2

The Path to Peace Preventing War One of the best ways to address the problem of war is to create a climate that maximizes the benefits that come with peace. One of the benefits of peace is the ability to promote marriages between patrilineages in neighboring confederations. Another possible benefit for peace accrued through the formation of trading partnerships and reciprocal gift-giving. Sahlins (1963)  articulated this principle of living at peace with such individuals as noted earlier (See also Mauss 2000). Thirdly, community peace could help to support shared ritual feasting in which the ancestors are honored, the favor of spirits is invoked, and marriages are arranged. A fourth community-­ building benefit engendered by peace was being able to form work parties to build new gardens or to rebuild the residences of a hamlet. These social and economic networks may not always stop warfare as Otterbein (2009) has noted, but in such tightly knit communities, when disputes broke out, stronger social pressures were brought on by kinsmen who would quickly came to the support of the parties involved and inasmuch as possible sought to make quick compensation payments for any injuries, slights, or losses experienced in order to preserve the benefits of the peace. It was only the failure to honor such grievances that provoked an escalation of the level of violence leading to an outbreak of war.

2  During the 1955 war in the Ilaga Valley, total warfare broke out between warring parties leading to the death of 135 people. This devastation was so unusual that the Ilaga Valley Dani created a memorial to the dead by placing that many stones in a line alongside the trail between the North Baliem and the Ilaga Valley. Another instance of total war was probably evidenced by the fact that Heider records that in the Dugum region during a large battle on June 4, 1966, about 125 people were killed (1979:112).

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

71

Bringing an End to War When leaders of a war believe that there is an equal or near equal death tally between sides, or after they have demonstrated their ability to earn the respect and dignity of their opposition by engaging in violence, they can then call for a truce. With the calling for a truce, the Dani engage in a lengthy process of de-escalation of hostilities through a three-cycle series of feasting and compensation payments.

Traditional Peace Agreements Approximately one month after establishing a truce, the Dani would celebrate with a “distribution of dead birds” (towe warak tumbukwi). Dead warriors were known as dead birds, and at this feast they were memorialized and honored. The feathered head dresses of the fallen along with the pigs they owned were distributed by the fight captain (ndugore) to his chief supporters, who, upon receiving these items, accepted the responsibility for making a subsequent axe-pig (ye-wam) indemnity payment. The second payment was made eight or nine months after a truce, during which time the owners of the war (i.e., the fight captain (dugore) along with his lieutenants or confederacy leaders) provided perhaps 70 or more pigs to be slaughtered and distributed to confederacy leaders and their people as compensation for wounds suffered by their fighters. This feast was called “paying for the war” (wim anep yakwi). The third war payment was made perhaps a year or more later and was known as the axe-pig (ye-wam) indemnification ceremony. On this occasion, payments were made to the relatives of men slain in the war and could include from 43–60 pigs per victim, plus strings of cowrie shells, axe heads, and blocks of ash salt. The final payment marking the close of the ritual phase of a war was the killing of a “peace pig.” This ceremony was delayed until most of indemnification payments had been made. During the ceremony, a representative from both sides of the conflict would come together under an archway of peace. They would kill and cook a small pig during which time they would talk about the evils of war and the evil of the behaviors that brought on conflict. In one description of this ceremony, I was told that the men were even asked to chew on a bitter uncooked taro root as a reminder that war was bitter, hard to swallow, and not good to live on. Under fuller analysis, war is an expensive endeavor. During a period of war, gardens are neglected and often trampled. Villages of the vanquished are burned, trade is curtailed, and wounded warriors are laid up for days and weeks as they recover. The cost in pigs is horrendous. Larson discovered that 300 pigs were offered to the ancestors as sacrifices during the 1977 war. Then at the end of the war, each of the three de-escalation payments required more pigs to be paid. In the first round, only a dozen or so pigs were paid, but in compensation for wounds received the second round involved 80–100 more pigs. Then in the third and final round,

72

D. Hayward

indemnification payments had to be made to the families of those killed. These consisted of 43 live pigs per victim for a total of about 1030 pigs (1987:303), which was less than the ideal payment which should have been 60 pigs, 30 long strings of cowrie shells, 10 axes, and several high value cowrie shells (1987:303). Responsibilities for making these payments, not surprisingly, fell most heavily upon those parties most responsible for the disputes leading to warfare (1987:291). Added to these costs of war is the suffering of the wounded and killed. Based upon his analysis of the 1977 war (17th war), Larson discovered that out of 1299 combatants (three out of four adult males), 355 were wounded and 12 were killed (out of a total population of 2219 people in the warring confederations). That is, almost a quarter of the male population were wounded or killed in this one battle. Furthermore, given that Dani warfare patterns indicated that on average ritual warfare broke out every four years, there was a high probability that during the course of any man’s fighting years (15–35) a warrior could be active in up to five wars and as a consequence would be exposed to wounding and possible death multiple times. Given the high cost of waging war both in number of lives sacrificed, pigs killed to satisfy combatants, and long periods of suffering by the wounded, it would seem that simply seeking to avenge someone’s death by inflicting death on a combatant is not a satisfactory answer to the goal of warfare. Trying to even the score would result in perhaps a dozen more deaths. A better answer, it seems to me, is that the Dani go to war in order to reestablished respect, honor, dignity, and perhaps a bit of fear in the hearts of anyone considering acts of aggression or disrespect toward their patrilineage or confederation. The loss of respect, then, becomes the driving force for going to war and paying the consequences of a war.

Third-Party Peace Movement Initiatives With the arrival of missionaries starting in 1958 and continuing until the present, along with the establishment and growth of government posts throughout the Western Dani regions, the motivations for engaging in warfare were challenged and even transferred to police and military forces. For their part, the missionaries encouraged peace by teaching, preaching, and promising a better life, while the Indonesian administration threatened the use of force and their own use of violence. As part of the peacemaking initiatives the missionaries sought to address perhaps the most critical source of conflict, namely, the matter of making indemnification payments for past deaths and compensation payments for past offenses. At every ye-wam ceremony, more demands were made than could be paid. As already noted earlier by Larson in the 1977 war, only 43 pigs were paid as indemnification of war dead instead of the usual 60 pigs. Not all of these pigs could be collected at the time of the ceremony, so families were put under a future obligation to make those payments. In fact, during the 24 indemnification payments made at the end of the 1977 war, Larson notes that perhaps one-third of the payments were for previous wars that were still unpaid (1997:308). As one Dani confederacy leader told me, at the

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

73

end of some ye-wam payment ceremonies “we would leave heavy of heart because we still had huge payments to be made to fulfill our obligations.” As such, during periods of rising tensions between communities, unpaid indemnification payments were often remembered and added to the lists of grievances that became the justification for further fighting to break out. These unpaid indemnification payments or unpaid bridewealth payments could actually extend back to a previous generation, or even two generations, and may have been mostly forgotten but could resurface quite unexpectedly. Thus, one of the important steps made by the confederacy leaders in the Mulia Valley in order to ensure future peace was to identify all unpaid indemnification, bridewealth, or other compensation payments and to assign payments to the appropriate parties. Further, under the innovative suggestion of the missionaries, all unpaid obligations had to be identified at this time. If any additional claims that may have been forgotten were later remembered, such claims could not be newly claimed if they were from deaths or claims that were more than five years old. This five-year moratorium on claims was an effective resolution to the sometimes simmering resentment and possible excuses for renewing old hostilities. Another decisive step toward making peace came with the burning of their war arrows, their war magic objects, and the entirety of whatever other magical paraphernalia owned by all the members of each of the five confederacies.3 The first of these ceremonies at Mulia took place on February 5, 1961. (For a fuller description of the events of that day see Hayward 1997:167ff & 204ff.) Not all religious paraphernalia was burned that first day as some magical paraphernalia was held back just in case fresh warfare broke out and war magic needed to be performed again or if there was any other evidence of angered ancestral spirits.4 Over a period of several

3  The practice of burning religious paraphernalia at the time of conversion is an ancient practice with its origins in the ministry of St. Paul during his time of ministry in Ephesus (see Acts, chap. 19). The point of the burnings was to ensure that new converts were indeed making a full break from their past, giving their full allegiance to their new faith, and making a return to that past more difficult. It is a practice that has been severely criticized by anthropologists and which has indeed sometimes been marred by the zealotry of new converts. 4  As a prime example of the anxieties and events that surrounded this event during a time of growing tensions between confederations in the Ilu Valley, one fight leader (dugore) sent his preteen son to live among relatives in the North Baliem during a pending period of conflict. While he was there, the people of the North Baliem Valley decided to burn their magical paraphernalia under the urging of a party of new Christians from the Ilaga Valley who came through their region in 1960. During this burning ceremony, this young lad was invited to do the honors by setting the massed collection on fire. Later that night while he was in the men’s house trying to sleep but restless from the excitement of the day, he overheard two village elders discussing the day’s events. One of them asked the other what would they do if calamity fell upon them from angered ancestors or if their enemies decided to break the peace and declared war. The first elder then replied that in such an event they would break out their remaining hidden war paraphernalia, would inform the spirits that the burnings had been done by an uninitiated boy who would accordingly be killed, and then would renew their ties to the offended spirits. Upon hearing this word, the young lad whose name was Puba waited a while longer and then, under the pretext of having to urinate, went outside and ran all night long fleeing back to his home in the Ilu Valley where he began to forge a new life working as

74

D. Hayward

more weeks and the continuation of the peace, all (or almost all) magical paraphernalia was destroyed in successive ceremonies, and the mass conversion of the Western Dani to Christianity commenced in full swing. While conversion to Christianity brought many changes to Dani culture, it was not fully successful in stopping all wars. As chronicled by Larson, at least three more wars broke out in the Ilaga Valley following the first burning of magical paraphernalia ceremony, first in 1962, then again in 1974 and 1977. In the Mulia Valley, no additional wars broke out following the 1961 burnings there, but warfare in both Valleys changed very dramatically with the coming of Christianity. Government stations were now being built in both places so that, if conflicts escalated to the point of warfare, there were first the exhortations of church leaders to confine the conflict to smaller numbers of aggrieved parties and, if formal fighting did break out, police and military units could be called in to put an end to the conflict. Slowly, the Western Dani were entering a whole new era in their history—the period of Pax Indonesia— wherein local tensions were now becoming fused with national interests, and with increasing regularity Indonesian patrols brutally enforced the right of the state to punish wrongdoers, thereby putting an end to the tribal state of “warre.”5

Conclusion and Implications Based upon this review of Dani warfare, let me now summarize my findings and reflect on their implications for the study of warfare in stateless societies. I will do this by asking and answering four questions: (1) why the Dani fight, (2) how often they fight, (3) how they pursue peace, and (4) what these studies teach us about war and peace within webs of violence. 1. Why do the Dani fight? (a) They live in a state of “warre” wherein every man is prepared to defend himself, his family, his village, and his allies against the aggression or wrongful behavior of others. It would be a mistake, though, to conclude that the Dani are naturally aggressive and live in a constant state of conflict. They are not a prime example of people living in a Hobbesian world of violence; rather, they are perhaps closer to what Heider calls “peaceful warriors”

a helper to the newly arrived missionary to Ilu, fully believing he had no future with the spirits of his ancestors. 5  With the increased presence of Indonesian police and military personnel, the earlier capacity of the Dani to address grievances through traditional patterns of fighting has come to an end. Any attempts by Dani warriors to redress grievances or to assert their autonomy in the pursuit of justice and dignity with weapons is assumed by the military to be an act of rebellion by the state and is brutally put down by reprisal raids of annihilation by the military. The current price of peace for the Western Dani is their loss of autonomy and their subject status to the overwhelming power of the state.

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

75

(1979) in that they are continually ready to deter aggression but do not seek it. (b) Every individual could be subject to aggression or wrongful actions due to negligence, accident, membership in a patriclan that has been accused of wrongful actions, personal violation of social norms, or by the unfair and unjust loss of someone’s personal rights or property. (c) Failure to respond to the aggression or wrongful actions of others (i.e., retaliation) would result in a loss of prestige, further weakening of one’s right to assert one’s own claims to reparations, compensations, or other social and financial obligations. Furthermore, such failure to retaliate would also result in loss of social status and communal support in regional activities; accordingly, it would be believed that even the ancestors would be angered and withdraw support for such failures. (In this respect, Heider claims the Dugum Dani fight to appease the ancestors, but this is not as apparent a motivation among the Western Dani.) Aggressive responses to wrongful actions served as a form of folk justice and were guided by the same principles of reciprocity that guided economic and other social behaviors. It is possible to suggest that an imbalance of power due to the failure to pursue indemnification payments or other compensation payments would lead to a loss of prestige and honor that would then be perceived as inequality between competing leaders or patriclans. (Ploeg uses the term “autonomy” to describe the Dani motivation to fight for respect and honor (1969).) (d) The Dani would not fight for land, plunder, women, or subjugation of others, even though these do accompany Dani warfare. This is in stark contrast to Meggitt’s argument that the Mae Enga of Papua New Guinea fight primarily for land (1977). Rather, the Dani would fight in order to be able to ensure the maintenance of social order and the pursuit of life with dignity. They would fight to avenge their honor and to revenge their dead. Fighting in order to sustain dignity and honor rarely shows up in discussions regarding the origins for warfare. (See especially Diamond 2012:157ff.) (e) If a nonlethal confrontation breaks out between members of a confederation, it could lead to arguments, brawls, or stick/stone fights, and these could be resolved with compensation payments as a way of acknowledging the wrong done and in order to keep the peace. It could also lead to people moving away from troublemakers and starting new hamlets somewhere else. (f) However, confrontations resulting in major insults or the loss of life could lead to vengeance killings and even war. Such wars sought to avenge the death of one’s own patrilineage required members of a confederation to create wartime alliances with other confederations, and the goal of the war was to fight until each side had experienced an equal or near equal number of slain warriors, thereby restoring honor or at least respect. Death tolls during periods of ritual warfare ranged from 7 to 48 with the average number being 23.8 persons. (g) The primary goal of warfare was the restoral of respect and dignity to an offended party (and his allies) based upon the principle that a life must be

76

D. Hayward

given for a life. If the loss of a life was from an enemy confederation, then it must be the life of a member of that confederation. In addition to that act of revenge, an additional payment for the loss of life must be made to the families of those who died in battle seeking that revenge. This payment must be made by the leaders of the confederation to their own allies. (h) When warfare did break out, it was never a single issue that provoked it; rather, there were always multiple sources that were the product of rising tensions over months between belligerent confederations with increasingly offensive behaviors between patrilineages. (i) When the Dani would go to war, they would seek to limit its effects by fighting under controlled circumstances, focusing on the need to bring revenge for the loss of life or the restoral of honor for egregious actions of disrespect (e.g., wife stealing, failure to make indemnification payments, etc.). I have described the Dani practice of what we are calling “ritual warfare” as “tribal dueling,” but this stretches Otterbein’s definition of dueling as the act of restoring honor between individuals rather than kinship groups (2009:46). However, it does fit with his attempt to describe a closed warfare system (i.e., as conflicts that are bounded and isolated to polities that are culturally similar) and with the battles he describes as resembling duels (2009:87). In point of fact, differentiating between feuding, warfare, and internal warfare is always a difficult task. (j) Individually, the Dani would not fight in order to develop reputations for being killers or as a necessary requirement to rise to “big man” status. While a coward could never become a big man because he could not attract others to ally themselves to him, a good warrior and military strategist could rise to become a fight captain or alliance leader during a time of war. Nevertheless, true long-term leadership required men who were proficient in the art of peace by their acts of generosity, persuasiveness in decision making, knowledge in matters of ritual, and who could best insure the well-being of the community. Such leaders had to be men who could restore peace and resolve conflicts, not make more trouble by killing more people and escalating retaliatory killings. (k) Population density does play a role in Dani warfare. As Larson has recorded for the Ilaga Valley Western Dani and as I observed among the Mulia Dani, the most recent immigrants to these two areas came from the more highly populated regions in the Upper Baliem region. They came to the Ilaga and to Mulia because of kinship ties in these regions and because both areas were more slightly populated. This westward migration of the Dani into less settled areas has been going on for generations, and in each instance their increased presence has led to two results. They have built villages and gardens in formerly unpopulated regions, and they have pushed members of other tribes to move further away (usually west and north) during times of conflict. In the Ilaga Valley, this influx applied a constant pressure on the Damal population to move away from the more numerous and powerful Dani, surrendering significant portions of the Ilaga Valley (see especially

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

77

Larson 1987:322ff). For the Mulia Dani, this meant pushing the Wano and the Duvele peoples further North.6 2. How often do the Dani fight? (a) Because the Dani live in a state of “warre,” they live in a state of constant vigilance against the ever-present prospect of aggression. Peace, therefore, is a relative state marked by lesser incidences of aggression. (b) Times of so-called peace are marked by low levels of aggression and have been known to last for 18 months and then followed by another period of similar duration marked by rising levels of tension. (c) Formal warfare among the Ilaga Dani has occurred over the past 70 years on the average of every four years, with formal fighting lasting for three to four months. (d) Extreme violence leading to total warfare has only occurred two or three times in the past 70 years, and each time the level of aggression between warring confederations made peace untenable, requiring the dispersal or annihilation of the enemy. 3. How do the Dani make peace? (a) Utilizing a segmentary system of social organization, social order would be maintained by resolving conflicts of interest first at the hamlet level and then, if larger than the members of a hamlet, at the parish level. If the conflict is still larger, it would be managed at the confederation level. Most conflicts at these levels would be resolved through compensation payments and the restoral of peace through reconciliation or, if necessary, fissuring of the village and the movement of portions of the population to another area. (b) When war would break out, fight captains (i.e., alliance leaders) would seek to control the losses by restricting fighting to mutually agreed upon times and places. When losses would reach a relative parity of 10–15 deaths on each side, both sides would agree to a truce, leading to peace (or at least to a cessation of hostilities). (c) A truce could be negotiated when the following conditions obtained: (i) The need for revenge has been satisfied; that is, the number of deaths on each side must be nearly equal to satisfy the urge for revenge. (ii) The aggrieved party has reestablished respect, honor, dignity, and perhaps a bit of fear in the hearts of anyone considering acts of aggression or disrespect toward their patrilineage or confederation. It would appear that 10–12 deaths per side would be an acceptable sacrifice to preserve honor.

6  I have only oral evidences for this claim based upon accounts by members of both tribes that claimed that at one time they once lived in the highlands but moved into the foothills and lowlands to escape the pressure of migrating Dani.

78

D. Hayward

(d) If a balance in deaths could not be achieved or if a belligerent alliance lost its support base, then the threat of protracted warfare would seem to be inevitable. Then the only way to end war would be to drive the losing faction out of the area, leaving their land empty and barren and vulnerable to repopulation in coming years. (e) Satisfaction for wounds and deaths in warfare would be achieved through a complex system of indemnification payments made by members of an alliance to their own members for their pain and losses in their attempts to secure peace, justice, revenge, and jural satisfaction for the actions of their own and other people’s behaviors. (f) Peace through a third-party intervention would be achieved when the Dani were persuaded to pursue peace in return for the promises of a better life as presented by the missionaries and later on by the forceful use of violence by the military. (g) Peace between virtually every confederation throughout the Western Dani regions was attained when all sides agreed to forgo further retaliatory fighting and then demonstrated this choice by publically burning their sacred arrows and other war-related magical paraphernalia in successive stages as the peace held. 4. What can the Dani teach us about war and peace within webs of violence? (a) According to Otterbein (2009), Dani fighting would fall into what he calls conflicts waged by Fraternal Interest Groups (2009:24). Further, he places them in a category he calls internal war in that the fighting is primarily between members who share the same language and culture. Nevertheless, he does classify such conflicts as war. (b) Otterbein’s conclusion that Dani fighting is indeed war raises the question of whether Dani warfare can really be considered war. Based upon the increased consensus of warfare studies and my own studies of patterns of conflict resolution, I would define warfare as the collective action of one group against another to engage in collective violence for the purpose of (1) redressing an offense (usually the taking of a life) by one or more members of the offending group under the principle of social substitution whereby responsibility for the offense can be transferred to any or all members of the whole group, or (2) managing another group who are perceived to be a significant threat to the well-being of their own ongoing existence, or (3) violently taking control of their territory, goods, or resources. By this definition warfare is more than a feud or an act of revenge. Dani warfare is the ultimate result that follows constrained attempts to satisfy the need for justice and respect following demands for compensation payments and even tribal dueling against unresponsive neighbors. (c) In stateless societies such as the Western Dani, there was little need to seize land, women, or goods from a neighbor. The primary motivation for war was to redress (1) insults resulting from the failure of others to fulfill previously agreed upon obligations (i.e., balanced reciprocity, indemnification

Seeking Justice, Preserving Honor: War and Peace Among the Western Dani

79

p­ ayments, compensation payments, bridewealth sharing), (2) the behavior of others violating someone’s rights (i.e., theft, adultery, injury, loss of life), or (3) the threat to their overall sense of well-being, self-esteem, or dignity. (d) When offensive behaviors would occur, negative sanctions would kick in to redress the problem and hopefully control future behaviors. The nature of those negative sanctions will vary in intensity appropriate to the offense. Guiding the use of negative sanctions is a sense of justice that seeks (1) to compensate the injured parties for their pain or loss, (2) to facilitate reconciliation between parties, (3) to promote appropriate social behaviors by every member of the community, (4) to exact revenge upon hostile or belligerent individuals, and (5) to project an aura of respect and even intimidation toward anyone who might consider engaging in hostile action toward another. (e) The Dani experience with war affirms the conclusion made by Keeley (1996:175) that “primitive warfare is simply total war conducted with very limited means.” (f) Peace in stateless societies can be achieved if the threat of warfare can be eliminated by a more compelling reason to live in peace, if the cost of further fighting is too great, if respect and dignity can be extended to one another, and if there is compelling evidence of de-escalation in preparation for war. In the final analysis, the Dani experience with warfare and webs of violence ought to suggest a greater interest in future studies regarding the desire for respect and honor between belligerents as a motivation for aggression.

References Bromley, Myron. 1972. The Grammar of Lower Grand Valley Dani in Discourse Perspective. Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Anthropology, Yale University. Diamond, Jared. 2012. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? New York: Viking Penguin Press. Gardner, Robert. 2004. Dead Birds. Cambridge, MA: A Film available through Film Study Center. Hayward, Douglas. 1997. Vernacular Christianity Among the Mulia Dani. New York: University Press of America. Heider, Karl. 1970. The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture in the Highlands of West New Guinea. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. ———. 1979. Grand Valley Dani: Peaceful Warriors. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Hobbes, Thomas. 1651/1982. Leviathan. New York: Penguin Classic. Keeley, Lawrence. 1996. War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. New York: Oxford University Press. Kelly, Raymond. 2000. Warless Societies and the Origins of War. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Larson, Gordon. 1987. The Structure and Demography of the Cycle of Warfare Among the Ilaga Dani of Irian Jaya. Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Mauss, Marcel. 1954/2000. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton.

80

D. Hayward

Meggitt, Mervyn. 1977. Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare Among the Mae Enga Tribesmen of the New Guinea Highlands. Palo Alto: Mayfield Publishing Company. O’Brien, Denise. 1969. The Economics of Dani Marriage: An analysis of Marriage Payments in a Highland New Guinea Society. Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University. Otterbein, Keith. 2004. How War Began. College Station: Texas A & M University Press. ———. 2009. The Anthropology of War. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Ploeg, Anton. 1969. Government in Wanggulam. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Sahlins, Marshall. 1963. Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (3): 285–302. ———. 1968. Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Douglas Hayward is a professor emeritus of Anthropology and Intercultural Studies at Biola University. He was a missionary-anthropologist for 20 years among the highlands Dani people in Papua, Indonesia. His responsibilities included community liaison officer, community development coordinator, leadership training, and program supervision. He has written three books on the Dani people, plus numerous journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and chapters in books on anthropological and missiological topics. He teaches classes in anthropology, folk religion, contextualization, ethics, new religious movements, and spiritual formation.  

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment and Agency in the City of Manaus, Brazil Ana Luiza M. Soares

For the anthropologist, Manaus is a singular city in many ways. Located in the state of Amazonas1 in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, Manaus is one of Brazil’s largest cities and boasts more than two million inhabitants. The Amazon has a clear international value, but the relationship between forest and city is complex. The forest’s products have contributed value to the national and international economy, but this commodification of the forest’s products is accompanied by a marginalization of the forest’s inhabitants. This dichotomy between forest products and the “forest inhabitants” is enshrined in national history. The majority of economic activities carried out in the Amazon came with a history of exploitation and abuse of Indigenous labor. In addition to working on the farms and other projects of the Jesuit, Carmelite, and Capuchin missionary camps, the Indigenous people comprised the main labor force for the extraction of “drogas do sertão”2 and construction of the forts along the Amazon region (Cardoso 2018:52). However, it is the rubber economy that deeply marks the history of the Amazon and the Indigenous communities from the late nineteenth century onwards. The importance of rubber in 1  After 1850, the Province of Amazonas was emancipated from the Province of Grão-Pará, and in 1856 Manaus became the capital of the Province of Amazonas. With the establishment of the Brazilian Republic in 1889, it became the Brazilian state of Amazonas, and Manaus remained as capital. 2  “Drogas do sertão” can be roughly translated as “backcountry drugs.” This term was used in Colonial Brazil to refer to Brazilian products that were exported to Europe as spices and medicines. This economic activity required penetration into the forest which made Indigenous workers ideal. The “drugs” consisted mostly of plants, herbs, cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, pepper, pau-cravo, urucum, Brazil nuts, and guaraná (Barbosa 2013:2).

A. L. M. Soares (*) Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_6

81

82

A. L. M. Soares

the international market in the nineteenth century brought fortune to the region. All this opulence had its greatest effect in Manaus, capital of the Province of Amazonas, transforming a little village into a modern city (Monteiro 1994; Reis 1999). During the years of urban splendor in Manaus, banks and export houses financed the expansion of rubber production to the most remote areas of the Amazon rainforest (Reis 1999; Loureiro 1989; Monteiro 1994). These were areas that were previously exclusively inhabited by Indigenous people in situations of relative isolation and autonomy from the expanding colonial state of Brazil (Oliveira Filho and Freire 2006; Oliveira Filho 1979, 2012). It was during this period when the conquest of the Province of Amazonas really took place (Oliveira Filho 1979). The consequent violence in the interior of the province caused many Indigenous people to flee to Manaus and other villages and cities in Brazil and Colombia (Oliveira Filho 1979:111–12). However, traditional academic history does not mention the presence of Indigenous people in Manaus. The Provincial Presidential Reports often mentioned the lack of workers in the city and urged the civilizing of the Indigenous people to fill that gap. In records from the 1870s, it is common to see mentions of Indigenous people as workers (mainly in construction) as well as school students and culprits in crime reports (Provincial Presidential Reports 1871, 1875). Moreover, travelers’ accounts of the mid-nineteenth century often described Indigenous traders who seasonally brought products from the interior of the province to trade in the city or Indigenous inhabitants of Manaus who frightened travelers by swimming naked in the city’s water streams (Bates 1863:61; Agassiz and Agassiz 1868:154). At the same time that the exploitation of the interior coerced Indigenous people to work in public construction and confined their children in boarding schools, some of them were able to use the city seasonally as they pleased. Manaus’ growth rate in the late nineteenth century was impressive. In 1870 the population was about 5000 inhabitants; in 1890 it registered 20,568 inhabitants, rapidly increasing to 30,757  in 1900 and to 60,000  in 1907 (Melo and Moura 1990:35–36). Brazil’s 1872 general census shows a population of 36,828 caboclos3 and 7226 pardos in the Amazonas Province, categories associated with Indigenous people or people of mixed ancestry between white, Indigenous people, and Black. These numbers considered only the free population: there were also 979 enslaved people in Amazonas, of whom 372 were considered pardos and 607 were Black (IBGE, General Census of 1872). There were many impediments to an efficient demographic survey in the province: lack of trained census personnel, long distances, poor access to settlements, and flight of residents who feared that the census was merely a pretext for recruiting workers (Sampaio 2014:26–27). All these difficulties generated dubious census data. Although there is a lack of reliability in census data, it is possible to say based on travelers’ accounts that—at least between 1870 and 1890—a great part of the population of Manaus was still composed of Indigenous peoples. However, Amazonas’ provincial presidents and governors often ignored the presence of Indigenous peoples and their role in building the city

 Pejorative term for mestizos (those of mixed race) with Indigenous origin

3

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

83

and its economy when writing their reports. Although government reports and traditional history failed to mention the participation of Indigenous people as the basis of Manaus’ workforce or even their presence as residents in the city, the newspapers, school reports, and judicial archives contradict these omissions. This chapter seeks to trace the process of control and invisibilization—the effect of modernization principles that erased the “undesirables” of Manaus from its streets and its history—and the assimilation of Indigenous communities into the population of Manaus between 1870 and 1910. This research illustrates the analysis of systemic violence that permeates a culture and produces what some researchers have termed a “web of violence” (Turpin and Kurtz 1997). In so doing, it uncovers what motivated this enforced invisibility and discusses how it was different from assimilation. Although both terms apply to differential power relations in contact situations, they are fundamentally different processes. To talk about invisibility, it is necessary to perceive how the concepts of beauty and modernization, common in city-planning as influenced by European ideals in the late nineteenth century, were also part of the transformation of Manaus (Mesquita 2009:85). According to this way of thinking, achieving beauty is synonymous with eliminating what does not fit the mold of civilization. When complete elimination was not possible, invisibility sufficed. The idea of assimilation also became strengthened at the end of the nineteenth century. The early republican government largely used the motto of assimilation, whose aim was to make all citizens culturally equal. In this sense, assimilation was related to the national political effort to give cultural identity to the recent republic of Brazil as one territory, one people, one language, one culture, and one history (Almeida 2010:135). However, in practice, this effort to bring equality and unity brought instead an intensification of class and cultural differences and a pattern of associated violence which, in turn, were hidden in the civilizing project. Nonetheless, the processes of invisibilization and assimilation were a two-way road. Thus, in this negotiation, Indigenous people might have gained benefits from being either “invisible” or “assimilated,” using this invisibility as a survival strategy or a way to maintain their cultural practices in the fringes of the city. However, some historians have wrongly perpetuated this invisibility by reaffirming the state’s discourse on the absence of Indigenous people in Manaus’ Belle Époque (Reis 1999; Loureiro 1989), a fallacy that can still be seen in the textbooks today. Although I acknowledge the importance of the works of Arthur Reis, Antonio Loureiro, and Mário Ypiranga Monteiro—authors who give visibility to Manaus by highlighting its economic importance during the rubber boom—these authors tend to invisibilize or minimize the most important characters in the rubber economy: the Indigenous people. I had a conversation with a famous historian/memorialist of Manaus in which he challenged my choice of research topic, saying that there were no “Indians” in the history of the city’s Belle Époque. Surprisingly, after making that statement, he told me many personal stories of Indigenous people in Manaus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In his words, they were maids, childminders, or orphans used in big parties as sexual entertainers and so on, which, for him, was not real history but “case history.” That dialogue helps to substantiate my argument that although there have been efforts to exclude the Indigenous characters

84

A. L. M. Soares

from history, they were there. I endorse the recent endeavors of Patrícia Melo Sampaio (2003, 2007, 2014), Maria Luiza Ugarte Pinheiro (1999, 2007, 2015), and Márcio Couto Henrique (2018) to show that a “history from below” is necessary to retell the history of Manaus and Amazonia in the nineteenth century. These authors are giving visibility to the Afro-Brazilians, working class, and Indigenous people of Manaus and the Amazon in general; whether one sees them or not depends on one’s approach to the sources. There is a consensus rooted in the absence of these actors, a consensus shaped by how the discourse of power wanted to be remembered: as only the great period of glory and wealth provided by the rubber boom where there is no room for the backwardness that the Indigenous people represented. In that story, only the elites are visible. Indigenous peoples were integral to Manaus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, despite the constant denial of their presence in the city during its modernization. The retelling of the Indigenous peoples’ history in Manaus can break with the consecrated view that their place is in the forest and can challenge the continuing discomfort of writers with the theme of Indigenous people in cities. However, because of the manufactured invisibility, the main challenge in studying the history of Indigenous people in cities is the fragmented information present in the historical sources. Reading a great number and variety of historical documents is crucial to gain a perspective on Indigenous peoples’ history there. To find evidence, I analyzed different types of sources as an attempt to gather different points of views on the city in the investigated period: Provincial Presidential Reports, newspapers, travelers’ account, judicial records, and municipal codes of conduct. The Provincial Presidential Reports are excellent sources for exposing the official point of view of the state, but we cannot forget that this is a discourse aimed at demonstrating accountability. For instance, political disputes could have led to the omission of facts in the government reports. Yet the Provincial Presidential Reports highlight the invisibilization process deriving from state power. In contrast, newspapers provide a narrative of the daily life of the city in which Indigenous people appear as actors vigorously manipulating their position to secure economic gains and freedom or as victims of precarious and abusive work situations. However, as any historical source, newspapers have to be analyzed critically. In Manaus, newspapers were often partisan and belonged to the elites. The judicial archive helps in the search for micro-historical evidence of everyday life and the dynamics of individual relationships. After 1880, as the economy grew and the city got richer, Indigenous people were mentioned less frequently in the archived documents and other contemporary records. The diminishing of direct reference to Indigenous people in the sources did not mean that they disappeared, but instead it indicates the beginning of a stronger state discourse on civilization and beauty. Therefore, more diverse historical sources must be sought out to give a nuanced narrative to grasp how, despite the change in state power, Indigenous people still remained in the city after its “modernization.” For instance, newspapers complement the Provincial Presidential Reports; They show a shift in references to Indigenous people, following the change in the

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

85

indigenist policy.4 The mentions to Indigenous  people  shift from expressions of anger and justification of violence to expressions of benevolence and paternalism (which nonetheless hide the continuation of hostility). In this chapter, I analyze the process of invisibilization of the “undesirables” of the city first by looking at the circumstances under which Indigenous people appear in the sources. Second, I examine the judicial codes of conduct and determine who were their main targets. Third, I discuss the laws and regulations of the city in relation to the national indigenist policy. Fourth, I analyze how education played a role in the governmental goal of assimilating Indigenous peoples. Lastly, I present the embellishment process that involved what I am calling the invisibilization of the undesirables. Thus, this chapter seeks to analyze the mechanisms of Indigenous peoples’ invisibilization and control in Manaus during its modernization period and tries to discern the ways they maintained their presence in the city and how they actively contributed to its rise.

 anaus in the Late Nineteenth Century: Evidence M for the Presence of Indigenous People According to the Provincial Presidential Reports, from the moment that Indigenous people got into the city (willingly or unwillingly), they were categorized generically as Tapuia, rather than Tupi or another ethnonym. The dichotomy of the terms Tupi/ Tapuia was largely used in the colonial period to distinguish between Christians and pagan Indians, respectively, but these terms gained new meaning in the nineteenth century. Tupi started to be exalted in the history of the new nation, carrying the meaning of “nation builders” (Monteiro 2001:172). The idea of the Tupi as “nation builders” was based on an idealized past in which the Tupi were heroic figures who willingly subjugated themselves to the Portuguese settlers through war alliances and miscegenation to help the settlers establish themselves in the region. In addition, at the time, Nheengatu, the língua franca based on the Tupi language, was exalted as a true national language (Monteiro 2001:172). According to the intellectuals of the Brazilian Empire, the Tupi were relegated to the distant origin of the nation and would have disappeared as a people despite “contributing greatly to the genesis of the nation through miscegenation and the heritage of their language” (Monteiro 2001:172). At the opposite extreme in the thinking of the time were the Tapuia, seen as enemies and treacherous savages aligned against Brazilian

4  Indigenist policy (política indigenista) refers to “acts in benefit of Native Brazilian peoples causing deep impact on their lifestyle and everyday life.” Such acts are proposed and elaborated by different social agents in the government or not. However, “Indigenous policy” (política indígena) refers to Indigenous peoples’ actions and reactions in the face of governmental and nongovernmental policies. The “Indigenous policy adopted by the Native Brazilians themselves should not be mistaken for the indigenist policy nor is the former submitted to the latter” [Instituto Socio Ambiental–ISA, “What is Indigenist Policy?”, https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/What_is_indigenist_policy%3F (Accessed June 13, 2019)].

86

A. L. M. Soares

civilization. Therefore, Tupi vs. Tapuia became an expression of the difference between ideal and recalcitrant Indigenous people. In reading the newspapers, I found that another classificatory distinction appeared between domestic slaves and servants in Manaus (escravos and fâmulos or criados, respectively). In my analysis, this dichotomy is differentiated between Afro-Brazilians (slaves) and Indigenous people (servants). Therefore, it is possible to observe that the uses of generic categorization of Indigenous peoples, which was recurrent during the colonial period, remained as a practice during the empire and early republic. Although newspapers encapsulate a specific dominant point of view—mostly that of the elite—they also are a way to detect the presence of the Indigenous people of the city. An example of a recurrent type of comment in several issues of the newspaper O Catechista of 1871 is the note from Ms. Maria Victoria Guimaraes da Costa, warning retail stores not to accept any merchandise order that her domestic slaves or servants make in her name, except with her written authorization. In another example, an announcement issued by the establishment of Antonio Joaquim da Costa & Irmãos warns in many issues of the same newspaper that they will not sell to servants or slaves without a letter from those who sent them. The purpose of these alerts was in order to avoid incidents like the case of Mr. Firmino Antonio de Souza Coelho’s servant called Juvencio, who made a purchase in the amount of 33$180 réis (i.e., $33,180 réis, a considerable amount for the time) and then “flapped his beautiful wings”5 out of town. The case of the servant Juvencio also appears in other issues of the same newspaper (LHIA, O Catechista, Manaus, #503, June 24, 1871). With such notes, newspapers reveal the existence of actors in the city outside of the groups defined in the normative view. In the analysis of Indigenous people’s agency in Manaus, it is necessary to reject the concept of acculturation that conveys the idea of an inferior culture being suppressed by a better one. The discussion of historical agency of the disenfranchised has been used by Brazilian scholars seeking to substitute for the concept of acculturation the concepts of appropriation and cultural resignification (Almeida 2010:22). According to Maria Regina Celestino de Almeida (2010:22), the idea of cultural resignification is better suited than acculturation to studies of Indigenous interests and motivations in the processes of social change. In her view, rather than seeing Indigenous people as passive victims of cultural imposition and cultural loss, they can be seen as agents very involved in the historical process (Almeida 2010:22). Recent research has shown that in the process of contact, Indigenous people actively negotiated for themselves and purposefully adopted some elements of western culture, giving it new meaning and using it for their benefit (Almeida 2003, 2010; Monteiro 2001; Carvalho Junior 2005). This rethinking of cultural change in history allows us to perceive the dialogue between the Indigenous people of Manaus and the city authorities who often acted to curtail Indigenous behavior in public spaces.

5  “bateo em linda plumage”: literal translation of a nineteenth century’s idiomatic expression to refer to escapes. It is an analogy to the flight of swallows that fly to summer elsewhere.

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

87

Laws and legal restrictions can illuminate the situations that inspired them. Laws and codes of conduct of Manaus at the time show that the segregation of, and discrimination against, Indigenous people (and also of Blacks and mestizos) became more severe at the end of the nineteenth century in Manaus. Enforced codes of conduct were made progressively more detailed in describing socially unacceptable behavior, personal appearance, and housing. For instance, in the 1872 municipal code of conduct, the third article forbade the most common Indigenous and caboclo mode of construction in the region: houses thatched with straw. Some naturalists who passed through Manaus at the time described houses thatched with straw as characteristic of the city (Avé-Lallemant 1961; Agassiz and Agassiz 1868; Köch-­ Grunberg 2006). Simone Villanova (2008:107) argues that straw was prohibited by codes of conduct because it had been considered unsightly and unhealthy. But more important than those issues, the straw had the “sin of bringing to mind a past that one sought to forget: the Indigenous roots” (2011:107). To eliminate this “sin,” other prohibitions were established and recapitulated until the 1910 codes of conduct. For example, the codes of conduct of 1848, 1872, 1875, 1890, 1893, and 1901 forbade (Sampaio 2016) (1) bater timbó or fishing with vegetal poison; (2) hunting in the city and surrounding areas; (3) walking naked, semi-nude, or immodestly dressed; (4) the gathering of slaves, servants, and children in public places; (5) walking masked through the city; (6) bathing in igarapés (streams), except after six o’clock and with decent bathing clothes; (7) shooting a gun or arrow in the city; (8) screaming, shrieking, and running around in the streets, squares, and roads; etc. The punishments for those infractions varied from fines to time in prison. Therefore, it is evident that there were specific behaviors of a culture that the city’s government wanted to make vanish. It seems that many traditional practices in the city started to be forbidden by the end of nineteenth century. Bater timbó is a very common form of fishery in several Amazonian Indigenous populations to this day. It is an activity that usually requires communal work to collect fish en masse. Timbó is a liana vine that releases an ichthyotoxic substance. The lianas are cut into pieces that are placed in water and heavily beaten with the help of a timber until they are in shreds. The crushed liana is then shaken forcefully underwater, releasing a bluish-white substance that looks like soap flakes. The fishes become stunned from its neurotoxic effects, float to the surface, and can be easily pierced with arrows or caught with the hands (Ribeiro and Ribeiro 1986:95–96). Another common practice for children and adults in Indigenous groups is hunting for food. The codes of conduct were clear in forbidding hunting unless a license was obtained and granted to adult individuals with a residential address, but it was totally prohibited for children under 16 years old. The requirement for a formal residential address also excluded the informal residences that were forming in the outskirts of the city among new arrivals from the interior and the persecutions in the center of the city. Moreover, in the exceptional case in which one had a government license, hunting was allowed only with shotgun, dogs, and nets; the law excluded any traditional Indigenous methods such as spears, bows and arrows, clubs, traps, or snares. Only after the 1896 code was the arrow allowed for fishing.

88

A. L. M. Soares

Although the Province of Amazonas Presidential Reports is unanimous in describing the province as a peaceful and quiet place, many crimes by members of the lower classes are reported in newspapers. Tenner Inauhiny de Abreu (2012:98–99) highlights that the “underclass” of the province’s society at the time was divided into the following categories: cafuzos, caribocas, mestizos, mulattos atapuiados, Black, and brown. He analyzed the newspaper Estrella do Amazonas from 1858 to 1860 and concluded that free Africans and Tapuia often appeared in the police section with recurrent reasons for arrest, such as escapes, fights, drunkenness, or for “correction” (arbitrary arrests and occasional corporal punishment) at their guardians’ request. Similar motives for arrests appeared in the Correio do Norte in 1906. The correctional arrests are particularly interesting since they were made arbitrarily when the tutor requested and mainly refer to slaves and Indigenous servants. The Tapuia were the most frequent type of “criminal” mentioned, as they were the majority of the province population before 1880. Membership in the separatist Millenarian movement in the Province of Amazonas countryside was another recurrent cause for punishment in Manaus. In the Millenarian movement, the ethnic groups of the upper Rio Negro had merged their beliefs and practices with traditional Christian religion and forged a new religion. In explaining the movement, Robin Wright (1992:266) argues that, in the mid-­ nineteenth century, the Indigenous peoples from the upper Rio Negro (Baré, Tukano, Baniwa) “revolted at the mistreatment and exploitation of their labor by hucksters and military in the region, and aware of the long history of abuses they had been suffering, engaged in political-religious movements led by various prophets.” Wright also argues that the Millenarian movement had a “great and lasting impact among the Tukano and Arawak peoples throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth.” Manaus archives catalogue many cases in which Indigenous people were brought to work in the city’s public department as a punishment for joining the Millenarian movement. Thus, it seems that arrest and forced labor were used as methods to fight such resistance to the imposition of Brazilian rule on native people. Enclosure has an important role in a disciplinary machinery, but, as Foucault (1995:143) notes, it is not on its own sufficient to control disliked behavior. Foucault (1995:136) argues that the classical age “discovered the body as object and target of power” and, in the eighteenth century, new methods were added to those disciplinary techniques. Therefore, in addition to enclosures, the “art of distribution” and “control of activity” were added to the equation to make docile bodies (Foucault 1995:141–149). To control people’s time and space, there was an effort to distribute bodies to avoid groupings; as previously mentioned, the codes of conduct were clear in forbidding pubic gathering of slaves, servants, and children. In Manaus, functional sites based on enclosures were widely used to discipline, not only in the prisons but also in schools and hospitals where there was also a strong regulation over people’s time. The final goal of the measures was to consolidate a docile work force. Although the Indigenous populations were not the only target, the codes of conduct made clear that Indigenous behavior was not acceptable and specific institutions were created for disciplining them, as I will show further on.

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

89

Liberalist and modernist ideas of the nineteenth century redefined the issue of poverty. The old Christian principle of charity as a source of personal redemption merged with the new goal of the state: to turn the idle population into a labor force. The objective was not only to shelter the unfortunates but also to act on the destitute children as a means of avoiding their future poverty (Amaral 2011:140). In the 1800s, the world seemed to become more comprehensible through science and rationality. Therefore, birth was not anymore considered the source of the fate of an individual: instead, through work, dedication, and the use of intelligence, one could transcend one’s own condition and be responsible for one’s life—what Simon Schwartzman (2004:11) called the “individualization of destinies.” In the individualization of destinies, the subject itself is blamed for its condition, resulting in the criminalization of idleness and what would be assumed to be its consequence: poverty. This approach tends to ignore material advantages given freely to the elites but denied to the “underclasses.” With the progress of urbanization, this blame on the unfortunate individual was taken to extremes. Sidney Chaulhoub (1996:21) argues that the poorer classes of the population were targeted as dangerous in several Brazilian cities. In Manaus at the end of nineteenth century, such ideas were joined with the crucial theme of the value of beauty. According to this way of thinking, achieving beauty is synonymous with eliminating what does not fit the mold of civilization. In the context discussed above, Manaus appeared as a “vitrine” of civilization. The image of the city was not a mere reflection of the modernizing changes “but a product of the interests that society manipulates and expresses” (Mesquita 2009:85). According to Mesquita (2009:86), the embellishment of cities throughout the nineteenth century was central in public policies, not merely for esthetic reasons but for its market performance. Thus, Manaus’ configuration was being discussed and planned in order to reach an ideal market model, including features that expressed the ideals of civilization, progress, and modernity, which Mesquita (2009:86–87), inspired by Walter Benjamin, defines as “strategic embellishment.” The “strategic embellishment” was orchestrated by Manaus’s elite, who considered themselves distinct from the workers. However, neither the workers nor the elite formed a homogeneous group. Maria Luiza Pinheiro (1999:31) gives visibility to the social tensions of Manaus urban workers in the late nineteenth century. In her analysis, Pinheiro rescues Thompson’s concept of “experience,” which “retrieves the active role with which social subjects forge their own history” (Pinheiro 1999:31). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Manaus, there was not a single, unified poor/working class. Instead, there was an intense coexistence of free Africans, mestizos, and Indigenous people in the workplace, and with the arrival of northeastern migrants, the heterogeneity of the working class increased, and some rivalries arose. Pinheiro (1999:29) also highlights plurality in the elite, arguing, for example, that including newspaper publishers in a single ruling class would be simplistic. Moreover, many Europeans with diverse economic status arrived in Manaus after 1880, mainly British and Portuguese settlers. This heterogeneous elite of Manaus’s society seemed to agree on the discourse on charity. After 1880, a number of philanthropic institutions were founded in Manaus: educational

90

A. L. M. Soares

institutions, asylums, Holy House of Mercy Hospitals, charitable societies, support groups, and more. All those institutions were focused on the poor and “idle.” Nevertheless, the Holy House of Mercy Hospitals and educational institutions were the central institutions whose work tended to invisibilize Indigenous and other unwanted people of society. Amaral Lapa (2008:50) argues that Holy House of Mercy worked in collaboration with asylums and the police in achieving the arrest and confinement of the needy, in effect recovering them from freedom and making them less visible. In Manaus, the activities of the Holy House in conjunction with the police were reported in Correio do Norte in two columns called “Holy House” and “From the Police.” The first column reported the names of people confined in the asylum and in the Holy House Hospital, while the second one documented police-related arrest records and also regularly mentioned the names of those sent to the Holy House. It is telling and poignant that the news of the sick indigents was combined with reports on detainees. On January 27, 1906, it was reported in the Correio do Norte that “they picked up for the Holy House of Mercy the indigent Antonio Bruno and the correctional inmate Quintino Antonio dos Santos, arrested on order of a deputy mayor.” These ambiguous causes for arrest highlight the dubious role of the Holy House Hospitals. The reasons for the arrests are rarely explicit, but I observe that the mention of unemployment often supplies further explanation seemingly intended to explain the reason for arrest in terms of vagrancy.

Indigenist Policy in the Nineteenth Century The Pombal Directorate6 (Diretório Pombalino) of 1757, the Royal Edict (Carta Régia) of 1798, and the Missions Regulation (Regulamento das Missões) of 1845 attempted to forge a uniform indigenist policy to regulate Indigenous labor and culture of civilization. Brazilian independence from Portugal in 1822 brought a host of contradictions: a new constitution of liberal slant was introduced in 1824, but slavery and the forced exploitation of Indigenous people continued. Furthermore, in the process of gaining independence, new ideas about Indigenous people arose among the intellectuals of the empire. Oliveira and Freire (2006:69) argue that the practices and administrative instruments used to govern Indigenous people(s) were defined very slowly. Furthermore, they assert that, at the time, there was little

6  Or Indigenous Directorate. “The mid eighteenth century was marked by a major concern of the Portuguese crown with the reform and improvement of state and administrative apparatus, a fact that had spread to the colonies…. A policy of strict secularization of the state was established, involving the expulsion of religious orders, control of all staff in contact with Indigenous people, and confiscation of Indigenous properties. (...) Inspired by the principles of the Enlightenment, the Marquis of Pombal pursued the objective of separation between the state and the Church, avoiding discrimination against Marranos (New Christians) and limiting acts of faith processes” (Oliveira and Freire 2006:70).

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

91

perception of discontinuity between the assimilationist policy of the Directorate and the gradual return of missionaries to the status of “administrators of the Indians.” Almeida (2010:141) argues that the extinction of the Directorate by the Royal Edict of 1798 did not prevent its guidelines from remaining in force during the nineteenth century. The Directorate (1757), the Indian Freedom Act7 (Lei de Liberdade dos Índios, 1755), and the Marriage Act8 (Lei de Casamentos, 1755) combined to further the extent to which the Indigenous peoples’ assimilation appeared as a major political goal (Almeida 2010:111). Almeida (2010:111) notes that the state ceased to prohibit the presence of white people in the old Indigenous villages, some of which were growing at this time into full-fledged towns, and instead encouraged their presence as a way to civilize the Indigenous people. At the beginning, the Directorate established that “Indian principals” (principais9) ruled the old Indigenous villages, but the assumption that the Indigenous people were unsuited to rule resulted in the insertion of a Director with proficiency in an Indigenous language. In villages, therefore, Indigenous peoples would be ruled by judges and councilors, not by missionaries: a change that put Indigenous people on an equal footing as other citizens from a formal point of view. Hence, some historiographical sources speak of “Indian emancipation,” but this is a misleading euphemism that obscures many harmful aspects of the colonizing model employed by the Directorate (Oliveira and Freire 2006:70–71). In practice, the policy to “emancipate” and settle Indigenous peoples in these new towns accomplished the task of turning them into a trained workforce and removing them from large tracts of forest land. Oliveira and Freire (2006:74) argue that until the end of the nineteenth century, the indigenist policy aimed to concentrate and sedentarize the Indigenous peoples in order to make them productive workers for the state. The indigenist policy placed great emphasis on the intermixing of “Indians and non-Indians” (Almeida 2010:118). Almeida asserts that the withdrawal of the temporal power of the Jesuits and their subsequent expulsion “encouraged the presence of non-Indians in the villages and introduced them to lay administration through the Directors of Indians.” Furthermore, the idea of civilizing the Indigenous people(s) prevails over the idea of indoctrinating them. However, “if the indigenist policy of Pombal was intended to end the distinctions between Indians and non-Indians, it is exciting to see that its various forms of application were based fundamentally on the continuation of differences” (Almeida 2010:118). Another key aspect of this process is the hierarchy created by the distinction between the “principals” and the “commons” as a consequence of the ennoblement of Indigenous leaders (Almeida 2010:119). Sampaio (2007:48) explains that the consolidation of this hierarchy was made possible by the principals’ expectation of enjoying the compulsory labor of 7  The Indian Freedom Act prohibited Indigenous enslavement under any circumstances (Almeida 2010:110). 8  The Marriage Act of 1755 encouraged mestizaje giving benefits to those who married Indians especially in outlying areas. 9  Principals were Indigenous headmen in Indigenous villages established by the Directorate and comprised a hereditary native nobility (Langfur 2014:115).

92

A. L. M. Soares

other Indigenous people. Therefore, inequalities and discrimination within those Indigenous villages were preserved and consolidated with the complicity of the Indigenous people(s) who benefited from jobs and acquired privileges in the newly negotiated situation in the region. As Márcio Couto Henrique (2018: 91) observes, “even when the village initiative came from the Indians, the motivation for this had more to do with the internal dynamics of Indigenous groups than with the desire to become Christians and productive workers for the province.” Almeida (2010:121) argues that Pombal’s indigenist policy interacted dialectically with Indigenous policies that responded to it in diverse and creative ways. Sampaio (2007:53) amplifies this idea by showing that, while the Directorate established the formal procedures, it was left to the Indigenous people to assume the practical role in its implementation. Scholars disagree about the extent to which laws and regulations aimed at the Indigenous people influenced their daily life and the Indigenous agency in forging and reacting to these laws in the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The Royal Edict of 1798 put an end to the Pombal Directorate and opened to individuals the possibility of hiring Indigenous workers without intermediaries, directly negotiating employment contracts in towns and villages. Sampaio (2007:47–48) highlights the importance of the Royal Edict of 1798 to the indigenist policy of the nineteenth century and argues that the issue of labor is critical in the new law, creating an Effective Corp of Indians (Corpo Efetivo de Índios), a group of workers to be distributed through the region. On the one hand, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (1992:138) analyzes the nineteenth century Indigenous law and argues that there was a clear rupture in Brazil’s political transition, i.e., from colony to empire, as well as in the transition from the Pombal Directorate to the Royal Edict, especially when it comes to Indigenous agency. On the other hand, Sampaio (2007:41–42) argues that there was no rupture but rather that there was continuity in Indigenous agency. What seems clear from this scholarship is the governmental importance attributed to Indigenous people’s “civilization.” This governmental focus perceived in the amount of civilizing legislation during the empire was developed “between the theory cabinet and the backwoods of experience,” as John Monteiro puts it (Monteiro 2001:131). As Henrique (2018:50) notes, the missionary activities do not end following the extinction of the Pombal Directorate. The alternative measures created by the provincial presidents “dialogued with the local reality, which included a perception of indigenous peoples movements within the territorial frontier” (Henrique 2018:50). Thus, political transitions were often not strong and sudden ruptures especially considering the people’s daily life. Indigenous agency has never ceased to be present, interfering and shaping indigenist policies throughout history. The Royal Edict is usually regarded as a law of lesser importance by historians and only cited as suppressing the Directorate, but Sampaio (2003:125) disagrees. Although the Royal Edict of 1798 extinguished the distinction between vassals—all were henceforth subjected equally to the municipal council—giving a false sense of dissolution of Indigenous leaders, there actually was a reconfiguration of the role of

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

93

those leaders. Subjected to the same laws as other vassals, the “settled Indians”10 started to pursue their own individual protection mechanisms since many of their collective institutions were being progressively abolished (Cardozo et al. 2010:113). It has been argued that there was a process of individualization among “settled Indians” and consequently a “diversification of survival strategies, now designed on an individual basis” (Cardozo et  al. 2010:114). This process of individualization would be the main effect of the Royal Edict of 1798  in the aftermath of the Directorate. While the latter had allowed the maintenance of some sense of community in which individuals could interact in organized groups, consult their leaders, and take advantage of common resources and facilities, the Royal Edict terminated those possibilities (Sampaio 2003:136). However, the issue of labor was still very present in the Royal Edict, and, in the case of the Portuguese Amazon, the incorporation of Indigenous people as a labor force was on the agenda of local governments throughout the nineteenth century. Sampaio (2003:136) concludes that, in any case, when it comes to indigenist policy, it is easy to see that political transitions do not efface the continuing diversity and complexity of the reality of the region’s inhabitants. The indigenist policy of the Empire of Brazil (1822–1889) was officially enacted only in 1845. Also known as Missions Regulation, this law followed many premises of the Royal Edict of 1798. The Missions Regulation allowed the “rent” of Indigenous groups to work in municipal construction and on private properties. It held that Indigenous people should be paid and then discharged to return to their villages at the end of the work term. However, the Provincial Presidential Reports reveal numerous breaches of that practice. The Province of Amazonas Presidential Reports often denounced the exploitation of Indigenous people and presented complaints against the “Directors of Indians,” leading the then-President of Amazonas Province, Francisco José Furtado,11 to say that “the history of the Indians is the opprobrium of our civilization” (Provincial Presidential Reports, 1858:22). Although it is important to consider the caveat that the Provincial Presidential Reports were forms of speech rather than proven facts and should not be taken as objective truth, Almeida (2010:112) states that there were many revolts of the Indigenous people against the Directors and also that there were plenty of officials who supported the Indigenous people against their often-abusive employers. This is the context of the president’s remark. In addition, the Corps of Workers (Corpo de Trabalhadores12) worked in parallel with the Indian Partial Directorships (Diretorias Parciais de Índios13) to organize Indigenous labor. In one of its assignments, the Corps of Workers stated that all 10  The term refers to the “wild Indians” or those who had fled from the Indigenous villages overseen by Jesuits. 11  He was president of the Province of Amazonas from November 10, 1857, to November 24, 1860. 12  The “Corps of Workers” was in effect in the Amazon until 1862, created by the Law of 1838 of the Legislative Assembly of Pará. 13  The “Indian Partial Directorships” was formally extinct in 1866, but its effect was still noticeable up to 1875 (Santos 2007:180).

94

A. L. M. Soares

individuals who had no fixed occupation should be mandatorily engaged in these Corps, with clear reference to Blacks, mestizos, and Indigenous people, not whites. According to Carlos Moreira Neto (1988:64), this legislation was a direct result of the peasant revolt known as Cabanagem14 and revealed the elites’ fear of a new popular uprising. The Corps of Workers shows the ideological continuity, for the provincial presidents and other rulers of the Amazonas, from the earlier colonial situation to the mid-nineteenth century (Moreira Neto 1988:278; Santos 2007:181). The promulgation of the Land Law of 1850 aimed to regulate the land possessions arranged by private individuals and establish a public policy for vacant lands, inter alia. Oliveira and Freire (2006:74) argue that the Land Law was created to regulate conflicts of interest between the Brazilian state and landowners who supported the colonial system and acted to prevent modernizing anti-slavery measures. In addition, this law sped up the dispossession of the Indigenous lands. Indeed, the Land Law reduced the Indigenous land rights to no more than the territories of the Indigenous villages (aldeamentos). Oliveira and Freire (2006:76) state that “the plots of land that were demarcated for Indigenous peoples considered ‘remnants’ extended internal disintegration by disrupting the traditional division of labor of Indigenous people and subjecting them to the control of production by the regional market.” By the end of the nineteenth century, Indigenous people survived as landless laborers, called caboclos, who had to struggle to be identified as “real Indians” (Oliveira and Freire 2006:76). In the present-day state of Amazonas, during the first boom of rubber exploitation, disputes over land and Indigenous labor accelerated. Many Indigenous lands were considered to be vacant by the government so that they could quickly go into the private domain. The newspaper A Província do Amazonas of 1888 pointed out several cases of land dispute related to the issue of vacancy in its columns. For example, newspaper staff reported that in the Juruá River, Mr. Manoel Lopes Rolim illegally took possession of “vacant” land to exploit rubber, starting a dispute with Captain Saturnino Marães, who, according to the Land Law of 1850, was the legal owner of that land (LHIA, A Província do Amazonas, n.45, 25 Jan 1888). Almeida (2010:141) concludes that, during the Empire of Brazil, the land policy generated violent wars, created new Indigenous villages, and extinguished old ones. All land policy and fights over land were aimed at the same purpose: “the occupation of Indigenous lands by whites and the transformation of their inhabitants into efficient citizens and workers to serve the new state” (Almeida 2010:142). Oliveira and Freire (2006:76) argue that the Indigenous people who had newly arrived in Manaus were distributed as servants in family houses, unlike the case of Santa Catarina, where most Indigenous people were sent to work in private companies. However, my sources highlight a more varied set of destinies for Indigenous workers in Manaus. For example, the newspaper O Catechista (LHIA, n.498, 24  Cabanagem was a peasant rebellion (1835–1840) that affected much of the Brazilian Amazon. The name of the rebellion refers both to the type of shacks where the poorest people of the thenProvince of Grão-Pará lived, which were located close to streams, and to the name of their inhabitants, the cabanos (mainly mestizos and Indigenous people) (Whitehead 2014:101; Harris 2010).

14

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

95

May 1871) presents a report from the Provincial Assembly ordinary session of May 11, 1871, in which a heated discussion took place about the Province of Amazonas’ education system. In this discussion, Mr. Sergio claimed that education was abandoned in the Province and that it was not fulfilling the civilizing role for which it was intended. At one point, Mr. Sergio clashed with Mr. Tapajoz, accusing him of enslaving the 12 Indigenous men who worked in his brickyard (Olaria). Another issue of O Catechista (LHIA, n.490, 26 April 1871) denounces the poor work conditions in public construction, reporting an accident involving an Indigenous man who worked on the construction of the Matriz Church (Igreja Matriz). He fell from a scaffold and fractured his head, and, despite the serious injury he suffered, the newspaper reported that he was improving. Although these reports and several others mention various jobs carried out by Indigenous workers, the vast majority of Indigenous people of Manaus were indeed domestic servants.

Education and “Docile Bodies” To discuss Indigenous education in Manaus, it is necessary first to realize how the state regarded public instruction. Colonel Antonio Constantino Nery, governor of the state of Amazonas from 1904 to 1908, writes in his 1905 report: As the greatness of the state depends on people’s education, since the beginning of my administration I launched the view to this administrative branch, for which I dare to draw your enlightened attention. (...) Thus, when assuming the responsibilities of administration, it was my intention, which I still maintain, to further the development of public instruction, trying as much as possible to deliver it according to educational progress, which claims the threefold purpose of educating the intelligence, the heart, and the body thus forming citizens useful to themselves, to the country, and to the family. (Governmental Message, 10 July 1905, emphasis added)

Through the Missions Regulation, the imperial government had relied on missionary work to ensure the occupation of Brazilian territory. Its regulations also removed all obstacles to the action of religious functionaries and boosted the missionary activities of the Capuchins, who worked to establish new Indigenous villages in the mid-nineteenth century to civilize and catechize Indigenous peoples. Religious education involved the formal teaching of vocational activities such as mechanical crafts, agricultural practices, and military activities as part of the “civilizing” project developed by the Capuchins (Amoroso 1998:101–103). In addition, the Royal Edict attributed to Indigenous people the condition of being orphans, a precept that remained in the Missions Regulation of 1845. The Indigenous peoples’ orphan status is an interesting fact for analysis in Manaus’s modernization, given that educational institutions aimed at orphans were founded during this period. The concept of orphanhood did not have the same connotation of parental abandonment as today. Many Indigenous children were removed from the bosom of their families and forcibly brought to those institutions.

96

A. L. M. Soares

Education based on vocational training would suit the progress of the nation, and disciplining the bodies of these “orphans” would be the key strategy to reach the “threefold purpose” of education, as governor Constantino Nery stated in the aforementioned governmental message. Sidney Chalhoub (1996) shows that public health became fundamental in the urbanization of Rio de Janeiro; the same was observed in Manaus, where public instruction along with public health worked to shape the population, adapting them to “civilization.” The most important educational institutions in Manaus were the House of Teaching Crafts (Casa Educandos Artífices) and Orphan Asylum Elisa Souto (Asylo Orphanológico Elisa Souto). These institutions were a combination of orphanage and trade school meant for underprivileged children, mainly Indigenous children, to be trained for western civilization’s work routines. The House of Teaching Crafts was founded at the beginning of the establishment of the Province of Amazonas in 1856, but it remained closed for 15 years until it was reopened in 1882 with a new name: Amazonense15 Institute of Teaching Crafts (Instituto Amazonense de Educandos Artífices) (Rizzini 2004:170). The institution’s name changed again in 1894 to Institute of Arts and Crafts, and in 1908 it became Affonso Penna Institute. This institution targeted Indigenous boys, teaching them a variety of utilitarian trades: for example, shoemaker, woodworker, carpenter, turner, carver, bricklayer, tinsmith, Blacksmith, and tailor. The Orphan’s Asylum Elisa Souto, founded in 1884, was the pride of the state. It focused mostly on Indigenous girls. During Eduardo Ribeiro’s government in 1892,16 this “Asylum” became the Benjamin Constant Institute, which maintained similar functions (Amaral 2011:218). Basic education and household skills were taught there. According to Rizzini (2004:173), the preference to call these establishments “institutes” instead of “houses” or “orphanages” was a result of a slow process of diversification and specialization of the children’s care. So, in the late nineteenth century, the appearance of institutes, colonies, and agricultural or industrial schools instead of asylums, homes, and orphanages became a way to clarify the nature and purpose of the institutions: to shelter, train, or rescue (Rizzini 2004:173). The 1908 statute for the Affonso Penna Institute described its target audience: Indigenous children and children of poor Indigenous parents. In my opinion, these two categories were created to distinguish those born in the state’s countryside, who were still considered Indigenous people in the city, and the Indigenous children who were born in Manaus. The latter ceased to be considered Indigenous people but still needed “special attention of the state,” as the governors’ report testified. State laws forced the Indigenous boys in this institution to work in public construction and in the provision of furniture and appliances to government offices (State of Amazonas Laws, box 14, cab.03:45). It is important to remember that these rules focused on children from 7 to 15 years old and did not allow for free time.

 A person from or belonging to the state (or Province) of Amazonas  Eduardo Ribeiro was a governor of the state of Amazonas in two periods: November 2, 1890, to May 5, 1891, and February 25, 1892, to July 23, 1896. He is one of the most famous governors, and the principal avenue of Manaus was named in his honor.

15 16

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

97

The Benjamin Constant Institute used a strict system of reward and punishment to impose discipline on Indigenous girls of ages 5 to 22 years old. The destiny of the girls after graduation was a recurrent concern of the state. When they reached a certain age, these girls were no longer considered for housemaid work and often had to resort to working as prostitutes in the so-called “damaged area” of the city (zona estragada). The governors’ report stated that the lack of choices for these girls ended up perverting them. The newspaper Correio do Norte highlights the preference for younger girls as housemaids in various editions of 1906 in which families announced specific age ranges to look for servants and the oldest age mentioned was 16 years old (LHIA, Correio do Norte, 8 May 1906:168). The strategies to discipline the school population were not as smoothly applied as the provincial and governmental reports show. For example, the Benjamin Constant Institute’s report of 1904 notes that four students were expelled for bad behavior and a similar number can be seen in the reports of other years. The governor Raymundo Affonso de Carvalho states in the 1908 report that minors’ idleness and beggary were increasing at that time, advising the government to take immediate measures to remedy the situation. Moreover, incidents “out of the norm” that resulted in arrests, whether “correctional” or other, as aforementioned, show that the process of making docile bodies was conflictual. The “flaws” in the discipline are not seen only for those who were its target but also for those who should enforce it. In an 1888 issue of the newspaper A Província do Amazonas, a case was reported in which a minor was raped by Mr. Antonio Prospero, who later gave her “potions” to miscarry her subsequent pregnancy. A charity sister, an attorney, and two other people not identified were involved in this crime as well (LHIA, A Província do Amazonas, 25 Jan 1888, n.45). Referring back to the conversation I had with the historian/memorialist of Manaus who does not believe that there were Indigenous people in Manaus’s Belle Époque, he also told me that he heard from his father that Eduardo Ribeiro and other important politicians and members of the elite often used the girls from Benjamin Constant Institute to sexually entertain their guests at important parties. Therefore, besides the rebellious cases that often appeared in the boarding schools’ reports, the children suffered all sorts of abuse that went beyond disciplinary repression. Through the boarding school system, it was possible to exert greater control over the Indigenous children in time and space. Alba Pessoa (2010:90) asserts that the control of the children in space allows the imposition of discipline that led to a “better” use of their time and strength. These institutions were an urban extension of the violence and exploitation of Indigenous people that were happening in the countryside. The discipline imposed on the children in the educational institutions had as its ultimate goal a greater control over their future. Therefore, the House of Teaching Crafts and the Orphan’s Asylum worked with such methods to make docile bodies and prepare them for labor. Foucault (1995:173) argues that the “disciplinary institutions secreted a machinery of control that functioned like a microscope of conduct.” Despite the abuses and the bodily discipline, Indigenous people were not only essential to the development of Manaus but also able to retain some personal agency, as attested mainly in newspapers of the period.

98

A. L. M. Soares

 urning Manaus into the “Paris of the Jungle”: T The Embellishment Process In the so-called “Paris of the Jungle,”17 repression of everything considered unaesthetic and uncivilized became extremely aggressive. The process created several mechanisms of repression and surveillance, which tended to expel the Indigenous population from the downtown and maintain them in the underclass. However, the consequent marginalization of this process did not mean that Indigenous people ceased to exist in Manaus at the end of the nineteenth century. To the contrary, they may have been the majority of the city’s population for a while. Manaus between 1880 and 1910 seems to have been somewhat similar to Sidnei Peres’s (2013:267) description of the lower Rio Negro, where the social relations developed under the aegis of ambiguity and mixture—which made the category of caboclo oscillate between “Indianness” and “civilization” and even merged the two in the notion of “civilized Indian”—opening a wide range of possibilities both for manipulation by the governing and owning classes and for cultural diversity and innovation in the underclasses. The Europeanized city-embellishment process motivated the invisibility of Indigenous people and other undesirables while also relegating them to the margins of society—or to use a term that better fit in Manaus’s case, relegating them to the other side of the margin. Most of the laws and disciplinary machineries analyzed above were enforced in the Manaus downtown, which was surrounded by beautiful boulevards and avenues. The residences of the poor and Indigenous peoples were pushed out of the downtown to the other side of the two great streams that bordered Manaus’s old downtown: Cachoeira Grande and Cachoeirinha. The House of Teaching Crafts, the institution focused on Indigenous boys, was initially installed in the former brickyard on the other side of the Cachoeirinha stream far away from downtown (see Fig. 1). At a time when there was no bridge to connect the downtown with the present-­ day Educandos neighborhood, crossing from the city to the suburbs and vice versa was done with boats and catraias18 (as the picture above shows). This situation of demarcation ended up creating other sertões19 (hinterlands or backlands) around the city. Nevertheless, before we judge these suburbs as merely an effect of oppression in urban planning, we should also consider them as a place of resistance. There, it would have been possible for people to follow their own rules far away from the codes of conduct repression and surveillance, a place to survive at the margins of the “civilized” and urbanized world.  Manaus was frequently called “Paris of the Jungle” during the opulent times of the rubber boom (1880–1910), a period also known as the Belle Époque. 18  Simple boats are moved by paddle. Rustic canoes still navigate the city streams. Canoeing was considered the basic way to move in the Amazon and involved a number of Indigenous rowers. 19  The term sertões (hinterlands, backlands) was used to define the land not yet dominated by the Portuguese, a place of freedom. It is also used as a metaphor for the unknown. 17

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

99

Fig. 1  Photography of Silvino Simões Santos Silva. Ancient brickyard transformed into the House of Teaching Crafts (building on the highest point), in the present-day Educandos neighborhood. From the City Hall’s archive

It is important to relativize the term “resistance.” I agree with Monteiro, Carvalho Junior, and others who de-essentialize the concept of resistance. For instance, when talking about resistance, it is necessary to remove the notion that people were resisting to preserve intact an ancient tradition during the time. Monteiro (2001:71) argues that “[resistance] emerges, little by little, that the political and the spiritual leaders who worked on the margins of the colonial system, gained a safer place as historical agents. This picture contrasts, of course, the more consecrated approach to Indigenous resistance, considered as cases of natural collective reaction in defense of ancient traditions.” Indigenous peoples, far from being passive, were in a constant process of negotiation of their situation. Carvalho Junior (2005:146) extends this idea and asserts that: Resistance should not be synonymous with maintaining standards of behavior and beliefs that are essentialized. I think it is more correct to refer to autonomous cultural models molded in the encounter between distinct symbolic universes and among unfamiliar lifestyles. On the other hand, for those Indigenous populations, maintaining certain standards of behavior that gave meaning to their lives was more a visceral need than a political resistance.

Laws, media, and the educational institutions were widely used tools to standardize behavior and make docile bodies. Jordana Caliri (2014:101) gives special importance to the newspaper since its issues denounced the “delinquents” and helped to reinforce the elite’s codes of conduct. Caliri argues that, after 1880, Manaus attempted to build a new model of family relations based on bourgeois values. This

100

A. L. M. Soares

new model of family relations included instructions on how to behave on the street and at home, as well as a redefinition of what was considered the public and the private domain (Caliri 2014:101). The media had a special role with education, lauding educational institutes—especially those aimed at Indigenous children—as key to civilization (Caliri 2014: 102). Thus, the process of embellishment involved more than building a sumptuous Opera House, beautiful boulevards, large avenues, and cable cars (railway) and the burial of igarapés (water streams). It was also a process of invisibilization of the undesirables through a complex disciplinary apparatus. Although there is no doubt about the violence intrinsic to the invisibilization process, indigenous people might have negotiated and willingly adhered to this “invisible” status in Manaus’s downtown. It gave them an opportunity to be there without much misfortune while living in Manaus’s outskirts where they could enjoy the freedom to exercise their cultural practices. However, the invisibilization was more effective in the government reports and official literature than in the daily life of the city. As the newspaper O Catechista of 1871 helps to uncover, indigenous servants often manipulated their work assignments to steal from their owner and flee to the interior of the state. In response, a new rule arose in the commercial establishments that started to require a written authorization from servant and slave owners to buy products. In the same way, the codes of conduct and laws appear to have been a reaction to practices that happened routinely in the city and were considered to be inappropriate. Therefore, indigenous people were an additional force influencing the makeup of the city, even if it was in constant struggle with the city’s rulers and entrepreneurs to invisibilize their presence.

Conclusion Neither during the so-called Belle Époque nor today can Manaus be treated as an isolated, “Euroamerican” urban center. All its leaders’ efforts to homogenize, modernize, and civilize the city’s inhabitants tended to manipulate, and frequently conflict with, the local cultures, thereby transforming the basic social categories and ways of life. Laws, codes, and regulations were reactions to what was happening in daily life, which contrasted with the ideals and goals of city leaders, and these formals codes were filled with elements that reveal the contradictions in the relationship between Indigenous people and the ruling class. The combination of the judicial archive with media and government reports reveal micro-historical evidence of everyday life and the dynamics of individual relationships, challenging normative narratives constructed by previous generations of social scientists and their statements that Indigenous people were not in the city or that they were not important in its creation and functioning. This research complements the “web of violence” approach insofar as it attempts to overcome the “tendency to see violence as the consequence of aberrant behavior committed by deviant individuals at the margins of society” (Turpin and Kurtz 1997:207), showing instead the way violence and

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

101

human conflict play a central role in society. Furthermore, this research can contribute to the discussion about the causes and consequences of abuse, maltreatment, and trauma (Hamby and Grych 2013). Despite the insistence of traditional historiography on invisibilizing the Indigenous presence in the city of Manaus at the end of the nineteenth century, I have shown that Indigenous actors and groups do appear in the sources of that period. Although they are cited generically or sparsely, implicitly or obliquely, that presence cannot be denied. The thicker description of the contexts of this presence is filled with abuses and violence, with arbitrary arrests, kidnapping of children, sexual violation, and forced labor/discipline. The abusive manipulation these people(s) endured did not hinder their creative reactions to the imposition of settler norms, and a history is revealed that is permeated by fleeing, using limited freedom in the exercise of work activities, and maintaining relative isolation in the suburbs of the city.

References Abreu, Tenner Inauhiny de. 2012. Nascidos no Grêmio da Sociedade: racialização e mestiçagem entre os trabalhadores na província do Amazonas (1850–1889). Masters dissertation, Department of History, Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM). Agassiz, Louis, and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. 1868. A Journey in Brazil (1865–1866). Boston: Ticknor and Fields. Almeida, Maria Regina Celestino de. 2003. Metamorfoses Indígenas: Identidade e cultura nas aldeias coloniais do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional. Almeida, Maria Regina Celestino de. 2010. Os índios na História do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da FGV. Amaral, Josali. 2011. Ritmos e Dissonâncias: controle e disciplinarização dos desvalidos e indigentes nas políticas públicas do Amazonas (1852–1915). Masters dissertation, Department of History, UFAM. Amoroso, Marta Rosa. 1998. Catequese e evasão: Etnografia do Aldeamento Indígena São Pedro de Alcântara, Paraná (1855–1895). PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, Universidade de São Paulo. Avé-Lallemant, Robert. 1961 [1860]. Viagem pelo Norte do Brasil no ano de 1859. Vol. 1. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto do Livro. Barbosa, Evandro Brandão. 2013. Zona Franca de Manaus: Política Brasileira de Desenvlvimento Socioeconômico Regional. En Observatório de la Economía Latinoamericana 184: 1–11. Bates, Henry W. 1863. The Naturalist on the River Amazons. Vol. 1 and 2. London: Murray. Caliri, Jordana. 2014. Folhas da Província: A Imprensa Amazonense durante o Período Imperial (1851–1889). Masters dissertation, Department of History, UFAM. Cardoso, Antonio Alexandre Isidio. 2018. O Eldorado dos Deserdados: Indígenas, Escravos, Migrantes, Regatões e o Avanço Rumo ao Oeste Amazônico do Século XIX. PhD thesis, Department of History, Universidade de São Paulo. Cardozo, A., R. Chambouleyron, Souza Jr, et al. 2010. Índios e Brancos na Amazônia Portuguesa: políticas e identidades no século XVIII. In T(r)ópicos de História: gente, espaço e tempo na Amazônia (séculos XVII a XXI), Rafael Chambouleyronl and José Luis Ruiz-Peinado Alonso (Org.), vol. 1, 1st ed., 99–116. Belém: Açai Editora.

102

A. L. M. Soares

Carvalho Junior, Almir Diniz de. 2005. Índios Cristãos: A conversão dos gentios na Amazônia Portuguesa (1653–1769). PhD thesis, Department of History, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp). Chaulhoub, Sidney. 1996. Cidade Febril: cortiços e epidemias na corte imperial. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Cunha, Manuela Carneiro da. 1992. História dos Índios no Brasil. São Paulo: Cia das Letras. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books. Hamby, S., and J.  Grych. 2013. The Web of Violence: Exploring Connections among Different Forms of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse. Amsterdam: Springer. Harris, Mark. 2010. Rebellion on the Amazon: The Cabanagem, Race, and Popular Culture in the North of Brazil, 1798–1840. New York: Cambridge University Press. Henrique, Márcio Couto. 2018. Sem Vieira Nem Pombal: Índios na Amazônia do século XIX. Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj. Koch-Grümberg, Theodor. 2006 [1917]. Do Roraima ao Orinoco. Vol. v.1. Editora Unesp: São Paulo. Langfur, Hal. 2014. Native Brazil: Beyond the Convert and the Cannibal, 1500–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Lapa, José R. do Amaral. 2008. Os excluídos: contribuição à história da pobreza no Brasil. Campinas: Ed.UNICAMP. Loureiro, Antonio. 1989. O Amazonas na época imperial. Manaus: Ltda. Melo, Mauro L. de, and Helio A. de Moura, eds. 1990. Migrações para Manaus. Recife: Massangana. Mesquita, Otoni. 2009. La Belle Vitrine: Manaus entre dois tempos (1890–1900). Manaus: EDUA. Monteiro, John Manuel. 2001. Tupis, Tapuias e Historiadores. PhD thesis, Department of History, Unicamp. Monteiro, Mário Ypiranga. 1994. Fundação de Manaus. 4th ed. Manaus: Editora Metro Cúbico. Moreira Neto, Carlos de Araújo. 1988. Índios da Amazônia: De Maioria a Minoria (1750–1850). Rio de Janeiro: Vozes. Oliveira Filho, João Pacheco de. 1979. O Caboclo e o Brabo: Notas Sobre Duas Modalidades de Força-de-Trabalho na Expansão da Fronteira Amazônica no Século XIX.  In Encontros com a Civilizaçõa Brasileira, edited by Enio Silveira et al. Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro. 2012. Mensurando Alteridades, Estabelecendo Direitos: Práticas e Saberes Governamentais na Criação de Fronteiras Étnica. DADOS – Revista de Ciências Sociais 55 (4): 1055–1088. Oliveira Filho, João Pacheco de. 2012. Mensurando alteridades, estabelecendo direitos: práticas e saberes governamentais na criação de fronteiras étnicas. Dados 55 (4): 1055–1088 Oliveira Filho, João Pacheco de, and Carlos Augusto Freire. 2006. A Presença Indígena na Formação do Brasil. Brasília: LACED/Museu Nacional. Pessoa, Alba Barbosa. 2010. Infância e Trabalho: Dimensões do trabalho infantil na cidade de Manaus (1890–1920). Masters dissertation, Department of History, UFAM. Peres, Sidnei. 2013. A política da identidade: Associativismo e Movimento Indígena no Rio Negro. Manaus: Valer. Pinheiro, Maria Luiza Ugarte. 1999. A Cidade Sobre os Ombros: trabalho e conflito no porto de Manaus (1899–1925). Manaus: Edua. Pinheiro, Maria Luiza Ugarte. 2007. Nos Meandros da Cidade: Cotidiano e Trabalho na Manaus da Borracha, 1880-1920. Canoa do Tempo 1(1): 53–82. Pinheiro, Maria Luiza Ugarte. 2015. Folhas do Norte: Letramento e Periodismo no Amazonas (1880-1920). Manaus: EDUA Reis, Arthur Cézar Ferreira. 1999[1934]. Manaos e outras villas. 2nd ed. Manaus: Universidade do Amazonas. Ribeiro, Darcy (Org) and Ribeiro, Berta (Coord). 1986. Suma etnológica brasileira, Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 1. Rio de Janeiro: Vozes, FINEP. Rizzini, Irma. 2004. O cidadão polido e o selvagem bruto: a educação dos meninos desvalidos na Amazônia Imperial. PhD thesis, Department of History, UFRJ/IFCS/PPGHIS.

Forced Labor and Disciplinary Control: A History of Indigenous Peoples’ Treatment…

103

Sampaio, Patrícia Maria Melo. 2003. Administração Colonial e Legislação Indigenista na Amazônia Portuguesa. In Os Senhores dos Rios: Amazônia, História e Margens, Priore, Mary del and Gomes, Flávio dos Santos (Org.), vol. 1, 1st 1ed., 123–139. Rio de Janeiro: Campus. ———. 2007. “Vossa Excelência mandará o que for servido...”: políticas indígenas e indigenistas na Amazônia Portuguesa do final do século XVIII. Revista Tempo 12 (23): 39–55. ———. 2014. Os Fios de Ariadne: Fortunas e Hierarquias sociais na Amazônia, século XIX. São Paulo: Editora Livraria da Física. ———. 2016. Posturas Municipais, Amazonas (1838–1967). Manaus: EDUA. Santos, Francisco Jorge dos. 2007. História Geral da Amazônia. Rio de Janeiro: MEMVAVMEM. Schwartzman, Simon. 2004. Pobreza, Exclusão social e Modernidade: uma introdução ao mundo contemporâneo. São Paulo: Augurium. Turpin, Jennifer, and Lester R.  Kurtz, eds. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Villanova, Simone. 2008. Sociabilidade e Cultura: A História dos “pequenos teatros” na cidade de Manaus (1859–1900). Masters dissertation, Department of History, UFAM. Whitehead, Neil L. 2014. Colonial Intrusions and the Transformation of Native Society in the Amazon Valley, 1500–1800. In Native Brazil: Beyond the Convert and the Cannibal, 1500–1900, edited by Hal Langfur, pp. 86–107. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Wright, Robin. 1992. História indígena do noroeste da Amazônia: hipóteses, questões e perspectivas. In História dos Índios no Brasil, ed. Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, 253–266. São Paulo: Cia das Letras.

Archives and Sources LHIA–Laboratório de História da Imprensa do Amazonas [Laboratory of History of the Amazonia’s Press] Correio do Norte (1906, 1910, 1911, and 1912) O Catechista (1862–1871) A Província do Amazonas (1886, 1888) IGHA–Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas [Geographic and Historical Institute of Amazonas] Códigos de Posturas Municipais (1872, 1893, 1904, and 1910) ——— (1872, 1893, 1904, 1910) Coleção de Leis do Amazonas (1882, 1884, 1890, 1891, 1893) Regimento Interno dos Hospitaes da Santa Casa de Misericórdia do Amazonas (1905, 1909 e 1912) Relatório Santa Casa de Misericórdia (1906,1907,1909, 1910, 1915 e 1916) Estatutos da Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Manáos. ( 1891, 1905 e 1922) Estatutos da Associação Beneficente Fundadôra do Azylo de Mendicidade de Manáos. (1910, 1916) Relatórios apresentados à Associação Beneficente Fundadôra do Azylo de Mendicidade de Manáos (1912, 1923) Regulamentos do Instituto Benjamin Constant (1892, 1894, 1907, 1914) Regulamento do Instituto Amazonense de Educandos Artífices (1882) Regulamento para o Instituto de Artes e Ofícios (1894) Regulamentos para o Instituto Afonso Penna (1908, 1910) Relatórios da Liga Protetora da Pobreza (1914, 1915, 1916) Messages and speeches of the Amazonas’ Governors from 1889 to 1916 and Provincial Presidential reports from 1852 to 1889. Available at http://www.crl.edu/brazil/provincial/amazonas IBGE–Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] Diretoria Geral de Estatística. 1873–1876. Recenseamento da população do Imperio do Brazil a que se procedeu no dia 1o de agosto de 1872. Vol. 1, 1–68. Rio de Janeiro: Leuzinger e Filhos.

104

A. L. M. Soares

Ana Luiza M. Soares is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago. With a full dissertation fellowship from the Brazilian agency CAPES, she has conducted ethnohistoric fieldwork in the Amazon city of Manaus, Brazil, searching the archives for evidence of indigenous peoples in the city’s history, a presence and an importance neglected for a long time. Her current work investigates the history of treatment, ethnic identification, and contributions of indigenous peoples and Afro-Brazilians in the urban centers of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brazil. Her research interests include urban history, ethnicity, sociocultural hierarchy, the dualism formal/informal city, cultural resignification, ethnohistory, law, order, and policing as mechanisms of state control of underclasses in diverse societies.  

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965 A. C. Roosevelt

State violence in the history of Congo demands attention for several reasons. The largest and most populous country in Central Africa, it occupies a central location between the Sahara and South Africa and the Atlantic Ocean and the rift valleys (Figs. 1 and 2).1 The country has the greatest concentration of valuable minerals in the world and very rich biological resources as well. Some of the longest sequences of self-rule by indigenous complex societies in Africa have also been found there. Such characteristics give Congo great potential for political leadership and economic development in the continent of Africa in the future. But the political disorder and violence there since independence have blocked that potential so far. Western literature tends to attribute the multiple crises of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to African people’s political inexperience, disorganization, radicalism, corruption, division, and/or violence and minimize the western roles (Bayart 2009; Brassinne and Kestergat 1991; Belgian Parliamentary Commission 2001; Coquery-Vidrovitch et al. 1987; de Vos et al. 2004, 2005; Fabian 1996; Heinz and Donnay 1966, 1969; Jewsiewicki and N’Sanda Buleli 2008; Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Lantier 1967; Lemarchand 2009; Malkki 1995; Pottier 2002; Reyntjens 2010; Timberlake 1963; Turner 2007, 2008, 2013; Willame 1967, 1990; Young 1965b, 1971; Young and Turner 1985). Some recent authors on the Congo crisis of the 1960s take the approach that it is somehow hegemonic to include a significant role

 Note on Figs. 1 and 2. The colonial conquest and administration of Congo created the map of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi as it appeared until the later twentieth century. Since the nomenclature was developed to uphold Belgian pride in the African empire, colonial place names recognized European colonial rulers, explorers, scientists, and businessmen. When western-installed military dictator the late President Joseph Mobutu started Africanization in 1971 to boost his national support, most of the original African place names were returned.

1

A. C. Roosevelt (*) University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_7

105

106

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 1  Map of the Belgian Congo. (Leon de Moor, Office de Publicité, Brussels: Lebegue & Cie, 1986)

for foreign intervention and that doing so takes agency away from Africans (Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Nzongola 2014). But the role of different actors and factors in particular historical events and processes is, in the end, an empirical question, and theories and interpretations must give way to the evidence. Some literature on the Congo crisis exemplifies common western racial biases about Africa and race during periods of Eurocentrism in world affairs. Biases,

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

107

Fig. 2  Map of the Democratic Republic of Congo. (UN, 2007, Wikimedia Commons)

conscious or not, are evident in unequal treatment of information and evidence by race in the writings. For example, biased writers ignore specific western culpability in crimes despite multiple lines of evidence for it but claim specific African culpability based on equivocal, questionable, or unspecified evidence (e.g., de Vos et al. 2004, 2005; Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Mahoney 1979, 1983, 1999; Nzongola 2002:12, 2014; Omasombo and Verhaegen 1998, 2005; Weissman 1974, 2010). Such authors complain of fratricidal divisions among Congolese but not of those that harshly divide Belgium (Van Reybroucke 2014: 257 and passim). Some claim to see racial hatred by Africans against whites at the time, without examples, but do not mention whites’ obvious racial hatred for blacks during the crisis (e.g., Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 11 and passim) nor the abundant published evidence of it (e.g., Dugauquier 1961; Masuy 1997). A biased author (Young 1965b: 11) mentions purported Congolese cannibalism (without citing evidence) but not the torture and dismemberment of African bodies in a Belgian secession military facility at the time (Puren 1986: 47). Dag Hammarskjold called Lumumba’s army campaigns’ war against the Belgian secessions “genocide” (Bring 2011: 160), something only diehard Confederates would have said about the comparable Union campaigns against the South’s secession. Writers highlight purported sexual affairs of prominent African leaders, such as Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo who was assassinated during the crisis, but not the egregious, well-documented sexual misconduct of prominent western leaders involved in Congo: Belgium’s

108

A. C. Roosevelt

Leopold II and USA’s John F. Kennedy (e.g., Devlin 2007: 50; Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 14–15; Mahoney 1979, 1983).2 Authors say Lumumba was a drug addict, without evidence (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 14; Scott 1969: 78), but leave out Kennedy’s addiction to amphetamines (Hersch 1998). Authors emphasize financial self-dealing and acquisition of wealth by Congolese such as Mobutu, Tshombe, or Bomboko (e.g., Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 107–134; Kelly 1993; Legum 1961: 94–97; Van Reybroucke 2014: 381, 457; Wrong 2001) but not the fortunes and fine homes acquired by CIA Congo chief Devlin (Roberts 2003), Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Dillon, US Ambassador to Belgium Burden (Burden 2010; Saunders 1999: 134–136, 137, 261–2), or Lt. Colonel Louis Marliere (Interview in Giefer 2000, in his mansion). The distinctly discriminatory character of some academic and media coverage of Lumumba in particular is little acknowledged in the secondary literature, though it has been highlighted in some more recent analyses (such as Masuy in Halen and Reisz 1997 and Mountz 2014a, b). Even western representatives in Congo during the crisis thought the press coverage of the disturbances exaggerated and erroneous at times (Devlin 2007; Scott 1969). The western press often wrote inaccurately and viciously about Lumumba and focused overly on the appearance of his body, a typical racist mode. For example, South African journalist Colin Legum says he had a “tiny, narrow head” and the body motions of a praying mantis insect (1961: 95) and maligns him with inaccuracies (Foreword in English version of Lumumba 1962: xiv; 1969). He claimed Lumumba said in his independence speech: “We are no longer your Makak [monkeys]!” (19xiv), a sentence not in any recordings of the speech (e.g., the vinyl disk in Heinz and Donnay 1966). When reporters wrote favorably on Lumumba or criticized western states, newspaper editors cut the articles (e.g., Christian Science Monitor, Waldron 2006). Recent press coverage continues the western bias and inaccuracies. Like CIA groupies, reporters (Shane 2008; Hersch blurb for Devlin 2007; Kelly 1993: 71; Wrong 2001) promote as highly truthful the self-exculpating memories of CIA chief Devlin, despite clear investigative recognition of the obvious inaccuracies of his accounts of his roles in Lumumba’s assassination (Church 1975: 13–70). The problematic character of some of the literature stems from its having been created by or on behalf of western security agencies and corporate interests in Africa, which covertly underwrote both researchers and publications in order to manipulate the record for propaganda purposes and to cover up their roles in the events (e.g., Arnove 1982; Berman 1982a, b, 1983; CRISP 1960, 1961, 1962a, b, c,

2  Leopold had numerous underage mistresses and prostitutes (Hochschild 1998: 221–223; Nelson 2007: 102); and Kennedy had numerous affairs, some risking national security as with Mafioso Sam Giancana’s girlfriend (SSCIA, Declassified Interview Record 157-10002-10384-File R-1358, 09/2075) and frequently had prostitutes at the White House (Hersch 1998). Mahoney hypes Lumumba’s supposed use of prostitutes on State Department say-so but despite access to many knowledgeable sources is silent on Kennedy’s for 20  years until Hersch publishes that fact (Mahoney 1999).

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

109

1963, 1964, 1966, 1967; Minter 1986; Saunders 1999; Wilford 2008).3 A good deal of it was actually written by involved government officers, agents, associates, or sometimes their relatives, with pseudonyms or without acknowledging their own links to the events (e.g., Brassinne 1968, 1991; Brassinne and Kestergat 1991; Davister 1960, 1964; Davister and Toussaint 1962; de Vos et  al. 2004, 2005; de Witte 1996, 2000, 2002; Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Gerard-Libois 1963, 1966, 1993; Heinz and Donnay 1966, 1969; Hochschild personal communication about de Witte’s government employ, 2011; Lancinay 1985; Roosevelt n.d.-a; Turner and Young 1983; Vandewalle 1971, 1974–1977, 1979; Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973; Verhaegen 1966; Weber 1982, 1983, 1991, 2001a, b; Wheelock and Young 1965; Young 1965a, b, 1966, 1967).4 Even public investigations of Lumumba’s

3  Western agencies, allied against Lumumba and the nationalists, sponsored publications that concealed evidence of western roles and framed African leaders on the basis of nonexistent or faked evidence. For example, Belgian military in Katanga were and still are misrepresented as mercenaries that Tshombe, not Belgium, employed and directed (Chapleau and Misser 1998; Clarke 1968; Brassinne 1991; Brassinne and Kestergat 1991; Larmer and Kennes 2014; Mockler 1969, 1986; Othen 2015). UN archives show that its representatives knew Belgian military involved in Lumumba’s assassination were Belgian officers not mercenaries, but they were represented as mercenaries in its publications (e.g., 1961b). Western agencies misrepresented Lumumba’s character as quixotic, illogical, communistic, and vicious, using doctored and falsified documents they created and disseminated. As an example, with secret Belgian government funding and editing, a series of scurrilous fakes against him were published in the main local newspaper just when western agencies were trying to remove him from office and assassinate him (Courrier d’Afrique 1960, September and October). (See Fig. 9) 4  Deceptive writers on the Congo coups and killings who were covertly involved and published misleading works include the following. Long-time Belgian government officer and secession official Brassinne and Belgian agent Gerard-Libois wrote about Lumumba’s murder under the false names Heinz and Donnay, claiming to be just professors. They also misrepresent the top Belgian security officers leading the capture of Lumumba as merely unidentified “observers” (e.g., Heinz and Donnay 1969: 44). Brassinne’s dissertation included numerous faked or altered documents. Gerard-Libois also presided over the Centre de Recherche et d’Information Socio-Politique (CRISP), the Brussels institute that funded research, travel, and publications on the Congo, with Ford Foundation support. It was one of the mid-twentieth-century fronts for the CIA and State Department to support US interests and policies undercover of universities and major private foundations such as Ford, Mellon, and Carnegie (Berman 1982a, b, 1983; Gerard-Libois 1993; Paget 2015; Saunders 1999: 129–145, 327–368, 381–427; Wilford 2008). Also with CRISP, Belgian secret agent Benoit Verhaegen was secretly paid millions during the crisis to help eliminate Lumumba and other nationalists (Belgian Commission 2001: 653–681). The CRISP editors liked to portray themselves as pro-Lumumba but several worked against him for pay; Verhaegen is one example (see Fig. 9). Belgian secret agent Christian Souris wrote on the murder as “journalist” Christian Lancinay (1985) in the journal Pourquoi Pas? while accompanying Belgian squads that massacred Lumumba supporters in Katanga (Roosevelt n.d.-b.). David Stern, another Belgian secret agent, wrote about the Katanga killings as a “journalist” under the pseudonym Davister (Augustijnen 2007) both in books and the journal Pourquoi Pas? Ludo de Witte also wrote misleadingly, posing as a mere academic without acknowledging his employment by the Belgian government. De Witte’s book is laced with inaccuracies based on the documents in Brassinne’s dissertation but did not include copies of them. Also problematic is M. Crawford Young. A longtime CIA agent under several of the CIA/State Department fronts (Garman 1969; Paget 2015: 159, 169, 187, 197–206, 258, 395–396), he did covert field work for CIA on the Congolese nationalists

110

A. C. Roosevelt

a­ ssassination by the UN, US, and Belgium were defanged by letting security agencies and agents limit the inquiries, censor the facts, and intoxicate the record (Belgian Commission 2001; Church Committee 1975: 14–70, 255–346; UN 1961a, b; Weissman 2002, 2010). Belgium’s inquiry was especially tainted by its control by “experts” with these types of covert connections to the events.5 Only a few authors acknowledge any disinformational aspects of the literature and revise conclusions accordingly (e.g., Daval 1976; Minter 1986; Hoskyns 1965a, b; 2013). There were also serious problems in the knowledge base, attitudes, competence, and emotional maturity of Western decision-makers in the Congo Crisis; and the disorderly, ineffective, and contradictory interventions carried out by them were the probable cause of many of the problems that ensued (Kabemba 2013: 141–148; Kaplan 1967; Mountz 2014a, b).6 There is a strong assumption that white officials are entitled to take power over African ones and anger when African politicians try to take initiative and lead (e.g., Belgian Commission 2001: passim; Mountz 2014a: passim). Like the British Ambassador, they felt that the “great powers” should control the world and the UN should help them do so (Scott 1969: 125–130; though he (e.g., Wheelock and Young 1965), from which he got a Ph.D. from Harvard and a professorship at U. Wisconsin, one of the universities whose African studies programs were secretly funded by the CIA under foundation cover. In his contribution to an edited volume (Kanet and Kolodziej 1991), in which other contributors acknowledge relationships with US security agencies, Young does not. 5  For disclosure, I have no connection to the events covered in this chapter. As in many political families, relatives in the three generations before me served in the US executive office, diplomatic corps, military reserves, colonial administration, OSS, and its successor, CIA. Some led activities that caused harm (Roosevelt 1981) as well as good (Roosevelt 1959; 1992), though not in Africa, though some served in North Africa during WW2 and a distant relative became CIA chief of Africa and the Mideast later (Roosevelt 1988). I have no relationship with these agencies and feel able to take a critical point of view of their role in Congo. 6  The personal accounts by key overt players in the crisis also are often deceptive about the facts, though sometimes also unintentionally revealing (Bosch 1986; Devlin 2007; Doyle 2001; Ganshof 1963; Hoyt 2000; Mobutu 1989; Kalonji 1964, 2002; Spaak 1969, 1971; Timberlake 1963; Tshombe 1967, 1975; Vandewalle 1971, 1974–1977; Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973; Weber 1982, 1983). The handful of more honest accounts of the crisis include those by a few UN functionaries (such as Dayal 1976 and Kuitenbrouwer 1961a, b), a few independent academic researchers (such as Hoskins 1965a, b and Weissman 1974), some journalists (such as Chome 1960, 1961, 1966; Ritchie-Calder 1961; and Valahu 1964), rare NGO workers (Middeleer 1973; Munger 1960), and a very few junior European or South African military (such as Blistein 2011 and Smith 2012). Captain Blistein had the courage to give an account that contradicted what his employer the Belgian government was saying. A transcript of his August 7, 1965 account is in Brassinne’s dissertation (1991: Temoignages. 10.1). Some other scholarly accounts also attain clarity (Adu Boahen 1987; Gibbs 1991, 1996; Katete Orwa 1985), but even those suffer from the lack of good information when they wrote. A very few films reached comparative accuracy by probing evidence with interviews as well as the literature (Giefer 2000); others relied on inaccurate books linked to an involved European government (e.g., Peck 2000, relying on de Witte 1996, 2000, 2002). More recently, some scholars originally from Africa, such as Nzongola Ntalaja (1986, 2002, 2014), are somewhat more critical and empirical but still take at face value purposeful misrepresentations of anti-Lumumba plotters, though some others have been able to see through them (Kabemba 2013). Perhaps not surprisingly, the clearest recent accounts are by younger African Americans (e.g., Mountz 2014a, b) and Africans (e.g., Kabemba 2013).

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

111

missed the fact that the UK was no longer a great power by 1960). Officials often characterize as childish or naive the African politicians’ lack of cooperation with western covert maneuvers (FRUS 1992, 1994, 2013; Kalb 1982: 29, 74), without questioning why Africans should act for western interests rather than for their own or their country’s. In one striking example (Mountz (2014a: 100), US Secretary of State Rusk told the US ambassador to Congo to tell western-installed Prime Minister Adoula that he, Adoula, was “not in [the] driver’s seat” (FRUS 1994: 346–347). The memoirs and other works of officials, officers, reporters, agents, settlers, and soldiers seem fatally narcissistic, careerist, disingenuous, and/or deluded (Alexander 1966; Borri 1962; Bosch 1986; Brassinne 2016; Burden 1982; Carlucci 2005; Closset 1995; Colvin 1968; Dedeken 1978; Devlin 2007; Doyle 2001; Dugauquier 1961; Dulles 1963; Hempstone 1962; Hoare 1979, 1989, 2008a, b; Janssens 1962, 1972, 1979; Lancinay 1985; Lawson 1963; Martelli 1962; Mummendey 1997; Nicolai 1987; Nothomb 1993; O’Brien 1962, 1968, 1998; Rikhye 1993, 2002; Roberts 1963; Scott 1969; Timberlake 1963; Trinquier 1961, 1964, 1978, 2006; Trinquier et al. 1963; Von Horn 1967; Weber 1982, 1983, 1991). Insisting on always being in control made effective collaboration and negotiation impossible, and only seeing one’s own side of things prevented the understanding needed to counter one’s opponents effectively. Western functionaries seem overconfident and very comfortable with uninformed decision-making. Belgium prime minister Eyskens’ first visit to Congo was at independence, and Congo’s UN Ambassador Thomas Kanza (1972: 16) said of Belgian government and NATO official Paul-Henri Spaak, “we were appalled by what seemed to us his ignorance of the Belgian Congo and its native population.” American officials with no personal or academic experience with Africa or Africans—Dulles, Dillon, Cordier, and Devlin—malign Lumumba as crazy, communist, and vicious (e.g., Kalb 1982: 29). The vituperative views of Lumumba by these inexperienced functionaries were not shared by some officials who spent time with him (see below) but did greatly influence western decisions. Especially tunnel-­ visioned and un-self-reflective, Belgian officials seemed completely unable to grasp that colonialism was indeed ending, and they angrily blamed everyone but themselves for the misfortunes of their overweening projects in Congo (Timberlake 1963; Van Bilsen 1962a). Even their descendants continue to malign and misrepresent Lumumba as a mass killer like Hitler (e.g., D’Aspremont-Lynden 2002; Eyskens 2000), blaming him for deaths for which Belgium had much more culpability than he had (see below on that nation’s role in the mutiny and secessions). Belgian officials involved in Lumumba’s assassination lambasted him as the devil incarnate and used Satan as his code name; they also referred to him sarcastically as Beau (Belgian Commission 2001: 255–256, 294–296) or as “our handsome prey” (De Vos et al. 2005: 201). Anonymous Belgian officials published vituperative, sexualized, openly racist attacks on him in the media (e.g., Masuy 1997).7 7  During Lumumba’s US visit, La Libre Belgique published a furious complaint over the fact that Lumumba’s head and genital hair had been allowed into the same Blair House guest bed that King Baudouin had slept in earlier (Masuy 1997).

112

A. C. Roosevelt

Understanding what happened and why in the Congo crisis thus can be difficult when literature is tainted by racial bias, covert government manipulation, self-­ censorship, and self-serving authorship with unacknowledged links to the crisis. Recent writers and readers seem quite unaware of these problems in the literature, but it makes a real difference. One’s connections with subject matter do affect how one conceives of and depicts it; therefore, the connections need to be revealed for readers to consider. Authors’, foundations’, government agencies’, and publishers’ lack of openness about their roles in the events makes it difficult to make an informed critical reading of their works. If analyzed based on evidence, many works are clearly disinformational, as I show below. Reinterpretation of works in view of authors’ and publishers’ covert roles and of the evidence from historical documents, images, memoirs, diaries, and interviews forces a drastic revision of prior conclusions about the period. It reveals very different patterns of culpability in the period’s disorders and killings by nationality, revealing westerners as the directing and operational perpetrators and Africans as resisters or reluctant paid accessories. Westerners’ cultures and personalities led them to take the interests and right to life of Africans very lightly, but they had great concern for white persons’ safety and interests. Furthermore, due to contrasts in economic and technological development in the first and third worlds, Western functionaries had much greater ability to create disorder and to kill in Congo through their greater access to financing, communications, and transport technology, their abundant and effective arms, and their developed alliances, compared to the Africans with and against whom they worked. In contrast, African leaders were from cultures more disposed to trying nonviolent solutions at first, and they were less equipped for effective long-distance communication, transport, and armed force in support of their attempts at negotiated solutions. And all these kinds of inequalities meant they lacked effective local and foreign allies. This chapter illustrates some of these patterns of contrast, outlines new explanations, and points to the implications for reforming both western and African governments and revising their foreign policies to lessen confusion, disorder, and violence in international affairs in the future. As the first major foreign intervention in the Congo, King Leopold II’s late-­ nineteenth/early-twentieth-century “Free State” was run by theft, rape, and deadly force in search of great wealth and glory for Belgium and its allies (Anstey 1966; Bradford and Blume 1992; Hochschild 1998; Nelson 1994; Slade 1962; Vangroenweghe 2010). Though Leopold promised to benefit Congo’s peoples, he never did (Kabemba 2013: 141–142). His administration was minimalist, and large regions were given over as extractive concessions for companies to run as they pleased. Not just Belgium but also the UK, the USA, and France became key investors, holders, and managers of mining-related properties there (Gibbs 1991; Joye and Lewin 1961). Such was the motivation for very great profits that a succession of monolithic colonial industries was run destructively, requiring replacement with a new scheme each time. Overexploitation ruined resources, and harshly forced labor soon diminished whole regional populations. In Leopold’s colony, extraction of ivory, rubber, and then palm oil was profligately done, devastating forests and orchards, animal species, and human populations. In colonial schemes, elephants

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

113

were overhunted for ivory, rubber vines were effaced by unsustainable harvesting, and the groves of oil palm, planted and maintained by villagers for millennia, were cut down without replanting. Through abusive taxes, the population was forced to neglect its own sustenance to pursue extraction for the Europeans. The abuses under Leopold were so dire and obvious that an avalanche of complaints from functionaries, missionaries, diplomats, journalists, and travelers forced the end of the king’s private Congo colony in a little over 20 years (Casement et al. 2003; Hochschild 1998; Morel 1904; Shaloff 1970; Sheppard 1919; Vanthemsche 2012). But its transfer to Belgium in 1908 did not eliminate abuses, though it did organize a fuller administration for the first time (Adu Boahen 1987; Brausch 1961; Higginson 1989; Jacobs 1994; Marchal 2008; Nelson 1994; Shaloff 1970; Vellut 2005). By mid century, Congo’s minerals had become the west’s focus as a major source of income and strategic resources (Williams 2016b). But by the time of independence in 1960, the Belgian colony was in severe economic trouble despite its mineral wealth because of mismanagement and unprepared-for changes in the world economy (Gibbs 1991; Timberlake 1963: 45–61, 134–167; Scott 1969). Always a primary focus of the colony, specialized mining was a nonrenewable economy whose profits the involved western countries did not intend to share with Africans either during the colony or afterward. When independence threatened western control of resources, Belgium and the multinationals with help from NATO allies created military secessions in order to keep control of the mines from the Congolese state (Taped interview with Major Colonel Rene Smal in Giefer 2000; Gibbs 1991; Hempstone 1962; Herz 2004; Jacques 2004; Mummendey 1997; Rubbens 1992; Schuyler 1962; Scott 1969; Valahu 1964; Weber 1983; Vandewalle 1974: 1: 1–135; 1974: 2: 142–302; 1975: 3: 306–478; 1975: 4: 1–275; 1975: 5: 277–555). While Leopold’s Congo had few employees and scant administrative structure, the Belgian colony was more organized. Lower administrators served short stints in Congo and returned to Belgium, but the backbone of the military-style administration was a network of long-time colonials (Gerard-Libois 1963, 1966; Hoare 2008a, b; Lantier 1969; Othen 2015; Puren 1986; Ryckmans 1948; Weber 1982, 1991). Many functionaries came from difficult situations in Europe: broken families, legal problems, and poor education. Some had collaborated in the Nazi occupation of Belgium and needed to evade postwar censure or prosecution; many were extreme right wing, nativist, anti-immigrant, pro-Catholic, and royalists, like Janssens (1962), Weber (1991), and van Bilsen (Saerens 2002; Reyntjens 2015); many worked with extremist groups after WW2 (Teacher 2015). Most came from the Flemish population, which had incurred discrimination in French-dominated Belgium. In Congo, such expatriates could become virtual lords, with villas, servitors, mines, and plantations, and the accompanying wealth, prestige, and predominance. Military and administrative service brought bonuses and indemnities (Valahu 1964: 100–121). Unlike most ordinary Belgians at home, white settler functionaries, business people, military, and missionaries opposed concessions to Congolese at independence and wanted the colonial racial hierarchy to continue (Close 2007: 50–51, 61, 92; Janssens 1962; Scott 1969: 26, 53; Timberlake 1963: 27). As one said, “We used to go ahead of them in a queue and now we can’t face calling them

114

A. C. Roosevelt

‘Monsieur’ and waiting behind them” (Scott 1969: 26). Even though some colonial administrators acknowledged the need to serve Africans (Ryckmans 1948), the colony really did not purposely do so. Africans were supposed to serve Europeans and their state. The triad of powers, the state, the missionaries, and business, prioritized their organizations’ welfare and the welfare of westerners over Africans. What services they delivered were directed at enabling exploitation: roads for mineral transport, primary schools to gain converts and train laborers, and facilities to preserve and control that labor. The premise of colonial control in Africa was the tenet of white supremacy: that the white race and its western civilization were superior to the black race and African culture, and therefore whites should rule and benefit from the labor of blacks and the resources of Africa (Dugauquier 1961; Williams 2016a). Such arguments for the empire were actively promoted in Belgium as in France through many kinds of public education (Sebe 2011; Stanard 2011, 2012). This intellectual premise for colonization was developed in the nineteenth century coincident with the expansion of European exploration, conquest, and rule (Gould 2008; Schwarcz 1999). Following Darwin’s theories, many scientists interpreted the human races as separate and unequal species. Imbued with a deep, unnuanced ethnocentrism nourished by basic ignorance of both the past and present, prominent European and Euroamerican scientists claimed the white race to be purer and more evolved than the others and human civilization to be the achievement of whites. Other races were incompletely evolved, unfit, primitive, or degenerate from interbreeding, according to the scientists. As eugenics theories were developed to purify the race, non-whites were targeted for sterilization, cleansing, and even physical elimination. Such theories about white supremacy gained in popularity in the early twentieth century as bolsters for racial segregation and discrimination in the USA, Europe, and their colonies (Coon 1939, 1962, 1965; Seligman 1930, 1979); and in one way or another they underlay the consolidation of colonial rule, Nazism, Apartheid, and Jim Crow America (Haraway 1990; Orlow 2009; Pringle 2006; Wells 1892; Williams 2016a; Woodward and McFeeley 2001; Schwarcz 1999). White control in these diverse arenas was supported by hateful and condescending expressions in the media, academe, and popular discourse and enforced by public scorn, legal action, and violence. And white supremacist thinking and acting did not end with decolonization in Africa. It was a factor in western decision-making and actions both during the Congo Crisis and in the western-sponsored dictatorships that followed, as can be seen below. White supremacist concepts of western involvement in Congo privileged violence to prevent true independence in order to continue using Congo’s resources. But the premise for justifying white supremacy at home and colonial rule in Africa was empirically false. As archaeology, DNA, and paleoanthropological research now show, the fully modern human species—Homo sapiens sapiens— arose in Africa, not in Europe. Even the great upper Paleolithic complex culture of Europe was established by recent migrants from Africa, the “Cro-Magnons,” not by Europe’s existing population of Neanderthals (DeSalle and Tattersall 2012; Mellars et al. 2007; Stringer and McKie 1998; Stringer 2010; Tattersall 2013). Furthermore, one of the earliest and greatest literate civilizations of the world, ancient Egypt, was

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

115

created by royal dynasties whose closest living relatives are sub-Saharan black Africans, not white Europeans (Hawass et  al. 2010; Hawass et  al. 2012; Martin 2012). At the time Egyptian civilization began, western European chiefdoms were heaping up earth mounds and standing stones and making nice jewelry and arms but not the writing, complex monumental architecture and art, and state government systems of great early civilizations like Egypt. Sub-Saharan Africa’s dynamic prehistoric cultures (Blench and MacDonald 2000; Casey, Eggert, and de Maret’s articles in Stahl 2005; Connah 2004; articles in Delneuf et al. 1998 and Essomba 1992a; Essomba 1992b; Lanfranchi et al. 1997; Roosevelt et al. 1998; Zangato and Holl 2010) culminated in a series of kingdoms often much larger than the contemporary European nations (Codere 1973: 46–300; Hilton 1987; Maquet 1962, 1972; Reefe 1981; Roberts and Roberts 1996; Schweinfurth 1874; Sheppard 1919; Thornton 1983). From the complex societies that arose in northern Katanga more than 2000 years ago to the Kongo kingdom beginning in the fourteenth century, the kingdoms spread complex culture and commerce throughout Central Africa and beyond. The industries and trades that made them so prosperous and populous—metallurgy, intensive agriculture, fishing, animal husbandry, pottery, sculpture, and textiles—were earlier prehistoric innovations, not introductions from Eurasia, as western scholars earlier presumed. The kingdoms’ customary balance of powers was also an African creation. Experienced queen mothers guided kings; clans of court historians dealt with succession; rulers engaged provincial leaders at court and elevated diverse local groups, including women, to important functions with hereditary titles and grants of land, cattle, and clients. Clientage linked the levels of societies from top to bottom, and the burden of periodic conquests was eased by marriage alliance with defeated dynasties. During the millennia of these complex cultures, Congo-­Guinean forests continued to dominate the basin, though much influenced by agroforestry, agriculture, ironworking, and herding near settlements (Biwole et al. 2015; Elenga et al. 1994; Eves et al. 1998; Mbida et al. 2000; Kahlheber et al. 2009). Thus, the Congo basin cultures subject to European colonial rule were not tribes or kinship societies as is often assumed (e.g., Hoskyns 1965a; Namikas 2013: 34; Timberlake 1963: 37–39; Van Reybroucke 2014: 207). They were kingdoms with a strong traditions of organization all the way from village to court, and some of their populations resisted Belgian colonization repeatedly, as did the Africans conscripted into the colonial military (e.g., Hochschild 1998; de Boeck 1987; Reefe 1981), eliciting harsh suppression that culminated in the massive riots that ended Belgian rule. People also collaborated with colonial rule, however, and observers of the functioning of the colony said the basic work of administration was accomplished by African functionaries with low salaries under a hierarchy of well-paid but often inactive Europeans (Hoskyns 1965a: 1–41; Kanza 1972: 11–15; Ritchie-Calder 1961). The Belgian colony continued the roles of kings and chiefs as advisors by appointment, but women and volunteer councils were excluded, as well as minority groups. On decolonization, there was much contradiction and change in the goals, methods, and stances of the different western countries involved, and these kinds of problems, more than the supposed inexperience, irresolution, and division of

116

A. C. Roosevelt

Congolese leaders, created the high degree of confusion and disorder there (Kabemba 2013: 141–148; Mountz 2014a, 2014b; Scott 1969). After WW2 and the rise of Cold War rivalries, US pretentions to global leadership and economic goals led to more engagement in Africa (Paxton 2005; Weissman 1980; Weissman 1974, 1981). World conditions had changed by the mid-twentieth century, and public support for overtly white supremacist European colonies was waning. However, none of the NATO colonial powers intended to give up control after independence; they just planned to operate behind a facade of African leaders (Kabemba 2013: 140–148). But the end of the colony as such did imply the end of whites’ overt prerogatives there, yet many in the Belgian Congo were determined not to give up those appearances (Hoskyns 1965a: 8–41, 51–84; Scott 1969; Vanthemsche 2012). For the colonialists and their supporters back home, the tiny country was nothing without its grand Congo colony (e.g., Stanard 2011, 2012; Weber 1982). Belgium had no thought of independence coming anytime soon, and even the idea it might come in 30 years (van Bilsen 1956, 1962a, b; Scott 1969: 12–40) was considered outrageous. When the facts became unavoidable, they still clung to the idea of continuing control behind a facade of Congolese leaders (Kanza 1972: 80–82). But a series of Belgian missteps and overreactions to Congolese opposition to Belgian colonial rule made covert control ineffective by independence, June 30, 1960, so Belgium quickly took back overt military control, particularly in the mining areas that funded the country and produced the wealth of Belgium and its allies (Gibbs 1991; Roosevelt n.d.-b). The extensive correspondence and public statements of its officials show without a doubt that they intended to continue the colonial situation (Belgian Commission 2001; Vanderstraeten 1985; Vandewalle 1974–1977). The troubled transition to independence started earlier than expected, in the first days of January, 1959. In the context of increasing unemployment and economic recession (Hoskyns 1965a: 14–21; Gibbs 1991), it began with a huge days-long uprising in the colonial capital of Leopoldville. The riot was precipitated by a colonial administrator’s indecision about a permit for the local Kongo ABAKO cultural organization’s meeting to discuss independence. When the meeting was cancelled by its organizers, the crowd began demonstrating angrily against Belgian rule, insulting European passers-by and stoning cars and store windows. The violence turned deadly when a white store owner shot and killed unarmed demonstrators. As the riot spread across the city, colonial police and military under orders from colonial army head Lt. General Emile Janssens killed hundreds more with grenades and guns; no Europeans were killed, however (Vanderstraeten 1985: 19–29, 73–79; Hoskyns 1965a: 87–104; Marres and de Vos 1959; Timberlake 1963: 19–25; these indisputable facts about Belgian mishandling of the riots are omitted by Belgian Commission “expert,” Emmanual Gerard, see Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 5–18). Joseph Kasa-­ Vubu, a local mayor and a leader of the cultural organization, with others, tried to prevent the uprising, but they were blamed for it, arrested, and deported to Belgium. Belgium then quickly announced that political parties could now form legally and independence be planned for some time in the near future, though the concept of “independence” seems to have been a Belgo-Congolese union with Belgium still in charge (Hoskyns 1965a: passim; Kanza 1972: 80–82). A “roundtable” meeting

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

117

with Belgian functionaries was called for early in 1960 in Brussels, including the most prominent Congolese politicians as well as those whom Belgium supported (Brassinne 1992; Hoskyns 1965a: 54–62; Kanza 1972: 74–93). But Patrice Lumumba, an up-and-­coming figure from eastern Congo with experience in organizing, business, and administration, was in jail on trumped up charges of inciting a riot (i.e., promoting true decolonization) in Stanleyville during a congress of political parties (Kanza 1972).8 Therefore, the sometimes fractious and competitive Congolese leaders at the Brussels meeting came together in a common front to demand Lumumba’s inclusion, and so he was reluctantly released by Belgium to join the meeting, while the Kongo political leader, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, retreated to Belgium after several of his demands went unsupported by the others. The upshot of the meeting was that independence would come in less than a year. For the elections the following May of 1960, Belgium, as well as political parties, businesses, foreign countries, and the church, promoted and funded different Congolese parties and candidates, and a number of parties carried out organized, canny, and effective campaigning. The foreign-sponsored parties and small regional parties won few votes, but Lumumba and his collaborators formed a big supraregional coalition of coalitions, and that won the most votes by far (Blouin 1983: 201–238; Hoskyns 1965a: 42–84; Lemarchand 1964, 1967a, b; Merriam 1961: 114–172; Scott 1969; Young 1965a). Congolese politicians had effectively dominated the roundtable with their common front and then they won election pluralities with the broad MNC (Movement National Congolais) coalition, despite all the western funding that supported its competitors. Inaccurately, the Belgian Commission “expert” hypes Congolese political divisions instead of their collaboration (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 5–18). There were some enduring rivalries, but the only really destructive ones were those fomented by foreign agents vie bribes. To Belgium and its NATO allies, the neutralist, anti-colonial nationalism of Lumumba’s party and its affiliates was “radical,” even “communist,” while the prowestern and pro-Catholic-church parties they preferred were “moderate” (e.g., Timberlake 1963: 63–64), inappropriate terms surprisingly still used by some recent authors (Nzongola 2002: 111; 2014). Belgium tried hard to prevent Lumumba becoming Prime Minister, employing a top Sûreté officer, Ganshof, and numerous covert Belgian agents in that goal (Belgian Commission 2001: 653–655, 679–681; Ganshof 1963; Scott 1969: 31–35), but he won in the end because the Belgian-style constitution gave the job to the leader of the strongest party coalition, which was his. Lumumba and Belgium’s representatives then agreed on the choice of KasaVubu as President, as the ABAKO party he helped develop was strong in the lower Congo, though weak everywhere else. 8  There, the colonial governor had white police officers shoot at unarmed Congolese and arrested and tried Lumumba for inciting a riot, though the riot was precipitated by them, not by Lumumba, who was indoors in a meeting. Prosecutors claimed that, though Lumumba’s speech in French did not incite violence, a translation into a Bantu language did, but they did not provide tapes showing that, contrary to a Belgian government-sponsored publication (Simons et al. 1995), and, in examining all the court records of the case in the Belgian archives, I found no such tapes.

118

A. C. Roosevelt

But the independence ceremony was marred by a clueless and condescending speech written for Belgian King Baudouin by Prime Minister Eyskens. It totally omitted colonial abuses, praised Belgium for civilizing Africa, and asked Congolese to prove they deserved their own country. In response, Lumumba spoke up about the colonial atrocities and gave praise to Congolese men and women for their courage in fighting for their freedom. Congolese strongly applauded, repeatedly interrupting him with their clapping. But the hyper-Eurocentric, white supremacist Belgian colonialists were enraged by his audacity and wanted revenge.9 In any case, the top cadre of Belgium’s military had already made plans to seize power and assassinate Lumumba (Belgian Parliamentary Commission 2001: 661–668; Brassinne 1991: Temoignages 24, 25; Janssens 1962; Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973: 1: 23–24). As part of the plot, the Belgian Congo Sûreté secretly organized mobile attack squads of Belgian colonial military and militias to help take over after independence. Just before and after independence, Belgium also secretly sent thousands of troops from Europe to its bases in Congo, amounting to a force of about 11,000 white military there by the time of independence (Vanderstraeten 1985: 61–64; 1992). In the squad of Belgian officers who ultimately beat, tortured, and shot Lumumba to death were several members of those mobile squads and invasion forces. Disorder ensued almost immediately after the contentious independence ceremony (Belgian Commission 2001: 40–42; Chome 1960; Devlin 2007: 2, 8–9, 24–25, 34, Hoskyns 1965a: 58–104, b; Janssens 1962; Kitchen 1967a, b; Munger 1960; Scott 1969: 43, 47, 50, 52, 94; Timberlake 1963: 7–12, 67–69; Van Langenhove 1960: 815–889; Vanderstraeten 1985; Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973; Willame 1990: 119–159). One of the plotters against Lumumba’s government,10 Lt. General Janssens, commander of the colonial army and adamantly opposed to promotion of blacks as officers, incited mutiny among the Congolese rank and file July 5 by declaring none would be made officers after independence (Vanderstraeten 1985: 167). An alarmist phone campaign by Belgian Sûreté agents and announcements by the Belgian Ambassador sent many Europeans into panicked flight (Devlin 2007: 11–13; Hoskyns 1965b; Munger 1960). The evening of the same day, the Belgian Sûreté made the first known attempt to kill Lumumba: An armed squad of four Sûreté officers tried to get into his residence to kill him, but his Congolese police

9  Belgian Commission “experts” and Belgian colonial historians deny Congolese fought for independence (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 10; Stengers 2007: 300). Apparently they do not consider repeated uprisings that incurred beatings, shootings, mass arrests, and mass executions (de Boeck 1987; Vangroenweghe 2010) as fighting for freedom. 10  Janssens boasted of his part in pre-independence plotting against Lumumba (Janssens 1962), and his correspondence with Belgian National Defense beforehand fits his claims (Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973: 1: 32–33). A Belgian government investigation into the mutiny concluded that he indeed had set it off, but the report was withheld from public release (Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973: 2: 179). Several letters purporting to be by Force Publique soldiers criticizing Lumumba around the time of the mutiny (CRISP 1961: 1: 349–357; Hoskyns 1965a: 60–62, 87) were written in French with several Flemish forms of address; therefore, the letters were by Belgian nationals writing under Congolese names, not by Congolese, who never used such forms.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

119

guard overcame them.11 Belgium then quickly extricated the attackers to safety in Europe. The mutiny was, illogically, represented by the Belgian government as a mass attack by Congolese against Europeans incited by Lumumba or a mutiny of Congolese soldiers against him (CRISP 1961: 1: 347–357; Hoskyns 1965a: 100–101). However, even Ganshof denies that Lumumba was behind it (1963: 404), as does the very well-informed head of the Belgian Congo Sûreté then (Vanderstraeten 1985: 167; Vandewalle 1971: 5), and there are very few sources who do not blame Janssens and the Belgian invasion for it (such as the Belgian Commission “expert,” Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 32–51). Only soldiers rioted, in any case, not civilians, and they only humiliated their white officers but did not kill or seriously injure anyone until the massive invasion of Belgian troops. The total white casualties were five European women raped and five Europeans killed, but many Congolese soldiers and civilians were killed and even more wounded (Hoskyns 1965a, b). The claim that many Europeans were killed (Von Horn 1967: 144) is unsupported by any evidence. As the mutiny spread, while Janssens skulked at home, Lumumba and other leaders raced around the country and managed to significantly calm the mutiny by July 7. In contrast to Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu, who personally negotiated with demonstrators, the Belgian generals ordered in war planes to strafe and bomb the mutineers (Vanderstraeten 1985: 162–166). General Gheysen explained, “You’ve got to hit them, hit them hard” (Von Horn 1967: 193). Reversing the war plane order, Lumumba’s government fired the troublemaking Belgian officers and offered Congolese soldiers the promotions they had wanted, which infuriated the Belgian military who wanted to punish them instead. Earlier, Lumumba and other leaders had repeatedly asked for the officer cadre to be Africanized, but Janssens had stonewalled (Hoskyns 1965a: 59–60). In their published complaints, the soldiers say they sensed a Belgian conspiracy to prevent Africanization of the cadres (Kitchen 1967a, b). They also reported abusive treatment by the white colonial officers, something unmentioned by complaisant Belgian authors (such as Willame 1967). On the excuse of saving whites from attacks by Congolese but with the intent of retaking control of Congo (Vanderstraeten 1985: 406–411; Willame 1990: 153), on July 8 Belgium ordered troops from its bases to take over Congo and two days later reinforced them with more troops from Belgium. They took over all important cities and transportation and communication facilities and went around shooting Congolese soldiers who were not doing anything; they arrested and cursed top Congolese leaders, calling them “monkeys” (Willame 1990: 155). When the Congolese government lambasted Belgium for invading without authorization, Belgium claimed Lumumba had accepted it on July 11 (CRISP 1961: 1: 446–7; Hoskyns 1965a: 98–99; Vanderstraeten 1985: 396, 458). But when challenged on it,

 Though Belgian Commission “expert” Gerard claims the attack was by Belgian civilians (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 35–37), the head of the Belgian Sûreté in Congo at the time, F. Vandewalle, acknowledges that it was an attack by Sûreté officers and he got the attackers freed from detention (Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973: 1: 23–24).

11

120

A. C. Roosevelt

Belgium published letters that are obvious fakes.12 Even the very anti-Lumumba US ambassador insists that Congolese leaders did not cause the mutiny or accept the Belgian invasion. And he said that the government “was united in its opposition to the employment by Belgium of Belgian troops to restore order” (Timberlake 1963: 9–10). As Kasa-Vubu said to a Belgian invasion commander, Belgium was continuing to operate as it had during the colony (Vanderstraeten 1985: 396–397). Though the mutiny had ended at the Atlantic port of Matadi, Belgian war planes carried out a vengeance attack there, and the establishment of the Katanga secession was announced on the authority of Major Guy Weber, commander of the Belgian invasion force there, where Belgian war planes strafed and bombed the mutineers. On 12 July, Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu headed to Katanga to help to calm the mutiny there, but in brutal terms Weber refused to let them land. Belgium later depicted his act as local notable Munongo’s (Hoskyns 1965a: 99–100; Vanderstraeten 1985: 397–398), but it was Weber’s (Weber 1983: 68–69). The pilots under Belgian orders also limited where Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba could travel, by intervening with their Belgian pilots (Scott 1969: 123). The first widespread violence in the mutiny followed all these incendiary Belgian acts (a sequence fudged by Belgian Commission “expert,” Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 35). Two days later came another serious threat to the Congolese leaders’ security. The commander of the invasion force, Lt. General Charles Cumont, had Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba’s plane hijacked to try to force them to endorse the invasion in a meeting with General Gheysen, the head of the Belgian army. Showing his hegemonic stripes, Gheysen castigated them for refusing his authority, threatened them, then dumped them at Leopoldville airport to be menaced by Belgian paras and angry colonists gathered there (Belgian Commission 2001: 147; Devlin 2007: 42–44; Vanderstraeten 1985: 399–408) (Fig. 3).13 Cumont told the US ambassador to Belgium soon after, “Lumumba’s position still very strong … Only course seems to be to get rid of him” (July 22, Herter to Burden, Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 36–39, 228, note 10), and he ordered another kidnapping to try to kill Lumumba a few weeks later (Belgian Commission 2001: 179–180; Dedeken 1978). The Congolese government broke diplomatic relations with Belgium over its invasion and secessions and expelled its representatives August 8. This forced the c. 1000 Belgian colonial officers still in Congo (Vanderstraeten 1985: 64–68) to cross to Brazzaville, western-friendly capital of former French Congo, or to the Belgian  The Belgian Sûreté published hastily assembled fakes impugning Lumumba in the main Leopoldville paper, which Belgium secretly funded and edited at the time (Courrier d’Afrique October 19, 1960: 1; Belgian Commission 2001: 653–655). Belgium published cleaned-up versions of some letters in a colonialist journal later that year (Van Langenhove 1960: 648–651). Among other anomalies, some were pasted up from texts typed on different machines, and some lacked the right letterhead, name of addressee, and the usual forms of Lumumba’s name and signature. Others had numerous errors characteristic of the writing and typing of certain Sûreté officers (Weber 1982, 1983), not of Lumumba’s (e.g., Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973: 2: opposite 192). 13  A Belgian Commission “expert” absurdly characterizes these aggressive, condescending, and illegal actions as “a desire to negotiate” that was rebuffed (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 38), and Kalb euphemistically calls it an invitation to review an “honor guard” of Belgian troops (1982: 14). 12

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

121

Fig. 3 Belgian settlers and paratroops menace Congolese prime minister Lumumba at Leopoldville’s airport, July 14, 1960, during the Belgian invasion after the mutiny. (Michel 1963: opposite p. 49)

secessions. Hardly grassroots affairs, the secessions were put in by Belgian military under Belgian National Defense Department orders and organized by the Belgian prime minister’s deputies, who also appointed their staff (Gerard-Libois 1963, 1966; Gibbs 1991; Weber 1983; Valahu 1964: 119–121; Vanderstraeten 1985; Vandewalle 1974–1977: passim). They were essentially military juntas, headed by Weber in Katanga, with a French colonial intelligence officer Jean Gillet under Weber in South Kasai, behind the facades of provincial presidents Moise Tshombe and Albert Kalonji, respectively (Colvin 1968; Gibbs 1991; Hempstone 1962; Kalonji 1964, 2002, interview 2013; Tshombe 1967, 1975; Valahu 1964; Weber 1983; U.N. Archives: Crener to Weber, 26 May 1961). Although Tshombe had been working to incorporate the pro-Lumumba BALUBAT party cartel into his provincial cabinet (Belgian Commission 2001: 50), the Belgian government intervened to prevent that by altering Katanga’s constitution. “Had not article 110 and 114 of the ‘Loi Fondamentale’ been altered, Tshombe might never have become president” nor the secession declared (Kanza 1972: 96). To massacre the cartel’s many members, Belgium organized heavily armed mobile squads under its officers (Borri 1962; Dayal 1976: 199; Kuitenbrouwer 1961a, b; Lancinay 1985; Middeleer 1973; Roosevelt n.d.-b; Valahu 1964) and cast the killings as fratricidal tribal wars (GOK 1961). [The strategy against the cartel members was directed by junta leader Weber (see the depiction of an attack strategy session led by him: Manu-XYZ 2008).] The Belgian military controlled the security for the secessions’ African leaders, and the mining multinationals controlled their funds, but the leaders did have choice in degree of personal cooperation with these forces, as will be seen below.

122

A. C. Roosevelt

The invasion and secessions unnerved the Congolese and many foreigners in Congo. The UK ambassador observed, “Deeper, perhaps, and unexpressed was the feeling that the Belgians were still there and would not go away; that they insisted on clinging to the Congo” (Scott 1969: 53). Convinced of Belgium’s intent to take over, the Congo’s government asked the UN to send forces to expel Belgian troops and bring order (asking verbally on the 10th and formally on the 12th). Two days later the UN passed a resolution demanding the removal of Belgian troops and authorizing a peacekeeping operation. The first UN troops arrived in days (Belgian Commission 2001: 50–51; Kent 2010). But to Lumumba’s dismay the UN at first protected the secessions and the colonists, not the Congolese and their leaders, and even got involved in western projects to remove Lumumba from office (Collins 1992; Dayal 1976; Kalb 1982; Kent 2010; Rikhye 1993, 2002; Timberlake 1983: 10–12; von Horn 1967). Since the efforts to sideline Lumumba in the elections and top appointments had failed along with the first assassination attempt as well, in late summer and fall of 1960 western governments together organized a series of UN-aided coups to dislodge him as prime minister and at the same time set in motion a multifaceted assassination effort (Fig. 4). When the coups did not work because of continued support for him in the parliament and army and lack of effective action by the western-­ bribed politicians for his removal, western plotters redoubled their assassination attempts, and these were, in the end, effective. Thus, repeated acts of direct and structural violence by the “democratic” governments of “the free world,” working in collaboration, resulted in Patrice Lumumba, the only truly democratically elected Prime Minister of Congo, being removed from office, imprisoned, and executed in the space of just a few months. As they did for the Belgian secession juntas, western intelligence, diplomatic, and UN functionaries enlisted various Congolese politicians, military, and security officers, with pressure, threats, and enormous bribes to serve as fronts for their activities against Lumumba, aided and abetted by secret agents of UK and France (Fig.  5) (e.g., Belgian Commission 2001: 963–964; Dayal 1976; Devlin 2007; Hayes 2016; Mountz 2014a, b; Scott 1969; Tully 1962; Weissman 1974, 2010). The successful acts against Lumumba are often attributed to Congolese initiative and motivations of selfish and divisive disloyalty on the part of inexperienced, greedy, and vicious Congolese politicians, who supposedly hated Lumumba (de Vos et al. 2004, 2005; de Witte 1996, 2000, 2002; Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 91–134 and passim; Kalb 1982; Nzongola 2002: 110–112; Weissman 2010; Young 1965a, 1966). However, the record is clear that most were reluctant to cooperate with the western plots against Lumumba and tried to reconcile with him repeatedly. For example, when asked to join the plot to kill Lumumba in August, “KASAVUBU REFUSED AGREE SAYING HE RELUCTANT RESORT VIOLENCE AND NO OTHER LEADER SUFFICIENT STATURE REPLACE LUMUMBA” (CIA cable, Leo to DC, 8/24/60, Church 1975: 15). The archives are packed with western messages to headquarters recording the western initiative in the acts against Lumumba and their complaints about the lack of commitment of the Congolese to these plots, their annoying waffling, and their supine inclination to keep reconciling with Lumumba.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

123

Fig. 4  Note in the CIA “Family Jewels” report of 16 May 1973, stating that a CIA officer (name redacted) told the inspector general that the agency had organized a plot to kill Patrice Lumumba. (JFK Assassination Archive, History Matters: CIA: MORI DocID 1451843, stamped 00464)

124

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 5  The “Binza” Group. The CIA station chief, US Ambassador, and US political officer, in 1961 with Congolese leaders whom the U.S. and the Belgian government bribed to work with them against Lumumba. From left Justin Bomboko, Mrs. Godley, Joseph Mobutu, US Ambassador Mac Godley, Lawrence Devlin, Frank Carlucci, and Victor Nendaka. (Devlin 2007: 9th photo after p. 132)

(See the relevant dates in the following: Belgian Commission 2001: 146–147, and passim; de Vos et al. 2004, 2005; Devlin 2007; FRUS 1992, 1994, 2013; Scott 1969; Timberlake 1963.) The assignment of blame onto Congolese is often based on documents attributed to them, yet it is repeatedly acknowledged in the plotter’s communications that the Belgian government handlers write the Congolese clients’ letters and cables.14 So the question is, if the plotting was by Congolese initiative, why are their communications about it written by westerners? The record shows that the removal of Lumumba from office was achieved collaboratively with UN and western government functionaries working together to direct, pay for, and write documents for other Congolese politicians and military to disavow Lumumba and with UN military forces to prevent Lumumba and nationalist politicians from speaking to the public or traveling by air to and from their constituencies (Belgian Commission 2001; Collins 1992; Dayal 1976; Devlin 2007;  For example, Andre Lahaye, the Belgian Sûreté head, wrote Kasa-Vubu’s letters (Belgian Commission 2001: 963). Belgian officers and secret agents wrote Tshombe’s letters (Colvin 1968: 18–19; Dayal 1976: 108–109). A European writes Tshombe’s letters to the Belgian king (Vandewalle 1975: 4: 26). Weber gave and wrote orders and letters under the names of both Munongo and Tshombe (Weber 1983: 67–68; UN Archives: Dumontet to Abbas Maceoin, 10 April 1961). An observer said that Tshombe and his ministers would sign anything put in front of them (Valahu 1964: 147–152). 14

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

125

Hoskyns 1965a). On September 6, after much maneuvering, a very large bribe via the CIA, and with UN knowledge ahead of time, the reluctant Kasa-Vubu’s Belgian handlers (Leopoldville Sûreté head Andre Lahaye, Jef Van Bilsen, and George Denis) managed to get him to read on the radio a document they drafted firing Lumumba for alleged criminal activities. He then went home to bed and could not be reached when they realized he had not obtained necessary signatures by two other ministers. Lumumba shot right back with two radio speeches, saying rightly that this was the work of foreigners and unconstitutional, to boot, and that he was firing Kasa-Vubu for his illegal and traitorous action. Prodded by the USA, UN’s main donor, Hammarskjold, sent his top US aide Andrew Cordier to assist the coup against Lumumba (Collins 1992; Hoskyns 1965a: 202–206; Urquhart 1972: 440–442). Cordier had the UN guard at the radio prevent further addresses by Lumumba, while his western-propped rivals continued to broadcast on the US-equipped and US-trained radio outfit in Brazza, which was under French influence at the time. He closed Congo’s main airports, preventing MNC-affiliated parliamentarians from traveling to and from their constituents and the capital but not western-supported ones. And he got the UN to send a million dollars for Mobutu to salve the troops with (Dayal 1976: 99–100). Both of Congo’s houses of parliament, however, continued to endorse Lumumba firmly, work for his reconciliation with Kasa-Vubu, and ignore western-chosen replacements, legal obfuscations, and massive bribes, so he remained the legal prime minister. The US State Department had drenched the parliament with money thinking that this would get it to disavow Lumumba, but this was unsuccessful (Carlucci 2005; Church 1975: 13–70; Devlin 2007). Hammarskjold had publicly supported the murky western legal challenges to Lumumba’s government, though neither his new representative in Congo, Indian diplomat Rajeshwar Dayal, nor the UN legal department did (Dayal 1976: 31–32, 43, 61, 80–81, 134). They said the constitution of Congo, in effect unless replaced by parliament, continued a fired prime minister in office until a new one formed a government confirmed by parliament (Anonymous 1960, Articles 1, 2, 22, 27, 99). Parliament never confirmed the west’s choice, Joseph Ileo, whose campaign the USA had funded during the elections, so Lumumba’s government should have continued, as even Van Bilsen, Kasa-­ Vubu’s “advisor,” recognized (1962a). These problems in controlling parliament persuaded the western reps that they needed to get parliament suspended, a move Hammarskjold supported (Dayal 1976: 116). Despite all the bribes, intimidation, arranged demonstrations against Lumumba (Fig. 6), and disinformation campaigns to imply lack of support for him in the country, the Congolese fronts for western plotters kept making reconciliation agreements with Lumumba, and he continued to enjoy popular and political support in his country and in others (Hoskyns 1965a: 197–246). In fact, most of the country supported his government, contrary to frequent western attempts to make it look otherwise. The tendency for Congolese to reconcile, rather than encouraged, was treated as a threat to western plans to control the government. For example, when Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu agreed in writing on September 17 to reconcile soon after the coup, the UK and US ambassadors got wind of it, raced over to Kasa-Vubu’s, and seized

126

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 6  Fake demonstrations organized by CIA and a European secret agent against Lumumba, in Leopoldville during a conference of African leaders Lumumba hosted in late August 1960. (Represented as genuine in Willame 1990: 26th photo after p. 256)

and destroyed the printed agreement. They then denied the reality of the reconciliation and ridiculed Lumumba as delusional when he announced it (Scott 1969: 32; Timberlake 1963), though UN functionaries had been party to the agreement and had seen the letter (Dayal 1976: 85–88). However, because the western-bribed Congolese pols were such ineffective and inconstant facades, on September 14 the western plotters organized a military coup behind the facade of Joseph Mobutu, a pre-independence US and Belgian intelligence recruit, and the College of Commissioners, a group of Congolese university students in Belgium (Dayal 1976: 135–142; Tully 1962: 180–182). But even Mobutu in charge was no match for Lumumba, as will be seen. At this point the governments of the NATO countries and the multinational mining corporations went in together on a more concerted project to eliminate Lumumba by killing him because the coups could not achieve that. The close collaboration of US and Belgium, the UK, France, and the UN Secretariat in the arrests, detention, and assassination is well documented, even though many archival materials remain classified out of sight.15 The Belgian Sûreté and the CIA, with help from the security services of the UK and France, created an elaborate multifaceted plan for that  CIA refused me full declassification of its Congo records on the grounds that it had “lost” the originals, and UN Archives officials in charge of declassification requests never even answered my six formal, detailed requests for declassification of Congo Crisis archives, made in 2010 and 2011. 15

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

127

purpose, which was variously called Operation Lumumba, Mission Lumumba, or Operation Barracuda by the Belgians. Although UN staff seem not to have been involved in creating or carrying out the assassination plan, they enabled its accomplishment at several points. Some of the plan’s main elements were detailed in USA’s congressional inquiry on the assassination (Church Committee 1975) and in Belgium’s parliamentary inquiry on the assassination (Belgian Commission 2001); other details came out in newspaper reports at the time, testimonies and confessions by perpetrators, selective declassifications, and participants’ memoirs. Evidence of links between the US and Belgium in the assassination plan include communications by Belgian plotters to US conspirators (e.g., the document Operation Lumumba Suggestions, Belgian Commission 2001: 649–648) and CIA cables (FRUS 2013; Hayes 2016: 138–181; Kalb 1982). Although still redacted in US records, the names of some of the Belgians involved in the operations and the Congolese they bribed and pressured to get them to help are actually given in the lists of secret funds allocated by Eyskens and throughout the text of the Belgian inquiry (Belgian Commission 2001: 653–655, 679–681, and passim). Various memoirs, theses, testimonies, a UN report, and archival documents also name names (e.g., Blistein interview 2011; Brassinne 1991: Annexes and Temoignages; de Witte 1996, 2000, 2002; Devlin 2007; Doyle 2001; Kalonji interview 2013; Mbu-Mputu 2010; Stockwell 1978: 105; UN 1961b; Vandewalle 1974–1977; Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973; Weber 1982, 1983, 1991). Little about specific UK and French collaboration in the plot has been released by those governments so far, but several French military security functionaries’ names are given in the Belgian Commission documents on plot collaboration in Brazzaville and the South Kasai secession, and the UK station chief Daphne Park’s recent biography quotes her claims of having “killed Lumumba” (Hayes 2016: 138–181). However, the literature for the most part goes along with the denial that Belgian or American functionaries had any role in the actual assassination, despite their having admitted trying to kill him earlier. So, the Church Committee (Church 1975: 13–70) carefully left unmentioned the two Belgian officers the UN published report identified as the actual killers from multiple independent sources of evidence, as do the Belgian Commission “experts” (Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Kalb 1982; Mahoney 1979: 52–99; 1983: 94–95; Weissman 1974: 115–151; and Willame 1990: 435–467). Instead, the ordering of the ultimate assassination is attributed to various top Congolese leaders—Mobutu, Kasa-Vubu, Bomboko, Ileo, Adoula, Tshombe, Munongo, Kibwe, and Kalonji, for example—not to western leaders or officers. Nonetheless, by combining evidence from declassified correspondence, witness interviews, and memoirs, it is possible to reconstruct much of what actually happened and that evidence shows the mainstream literature to be incorrect and incomplete. It is clear that the assassination plots against Lumumba were ordered by the top officials of the two most involved western countries: the USA and Belgium, and top

They were only declared open to the public in fall of 2019 during the new inquiry on Hammarskjold’s death (Othman 2019).

128

A. C. Roosevelt

officials of their close allies, especially the UK and France, helped the project along at important points. To understand the motives of US functionaries with regard to Lumumba, it is relevant that this is the time of Jim Crow America, which whites ruled with racial discrimination under the law and where African American leaders were resisted, often physically attacked, and not infrequently assassinated (Williams 2013; Woodward and McFeely 2002). Dwight D. Eisenhower, US president at the time, was later said by members of his National Security Council to have ordered the assassination and had his deputies keep pushing the CIA when it did not happen immediately (Belgian Commission 2001: 129–130; Church Committee 1975: 13–70). Former top military officer and leader of a white-dominated, highly segregated society, Eisenhower was irritated both by African Americans’ demands for civil rights (Cook 1984: 173) and by the aspirations of recently independent African states. His ire at Lumumba’s assertiveness shows up in his comments in the minutes of National Security Council meetings (FRUS 1992, 2013; Mountz 2014a). Financial self-dealing also was a part of the motivations of some US functionaries. Some US officials in charge of foreign policy and security at the time had significant conflicts of interest through their investment or participation in the mining business. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Douglas Dillon, had a family investment bank, Dillon Reid (where Ganshof’s son was employed), heavily invested in the Congo mines. CIA chief Devlin profited from diamond dealing even while on CIA staff and often did business with father and son L. and M. Tempelsman, diamond dealers who were close to Kennedy’s administration and family, to Adlai Stevenson, and to the Johnson administration; the son was later convicted of illegal trading (Mahoney 1979, 1983: 174–175; Roberts 2003: 174–181, 194–198, 161–280, 309–323, 336, 358; Weissman 1974: 127–128, 176). For its part, Britain had long competed and also collaborated with Belgium in the control and use of mineral resources in Congo, and their exploitation required coordination between the two countries, especially in transport and executive decisions in the multinational corporations (James 1996; Gibbs 1991; Williams 2016b). Many Brits from the Foreign office and secret services serving in Congo at the time were from colonial backgrounds and had imbibed its white supremacist ethos. In any case, the long-time, consensus British policy was to support and preserve its white colonies in Africa to maintain white control of minerals (Hayes 2016; Williams 2011, 2016a, b), though this motivation is quite absent from some functionaries’ retrospectives (e.g., Carrington 1962). As for the Belgians, the government functionaries in the anti-Lumumba project were mostly from Belgian colonial families and high-ranking investors in Congo. Greed was important in their motivations, because a favorable Congolese government could preserve western control of mineral resources, and government service in the Congo gave retirement benefits and bonuses in addition to salaries (e.g., Valahu 1964: 121; Weber 1983: 208, Annex J). Even the Belgian Commission that white-washed Belgian perpetration in Lumumba’s assassination admitted that Belgians involved in the crisis used it for personal financial gain (Belgian Commission 2001: Summary). White supremacist ideals, behavior, and control were enforced brutally in the colony, and even whites who fraternized with blacks

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

129

were ostracized (Van Reybroucke 2014). Such attitudes did not change overnight on independence day, June 30, 1960, and the colonialists were outraged by Lumumba’s self-confidence, initiative, and independence of western influence (Blistein interview 2011). In contrast to Lumumba’s, and even Tshombe’s, quick-footedness in the crisis, Belgian functionaries seemed unable to adapt to the quickly changing situation. Their communications manifest a sense of insecurity, insularity, extreme touchiness, divisiveness, and a tendency to hold onto resentment and grudges: against Lumumba for his independence day speech and his being too nice to the mutineers, against the UN for agreeing to expel and even fight Belgian military, and against its allies for their support of the UN operation in Congo (Belgian Commission 2001; Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Hoskyns 1965a; Timberlake 1963). Like Belgium’s, France’s population of colonialists overlapped substantially with its fascists and neofascists (Jennings 2001). With a history of collaboration with the Nazis, like Belgium’s, and an equally fractious and uninsightful decolonization experience as Belgium’s, France was happy to quietly assist in the colonial to neocolonial transition process in Congo. Its UN representatives voted with Belgium and the UK, its diplomats helped pressure the USA at NATO meetings, and its covert functionaries in Brazzaville were quite available to assist western plotters against Lumumba’s government. A French agent, for example, assisted in the fake tract operations using the ABAKO youth branch as its front (Belgian Commission 2001: 112–113), which CIA used for its fake demonstrations against Lumumba (see Fig. 6, above). Also, the massacres of Lumumba supporters in Katanga were a perfect venue for the very hardline French colonial military, fresh from their unsuccessful military coup against de Gaulle over Algeria (Hoare 1989: 77–80). This military had used very similar methods to the abusive Belgian “parades” to suppress African uprisings (Golsan 2000: 156–180). Belgian colonial military both resented and benefitted from those French activities, and the Katangan ministers often tried to play them against each other, though ultimately unsuccessfully (Vandewalle 1979). By August, in addition to its legal and administrative maneuvering against the Lumumba government, Belgium’s determined assassination plotting had begun, and collaboration with the CIA on it, also (de Vos et al. 2005: 183–240). In early October, Belgium informed its functionaries that its top priority was Lumumba’s “definitive elimination” (Belgian Commission 2001: 656), and elimination in the context meant execution (Vandewalle 1975: 3: 317–324), the tergiversations of the Belgian Commission “experts” notwithstanding. The Belgian administration had been surveilling and harassing Lumumba since 1954. Belgian king Baudouin was kept closely informed about the machinations against Lumumba in Congo and was clearly even more committed to using force there than the civilian Belgian government under Eyskens (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 32–34, 49–51). He was fervently opposed to Lumumba, whom he blamed for Belgium’s humiliation and loss of its valuable colony (see his notes upon Weber’s letter of Oct 19, Bel Com 2001: 659–650). Guy Weber, the Belgian cabinet-appointed head of the Katanga junta and top officer in the chain of command over the officer who actually shot Lumumba dead (Belgian Commission 2001: 926), who went to military school in Nazi-­ occupied Belgium, was a strong royalist and close associate of Baudouin’s

130

A. C. Roosevelt

Nazi-collaborationist father, Leopold III (Weber 1991). Weber had frequent meetings and regular correspondence with Baudouin’s cabinet during the crisis on topics including murder plots. By summer’s end, Belgian Prime Minister Eyskens had ordered his cabinet to organize secret operations to depose and assassinate Lumumba. His top deputies Harold d’Aspremont Lynden and Robert Rothschild organized the secession where the assassination took place, even to the individual appointments in its Belgian administration and military, and he arranged millions of dollars of “secret funds for subterranean action” for the use of Belgian officers and agents (see Fig. 7) (Belgian Commission 2001: 653, 679, 681, and passim). Eyskens also was in intimate contact with Weber, who had Eyskens’ personal office phone number in his diary, which I found in the Belgian archives (see Fig. 8). Although Belgian Commission “experts” reduced Belgium’s fault to the “moral” crime of not saving Lumumba from being killed by Congolese, the concrete evidence shows that Belgium ordered and paid for the crime; chose, directed, and rewarded the Belgian perpetrators; and shifted the blame onto Africans. The UN itself became integrally involved in Lumumba’s downfall and death— “an accessory before the fact” (Nzongola 2002: 111)—and was an instrument of confusion, disorder, and harm throughout the Congo Crisis. Several elements interacted to give it this disastrous role. Hammarskjold sincerely wanted the UN to be a respected progressive international influence and encouraged newly independent countries of the third world to join it (Dayal 1976; Kent 2010; O’Brien 1962; Urquhart 1972, 1987). However, either from a superiority complex as a highly educated European aristocrat, his family links to mining investment, or due to his job and funding that depended on the USA, he betrayed both UN principles and African rights again and again. His failings in this regard have been little analyzed (but see Abi Saab 1978; Blommaert 1990; Chome 1961; Hoskyns 1965a: 222–229; Katete Orwa 1985; Lefever 1965, 1967). Loyal UN functionaries were reluctant to criticize, and their countries’ governments disallowed frankness about its problems (e.g., Dayal 1976; Urquhart 1987, Rikhye 1993, 2002; Von Horn 1967). But his and his associates’ involvement was very important in the untoward events. It is telling that he became furious when one or another Congolese leader defied him. In internal documents, he used the same phrase, “I am going to break him,” when both Lumumba and Tshombe strongly disagreed with him. Despite insisting that he could not take sides nor intervene in internal matters in Congo, he repeatedly did so and then prevaricated about it. In one example, he sent his top American deputy Cordier to Congo with carte blanche to lead the first coup against Lumumba, told him he would probably need to lie about it, and then lied about it (Collins 1992). He knew that the Congolese leaders were not in charge and that western powers were behind the coups and killings—“Believe that the real game now, as in fact all the time, is between much bigger powers and personalities than those which figure in Congo limelight” (Dayal 1976: 135)—but he never expressed that fact in any reports the UN published and cut from UN reports what Dayal describes as a Belgian-led “genocidal activities” against Lumumba political supporters in Katanga (Dayal 1976: 111).

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

131

Fig. 7  First pages of Belgian prime minister Eyskens’ list of “secret funds” for “subterranean actions” against Lumumba, September 12, 1960, showing 7 million francs for Belgian secret agent Benoit Verhaegen of CRISP (Centre de Recherche et d’Information Socio-politique) and 2.5 million for Couraf (Courrier d’Afrique), the paper that published fake letters depicting Lumumba as a genocidal dictator allied with the Soviets (see Fig. 9). (Belgian Parliamentary Commission Report, 2001:2:653)

132

Fig. 7 (continued)

A. C. Roosevelt

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

133

Fig. 8  Excerpts of pages of the 1960 diary of Belgian officer Major Guy Weber, the military junta leader for Katanga, showing the work and home number of King Baudouin’s cabinet head, the King’s Palace number, and the personal office number of Belgian Prime Minister Eyskens. The diary calendar for August 1 and 3, 1960, has Weber lunching in Brussels with Eyskens and the Minister of Belgian National Defense, Arthur Gilson. I copied his diaries for 1960 and 1961 in the Royal Africa Contemporary History Museum Archives. (Gerard-Libois collection, 01.13.79.02, Dossier Guy Weber)

Furthermore, Hammarskjold and his associates supported the confinement of Lumumba to house arrest by refusing to protect him outside it (though they protected western-supported leaders away from their residences, including Mobutu and Kasa-Vubu). The confinement prevented Lumumba from functioning as prime minister, which UN legal experts acknowledged he still was at the time, and put Lumumba in danger as a ready target of ongoing US/Belgian attempts to poison, shoot, or kidnap him. When Lumumba was arrested after fleeing house arrest, Hammarskjold ordered nearby UN troops from Ghana not to help him, then claimed that the troops could not save him because they were not in the area, though they certainly were (Dayal 1976: 145–204; Von Horn 1967: 248). The arrest and jailing of Lumumba put his life in even greater danger because assassination plotters could now get direct access to him. Other manipulations by Hammarskjold led to mortal harm to African civilians. Under him, UN troops from Europe were sent to Katanga with instructions to protect the whites, and so at first they worked with the Belgian military in the massacres of supporters of the Lumumbist BALUBAKAT cartel (Keane 1994: 39; Roosevelt n.d.-b; Tullberg 2012). After Lumumba’s death, the UN

134

A. C. Roosevelt

worked with the CIA and State Department to bribe Congolese parliamentarians to determine his replacement (Devlin 2007: 156–161; Gibbs 1991: 128–129; 1996; Weissman 1974: 144–151), hardly an exercise in democratic self-determination. And, finally, UN actions indirectly led to Hammarskjold’s own death (UN 1962) and to impunity for the Belgian officers who killed him, Lumumba, and Lumumba’s colleagues and massacred tens of thousands of Lumumba’s supporters in Katanga. Some European UN officers in Congo felt friendship to Belgian military and the white mercenaries and socialized with them. As a result, they sometimes did not carry out UN resolutions to expel them (e.g., Hoare 1989: 71–72). Similarly, although UN resolutions mandated an investigation to find Lumumba’s assassins and bring them to justice, the report left out that fact that two Belgians it directly implicated in the killing—Colonel Charles Huyghe and Captain Julien Gat—were regular Belgian military under Belgian orders (UN 1961b), not mercenaries, and Hammarskjold’s staff also protected Huyghe from arrest, deportation, and interrogation by the UN investigation (UN Arms S-0793 Bx 9 File 39 ACC DAG 13/1.6.4.3.1: O’Brien to Linner, 28 July 1961 S 0793; O’Brien to Linner Maceoin,1 August 1961; O’Brien to Linner, 15 May 1962) (See Fig. 16, below). Both officers took part in organizing mobile squads before independence, and Huyghe, furthermore, was actively involved in the Belgian death squads active against the Luba in North Katanga, whose activities Dayal called genocidal (Dayal 1976: 199–201). Ironically, as the acting secession defense head, Huyghe commanded its air force, which probably shot down Hammarskjold’s plane under his direction with one of its improvised war planes (described in Puren 1986 and Vandewalle 1975: 4: 22), during his descent to Ndola airport, Northern Rhodesia, September 18, 1961, to negotiate with Tshombe (Othman 2019); Huyghe, along with another high Belgian military officer, was at that airport when it happened (Puren 1986: 55–61). Among all the combatants in Congo, Huyghe’s long-time employer, Belgium, was the most furious at Hammarskjold. It regarded the UN’s effort to expel its military and administrators and prevent its “aide” to Congolese leaders “with undisguised hostility” (Dayal 1976: 108). When the UN finally decided the secession had to end, the Belgian military there went on an all-out war against the UN (O’Brien 1962). What of the actions and motivations of the Congolese who helped western functionaries against Lumumba? Many of the pols elevated to office by western representatives were unable to win high office on their own accord (e.g., Nendaka, Mobutu, and Pongo). Many also had long been employees in the Colonial Sûreté; the Belgian officers who had been their bosses now became their supposed “assistants” or “aides.” Congolese army head Joseph Mobutu, security chief Nendaka, and several commissioners under Mobutu’s first coup government, such as Damien Kandolo, Ferdinand Kazadi, Justin Nendaka, and Jonas Mukamba, had been secret agents for the colony before independence. Mobutu was put in charge by the USA and Belgium through three coups and was propped up for three decades as the country’s abusive military dictator. Despite his later image as a strong man, as a colonial army journalist he had no military experience (FRUS 2013: 32) and no political success. Western secret correspondence repeatedly complains that he had little control over the army and worries over repeated rumors of his participation in

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

135

reconciliation talks with Lumumba. Otherwise, his life is poorly documented (Chome 1979; Mobutu 1989; Monheim 1961, 1962). By all accounts he was a weak, depressive, covetous, and deceptive personality. He is described as anxious, timid, and indecisive (Chatterji 1980; FRUS 1992: passim; Dayal 1976: 61–67; Rikhye 1993: 170–171 and passim) and unable or unwilling to direct the army. Without the force of western help, he never would have been able to head the country. There was no provision in the constitution for his position or for his College of Commissioners. Although several political rivals were executed soon after the final and definitive coup in 1965, the army was still commanded by western military then, and his was an evasive and peripheral role in the other executions that took place in Congo in the 1960s (Brassinne 1991: Temoignages, 11.2). Moise Tshombe was a genial money-loving businessman from a wealthy family and ran through several fortunes in his youth (Colvin 1968: 11–23). Belgian security officers dubbed him Mr. Cash Register (Marliere interview in Giefer 2000). Without the help and money of westerners, he could not have gained the positions he got as provincial president or president of the Katanga secession under the Belgian junta, the real power in Katanga. Minister of Interior in Katanga, Godefroid Munongo, also had been a colonial functionary. He was certainly a strong supporter of the Katanga secession, but nonetheless rejoined the Congo government after it ended. Many authors cite his murderous hatred for Lumumba (Dayal 1976: 316; de Witte 2002: 84; Ganshof 1963: 476; Mazov 2010: 91; Nzongola 2002: 112; Vanderstraeten 1985: 397–398; Weissman 1974: 138; Willame 1990: 170–171), but the sources they cite for that, if any, are either the forensically questionable documents (Brassinne 1991: Annexe 27-1, 39-2; Volksgazet 1961, February 15: 3) or orders by the Belgian officer who headed the secessions, not by Munongo (Weber 1983: 67–68). Munongo was not the strong man of the Katangan legend (Vandewalle 1976: 7: 5); Weber was. Congolese functionaries got millions of dollars and other emoluments from both American and Belgian governments and sometimes from the UN during the crisis (Belgian Commission 2001: 653–655, 679–681; Dayal 1976: 28–47; Weissman 1974: 149–151, 2010, 2011). Money was extraordinarily scarce at independence in Congo because the treasury was almost bankrupt; Belgium had moved the National Bank’s gold bullion to Brussels, changed stocks and bonds listings, and seceded the mining areas that gave most of its income (Gibbs 1991; Hoskyns 1965a: 14–20; Scott 1969: 32). Despite this context and inducements, Congolese pols did not seem to feel they had to do what the bribers wanted. They are described by the bribers as infuriatingly reluctant, uncertain, wobbly, uncooperative, unreliable, and ineffective during the actions against Lumumba, and their participation was hardly the reason the actions succeeded. The majority of politicos were quite professional and patriotic for Congo, in a way. For example, though bribed to the hilt to reject Lumumba after the first coup, the houses of Parliament instead gave him a strong vote of confidence anyway, and their leaders quickly organized effective reconciliation efforts (FRUS 2013: 23–27; Dayal 1976: 85–88; Hoskyns 1965a: 219–224). And, finally, despite all the claims against them by western functionaries and writers, there is no evidence that Congolese leaders were integrally involved in the execution. The

136

A. C. Roosevelt

loyalty of such African leaders to their Belgian patrons would never be enough for the complete confidence of those patrons, though, and most met later their ends in suspicious circumstances. Extensive propaganda and disinformation efforts were made before Lumumba’s death and since, to try to discredit him and his associates, and they affect his reputation still. As I mention, a series of obvious fakes were concocted to represent him as a deceptive, deranged, dictatorial, communist assassin and mass murderer. Purportedly, the documents were discovered with the help of the CIA when Lumumba left his briefcase behind during a fracas at the military camp (Tully 1962: 180–181; Von Horn 1967: 212–213). They were published in facsimile in the fall issues of the main Leo newspaper, which was secretly funded and edited by the Belgian government (see Fig. 7, above). The documents depict Lumumba and his ministers requesting money, arms, vehicles, planes, and troops from communist governments, declaring adherence to communism and alliance with the Soviet Union, ordering out the UN, forming a dictatorship, and ordering a campaign to kidnap, detain, torture, and kill opposition leaders and their followers (Courrier d’Afrique 1961: September 21 and 29, October 6 and 12 issues, among others). In some, he excoriates and expels the UN, praises the USSR (as in, “Long Live the Soviet Union!”), and declares Soviet military forces will arrive in a week (Fig. 9). Lumumba’s western enemies forwarded them around eagerly, even translating some into English for the purpose (e.g., Scott 1969: 135–138; Timberlake 1963: 97–98). Surviving Belgian colonial security agents boast slyly about their fakery project (Sonck email 2011) and illustrate their faking tools (Omasombo and Verhaegen 2005: photo 22). They say they stole Lumumba’s stationary and made rubber stamps of his signature to infiltrate and discredit his party organization (Omasombo and Verhaegen 2005: photo 22, by Sonck). The “discovered” letters against Lumumba were judged to be crude fakes when the UN had them analyzed by veteran Swiss police chief Charles Knecht, and several other researchers at the time came to the same conclusion (Dayal 1976: 88–89; Hoskyns 1965a: 216–217 and footnotes; Houart 1960: 11, App. 1). But UN published the fake documents, not Knecht’s report that they were fake (UN 1961a: A/4711/Add. 2). Thus, most literature on Lumumba takes the fakes at face value, perpetuating a highly inaccurate picture. Few authors cite the originals but instead transcriptions immortalized in the publications of a CIA-funded Belgian institute (e.g., CRISP 1961). Similarly, fake Congolese soldier letters are taken as evidence the mutineers were against Lumumba; and the fake demonstrations organized by CIA, Belgium, and France (see Fig. 6) are used as evidence that Lumumba lacked support among the Congolese (e.g., CRISP 1961: 2 662–663; Ganshof 1963; Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Namikas 2013: 83). Given all the fakery and misrepresentation, assessment of Lumumba’s ideas is best done from actual speech recordings or verifiable transcriptions (e.g., Heinz and Donnay 1966: vinyl disks; van Lierde 1963, 1972). The literature on the crisis especially misrepresents Soviet and communist Chinese relationships with Lumumba and other Congolese, which appear to have been next to nil, as both the US army and State Department researchers predicted (FRUS 1992: 347, 354; Namikas and Mazov 2004: VI.B and VII), though their

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

137

Fig. 9  Fake Lumumba “Ultimatum” on the front page of Courrier d’Afrique, September 21, 1960. Widely cited as evidence of his Soviet collaboration and rupture with the UN, it threatens violence against UN troops and opposition politicians, with Soviet military forces arriving in 8  days. Pasted up unevenly with text from different typewriters, the letter’s bombastic, brutal, error-ridden writing does not resemble that of genuine Lumumba letters (UN 1961a: Addendum 1:27;

138

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 9  (continued) Vandewalle and Brassinne 1973: 1: opposite p. 33; 2: opposite p. 192) but does resemble that of Belgian Sûreté officer Guy Weber (e.g., Vandewalle 1979; Weber 1982, 1983). Hammarskjold’s representative in Congo wrote, “I asked our experts to make enquiries about the letter and they were categorical that it was a crude forgery. But many of the Congolese were tricked into believing its authenticity. It was clear that one foreign hand was behind [the conspiracy]” (Dayal 1976: 88). Yet top UN rep in Congo Urquhart (1987: 153–154) quoted the fake letter as evidence of Lumumba’s instability, though he must have known the report. (Courtesy of Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University Libraries)

bosses did not believe them. Most published accounts claim that significant Soviet financial and military aide was furnished to Lumumba at his request, but most rely on the fakes published in the newspaper. At the time, various western and UN reps also claimed publicly that the Soviet Union was bringing in funds, military, warplanes, military advisors, and arms for Lumumba (Belgian Commission 2001: 39–44, 71–80, 86–91, 120, 222, 460, 484, 494; Devlin 2007; Kalb 1971, 1982: 24–29, 55–58, 109–129, 404 note 32; Mazov 2007, 2010: 110; Namikas 2013: 201; Stevens 1976: 16–19, 191–192; Timberlake 1963: 88–92). However, there is no evidence that Lumumba was in any way communist in ideology or allied with the Soviets or that he asked for or that the Soviets sent any funds, troops, planes, arms, or military advisors. Hammarskjold had asked the Soviet Union to furnish medical and food aid, trucks, and truck mechanics for the UN operation in Congo that Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu requested, and it did do so (Mazov 2010: 96–98). That is absolutely all that can be documented. Devlin’s claims of the arrival of hundreds of Soviet agents (2007: 48) could not be verified (Mazov 2010: 108). Any Soviet planes came with the shipments promised to the UN, which shipments were carefully examined by UN investigators and confirmed to lack military materiel or personnel. The Soviet donations were intended for civilian purposes (Dayal 1976; Rikhye 1993: 70, 132, 2002). The claims that Lumumba “accepted Soviet military assistance” (e.g., Weissman 2014: 24) and got Soviet money, arms, military or military advisors, or trucks or planes for the campaign against the secessions are unsupported. And nearly all the American functionaries who used such cold war justifications at the time backpedaled from them later. Dulles admitted that the CIA had exaggerated the threat of communism in Congo, and US ambassador to Congo Timberlake, who had kept up a drumbeat of hysteria about the Soviet connection (Kalb 1982: 92), admitted, “the important fact was that the Soviets were not prepared to challenge the West directly in the Congo” (1963: 91). Devlin, who repeatedly drummed up CIA support for assassinating Lumumba with claims of an imminent Castro-like takeover by him with the Soviets, acknowledged Lumumba’s lack of interest in communism (Devlin 2007). Carlucci, too, belatedly denied the reality of a Soviet role (2005). US functionaries maligned Lumumba severely as “harrowing,” a “Castro or worse,” and “crazy” (e.g., FRUS 1992: 338–339), but in secret documents they praised him, as in this partly declassified CIA cable to Leo by Bronson Tweedy, in charge of Africa at CIA HQ (Kalb 1982: 87): “LUMUMBA TALENTS AND DYNAMISM APPEAR OVERRIDING FACTOR IN REESTABLISHING HIS

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

139

POSITION EACH TIME HE SEEMS HALF LOST. IN OTHER WORDS EACH TIME LUMUMBA HAS OPPORTUNITY HAVE LAST WORD HE CAN SWAY EVENTS TO HIS ADVANTAGE.” A CIA agent active in anti-Lumumbist intelligence and operations praises Lumumba’s intelligence and political abilities repeatedly (e.g., Young 1965a: 295, 323, 332, 388), and American Ambassador to the UN Henry Cabot-Lodge also does, saying “he’s intelligent and certainly not crazy, … knows exactly what he’s doing.” He said his discussion with Lumumba was “interesting and on the whole encouraging” (FRUS 1992: 359). After the fact, many western representatives stated to interviewers or in memoirs that Lumumba was indeed intelligent, serious, determined, adept, energetic, persuasive, and honestly unaligned in Cold War terms, as opposed to the evil, deranged, quixotic, Soviet pawn they represented him as at the time (Devlin 2007; FRUS 1992: 366; Weissman 2010). Lumumba was actually eager to collaborate with the USA on an equal and independent basis, but USA would not tolerate such independence, and, when he refused its bribes and restrictions, it went all out against him. Even after the two coups, Lumumba was able to go about in the city and military camp and presumably build support for his return, which worried the plotters. Both Hammarskjold and the US ambassador demanded that UN representative in Congo, Dayal, arrest Lumumba, but he refused. Belgium’s reps asked Mobutu to do so but, they complained, he would not (Belgian Commission 2001: 146). Lumumba, though, was soon maneuvered into house arrest within concentric rings of UN and Congolese troops. Caught in this position, he was a target for the multiple assassination attempts organized in tandem by the USA and Belgium, with help from their French and British allies and complaisance from the UN. As soon as he was confined, Belgian officers and administrators poured back into Leopoldville from Brazza and Katanga (Dayal 1976; Hoskyns 1965a; Timberlake 1963; Von Horn 1967: 221), facilitating the plotting and control of the coup government, whose disorganization and disinterest in their urgings to assist the plots they frequently bemoaned (Devlin 2007; Scott 1969; Timberlake 1963). With Devlin, Marliere, Lahaye, and Loos heading the project on the ground, methods tried included poisoning, sniper fire, kidnapping, and transport to Katanga for execution (Devlin 2007; Belgian Commission 2001: 127–130, 158–213; 648–649; Church 1975: 13–75; FRUS 2013: 36–67; Kalb 1982: 128–156). In his “Operation Lumumba suggestions” to the US plotters, a Belgian Sûreté officer suggests poisoning food or medicine and targeting by sniper from adjacent buildings, for which he was researching blueprints. CIA followed up and sent a top scientist to Leo with poison, but no one in Lumumba’s entourage (several were double agents for the west) would give it to him. Both Belgians and Americans followed up on the sniper idea. CIA’s Devlin, who had pushed strongly for the physical elimination of Lumumba, asked for high-powered weapons with scopes to be sent in the diplomatic pouch. Belgian Lt. Colonel Marliere hired and paid an advance to “George,” an Aegean hit man, with help of a Belgian agent under media cover, but they could never get a clear shot at Lumumba. Edouard Pilaet, a Belgian secret agent at the South Kasai diamond firm Forminiere, quickly resigned in disgust from the assassination attempt because of its amateurish disorganization (Belgian Commission 2001: 169–174): “Marliere

140

A. C. Roosevelt

is an amateur: his organization is derisible” (De Vos et al. 2004). Under the code ZR/RIFLE, CIA tried to organize shooting squads through several code-named Belgian agents, but the agents—incompetent and careless of security—got nowhere at the time (FRUS 2013: 66–67). Belgian Lt. General Cumont’s mission for Noel Dedeken to organize a kidnapping also went nowhere (Dedeken 1978). Though some secondary sources claim that the western assassination attempts ended when Lumumba escaped from house arrest (Nzongola 2014), the project definitely continued (even Belgian commission “expert” acknowledges that, Gerard and Kuklick 2015). The assassination attempts focused at his house put Lumumba in a situation of great danger, of which he was well aware (Dayal 1976: 132); he escaped on November 27 and tried to get to Stanleyville, in Orientale Province, where the remnants of the Congo elected government presided. The CIA and Sûreté, which had wired his house for surveillance together, knew of the plan ahead of time and were ready to follow after him (Belgian Commission 2001: 960; Devlin 2007: 113–116). But Mobutu and Kasa-Vubu showed little concern for chasing after Lumumba, to the great annoyance of Devlin and his Belgian counterparts, so they organized the chase, with British help. The Belgian embassy in Brazza cabled to Brussels: “grave situation provoked by Lumumba’s escape. Congolese administrative disorganization and Mobubu inertia hamper coordinated measures to intercept Lumumba en route to Stan. Despite multiple efforts deployed the 30th by diverse Commissioners Mobutu could not be moved.” Working together, the westerners located him on November 30 through low elevation aerial survey, flown by South African security officer Robert Dixon, who was later on the crew that flew Lumumba to his death in Katanga, on a Belgian company Air Brousse plane. Though a Belgian Commission “expert” whitewashes these events of any Belgians (Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 178–184), and Brassinne and Gerard-Libois call them unnamed “European observers” (Heinz and Donnay 1966, 1969), in fact, Lahaye, the Belgian Sûreté director in Leo, and Marliere, former colonial army chief of staff, Mobutu’s chief handler, and a top manager of the assassination operations, led a squad of soldiers to arrest Lumumba, behind a young front person, Gilbert Pongo, a former Belgian colonial employee and unsuccessful candidate of the PNP (what Congolese dubbed the “Party of Paid Negroes”), sponsored by Belgium. The Belgians tried to get Pongo to let them take Lumumba to Katanga, but he refused because, he said, Mobutu had told him to bring Lumumba back to Leopoldville unharmed (Belgian Commission 2001: 246–303). So, Lumumba was brought back, buffeted and disheveled, displayed to the press, then imprisoned in the Thysville military camp Hardy, near Belgian base Kitona, about 80 miles from the capital. However, US and Belgian representatives were still worried about Lumumba; the numerous intelligence reports of reconciliation between the coup government and Lumumba put them in a panic (FRUS 2013: 37–43; Devlin 2007: 113–141; Kalb 1982: 156–174). Since his imprisonment, his support in the country had only increased, even in the army, making his return to power a real possibility. There was a mutiny in his favor at the camp where he was imprisoned (Brassinne 1991: Temoignages, 14.1; FRUS 2013: 66–69; Vandewalle 1974: 4: 41–55). The

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

141

westerners nixed Congolese leaders’ several suggestions for a transfer to other prisons nearby and decided to remove him to one of the secessions, where he would be more “secure,” as Belgian military security and mining executives were in more direct control than in Congo proper. Belgian government secret correspondence about the transfer expose Belgian officers’ direct, leading role in planning the transfer and their many failed attempts at getting Tshombe to agree to it. The transfer group that met January 16 to set the plan was made up of nine high-ranking Belgian Sûreté officers and agents, some undercover as aviation executives, including Gaston Dieu, head of the Belgian government airline Sabena in Congo (Brassinne 1991: Temoignages 4.1–2, 8.1; MbuMputu 2010: 159–160), and only two Congolese. The two plane crews especially chosen by this group for the trip included only western officers, from Belgium, France, Britain, and South Africa. (The two Congolese in the meeting, Nendaka and Kandolo, were long-time Belgian agents of the Belgian Congo Sûreté, accompanied by their two handlers and former bosses Belgian Sûreté head Lahaye and former colonial army head Marliere.) As with the majority of transfer documents, the itinerary was made up by a top Belgian official, in this case Lahaye (facsimile in de Vos et al. 2004: 679). The top CIA officers in Congo assisted the transfer and knew its specifics ahead of time (FRUS 1994: 17–18).16 Devlin later boasted of helping deliver Lumumba to the plane, and Doyle, in charge in Elizabethville, boasted of transporting his dead body (Shoumatoff personal communication 2009; Stockwell 1978: 105). But Congolese Commissioners of the Mobutu-led coup government may not have been involved, as a group. The minutes implicating them bear obvious text alterations in the sections on the transfer (e.g., Brassinne 1991: Annexes, 1 and 34). Mobutu must have at least allowed the transfer, since as head of the ANC he had authority over the camp. However, Lumumba had been under guard by Mobutu’s ANC for six months and was still alive, whereas he died only five hours after going under guard by Belgian Sûreté officers in Katanga. The transfer of Lumumba to his death has been termed a rendition, on the grounds that the Mobutu-led government sent him to his worst enemies with the intention that he be killed by them (Weissman 2010). American officials called it “An African Affaire” and Belgian counterparts called it “A Bantou Affaire” (Church 1975; Belgian Commission 2001). However, in the voluminous Belgian government correspondence on the assassination project reviewed in its belated investigation, there is no evidence of initiative by Africans but every indication of initiative by Belgian functionaries. All the genuine communications about it are by high Belgian functionaries. The record shows that it was Belgian officials who had him transferred and Belgian officials who received and killed him, with the knowledge and help of the Americans. Thus, the transfer was not a rendition. Western agencies and many writers claimed that the transfer of Lumumba to his death was ordered by Mobutu, Kasa-Vubu, and the College of Commissioners,  The denials by Devlin to the Church committee about his willingness to help kill Lumumba are taken at face value by some authors (Nzongola 2014), though not by the Church Committee, which pointed out the conflict between his correspondence at the time and his testimony.

16

142

A. C. Roosevelt

directed by Nendaka, and eagerly accepted by Tshombe, Munongo, the other Katanga ministers, and Kalonji in South Kasai, but, again, there is no verifiable evidence for the claim and much clear evidence for the initiative and involvement of Belgian and US government functionaries. D’Aspremont Lynden, the top cabinet official who chose, installed, and directed all Belgian functionaries in Congo at the time of the Congo Crisis, wrote repeatedly to his deputies to push the transfer of Lumumba upon African leaders (Brassinne 1991: Annexes 2-6, 7-2, 7-3, 8 to 14; Temoinages, 6.1 note 1). Despite Belgian insistence that secession facade leaders Tshombe and Kalonji were AOK with Lumumba’s transfer to his death in the secessions, Belgian government correspondence shows that Tshombe repeatedly refused to allow Lumumba to be shipped to Katanga and Kalonji appears to have blocked its landing. Messages between Belgian functionaries say Tshombe keeps refusing to accept the transfer. In fact, the Belgian plotters chose South Kasai as the destination because they could not get Tshombe to OK Katanga as a destination. And when one of the planes overflew Bakwanga, South Kasai, it was prevented from landing, although Colonel Jean Gillet, the French intelligence agent who was head of its army, had cheerfully radioed Belgian transfer plotters Marliere and Verdickt, to say the equivalent of “Come on down!” (Heinz and Donnay 1969: 78). Kalonji says he had his African police force block the runways (Kalonji 1964, 2002; Kalonji interview 2013). Because of the blockade, Lumumba was flown on to Katanga. Documentation on who picked up Lumumba and who was on the DC-4 plane that took him to the secessions also is questionable (Brassinne 1991: Annexes, 4-1, 8-1; Temoignages 4.1, 29, 30). Letters implicating Congolese officials in the actual transfer are forensically problematic. A supposed letter from Tshombe to Bomboko dated January 16 could not have reached Leo before the transfer had gone forward, as Vandewalle pointed out (1975: 4: –32). Kasa-Vubu’s letter asking for Brazzaville airport access for the transfer has no letterhead, and the date has been changed in a different typeface (Borri 1962: 64); Nendaka’s purported order for the transfer is on obsolete colonial letterhead, the date has been changed, and the typing in the text and in Nendaka’s name contrasts with that in the sign-off title (Brassinne 1991: Annexes 7-1; Belgian Commission 2001: 671–672). Many sources close to the events state that Lumumba was grievously beaten and tortured on the plane, with parts of his hair and beard forcibly pulled out. Belgian sources attribute this treatment to Congolese soldiers under the command of two commissioners, Jonas Mukamba and Fernand (or Ferdinand) Kazadi, but the sources on this are highly questionable materials among the many problematic documents in Brassinne’s dissertation. The captain of the exclusively European plane crew of intelligence officers claimed that they protested this treatment, a risible claim (as stated in Vandewalle 1975: 4: 44–45). The pilot could have easily ended it by simply landing to secure the plane and passengers, which, ultimately, was their responsibility as aviation officers. Significantly, the crews included an officer, Dixon (Puren 1986: 21), previously involved in piloting an aircraft at low altitudes to search for Lumumba’s convoy during his escape. The DC-4 plane carrying Lumumba proceeded to Katanga, where more than 100 heavily armed Belgian military officers waited with an armored vehicle and jeeps. [The identity of those who took Lumumba in charge has been confused by a

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

143

misunderstanding of terms used in the Katanga secession. In the early days of the secession, “Katangan gendarmes” and “Katangan police” referred primarily to Belgian and other western officers. An army composed of Africans hardly existed there yet (Vandewalle 1975: 3: 96; 1975: 4: 9, 30) because most African soldiers had been expelled after the mutiny, and there was little local support for the European-­ controlled secession.] The Belgian military command told both the CIA chief and Kalonji that they feared Africans there might try to save Lumumba (Kalonji interview 2013). Including them would have been very risky, in their eyes. Belgian sources have claimed that Munongo was at the airport to meet Lumumba and that African soldiers participated in the beatings given there and later, but the truth of these claims is not secure. That only Belgian military were at the airport to receive and transport Lumumba to his death, however, is indicated by two very independent sources. First, late the night of the killing, CIA Elizabethville Chief David Doyle wrote headquarters that Lumumba was placed under “all white” guard (see the quotation, below). Second, Metropolitan Belgian army officer Captain Xavier Blistein, who saw Lumumba come in, be beaten, and driven off (he was at the airport to pick up an officer coming in for medical treatment), said he saw no Africans at the airport (Blistein interview 2011). (See Fig.  10 for a Europeaninfluenced propagandistic painting portraying only African officials and guards there to meet Lumumba.) Despite the decision to send Lumumba to Bakwanga, Belgian officials in Katanga had already made preparations for a possible transfer of Lumumba to Katanga. They

Fig. 10  Painting of Lumumba’s arrival in Elizabethville, Katanga, hours before his assassination. Though a CIA cable said Lumumba was received by an all-white guard (Fig. 8.11), and a Belgian officer said he only saw whites there (Blistein interview 2011), the painting omits whites and has only African functionaries there to receive him, with Munongo featured with his signature dark glasses. Attributed to L.K. Tshibumba, an artist whose subjects for historical paintings were influenced by European anthropologists (Fabian 1996). (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2017.77)

144

A. C. Roosevelt

had organized the arrest and detention of Lumumba supporters in the area, ordered their officers to identify a place to hold Lumumba, and opened the back fence of the airport. However, it is clear that the Katangan ministers did not know that Lumumba was coming, contrary to the Belgian insinuations, and they were not at the airport when the plane arrived. Colonel Vandewalle, the supervisor of the Belgian military junta in Katanga at the time and Belgian consul general there afterward, wrote, “The Katangan authorities were surprised by the arrival, this Tuesday, of the former head of the government, his companions, and their jailers. They were to lose control of the affaire” (1975: 4: 41). As for the Belgian claim that Tshombe agreed to a request by Kasa-Vubu that he receive Lumumba, Vandewalle said, “That does not correspond to reality” (1975: 4: 32). After Tshombe got out of his movie, he and Munongo tried to get the European crew of the transfer plane to leave immediately with him, but they refused, saying it had too little fuel. The Katangan leaders then discussed sending him away from Elizabethville, not killing him. As for the CIA, Devlin and Doyle admitted to assisting the transfer and knowing about the assassination (Shoumatoff 2009; Stockwell 1978: 105), and they informed headquarters about them (FRUS 2013: 79–84, 93–95, 101). Very late the night Lumumba was killed, CIA chief in Elizabethville, David Doyle, wrote HQ about Lumumba’s arrival, acknowledging that the CIA had a role in delivering Lumumba by thanking headquarters. He wrote: “THANKS FOR PATRICE. … PER [censored name the length of Vandewalle] GOK HADE NO ADVANCE WORD WHAT SO EVER.  LUMUMBA SEVERLY [sic] BEATEN AT AIRPORT BY GENDARMERIE, THEN … GUARDED BY ALL WHITE GUARDS.  GOK DOES NOT PLAN LIQUIDATE LUMUMBA. [censored name the length of Weber] FEARS CHANCES OF BALUBAKAT UPRISING IN EVILLE CONSIDERABLY INCREASED” (CIA Cable declassified at my request, by FOIA; Roosevelt 2011: 10, Illustration 1; see Fig. 11). Among those presiding at the airport were the top Belgian career army officers assigned by Belgium to run the secessions: Colonel Vandewalle, Colonel Charles Huyghe (Fig. 12), and Major Weber. Vandewalle headed Belgian Colonial Sûreté in Congo and supervised the entire secession operation for Belgium. Huyghe, a Belgian intelligence officer from a noted colonial military family, was the virtual head of the secession defense department, under Weber. Weber, also Sûreté (Vandewalle 1979), led the Belgian takeover of Katanga and directed the secession junta. Most important for the murder, he was guard detail leader Captain Julien Gat’s commanding officer according to the secession organizational chart (Belgian Commission 2001: 2: 926). [It has been suggested that Huyghe and Gat were recommended by Weber with several others for the CIA’s assassination program under the code names QJ/WIN and WI/ROGUE (Evanzz 1998: 97–116, 337–339, notes).] Military Police Commissioner Verscheure also was there. Earlier, he had taken Lumumba to prison in Katanga after his conviction in Stanleyville; see above. Under their gaze, junior Belgian officers and non-coms under Gat beat Lumumba severely, knocking him to the ground and kicking him viciously. They then threw him into a jeep and drove him out the back of the airport to the house requisitioned nearby. The farmhouse (Fig. 13) lies just outside the airport perimeter, at most 10–15 min away. Its choice shows a desire to deal with Lumumba definitively as quickly as possible.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

145

Fig. 11  CIA cable to headquarters late the night of Lumumba’s assassination, January 17/18, 1961 (C01366116, Co Co 69/1). The CIA officer in Elizabethville (David Doyle) thanks CIA for sending Lumumba and reports that the Katangan government was not expecting him and had no intention of killing him. The statement that he was placed under “all-white guards” is an important corrective on culpability in Lumumba’s death, often attributed to a guard of Congolese soldiers under Katangan leaders. CIA declassified this cable for me in January of 2007 under my FOIA request. The part about the all-white guard was blacked out in all earlier releases

146

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 12  Belgian military officer Colonel Charles Huyghe, the highest ranking officer of the Belgian squad that beat, tortured, and killed Lumumba in the Brouwez farmhouse on January 17, 1961. The Belgian government later gave Huyghe its highest award. (van Rensburg 2009) (UN Archives, S-0793 Bx 14 File 31 ACC DAG 13/1–6.4.3.1, UN Photo 74)

At the house, Lumumba and his two colleagues were beaten and tortured by a group of about ten Belgian military intelligence officers and non-coms under Gat’s command, a process watched part of the time by both Huyghe and Verscheure and probably also by Weber (Blistein interview 2011; Brassinne 1991: Temoignages #10; Vandewalle 1975: 4: 49; Weber 1983: 177–181; 1991: 114). Only Belgians were mentioned doing beatings when Rougefort and Michels, two of those delivering the beatings, describe what happened to fellow officer Blistein a day later. They also say Huyghe was in the house. Someone, apparently Weber, slid a bayonet into Lumumba’s chest, and Gat the leader of the white guard detail ended Lumumba’s life about 9:30 PM, shooting him in the head with a Belgian officer’s 9 mm Browning semiautomatic service pistol.17 (It was later sent to Gat in Europe as a souvenir, according to Blistein.) The two other Congolese ministers were then shot to prevent them from telling what they saw. The three bodies were taken out the window and buried in the woods at the far end of the lot. The farmhouse interior, now covered  Weber, in his memoirs about Lumumba’s death (1983: 177–181; 1991: 114), coyly mentions and does not actually deny an Italian news story saying that he, Weber, pierced Lumumba in the heart with a bayonet soon before his death. Following his usual practice of attributing his own problematic acts to Munongo, he said in confidential testimony to the UN Commission of Investigation and to Brassinne that it was Munongo who did this (UN 1961b).

17

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

147

Fig. 13  The Brouwez farmhouse next to the Elizabethville airport, where Lumumba died. The many accounts of the murder from the time identify it as the murder place. (By Tom Kusters, Holland 1977)

with blood, was quickly cleaned up and all materials used in the beating and killings removed and destroyed that night. Two days later a bulldozer owned by the British Honorary Consul was used to push a deep layer of earth over the graves.18 Members of the death squad later went out to drink and celebrate the killings. In fact, white settler-dominated Elizabethville was the scene of drunken celebration for weeks, and many people thereby learned what had happened, especially other officers in the Belgian-led army there. Accounts from involved military emerged immediately after the event and are consistent in stating that Lumumba was beaten and killed by Belgian officers in a farmhouse near the airport and that the operation had been organized by the Belgian Sûreté. Huyghe himself boasted about “killing Lumumba” with Gat to several English mercenary officers working with him on the anti-Luba campaigns. The accounts he gave to two of them—William Browne and Roderick Russell-Cargill (Fig. 14)—are quoted in the UN report on the death (1961:

 A story of Lumumba’s death (see below) included a scenario in which the bodies were dug up, transported, buried again, transported again, chopped up, burned, and dissolved in acid and the remainder tossed to the wind near the border with Rhodesia. But there is no secure evidence for the scenario. 18

148

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 14 UN Investigations interrogation form for Huyghe’s assistant, English mercenary Lieutenant Roderick Russell-Cargill, 17 May 1961. They worked together recruiting white soldiers for the attack squads that Belgian military led against the Luba in Katanga, and Roderick was one of several witnesses who implicated Huyghe in Lumumba’s death to the UN Commission of Investigation (1961b: 52–54). (UN Archives, Military Information S. 0793 Bx18, File 47, ACC DAG 13/1.6.4.3.1)

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

149

Fig. 15  Handwritten note reporting that Huyghe said he killed Lumumba. Russell-Cargill had it with him when he surrendered to UN forces, and I found and photographed it in the UN Mercenary Archives. (Russell-Cargill file. S-0806 Bx2 File 6 13/1.6.5.4.1 ACC DAG)

52–54). Also, I found in the papers Russell-Cargill surrendered to UN forces a handwritten note reporting that Huyghe was claiming to have killed Lumumba (Fig. 15). Like all the Belgian officers on the death squad, Huyghe and Gat were affiliated with the Sûreté, which was said by knowledgeable people to have been behind the crime. A death squad officer, Verscheure, later testified, “It seems that the Sûreté played a greater role than people think in the organization of the operation” (Brassinne 1991: Temoignage 38.1). The day after the killing, also, as the daily Belgian intelligence report for Katanga stated, a Belgian secret agent named Leopold Daffe “declared in public in an establishment in town that Lumumba had just been “liquidated” by the Sûreté” (Annex 1, Intelligence Bulletin 92, January 18, 1961, seen and photographed by me in the Africa Museum Colonial History Archives, Tervuren). The Belgian Sûreté reported that Daffe acted for both Belgian and American intelligence against Lumumba (Belgian Commission 2001: 504–509).19 The evening after the assassination, Captain Blistein and his wife met two members of the death squad at a bar, drunk and speaking about what happened, including Huyghe’s and Gat’s roles. Of the two, Lt. Michels showed off knuckles bruised and cut from hitting Lumumba. The next day, they took Blistein to the farmhouse to show him where the deed was done (Blistein interview 2011; Brassinne 1991: Temoignages 10). Gat got a large monetary bonus for his role and was spirited 19  In regard to the Belgian intelligence report about Daffe (Belgian Commission 2001: 502–515), Brassinne, a Belgian functionary, gave an altered version, saying that the Katangan information minister Lucas Samalenge was its source, rather than Daffe, giving no source. This obfuscation and reticence about Belgian roles, along with the other evidence of Sûreté direction of the assassination, leaves the reader to conclude that Belgian intelligence accurately recorded the truth at the time.

150

A. C. Roosevelt

out of the country to continue his service in the Belgian army, and Huyghe later was given the top award for services to the Belgian government on May 15, 2009 (van Rensburg 2009: 7). Belgium, though falsely denying that it had ever heard of Gat or Huyghe when the assassination was revealed, was nonetheless very thankful to them for their participation. The assassination was kept from the media for several weeks, but rumors about what had happened spread immediately. When news finally surfaced in February of 1961, the Belgian government denied that “any Belgian was involved” (Belgian Commission 2001: 419–424). The Katangan government announced that Lumumba and his colleagues had escaped and been killed by angry villagers but nobody believed this story, which was the first of two elaborate false accounts of the assassination, both of which fingered Katangans as the killers.20 Strange, contradictory, confessional “interviews” attributed to Tshombe were published under pseudonyms by Belgian agents working as journalists (Davister 1964; Brassinne 1991: Annexes 31-3). In other attempts to implicate Tshombe, Munongo, Mobutu, Bomboko, Adoula, and other Congolese functionaries, Belgian military intelligence officers involved in the secession created many fakes21 and other officers at least witting of  The Belgian Sûreté quickly created two false stories about the assassination: the first to delay discovery of Lumumba’s death and the second to distance the Belgian government from the crime. For false story 1, Weber wrote up a three-page narrative for press announcements February 10–13 (Brassinne 1991: Annexe 37). Munongo, the front for this story, gave it out in press releases also typed by Weber (Heinz and Donnay 1966; UN 1961b). It said that the prisoners escaped to the countryside, where they were killed by enraged villagers. Sometime later, Weber also typed up the 42-page narrative of false story 2. His typed text, riddled with his typical Flemishisms, misspellings, typos, and incorrect punctuation and spacing (e.g., Weber 1982, 1983), was corrected in someone’s handwriting and included in Brassinne’s dissertation with a series of documents and testimonies created by Sûreté fakers (1991: Testimony 49–1) and published by the widow of Roger Jaspar of INFORKAT (Nicolai 1987), which Weber directed. False story 2 was the main basis for the books on the assassination by Belgian functionary Ludo de Witte, without the documents (de Witte 1996, 2000, 2002), the Belgian Commission report (2001), and dramatized in living color in a film based, unwisely, on de Witte’s book (Peck 2000). In false story 2, Tshombe, his ministers, and Kalonji conspire with Mobutu, Kasa-Vubu, and the College of Commissioners to organize, direct, and engineer the transfer and the assassination, carried out in the bush by a firing squad of Katangan African soldiers commanded by Julien Gat under Verscheure’s orders. No one believed the first false story for long, but many have accepted or promoted the second (Bustin 2001; Gerard and Kuklick 2015; Namikas 201; Nzongola 2002: 107–112; 2014: chapter 7; Weissman 2010), despite its tardy appearance, its near total conflict with the many accounts at the time, the lack of verifiable evidence for it, and its obvious origin with Belgian functionaries demonstrably involved in the crime. Brazzinne’s doctoral dissertation on it, richly illustrated with faked documents and carefully stage-managed and edited testimonies (Brassinne 1991), is the main published source on this story. 21  Some of the fakes implicating secession ministers are as follows. A message by Munongo to the Katangan army orders all forces to prevent Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu from landing at Elizabethville when they came to deal with the mutiny. It orders, “use of force if they do enter Katanga in one way or another, THEY MUST, in this case, DISAPPEAR.” This unsigned message resembles the bombastic writing of Weber, who managed the Lumumba assassination project on the ground for Belgium and the disinformation program in the secession. He admits in his memoirs that he, not Munongo, gave this order (Weber 1983: 67–68), which was published in a Flemish journal 20

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

151

the assassination planning published both books and articles (Brassinne and Kestergat 1991; Heinz and Donnay 1966, 1969). But Le Monde wrote that well-­ informed persons (a code word for intelligence officers) “think that Tshombe did not take part in the executions” (Vandewalle 1976: 4: 73). Everyone who saw him at the time made similar observations. Blistein, the Metropolitan Belgian officer, observed, “Mr. Tshombe was very unhappy about the arrival of the prisoners and especially their death, and he went into a great rage” (Brassinne 1991: Temoignages, 10.3–4 and 12.1). Norwegian UN representative Egge also mentions Tshombe’s agitation at the time. Thus, his behavior seems not that of someone in on the plot to kill Lumumba in Katanga but of someone who realized that it would be the end of the secession. No serious and transparent attempt was ever made to investigate or prosecute Lumumba’s killers, despite a UN resolution to so do, and what little was done shows well why such investigations can only work when completely independent. The only investigations seem to have been directed at evading the supposed goals. In 20–21 February, 1961, a UN Security Council resolution mandated “that an immediate and impartial investigation be held in order to ascertain the circumstance of the death of Mr. Lumumba and his colleagues and that the perpetrators of these crimes be punished” (1961b: Annex 1:1). It concluded that there was “a great deal of suspicion” on Huyghe as leading the assassination and on Gat as his accessory, with Tshombe, Munongo, and Kibwe probably present and complicit and Kasa-Vubu, Mobutu, and Ileo indirectly complicit for sending Lumumba to Katanga. But instead of pursuing the two actual killers they identified, the UN let both evade arrest at the time, so neither was interrogated by the commission (Fig. 16) (e.g., UN Archives: O’Brien to Linner, 15 June 1961 on Huyghe), which was prevented from investigating on the ground in Congo (UN Archives: U Thant to U Aungkhine 16 September 1961; UN 1961b: Annex 7b). UN messages in the archives show that Huyghe was in contact with the UN multiple times in the months of its investigation and could have been detained and delivered for questioning but was not.22 Also, the commission uncritically relied on confidential testimony from Gat’s ultimate commanding officer Weber and other top Belgian secession officials to implicate the Congolese officials. Furthermore, it never mentioned any role by western governments, even by Belgium,

Volksgazet (February 15, 1961: 3). Another is the unsigned Munongo Brouwez farmhouse requisition order (Brassinne 1991: Annexes 27.1). An execution order purportedly signed by Tshombe is also obviously fake, pasted up ex post facto from two different documents (Brassinne 1991: Temoignages 10.1; Roosevelt 2011: 11; nd1: 1). It was assembled by reproducing a letterhead document he had signed, cutting out its text, and inserting text ordering the execution. If the ministers actually were co-conspirators in the assassination, why were such evidentiary contrivances needed? As for Kalonji, the only documents supposedly implicating him in the murder were statements by Congolese employees of the Belgian Sûreté to Belgian agents of the anti-Lumumba operations, hardly reliable sources (e.g., Brassinne 1991: Temoignages 3). 22  The messages between UN officers in Katanga and Congo about Huyghe mention that the commission wants to know where he is, that he is there, that they have spoken to him, and they discuss whether to arrest him, to send him for interrogation, or to expel him. According to these, he came in and out quite freely, traveling to South Africa and Rhodesia, France, and Belgium, recruiting and arranging supplies and materiel for the secession army and air force.

152

A. C. Roosevelt

Fig. 16  Typewritten message from UN representative Conor O’Brien in Elizabethville to Sture Linner in Leopoldville recommending a delay of the investigation of Huyghe, 15 June 1961. Despite the evidence for Huyghe’s role in Lumumba’s murder and the multiple contacts of UN staff with him, he was not detained for investigation by the UN and was not made available to the UN commission investigating that death (1961b: 6). (UN Archives, Military Information S 0793 Bx 9 File 39 ACC DAG 13/1.6.4.3.1)

though UN officials knew these officers were Belgian regular military under Belgian command, not mercenaries and not under Congolese orders, and Belgium acknowledged the same to those UN officials. But by calling Huyghe and Gat mercenaries, rather than Belgian officers, the UN employee from a colonial family commission protected the Belgian government from public exposure for its direct role in the crime. More than 10 years later, a US Senate committee investigated US complicity in the Lumumba assassination in response to discoveries by the CIA inspector general in 1973 that CIA had engaged in assassination plots (see Fig. 4, above) (CIA 2007). The committee’s report acknowledged that CIA officials had tried to kill Lumumba but held that they were unsuccessful and that the eventual assassination was carried out by his Congolese enemies (Church 1975: 13–70). In testimony before the committee, Dillon denied knowing anything about any such plots, and Devlin denied he gave any support for the assassination plots or had involvement in the actual killing. Despite his denials, the report concludes that Devlin was lying about not supporting the plots, since his cables showed both initiative and strong, continuing enthusiasm for them, but it gave him a pass publicly on complicity for the eventual murder. Senate staffers long maintained a silence on the issue of Eisenhower’s and other Americans’ complicity (e.g., Johnson 1988; Weissman 1974), and in recent interviews some explained that the committee wanted to protect the US and its government from exposure and censure (Weissman 2010: 218–219). The Belgian Parliament only formed a commission to investigate the assassination in 2001 after Belgium’s involvement was implied in a book by a Belgian

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

153

government employee (de Witte 1996, 2000, 2002). As in the US investigation, parliament could not stomach the unvarnished truth, and the commission whitewashed Belgium of direct complicity, only admitting its “moral” responsibility for not stopping Congolese from killing Lumumba (Belgian Commission 2001)! This inaccurate conclusion was produced by a group of “experts” hardly independent of the events. They were headed by Jules Gerard-Libois, a Belgian agent personally involved in the secession government, founding head of a CIA-­funded research and publishing project about the events, CRISP (see note 4), and pseudonymous coauthor of several early and disinformative accounts of Lumumba’s murder. Nonetheless, numerous documents published in the Belgian report show repeated Belgian but not Congolese initiative in the coups and the assassination, requiring extreme logical contortions and obfuscation in the report as well as reliance on faked or doctored documents against Congolese, the existence of which only underline the lack of hard evidence against them (see below). After Lumumba’s death, western representatives finally felt safe enough to allow Congo’s parliament to reconvene the following summer, at the Lovanium University campus, but in the first vote it chose his deputy prime minister Antoine Gizenga as his replacement. The USA, its allies, and the UN secretariat refused to accept Gizenga, whom they characterized as a stony-faced, communist radical. The UN had closed off the meeting purportedly to prevent outside interference but the sequestration enabled US and UN functionaries to bribe and intimidate parliamentarians to make USA’s favorite Adoula prime minister and Gizenga deputy prime minister (Devlin 2007: 156–161; Weissman 1974: 144–151). [Lovanium is characterized as a democratic process by authors unwitting of the accounts of the suborning (e.g., Haskins 2005: 31) and some that must have been witting (e.g., Lefever 1965, 1967).] Gizenga ended up distrusting the situation and retreated to Stanleyville to head the remnant of independent Congo; he eventually was arrested by the UN and imprisoned. In the end, Adoula was not comfortable with the hegemonic, quixotically changing western party line he was supposed to follow (Mountz 2014a), and the Belgian government then wanted Tshombe in, despite the resistance of Mobutu and Kasa-Vubu. Belgium finally ended its support for the secessions in 1963, when the Belgian-led white mercenary military were defeated by UN forces (Gibbs 1991; Hoskyns 1965a: 384–435; O’Brien 1962; Weissman 1974: 153–191). At first Tshombe went into exile in Spain, but the summer of 1964 he was called back to run for prime minister, when the Adoula government was judged no longer useful by western governments. Tshombe felt he could work with the Lumumbists and had Gizenga released, but western supporters of the Congolese government and army under Kasa-Vubu and Mobutu were bent on foiling the supporters of an independent Congo, who still represented most of the population of Congo. Thus began the war against the “Simba rebellion.” The Simba rebellion has been drastically misrepresented in the literature, written mostly by western diplomats, military intelligence officers and agents, and the white mercenaries (e.g., Hoare 2008a, b; Hoyt 2000; Hudson 2012; Odom 1988; Lanotte 2010; Michaels 2012; Nothomb 1993; Sonck 1960, 2009; Vandewalle 1979; Verhaegen 1966; Wagoner 2003; Wheelock and Young 1965; Young 1965b,

154

A. C. Roosevelt

1967). But one exhaustive independent study (Gleijeses 1994, 2002), one painfully honest and detailed mercenary memoir (Smith 2012), an Indian diplomat’s interviews with numerous Congolese (Chatterji 1980), a missionary nurse’s hostage account (Hayes 1966), and a cautionary article on the role of misrepresentation of violence (Hoskyns 1965b), plus a careful, critical reading of the rest, allow some clarity on the subject. The “rebels” were merely most of the native population of Congo. While western and UN representatives were quixotic and inconstant in their policies during the Congo crisis, Congo’s population was quite consistent in its political goals. Despite regional, ethnic, and political differences, they supported the Lumumba government and its constitutional successor, the Gizenga government in exile in Stanleyville, and were uncooperative with other governments. However, their consistency was anathema to the westerners because they supported the unconstitutional governments they had installed and sponsored, which were composed of varying combinations of bribed civilian politicians and General Mobutu. Therefore, the western representatives organized a war of suppression against these populations. By the time of the operation, Mulele had disappeared; Gizenga had been incarcerated and was later exiled. There was no more rump Democratic Republic of Congo government and no army in Stanleyville, the largest city in the “rebel” area and home to a big population of Europeans and some Americans, who were being treated well by the local government and Congolese residents. But western representatives and intelligence operatives needed something more substantial than just a vast, uncooperative Congolese civilian population, for attacking it with military forces to suppress its democratic political aspirations would have been an obvious war crime. Thus, using complaisant Congolese politicians linked to the CIA (Soumialot, a sometime informer) or to Belgian security services (Christophe Gbenye, Nendaka’s childhood friend and in-law, whom Devlin says gave the CIA good intel), they created what M.  Crawford Young’s co-authored classified CIA report called a “phantom government” in Stanleyville. To this phantom, they could attribute hostage captures, cannibalism, and massacres of missionary priests and nuns. Western propaganda, purposefully created to deflect criticism of their campaign, claimed “rebels” were communist radicals and that Soviet and Chicom governments supplied arms and military advisors, but the literature and relevant archives show that this was not true. The US State Department actually ordered the creation of such propaganda, according to declassified cables (Minter 1986); and Belgian diplomats and military also published on it (e.g., Nothomb 1993; Vandewalle 1970). The Simbas were not communist in ideology, and Soviet Russia had so far held back from helping them, fearing to cause a world war (Hoyt 2000; Mazov 2007, 2010). Behind the facade of the nonexistent Simba government, Belgian intelligence officers published its newspaper, Le Martyr, with Flemish-accented French, a language that most of the local population could not read, anyway (see issues Nov. 21–22, 1964), and the same officers seem to have run the radio station. A Belgian expatriate physician working for the Sûreté in Stanleyville claimed that the rebel government was holding rabid rallies at a Lumumba monument, complete with executions and cannibalistic rituals (Hoyt 2000; Sonck 1998). Despite his claim that he saw all these

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

155

from his front windows, he never produced any pictures of them or any other evidence, and no one has found grisly body parts in the park encircling the monument. In fact, the Simbas were to a large degree a mythic concept created by western propagandists to justify their action against the Congolese population. The fierce “native” rebel fighters were nothing more than local people, and their supposed government was merely a figment of western intelligence services and their Congolese employees. Simba referred to “lion” in Swahili and symbolized the warlike and superstitious belief system of the “rebels,” who purportedly believed that shamanic rituals and amulets, or dawa, made them immune to bullets and grenades, which became as harmless as drops of water. Thus, when fighting they called out mai mai, referring to the water. But the fictions on the Simba army were disposed of in memoirs by South African mercenaries recruited to fight the “Simbas.” They report that they never saw any Simba armies, only surprised civilians who usually ran away but occasionally tried to defend themselves with sticks and magic spells, having no military arms (e.g., Anonymous Luba Informant 2017; Smith 2012). To suppress the “rebel” population, the US had the CIA organize massive carpet bombing in the areas of Congo that still supported Congolese independence. US planes serviced by CIA-front WIGMO employees were accompanied by US officers and piloted by Cuban pilots in CIA employ. The bombing provided an excuse for the Belgian handlers of the phantom Simba government in Stanleyville to organize a hostage capture, supposedly more than 1000 people, including US diplomats and three CIA officers, physician Paul Carlson, and numerous local Europeans (Hoyt 2000). The “Simba” government announced on the radio and in the supposed Lumumbist Stanleyville newspaper that if the US did not stop the bombing, they would commit atrocities on the hostages (Le Martyr Nov. 14, 1964: 1). “At the least bombardment of our regions and our revolutionary capital, … they will be massacred. … We will make our fetishes out of their hearts and we will dress ourselves in the skins of the Belgians and the Americans.” However, as the US diplomat and CIA officer reported, the hostage holders, commanded by Nicholas Olenga, were strangely kind and solicitous to them, not vicious and bloodthirsty as represented in those media. To rescue the “hostages,” the USA and Belgium organized a two-part airdrop operation, Dragon Rouge, for Stanleyville, and Dragon Noir, for the town Isiro (Gleijeses 2002; Hoyt 2000; Odom 1988; Reed 1965; Vandewalle 1970; Wagoner 2003). US planes flew in several hundred Belgian paratroops, and Colonels Vandewalle and Hoare led Belgian military and white mercenary forces by land, though these missed the rendezvous date. On landing, US military intelligence officer Odom told Belgian officers to take control of the radio and was surprised when they said that was not necessary (Odom 1988)! Odom’s and some hostages’ descriptions of how the paratroops arrived shooting madly raise the question whether their arrival was the cause of hostage killings, for none were killed before their arrival. Although western reports claim Carlson was killed by Simbas, his widow Lois said no one saw her husband killed (Carlson 1966: 177–178, 193). And when the paras came shooting at them, the “Simba” officer in charge of them cried out in dismay that they had been told they would not be harmed (Hoyt 2000; Reed 1965). A missionary nurse forced by the “Simbas” to treat their wounded said the killings of

156

A. C. Roosevelt

hostages were a reaction to the massacres by western forces (Hayes 1966). What is clear from all accounts is that during the operation and mopping-up actions months afterward, Belgian military and white mercenary troops lynched many individuals and fired incessantly upon any and all the civilians they encountered, killing hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Congolese whose only crime was supporting the elected government of Congo. Ironically, the Stanleyville invasion, strongly criticized as a counterrevolutionary conspiracy in the world press, was one of the events that persuaded both Communist China and Soviet Russia to finally become seriously involved in the Congo from then on (Mazov 2007). The year after Stanleyville, the USA dispensed with the halting and unsatisfactory “civilian” governments they had been inserting, propping up, and removing and with Belgium installed General Mobutu as “President,” i.e., military dictator of Congo. By then, Kasa-Vubu had already removed Tshombe and put in Kimba as prime minister. Most of the Belgian Congo Sûreté alum officers were back in charge of the Congo military under Vandewalle, edging out the remaining South African mercenaries who thought they had a main chance (Kelly 1993; Puren 1986: 181–205). Who was responsible for the executions of Kimba and other politicians for treason soon after Mobutu’s accession is hard to tell, given the multiple power nodes. Western writers like to say that Mobutu and Nendaka had Tshombe captured and killed (Bourlion 1969; Mullenheim-Rechberg 2001), but that is not likely, given that French, Americans, British, and Belgians but no Congolese took part in the kidnapping and that his “Algerian” death certificate (Nawej 2006; Tshombe 1997) has the Flemish forms that Belgian colonial military often used in their imperfect French.

Conclusions The combined evidence from earlier studies and new information gives insights into the problems exemplified by the Congo crisis. This chapter illustrates how the allied western countries followed a systematic culture of structural and direct violence of the sort “web of violence” theorists have defined (Hamby and Grych 2013; Turpin and Kurtz 1997). In contrast, most Congolese maneuvered intensively but tended to avoid getting into frank violence and were not usually in a position to erect structural violence at the time. Both then and since, some westerner writers have misrepresented these patterns of difference, essentially reversing the culpability for violence. For one thing, the public policy stance of the USA and its allies—claiming to work for the furtherance of “the free world,” international peace, and self-­ determination for former colonies—does not at all fit their actions at the time, which subverted the political will of Congolese leaders and voters and caused disorder and violence. One clear pattern that explains the inconsistency of US policy and practice with its expressed goals is the powerful effect of racism. This was the time of the government-supported racism of the Jim Crow period of the 1960s, and US functionaries show its effects. The record on Eisenhower and Allen Dulles, for example, indicates racial discrimination in their emotional reactions to Congolese leaders.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

157

Another pattern subverting the goals was the tendency for self-dealing. Some top US functionaries appear to have been motivated by personal greed and careerism. The actions of Douglas Dillon and Larry Devlin both manifest cupidity in the minerals business, and in his memoir Devlin repeatedly expresses fear of losing his job. Beyond personal failings, western representatives showed strong motivation of narrow, nationalistic geopolitical economic competitiveness. It is clear that the desire to secure for their countries preferential access to strategic minerals and outmaneuver international political rivals, such as the Soviet Union, trumped any commitment to world freedom and national independence for colonies. The communications of top US representatives frequently mention national pride in the public appearance of winning international contests and feelings of humiliation at any losses. Again, impulsive, partisan, and emotional reactions rather than methodical and farsighted strategizing dominated functionaries’ thinking, with unfortunate results. When US leaders were able to think beyond personal and nationalistic rivalries, as when Kennedy and Khrushchev managed the Cuban missile crisis through negotiations behind the scenes, nuclear holocaust was averted. When Nixon and Mao opened relations with China, proxy wars became less common in East Asia, and both countries greatly benefited economically. As for the European allies, Belgium, France, and the UK all pursued their colonial and neocolonial interests unapologetically. Many of their nationals active in the crisis had colonial backgrounds, attitudes, and interests, which included aggressive support for white rule, whether overt or covert, and western control of third world resources. But even those inexperienced in Africa privileged their countries and allies to such a degree that their own projects failed by pushing Congo into state failure. The UK was committed to maintaining its segregated colonies and ex-­ colonies and to allied control of strategic resources, rather than to handovers to nationalist African governments, and this commitment extended to its Congo policy. And at every step of the crisis, Belgium resisted ceding control of the Congo mining areas. There was a strong emotional component to its attitudes, and Belgian representatives and media expressed extremes of mortification at the USA’s relatively respectful treatment of Lumumba during his US visit, for example. The tendency to emotional, impulsive, self-centered, and uninformed decision-­ making had broad untoward effects. When western and UN efforts succeeded in getting rid of Congo’s elected leaders, mining production inevitably diminished under the incompetent, kleptocratic dictator they sponsored, as the country spiraled into decline under him. Western actions had threatened the economic health of Congo with the secessions and ended up impoverishing its populations during their rule. True, the dire economic and security situation, created in Congo by Belgium removing bank funds and shares and setting up mineral secessions, helped western representatives manipulate selected Congolese collaborators by intimidation and bribery in order to divert democratic processes, but the benefit was only short term. And far from fostering peace and privileging consensus through negotiation, the USA’s and its allies’ impatient, reactive, and short-sighted policies led to repeated armed interventions that worsened situations and, of course, caused injury and loss of life. White supremacy aspirations and imperial pride led the involved western

158

A. C. Roosevelt

governments and their agents to privilege the lives and interests of westerners over those of Africans to an extreme, and they abandoned democratic goals. The result was political disorder, domestic insecurity, and a deadly web of violence, including the assassination of Prime Minister Lumumba and the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians supporting him. Western representatives’ emotional approaches toward other countries, whether allies, neutrals, or competitors, were also inappropriate, leading them to go along with criminal and violent activities of close allies and to oppose sensible and peaceable policies and actions of competitors and neutrals. For example, their strong sense of competition with the Soviet Union led to distinct misinterpretation and misrepresentation of Soviet policies and activities in Congo. Compared to what is now known of what was going on during the Congo crisis, the statements of the Soviet representatives at the UN are much more accurate than those of western ones (with the exception of Soviet claims of a NATOsponsored invasion during the mutiny). In contrast, Congolese voters and the top elected leaders had perfectly worthy and moderate aspirations for themselves and their country and mostly sensible policies and practices to achieve their limited goals. Though western officials and analysis claimed their inexperience and the lack of an existing administration made it impossible for them to run the country, local leaders and functionaries carried on after independence, and local people not actually in conflict zones continued to support themselves and trade their surpluses. In the long run when left to their own devices, most Congolese leaders worked to get along with each other and with the representatives of other countries, despite all the disagreements, misunderstandings, and complications that arose. In an extremely challenging and rapidly changing political and economic situation, they strove to find solutions to problems and to avoid violent responses. Politicians on opposite sides of issues repeatedly sought reconciliation, despite determined western opposition. However, in the face of the superior resources and technologies of the involved western governments with their strong Eurocentric alliance, their power over the UN, and their influence with the media, Congolese elected or appointed leaders had much less ability to achieve their goals. Even those recruited by western authorities to subvert their country were unable to deliver what was asked. It was particularly the Congolese who had long worked as secret agents for the Belgian colonial security services who let themselves be involved in political coups and death plots westerners sponsored. They definitely worked as subordinates, though western propaganda depicted them as in charge. However, even they mostly evaded direct involvement in the killing plots. In contrast, the politicians independent of western governments, i.e., most Congolese leaders, acted in reasonable, practical, and quite principled ways and served their country well to the extent possible in the circumstances. It is really tragic that some of them lost their lives because they underestimated the forces arrayed against them and lacked the wherewithal to combat them. Reinterpreting the processes and effects of the Congo Crisis was aided by new information about the facts. An important element that changed understanding was the exposure of a rampant disinformation program coordinated by the western governments in aid of concealing the facts about their projects in Congo. The

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

159

disinformation, created by western functionaries who were themselves centrally involved in the coups and killings, misrepresented the aims and actions of the different political actors, whitewashing those of westerners and vilifying those of the Congolese leaders and electorate. At times, it seemed that there was so much prevarication that western representatives lost sight of the truth themselves, especially the Belgians but also the Americans. The disinformation program has deeply tainted the scholarly record on the Congo crisis because officers of the anti-Lumumba program were able to create the majority of the literature on the crisis without being exposed as disinformation agents who had been western government functionaries involved in the political and physical violence. These writers produced the record of the crisis without acknowledging that they were part of the story, preventing critical analysis of their works. The other important element in changing the picture is the body of declassified materials and newly available interviews with surviving participants and eyewitnesses. These materials and testimonies expose the plotting and the disinformation by furnishing substantive evidence for narratives that contradict those of the earlier literature. The lessons for researchers from the new evidence and interpretations on the Congo crisis are several. For scholars, an important lesson is that sources should not be taken at face value. You need to inquire into the relationship of writers and researchers to their subjects, the nature of their funding sources, and the full details of their employment or affiliation germane to their subjects. In the Congo crisis, many authors had hidden relationships to involved governments and even those with an acknowledged relation had roles in the crisis that were not as mentioned by them. These deceptive authors often misrepresented the situations of the crisis. When authors have a hidden stake in their subject, they may not tell the truth about it or even be able to recognize the truth about it. A related lesson for scholars is that materials without acknowledged provenance—the information about how and where they were produced and where and how the author obtained them—may be disinformation and should not be relied on as direct primary evidence. Furthermore, both documentary and oral records must be critically scrutinized as artifacts to evaluate their forensic integrity and internal consistency before being considered as valid evidence. In regard to foreign policy, the Congo crisis has lessons about the harm certain national cultural ideologies can cause. Given the universally acknowledged importance of achieving peace and prosperity in the world, ideologies that influence governments and national populations to unreasonable and destructive actions in the world must be recognized as such and discouraged. It is clear that in the world today, hegemonic and racialist ideologies do not arise as purely natural phenomena from populations, but they are programs designed and disseminated by various institutions and leaders in societies. That being so, such ideologies must be scrutinized for their logic, their values, and their appropriateness. The imperial aspirations of certain European administrations and US aspirations to serve as the world’s policeman fail the test on all such counts. In the context of the independence movements in former colonies, there was no way that colonial-type domineering control could continue to be maintained without force, and even with force such control

160

A. C. Roosevelt

could not secure peace and government stability. In the Congo, for example, outsiders’ control through client military dictators left the country in a continuing state of disorder and malfunction, which prevented the outsiders’ intended harvest of Congo’s resources. War, in particular, prevents civilians from keeping up their farms, jobs, and businesses and deters foreign investment. Foreigners seeking to invest, therefore, need to practice restraint and keep out of the internal affairs of their client countries, for both their sakes. Though foreign countries will try to get the best deals possible for themselves in the global market, it does them no good when the developing countries they trade with cannot produce because of the corruption, disorder, and warring that the foreigners’ interventions have facilitated. Since the crisis and its aftermath, Congo’s mineral production has been relatively small and unstable, and its once-productive agriculture is in serious disarray. Those who cynically argue that this is just how nationalistic foreign policy works (e.g., Gerard and Kuklick 2015: 215–222; Weissman 2014) miss the point that it works against both the predators and their prey. The cynics also seem oblivious to the fact that subverting constitutions, rigging elections, bribing leaders, and stealing countries’ resources are illegal acts and can and should be prosecuted and punished. Furthermore, the destruction of property and carnage inflicted by western military and their mercenaries in the third world is not only a tremendous, criminal waste of human and material capital but more importantly a serious crime against humanity. Sooner or later, the international justice system will stop favoring the powerful nations and start prosecuting their leaders when they sponsor the perpetration of such crimes. The UN needs to be freed from its bondage to Eurocentric interests, which mire it in the past and involve it in atrocities through its “peacemaking” operations. Third world regions with large, growing populations and abundant resources are going to be the growth markets of the future (Akaev et al. 2015). The active ongoing reorganization of economic power and technology in the world is going to change international political power relationships and that will require finally changing countries’ power and influence at the UN.  Furthermore, alterations in the UN constitution could privilege the General Assembly’s authority over that of the great power-­ controlled Security Council. Above all, this global public institution must be more open and accountable to its constituents. The UN until the year 2019 had withheld from scrutiny most of the records of the Congo crisis, but why? My observations of the declassification process while working in its archives were that US military intelligence is the agency responsible for the censorship of these records. One country should not have such great power to conceal its misconduct and that of its allies. Other countries must insist on the release of these and other important records that are being withheld. Without transparency, there is no possibility of accountability or learning from errors. The UN must furnish full information about its policies and actions. Its functionaries from Hammarskjold on down have lied and lied again about what they were doing, had done, had said, and planned to do and why. All UN records should automatically be released within five years of writing. Archives of governments and international institutions need to be open because hiding information prevents prosecution for crimes and obstructs prevention and remediation. The press also needs to become more open and aboveboard, itself.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

161

Declassification shows that the media too often has been a servant to questionable elite privilege and supposed national interests. In the long run, having good factual information in the open benefits everyone by informing debates and enabling critiques. It is clear that the CIA’s history of ineffective intelligence and abusive operations was enabled by its functionaries’ lack of factual knowledge and a disinclination to check things or self-reflect (e.g., Robarge 2014). The populations of the democratic nations involved in the Congo crisis were ill-served by their countries’ disinformation programs, for voters cannot make good judgments if they do not know what is going on both at home and abroad. For Congolese and nationals of other third world countries, there are lessons from the Congo crisis, too. Their populations are some of the most committed to the democratic process, voting in large percentages, and regularly have produced strong leaders committed to their national interests and scholars inspired by new data to rewrite theoretical approaches and reimagine the Congo’s future (Destrouper and Sundi Mbambi 2017; Kabemba 2013; Sundi Mbambi 2011; Ngbatana 1997). But to better protect their country’s ability to secure its interests, they need to give up their country’s dependence on the foreign paternalism that has so distorted the country since independence (Van Bilsen 1962a was prophetic on this). They also need to invest in the kind of regional cultural alliance that western countries relied on in the Congo crisis. A strong Pan-African alliance cleansed of covert foreign patronage could help countries’ leaders collaborate to be more powerful in the face of the cohesion of the NATO allies and other regional interest groupings. Clearly, a neutralist stance in relation to the competition between outside interests is the best strategy, since foreign interests can be played against each other instead of dividing a country. Development of expertise in technology, metallurgy, communication, transport, sustainable energy, agriculture, and fishery science are especially important for the development of resources in regional, national, and global spheres. The potential regional market in Africa is huge. It is a future engine for wealth production and an arena for fruitful strategic cooperation. To motivate such a continental allegiance, there is much to be proud of in the history and prehistory of the continent, though the information on that has not been communicated widely. School curricula need to surmount the inaccurate relict colonialist material that denigrates African cultures with empirically discredited theories like the Hamitic theory of white racial and ethnic cultural supremacy. With Africans’ long, strong record of cultural and technological innovation, regional interaction, and effective self-rule, the future could be their apple.

References Abi Saab, Georges. 1978. The United Nations Operation in the Congo, 1960–1964. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Adu Boahen, A. 1987. African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

162

A. C. Roosevelt

Akaev, Askar, Askar Sarygulov, and Valtin Sokolov. 2015. Macroeconomic Evolution: The Multipolarity of the Process and Quantitative Estimation Models. Social Evolution and History 14 (2): 109–207. Alexander, H.T. 1966 (1965). African Tightrope: My Two Years as Nkrumah’s Chief of Staff. New York: Praeger Publishers. Anonymous. 1960. Loi Fondamentale sur la Structure de l’Etat du Congo Belge. Anonymous Luba Informant. 2017. Personal Interview, July 20, Lumumbashi, DRC. Anstey, Roger. 1966. King Leopold’s Legacy: The Congo Under Belgian Rule. London: Oxford University. Arnove, Robert F. 1982. Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad. Bloomington: Indiana University. Augustijnen, Sven. 2007. Cher Pouquoi Pas? A Prior Magazine No. 14, February 6. [unpaginated]. Bayart, Jean-Francois. 2009. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press. Belgian Parliamentary Commission. 2001. Rapport. Enquête Parlementaire Visant à Déterminer les Circonstances Exactes de l’Assassinat de Patrice Lumumba et l’Implication Eventuelle des Responsables Politiques Belges dans Celui-Ci. Chambre des Representants 4th Session, 50th Legislature, 16 November 2001. Brussels. 2 vols. Berman, Edward H. 1982a. Educational Colonialism in Africa: The Role of American Foundations. In Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, ed. Robert F. Arnove, 179–202. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1982b. The Foundations’ Role in American Foreign Policy: The Case of Africa, Post 1945. In Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, ed. Robert F. Arnove, 203–232. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1983. The Influence of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy. Albany: State University of New York. Biwole, Achille B., Julie Morin-Rivat, Adeline Fayolle, Bitondo Dieudonne, Laurent Dedry, Kasso Dainou, Olivier J. Hardy, and Jean-Louis Doucet. 2015. Cameroon: An Insight into the Role of Historical Human Disturbances on the Current Forest Composition. Plant Ecology and Evolution 148 (1): 19–28. Blench, Roger, and Kevin MacDonald, eds. 2000. The Origins and Development of African Livestock: Archaeology, Linguistics, Genetics, and Ethnography. London: UCL Press. Blistein, Xavier. 2011. Interviews. March 27, 28, 29. Blommaert, Jan. 1990. Lumumba, Hammarskjold, and the 1960 Congo Crisis: A Case of International Understanding? Afrika Focus 6 (2): 97–118. Blouin, Andree with Jean MacKellar. 1983. My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionara. New York: Praeger Publishers. Borri, Michel (pseudonym for Alfred Charles Delarue). 1962. Nous Ces Affreux (Dossier Secret de l’Ex-Congo Belge). Paris: Editions Galic. Bourlion, Jacques. 1969. Moise Tshombe Abandonne. Brussels: Editions Pierre de Meyere. Bradford, Phillips Verner, and Harvey Blume. 1992. Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Brassinne, Jacques. 1968. L’Assistance Technique Belge au Congo Juillet 1960-Juin 1968. Chronique de Politique Etrangere 21(3–4), May-July. Brussels: Institut Royal des Relations Internationales, Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche. ———. 1991. Enquête sur the Mort de Patrice Lumumba. Doctoral Dissertation, Political Science, Universite Libre de Bruxelle, Brussels, Belgium. (Originally restricted to access by security clearance: released publicly after report of the Belgian Parliamentary Investigation was published in 2002.) ———. 1992. Les “conseilleurs” des delegations Congolaises à la conference de la table ronde (20 Janvier  – 20 Fevrier 1960). In Receil d’Etudes Congo 1955–1960, 122–163. Brussels: Academie Royale des Sciences d’Outre Mer.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

163

———. 2016. La Secession du Katanga: Temoignage (Juillet 1960-Janvier 1963), Collection Outre-Mers Vol. 5. Brussels: P. I. E. Peter Lang. Brassinne, Jacques, and Jean Kestergat. 1991. Qui a Tué Patrice Lumumba? Paris: Duculot. Brausch, Georges. 1961. Belgian Administration in the Congo. London: Oxford University Press. Bring, Ove. 2011. Hammarskjöld’s Approach to the United Nations and International Law. Documentos. Chile: Instituto de Estudios Internacionales. Burden, William A.M. 1982. Peggy and I: A Life Too Busy for a Dull Moment. New York: Published by the Author. Burden, Wendy. 2010. Deadend Gene Pool: A Memoir. New York: Gotham Books. Bustin, Edouard. 2001. Review of The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo de Witte 2001. International Journal of African Historical Studies 34 (1): 177–185. Carlson, Lois. 1966. Mongona Paul: The Congo Ministry and Martyrdom of Paul Carlson, M.D. New York: Harper and Row. Carlucci, Frank. 2005 (2002). Interview. Final edited transcript. Ronald Reagan Oral History Project. Charlottesville: The Miller Center Foundation, University of Virginia. Carrington, C.E. 1962. Decolonization: The Last Stages. International Affairs 38 (1): 29–40. Casement, Roger, Seamas O’ Siochain, and Michael O’Sullivan. 2003. Roger Casement’s Congo Report and 1903 Diary. Dublin: University College Dublin. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 2007. The Family Jewels: Previously Classified Papers on Attempted Castro Assassination, Mafia, Watergate, Domestic Spying, Wiretapping, Project Mockingbird. Ringbound plus CD-ROM. Progressive Management Publisher. Centre de Recherche et d’Information Socio-Politique (CRISP). 1960. Congo 1959, ed. Jules Gerard-Libois, 1st ed. Brussels: CRISP. ———. 1961. Congo 1960, ed. Jules Gerard-Libois and Benoit Verhaegen, vol. 3 vols. Brussels: Dossiers du CRISP. ———. 1962a. Congo 1959, ed. Jules Gerard-Libois. 2nd ed, revised and expanded. Brussels: Dossiers du CRISP. ———. 1962b. Congo 1960. Documents Belges et Congolais, ed. Jules Gerard-Libois. 2nd edition, revised and expanded. 2 vols. Brussels: Dossiers du CRISP. ———. 1962c. Congo 1961, ed. Benoit Verhaegen. Brussels: Dossiers du CRISP. ———. 1963. Congo 1962, ed. Jules Gerard-Libois and Benoit Verhaegen. Brussels: Dossiers du CRISP. ———. 1964. Congo 1963, ed. Jorje Beys, Paul-Henry Gendebien, and Benoit Verhaegen. Brussels: Dossiers du CRISP. ———. 1966. Congo 1964: Political Documents of a Developing Nation, ed. Jules Gerard-­Libois, Jan van Lierde, and Herbert F. Weiss. Princeton/Brussels: Princeton University Press/Centre de Recherche et d’Information Socio-Politique (CRISP). ———. 1967. Congo 1965: Political Documents of a Developing Nation, ed. anonymous researchers and Herbert Weiss. Princeton/Brussels: Princeton University Press/CRISP. Chapleau, Philippe, and Francois Misser. 1998. Mercenaires S.A. Paris: Desclée de Vrouwer. Chatterji, D. N. 1980. Storm over the Congo. New Delhi: Vikas. Chome, Jules. 1960. La Crise Congolais: De l’Independence a l’intervention militaire Belge. Brussels: Remarques Congolaise. ———. 1961. Le Gouvernement Congolaise et l’ONU. Brussels: Remarques Congolaise. ———. 1966. Moise Tshombe et l‘Escroquerie Katangaise. Brussels: Fondation Jacquemotte. ———. 1979. L’Ascension de Mobutu. Paris: Maspero. Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). 1975. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, U.S.  Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 1st Session, November 20. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Clarke, S.L.G. 1968. The Congo Mercenary: A History and Analysis, Study 6, South African Institute of International Affairs. Johannesburg: Jan Smuts House.

164

A. C. Roosevelt

Close, William T. with Malonga Miatudila. 2007. Beyond the Storm: Treating the Powerless and the Powerful in Mobutu’s Congo. Marbleton: Meadowlark Springs Productions. Closset, Andre. 1995. Les Compagnons de l’Ommegang. Avin-en-Hesbaye, BE: Editions de l’Aronde. Codere, Helen. 1973. The Biography of an African Society, Rwanda 1900–1960: Based on Forty-Eight Rwandan Autobiographies. Musée Royale de L’Afrique Centrale, Annales Serie, Sciences Humaines 8(79). Collins, Carole. 1992. Fatally Flawed Mediation: Cordier and the Congo Crisis of 1960. Africa Today 39 (3): 5–22. Colvin, Ian. 1968. The Rise and Fall of Moise Tshombe. London: Leslie Frewin. Connah, Graham. 2004. Forgotten Africa: An Introduction to its Archaeology. London: Routledge. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1984. The Declassified Eisenhower: A Startling Reappraisal of the Eisenhower Presidency. New York: Penguin Books. Coon, Carleton. 1939. The Races of Europe. New York: MacMillan. ———. 1962. The Origins of Races. New York: Alfred Knopf. ———. 1965. Living Races of Man. New York: Alfred Knopf. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, Alain Forest, and Herbert Weiss, eds. 1987. Rebellions  – Revolution au Zaire 1963–1965. 2 vols. Paris: L’Harmattan. D’Aspremont-Lynden, Arnoud. 2002. Interview. La Libre Belgique 10, February. Brussels. Davister, Pierre (Pseudonym). 1960. Katanga: Enjeu du Monde: Récits et Documents. Brussels: Europe-Afrique. ———. 1964. Comment est mort Lumumba. Pourquoi Pas? No. 2357, Janvier. Davister, Pierre (Pseudonym), and Philippe Toussaint. 1962. Croisettes et Casque Bleus. Brussels: Actuelles. Dayal, Rajeshwar. 1976. Mission for Hammarskjold: The Congo Crisis. Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Boeck, Guy. 1987. Baoni: Les Revoltes de la Force Publique sous Leopold II, Congo, 1895–1908. Anvers: Les Editions EPO. De Vos, Luc, Emmanuel Gerard, Philippe Raxob, and Jules Gerard-Libois, eds. 2004. Lumumba: De Complotten? De Moord. Leuven: Davidsfond. ———, eds. 2005. Les Secrets de l’Affaire Lumumba. Brussels: Racine. De Witte, Ludo. 1996. Crisis in Congo: De Rol van de Verenigde Naties, de Regering-Eyskens en het Koninghuis in de Omverwerping van Lumumba en de Opkomst van Mobutu. Leuven, BE: Uitgeverij Van Halewyk. ———. 2000. L’Assassinat de Lumumba. Paris: Karthala. ———. 2002. The Assassination of Lumumba. Trans. Ann Wright and Renee Fenby. London: Verso. (Originally published in 1999 in Flemish.) Dedeken, Noel C. 1978. Chimères Baluba: Le Sud-Kasai 1960–1962 à Feu et à Sang. Published by the author in Brussels, BE. Delneuf, Michele, Joseph-Marie Essomba, and Alain Froment, eds. 1998. Paleo-Anthropologie en Afrique Centrale: Un Bilan de L’Archaeologie au Cameroun. Paris: L’Harmattan. DeSalle, Rob, and Ian Tattersall. 2012. Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us about Ourselves. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Destrooper, Tine, and Pascal Sundi Mbambi. 2017. A Praxis Based Understanding of New Duty Bearers Examining Contextual Realities in the DRC. The International Journal of Human Rights 21 (2): 142–166. Devlin, Larry. 2007. Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone. New York: Public Affairs Books. Doyle, David W. 2001. True Men and Traitors: From the OSS to the CIA, My Life in the Shadows. New York: Wiley. Dugauquier, D.P. 1961. Congo Cauldron. London: Jarrolds. Dulles, Allen. 1963. The Craft of Intelligence: America’s Legendary Spymaster on the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World. Guilford: Lyons Press.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

165

Elenga, H., D. Schwartz, and Annie Vincens. 1994. Pollen Evidence of Late Quaternary Vegetation and Inferred Climate Changes in the Congo. Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 109: 345–356. Essomba, Joseph Marie, ed. 1992a. Paleo-anthropologie en Afrique Centrale: Un Bilan d l’Archaeologie au Cameroun. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———, ed. 1992b. Civilization du Fer et Sociétés en Afrique Centrale. Paris: L’Harmattan. Evanzz, Karl. 1998 (1992). The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcom X. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Eves, Heather E., Rebecca Hardin, and Stephanie Rupp, eds. 1998. Resource Use in the Trinational Sangha River Region of Equatorial Africa: Histories, Knowledge, Forms, and Institutions. Bulletin of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (102). New Haven, CT. Eyskens, Mark. 2000. Interview. De Zevende Dag. Brussels: VRT Flemish Language Television, 12 December. Fabian, Johannes. 1996. Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire. Berkeley: University of California. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). 1992. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960. Africa 19. Glenn W. LaFantasie, general editor. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. ———. 1994. Congo Crisis. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963. Vol. 20. Glenn La Fantasie, general editor. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. ———. 2013. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968. Congo, 1960–1968. Vol. 23. Adam M. Howard, general editor. Washington, DC: United States Printing Office. Ganshof van der Meersch, W.J. 1963. Fin de la Souveraineté Belge au Congo: Documents et Reflexions. Brussels: Institut Royal des Relations Internationales. Garman, Betty. 1969. “Good News” for Ex-CIA agents. La Free Press October 10: 11. Gerard, Emmanuel, and Bruce Kuklick. 2015. Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gerard-Libois, J. 1963. Secession au Katanga. In Brussels: CRISP and Leopoldville. Congo: INEP. ———. 1966. Katanga Secession. Trans. Rebecca Young. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (Originally published in 1963 in French). ———. 1993. CRISP, le Zaire, et l’histoire immediate. In Le Zaire a l’Epreuve de l’Histoire Immediate, ed. Jean Tshonda Omasombo, 243–246. Paris: Karthala. Gibbs, David N. 1991. The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Giefer, Thomas. 2000. Death Colonial Style. Video DVD. Presented by Michael Noll. Co-produced by WDR and Quartier Latin. Film Ideas, Wheeling, IL. Gleijeses, Piero. 1994. “Flee! The White Giants Are Coming!” The United States, Mercenaries, and the Congo, 1964–1965. Diplomatic History 18: 207–237. ———. 2002. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University. Golsan, Richard J. 2000. Vichy’s Afterlife: History and Counterhistory in Postwar France. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 2008 (1996). The Mismeasure of Man: The Definitive Refutation of the Argument of the Bell Curve. Expanded with a new introduction. New York: W.W. Norton. Government of Katanga (GOK). 1961. Livre Blanc du Gouvernement Katangais sur les Activités des Hors-la-Loi dans Certains Territoires Baluba/White Book of the Katangan Government About the Outlaw Activities in Some Baluba Areas. Katanga: Elizabethville. Halen, Pierre, and Janos Riesz, eds. 1997. Patrice Lumumba entre Dieux et Diable. Un Héros Africain dans Ses Images. Paris: L’Harmattan. Hamby, S., and J.  Grych. 2013. The Web of Violence: Exploring Connections Among Different Forms of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse. Amsterdam: Springer. Haraway, Donna. 1990. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. London: Routledge.

166

A. C. Roosevelt

Haskin, Jeanne. 2005. The Tragic State of Congo: From Decolonization to Dictatorship. New York: Algora. Hawass, Zahi, Yehia Z.  Gad, Somaia Ismail, et  al. 2010. Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamen’s Family. Journal of the American Medical Association 303 (7): 638–647. Hawass, Zahi, Somaia Ismail, Ashraf Selim, et  al. 2012. Revisiting the Harem Conspiracy and Death of Ramesses III: Anthropological, Forensic, Radiological, and Genetic Study. BMJ 345: e8268. Hayes, Margaret. 1966. Captive of the Simbas. New York: Harper & Row. Hayes, Paddy. 2016. Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain’s Cold War Spy Master. New York: Overlook Press. Heinz, G. (Pseudonym for Jacques Brassinne), and H.  Donnay (Pseudonym for Jules Gerard-­ Libois). 1966. Lumumba Patrice: Les Cinquante Derniers Jours de Sa Vie. Brussels: CRISP and Le Seuil. ———. 1969. Patrice Lumumba: The Last Fifty Days. Trans. Jane Clark Seitz. New York: The Grove Press. Hempstone, Smith. 1962. Rebels, Mercenaries, and Dividends: The Katanga Story. New  York: Praeger Publishers. Hersch, Seymour M. 1998. The Dark Side of Camelot. New York: Harper Collins. Herz, Martin. 2004 (1962). Analytical Chronology [of the Congo Crisis]. Declassified Manuscript. Bureau of African Affairs, United States Department of State, Washington, DC. In Conference Reader: The Congo Crisis, 1960–1961. A Critical Oral History Conference, ed Namikas, Lise and Sergey Mazov. Cold War International History Project and Africa Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, September 23–24, 2004. Higginson, John. 1989. A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise, and the African Mineworker, 1907–1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Hilton, Anne. 1987. The Kingdom of Kongo. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hoare, Mike. 1979 (1967). Mercenary. New York: Bantam. ———. 1989. The Road to Kalamata: A Congo Mercenary’s Personal Memoir. Boulder: Paladin Press. ———. 2008a (1991). Congo Warriors. Boulder: Paladin Press. ———. 2008b. Congo Mercenary. Boulder: Paladin Press. Hochschild, Adam. 1998. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. London: Pan Books. ———. 2011. Personal communication. Hoskyns, Catherine. 1965a. The Congo since Independence: January 1960  – December 1961. London: Oxford University Press. ———. 1965b. Violence in the Congo. Transition 21: 47–50. ———. 2013. Interview., June 10. Houart, Pierre. 1960. La Penetration Communiste au Congo. Commentaire et Documents sur les Evenements de Juin-Novembre 1960. Brussels: Centre de Documentation Internationale. Hoyt, Michael P. 2000. Captive in the Congo: A Consul’s Return to the Heart of Darkness. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. Hudson, Andrew. 2012. Congo Unravelled: Military Operations from Independence to the Mercenary Revolt 1960–1968. Solihull: Helion. Jacobs, E.A., ed. 1994. Defense et Mantien de l’Ordre en Afrique Centrale: A l’Epoque Contemporaine de la Colonisation Belge. Brussels: Musée Royal de l’Armée. Jacques, Gerard, ed. 2004. La Colonisation Belge: Une Grande Aventure. Nivelles: Gamma and Union Royale Belge pour les Pays d’Outre-Mer. James, Alan. 1996. Britain and the Congo Crisis. 1960–63. London: MacMillan. Janssens, Emile. 1962. J’étais le Général Janssens. Brussels: Charles Dessart. ———. 1972. Au Fil d’Une Vie. Brussels: Pierre de Meyere. ———. 1979. Histoire de la Force Publique. Brussels: Ghesquiere and Partners. Jennings, Eric T. 2001. Vichy in the Tropics: Petain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–1944. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

167

Jewsiewicki, B. and L. Nsanda Buleli, eds. 2008. Constructions, Negociations, et Derives des Identites Regionales dans les Etats des Grands Lacs Africains: Approche Comparative. Paris: L’Harmattan. Johnson, K. Loch. 1988 (1985). A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence. Paperbound ed. Chicago: Dorsey Press. Joye, Pierre, and Rosine Lewin. 1961. Les Trusts au Congo. Brussels: Société Populaire. Kabemba, Claude. 2013. The Democratic Republic of Congo: The Land of Humanitarian Interventions. In The History and Practice of Humanitarian Intervention and Aid in Africa, ed. Bronwen Everill and Josiah Kaplan, 140–157. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kahlheber, S., K. Bostoen, and K. Neumann. 2009. Early Plant Cultivation in the Central African Rain Forest: First Millennium BC Pearl Millet from South Cameroon. Journal of African Archaeology 7: 253–272. Kalb, Madeleine. 1971. The Soviet Union and the Congo 1960–1962. Ph.D. dissertation, Political Science and International Relations, Columbia University, New York. ———. 1982. The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa  – From Eisenhower to Kennedy. New York: Macmillan Publishers. Kalonji, Albert Mulopwe. 1964. Ma Lutte, au Kasai, Pour la Vérité au Service de la Justice. Barcelona: CAGSA. ———. 2002. Congo 1960: La Secession du Sud Kasai la Vérité du Mulopwe. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 2013. Personal Interview, June 12. Kanet, Roger E., and Edward A. Kolodziej, eds. 1991. Cold War as Cooperation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kanza, Thomas. 1972. Conflict in the Congo. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Kaplan, Lawrence S. 1967. The United States, Belgium, and the Congo Crisis. The Review of Politics 29 (2): 239–256. Katete Orwa, D. 1985. The Congo Betrayal: The UN-US and Lumumba. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau. Keane, Daragh. 1994. The Irish Army in the Congo. MA thesis. Maynooth: St. Patricks College, National University of Ireland. Kelly, Sean. 1993. America’s Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire. Washington, DC: The American University Press. Kent, John. 2010. America, the UN, and Decolonization: Cold War Conflict in the Congo. London: Routledge. Kitchen, Helen, ed. 1967a. Footnotes to the Congo Story: An Africa Report Anthology. New York: Walker and Company. ———. 1967b. The Linchpin Gives Way: Revolt of the Force Publique. In Footnotes to the Congo Story: An Africa Report Anthology, ed. Helen Kitchen, 12–24. New York: Walker and Company. Kuitenbrouwer, Joost B.W. 1961a. The Baluba Camp: A UNO Undertaking. Brussels: Charles Dessart. ———. 1961b. Le Camp Baluba. Rapport Secret. Brussels: Charles Dessart. Lancinay, Christian (Pseudonym of Christian Souris). 1985 (1962). Les Héros Sont Affreux. Scaillet, Montigy-le-Tilleul/Brussels: Scaillet/Dessart. Lanfranchi, R., J. Ndanga, and Henri Zana. 1997. Nouvelles datations 14C de la métallurgie du fer dans la forêt dense Africaine. Yale F & ES Bulletin 102: 46–55. Lanotte, Olivier. 2010. Chronology of the Democratic Republic of Zaire (1960–1997). In Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, ed. Jacques Semelin. SciencesPo. www.massviolence.org. ISSN:1961-9898. Lantier, Jacques. 1967. Afrique Déchirée. Paris: Planete. ———. 1969. Le Temps des Mercenaires. Paris: Culture, Art, Loisirs. Larmer, Miles, and Erik Kennes. 2014. Rethinking the Katangese Secession. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42 (2): 741–761. Lawson, Richard. 1963. Strange Soldiering. London: Hodder and Staughton. Lefever, Ernest W. 1965. Crisis in the Congo: A United Nations Force in Action. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

168

A. C. Roosevelt

———. 1967. Uncertain Mandate: Politics of the UN Congo Operation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Legum, Colin. 1961. Congo Disaster. Baltimore: Penguin Books. Lemarchand, Rene. 1964. Political Awakening in the Congo: The Politics of Fragmentation. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1967a. How Lumumba Came to Power. In Footnotes to the Congo Story: An Africa Report Anthology, ed. Helen Kitchen, 9–17. New York: Walker and Company. ———. 1967b. Patrice Lumumba in Perspective. In Footnotes to the Congo Story: An Africa Report Anthology, ed. Helen Kitchen, 35–44. New York: Walker and Company. ———. 2009. The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa: National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Lumumba, Patrice E. (not the proven author). 1962. Congo, My Country. Trans. Graham Heath. Forward by Colin Legum. London: Pall Mall Press with Barrie and Rockliff. ———. 1969. Congo, My Country. Trans. Graham Heath. Forward by Colin Legum. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers. Mahoney, Richard D. 1979. The Kennedy Policy in the Congo 1961–1963. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. ———. 1983. JFK: Ordeal in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy. New  York: Arcade Publishing. Malkki, Liisa. 1995. Purity and Exile: Chicago: Violence Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Manu-XYZ (Pseudonym). 2008. EGON Soldat de Fortune au Katanga. bd-egon.blogspot. com/2008_03_01_archive. Article accessed 9 Sept 2011. Maquet, Jacques. 1962. Les Civilisations Noires. Paris: Horizons de France. ———. 1972. Civilizations of Black Africa. Revised and translated by Joan Rayfield. New York: Oxford University Press. Marchal, Jules. 2008. Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo. Trans. Martin Thom. London: Verso. Marres, Jacques, and Pierre de Vos. 1959. L’Equinox de Janvier. Brussels: Editions Euraforient. Martelli, George A. 1962. Leopold to Lumumba: A History of the Belgian Congo. London: Chapman and Hall. Martin, Lucas. 2012. DNA Tribes Digest, January 1:1–10. Masuy, Christine. 1997. Du portrait au personnage. La diabolisation symbolique de Patrice Lumumba (1959–1961). In Patrice Lumumba entre Dieu et Diable: Un Héros Africain dans Ses Images, ed. Pierre Halen and Janos Riesz, 199–213. Paris: L’Harmattan. Mazov, Sergei. 2007. Soviet Aid to the Gizenga Government in the Former Belgian Congo (1960–1961) as Reflected in Russian Archives. Cold War History 7 (3): 425–437. ———. 2010. A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo. Washington, DC/Stanford: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press. Mbida, Christophe M., Wim Van Neer, Huyghes Doutrelepont, and Luc Vrydaghs. 2000. Evidence for Banana Cultivation and Animal Husbandry During the First Millennium BC in the Forest of Southern Cameroon. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 151–162. Mbu-Mputu, Norbert Xson (Pseudonym). ed. 2010. Patrice Lumumba: Discours, Lettres, Textes. Lexingon/Wales: Lulu.com and Newport/MediaComx. (Self-publishing outlets.) Mellars, Paul, Katie Boyle, Ofer Bar-Yosef, and Chris Stringer. 2007. Rethinking the Human Revolution: New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origin and Dispersal of Modern Humans, MacDonald Institute Monographs. Cambridge: MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Merriam, Alan P. 1961. Congo Background of Conflict. Evanston: Northwestern University. Michaels, Jeffrey H. 2012. Breaking the Rules: The CIA and Counterinsurgency in the Congo 1964–1965. International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence 25 (1): 130–159. Michel, Serge. 1963. Uhuru Lumumba. Trans. Jose Desumbila. Barcelona: Editorial Fontanella. Middeleer, Jacqueline. 1973. Katanga Rouge. Brussells/Sables-d-Olonne: Brusilia Building/ L’Imprimerie Pinson. (Author-published).

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

169

Minter, William. 1986. Candid Cables: Some Reflections on U.S.  Response to the Congo Rebellions. In The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities, ed. Georges Nzongola Ntalaja, 265–288. Trenton: Africa World Press. Mobutu, Sese Seko. 1989. Dignity for Africa  – Mobutu Interviews with Jean-Louis Remilleux. Paris: Editions Albin Michel. Mockler, Anthony. 1969. The Mercenaries. New York: Macmillan. ———. 1986. The New Mercenaries. Transworld Publishers: Corgi Books. London. Monheim, F. 1961. Réponse à Pierre de Vos au Sujet de ‘Vie et Mort de Lumumba’. Antwerp: De Vlijt. ———. 1962. Mobutu: l’Homme Seul. Paris: Actuelles. Morel, Edmund Dene. 1904. King Leopold’s Rule in Africa. London: Heinemann. Mountz, William. 2014a. Americanizing Africanization: The Congo Crisis, 1960–1967. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Missouri-Columbia. ———. 2014b. The Congo Crisis: A Reexamination (1960–1965). Journal of Middle East and Africa 5 (2): 151–155. Mummendey, Dietrich. 1997. Beyond the Reach of Reason: The Congo Story 1960–1965. (Self-­ published by Sora Mummendey, no place of publication given.) Munger, Edwin S. 1960 (1966). Conflict in the Congo. American Universities Field Staff Reports, Service Central & Southern Africa Series 8(1–4). Namikas, Lise. 2013. Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo. Washington, DC/Stanford: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press. Namikas, Lise and Sergey Mazov, eds. 2004. Conference Reader: The Congo Crisis, 1960–1961. A Critical Oral History Conference. Cold War International History Project and Africa Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, September 23–24, 2004. Nawej, Kayemb “Uriel”. 2006. Moise Tshombe: Visionaire Assassine. Lexington. (Self-published.) Nelson, Samuel H. 1994. Colonialism in the Congo Basin 1880–1940. Monographs in International Studies, Africa Series No. 64. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies. Nelson, Michael. 2007. Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks. Ngbatana, Tongele. 1997. From Congo to Zaire to Congo: Challenges and Prospects for the 21st Century. North Highland: Transnational Printing Services. Nicolai, Marie. 1987. Ici Radio Katanga 1960–1961. Brussels: J. M. Collet. Nothomb, Patrick. 1993. Dans Stanleyville. Brussels: Duculot. Nzongola Ntalaja, George, ed. 1986. The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities. Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. 2002. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. London: Zed Books. ———. 2014. Patrice Lumumba. Athens: Ohio University Press. O’Brien, Conor Cruise. 1962. To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History. New York: Simon and Schuster. ———. 1968. Murderous Angels: A Political Tragedy and Comedy in Black and White. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ———. 1998. Memoir: My Life and Themes. Lanham: Cooper Square Press of Rowman and Littlefield. Odom, Thomas P. 1988. Dragon Operations: Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964–1965. Fort Leavenworth: Leavenworth Papers No. 14. Okumu, Washington. 1963. Lumumba’s Congo: Roots of Conflict. New York: Ivan Obolensky. Omasombo Tshonda, Jean, and Benoît Verhaegen. 1998. Patrice Lumumba Jeunesse et Apprentissage Politique 1925–1956. Cahiers Africains – Afrika Studies No. 33–34. Tervuren/ Paris: Institut Africain-CEDAF – Afrika Institut-ASDOC/L’Harmattan. ———. 2005. Patrice Lumumba Acteur Politique de la Prison au Portes du Pouvoirs Juillet 1956-Fevrier 1960. Cahiers Africains  – Afrika Studies No. 68–69–70. Tervuren/Paris: Africa/L’Harmattan. Orlow, Dietrich. 2009. The Lure of Fascism in Western Europe: German Nazis, Dutch and French Fascists, 1933–1939. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

170

A. C. Roosevelt

Othen, Christopher. 2015. Katanga 1960–1983: Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that Wages War on the World. Stroud: The History Press. Othman, Mohamed Chande. 2019. Report of the Eminent Person pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 72/252: Investigation into the Conditions and Circumstances Resulting in the Tragic Death of Dag Hammarskjold and other Members of the party accompanying him. United Nations General Assembly 73rd Session, Agenda Item 131, 12 September 2019. Document A/73/973. Paget, Karen M. 2015. Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Paxton, Robert O. 2005. Europe in the Twentieth Century. 4th rev. ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Peck, Raoul. 2000. Lumumba. Zeitgeist Films. Pottier, Johan. 2002. Re-imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pringle, Heather. 2006. The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust. New  York: Hyperion. Puren, Jerry, as told to Brian Pottinger. 1986. Mercenary Commander. Alberton: Galago. Ramondy, Karine. 2020. Leaders Assassines en Afrique Centrale 1958–1961. Entre Construction Nationale et Regulation des relations Internationales. Paris: L’Harmattan. Reed, David. 1965. 111 Days in Stanleyville. New York: Harper and Row. Reefe, Thomas Q. 1981. The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reyntjens, Filip. 2010. The Great African War: Congo and Geopolitical Politics 1996–2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015. Van Bilsen (Anton Arnold Jozef). Biographie Belge d’Outre Mer 9. Brussels. Rikhye, Indar Jit. 1993. Military Advisor to the Secretary General: U.N. Peacekeeping and the Congo Crisis. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ———. 2002. Trumpets and Tumults: The Memoirs of a Peacekeeper. New Delhi: Manohar. Ritchie-Calder, Peter. 1961. The Agony of the Congo. London: Victor Gollancz. Robarge, David. 2014. Review of FRUS Volume (1964–1968), Vol. XXIII. Studies in Intelligence, Extracts 58 (3): 1–9. Roberts, John. 1963. My Congo Adventure. London: Jarrolds. Roberts, Janine. 2003. Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel. New York: The Disinformation Company Ltd. Roberts, Mary Nooter, and Allen F.  Roberts, eds. 1996. Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History. New York/Munich: The Museum for African Art/Prestel Verlag. Roosevelt, Eleanor B. 1959. The Day Before Yesterday: The Reminiscences of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Garden City: Doubleday. Roosevelt, Kermit. 1981. Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1992. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Da Capo Press. Roosevelt, A. C. 2005. Ecology in Human Evolution: Origins of the Species and of Complex Societies. In A Catalyst for Ideas: Anthropological Archaeology and the Legacy of Douglas Schwartz, ed. V. Scarborough, 169–208. Santa Fe: School of American Research. ———. 2011. Behind the veil: Culpability in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Congonova 4: 1–11. ———. n.d.-a. The Heart of Darkness Was White: The Role of the NATO Coalition in Death, Disorder, and Disinformation in Central Africa 1955–2005. Book manuscript. ———. n.d.-b. An Unnoticed Genocide: Belgian massacres of the descendants of the Luba kingdom in the Katanga Secession, 1960–1963. In preparation for submission to the Journal of Anthropological Research. Roosevelt, A. C., M. Imazio da Silveira, B. Mbongo, H. Zana, J. Douglas, J. Whitaker, D. Harris, and E.  Quinn. 1998. The Excavations at Ngolio, Central African Republic. Paper presented at the International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology/Association of Human Biologists Dual Congress, Human Ecology Session, Sun City, South Africa.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

171

Roosevelt, Archibald, Jr. 1988. For Lust of Knowing: The Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer in the Middle East. Boston: Little Brown and Company. Rubbens, A. 1992. L’incubation de la fievre sécessioniste du Katanga. In Receuil d’Etudes Congo 1955–1960, 343–357. Brussels: Academie Royale des Sciences d’Outre Mer. Russel-Cargill, Roderick. 1961. Response to Interrogation, Case 40. New York: UN Mercenary files. Ryckmans, Pierre. 1948. Dominer pour Servir. Brussels: L’Edition l’Universelle. Saerens, Lieven. 2002. Inventaris van hiet Archief Anton A. Jozef (Jef) Van Bilsen (1913–1996). KADOC Reeks Inventarissen en Reportaria No. 59. Leuven. Saunders, Frances Stonor. 1999. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press. Schuyler, Philippa. 1962. Who Killed the Congo? New York: Devin-Adair. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. 1999. The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil. Trans. Leland Guyer. New York: Hill and Wang of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Schweinfurth, Georg. 1874. In the Heart of Africa: Three Years’ Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa from 1868 to 1871. Vol. 2. Trans. Ellen E.  Frewar. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Scott, Ian. 1969. Tumbled House: The Congo at Independence. London: Oxford University Press. Sebe, Berny. 2011. Exalting Imperial Grandeur: The French Empire and Its Metropolitan Public. In European Empires and the People: Popular Responses to Imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy, ed. John M. MacKenzie, 19–56. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Seligman, Charles G. 1930. The Races of Africa. 1st ed. London: Oxford University Press. ———. 1979. The Races of Africa. 4th and Final ed. London: Oxford University Press. Shaloff, Stanley. 1970. Reform in Leopold’s Congo. Richmond: John Knox. Shane, Scott. 2008. Lawrence Devlin, CIA Officer Who Balked on a Congo Plot, Is Dead. New York Times, December 11: B10. Sheppard, William Henry. 1919. Presbyterian Pioneers in the Congo. Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication. Shoumatoff, Alex. 2009. Personal communication, September 22–28. Simons, E., R.  Boghossian, and B.  Verhaegen. 1995. Stanleyville 1959: Le Procès de Patrice Lumumba et les Emeutes d’Octobre. Cahiers Africains No. 17–18. Brussels: Institut AfricainsCEDAF and Paris: L’Harmattan. Slade, Ruth. 1962. King Leopold’s Congo: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Congo Independent State, Issued Under the Auspices of the Institute of Race Relations. London: Oxford University Press. Smith, Ivan. 2012. Mad Dog Killers: The Story of a Congo Mercenary. Silihull: Helion. Sonck, Jean-Pierre. 1960. Operations au Congo. www.congo-1960.be. Accessed: July 2015. ———. 1998. Forces de l’Ordre et Sûreté Katanga 1960–1961. CEDOMI. ———. 2009. Echec au Simbas. www.Stanleyville.BE/Documents Spaak, Paul-Henri. 1969. Combats Inachevés. Paris: Fayard. ———. 1971. The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European, 1936–1966. Boston: Little Brown. Stahl, Ann Brower, ed. 2005. African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction. Malden: Blackwell. Stanard, Matthew G. 2011. Learning to Love Leopold: Belgian Popular Imperialism 1830–1960. In European Empires and the People: Popular Responses to Imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy, ed. John M. MacKenzie, 124–157. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 2012. Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Stengers, Jean. 2007. Congo: Mythes et Réalités. Brussels: Racine. Stevens, Christopher. 1976. The Soviet Union and Black Africa. New  York: Holmes & Meyer Publishers. Stockwell, John. 1978. In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story. New  York: W.  W. Norton & Company, Inc. Stringer, Chris. 2010. The Origins of Our Species. London: Penguin.

172

A. C. Roosevelt

Stringer, Chris, and Robin McKie. 1998. African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity. New York: Henry Holt. Sundi Mbambi, Pascal. 2011. The Quest for Democracy in Africa: The CNS in D. D. Congo (Zaire) and the CODESA in South Africa. Saarbrucken: LAP Lambert Academic. Tattersall, Ian. 2013. Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Teacher, David (Pseudonym). 2015. Rogue Agents: Habsburg, Pinay and the Private Cold War 1951–1991. Electronic book. 4th ed. Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP). Thornton, John K. 1983. The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Timberlake, Clare H. 1963. The First Year of Independence in Congo: Events and Issues. MA thesis, College of General Studies, International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, DC. Trinquier, Roger. 1961. La Guerre Moderne. Paris: Editions de la Table Ronde. ———. 1964. Modern Warfare: A French View of Counter-Insurgency. New York: Praeger. ———. 1978. Le Temps Perdu. Paris: Albin Michel. ———. 2006. Modern Warfare: A French View of Counter-Insurgency. Westport: Praeger Security International. Trinquier, Roger, Jacques Duchemin, and Jacques Bailly. 1963. Notre Guerre au Katanga. Paris: La Pensée Moderne. Tshombe, Moise. 1967. My Fifteen Months in Government. Plano: University of Plano. ———. 1975. Memoires de Moise Tshombe. Brussels: L’Esperance. Tshombe, Joseph Kayomb. 1997. Le Rapt de Tshombe – La Mis a Mort du Leader Congolais. Ottignies Louvain la Neuve: Editions Quorum. Tullberg, Andreas. 2012. “We Are in the Congo Now”: Sweden and the Trinity of Peacekeeping During the Congo Crisis 1960–1964. Lund: Department of History, Lund University, Sweden. Tully, Andrew. 1962. CIA: The Inside Story. New York: Fawcett World Library. By arrangement with William Morrow & Company, New York, NY. Turner, Thomas. 2007. The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth, and Reality. London: Zed Books. ———. 2008. Nationalism, Historiography, and the (Re)construction of the Rwandan Past. In Identités Régionales en Afrique Centrale: Constructions et Dérives, ed. Bogumil Jewsiewicki and Leonard N’Sanda Buleli, 193–202. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 2013. Congo. Cambridge: Polity Press. Turner, Thomas, and M.  Crawford Young. 1985. The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Turpin, Jennifer, and Lester R.  Kurtz, eds. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. United Nations (UN). 1961a. The Situation in the Republic of the Congo: Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for the Congo. United Nations General Assembly, Fifteenth Session, Agenda Item 85, 20 March, 1961. UN Documents A/4711, A/4711 Annexes, A/4711/ Add. 1, A/4711/Add.2, and A/4711/Corr. 1. ———. 1961b. Report of the Commission of Investigation into Lumumba's Death. A/4964 UN Security Council issued document S/4976, Official Records, Supplement for October, November, and December, 11 November 1961, 11/11/61. UN Documents S/4976, A/4964. ———. 1962. Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Conditions and Circumstances Resulting in the Tragic Death of Mr. Dag Hammarskjold and Members of the Party Accompanying Him. General Assembly A/5069 and A/5069/Add.1, 24 April, 1962. 62/09174. Urquhart, Brian. 1972. Hammarskjold. New York: Alfred P. Knopf. ———. 1987. A Life in Peace and War. New York: Norton. Valahu, Mugur. 1964. The Katanga Circus: A Detailed Account of Three UN Wars. New York: Robert Speller & Sons. van Bilsen, Anton A.J. 1956. Un Plan de Trente Ans pour l’Emancipation de l’Afrique Belge. Brussels: Publisher s.n. ———. 1962a. Some Aspects of the Congo Problem. International Affairs 38 (1): 41–51.

Culpability for Violence in the Congo: Lessons from the Crisis of 1960–1965

173

———. 1962b. L’Independance du Congo. Brussels: Casterman. van den Bosch, Jean. 1986. Pre-Zaire: Le Cordon Mal Coupe. Brussells: Le Cri. Van Langenhove, F. 1960. La Crise Congolaise; Janvier 1959–Aout 1960. Chronique de Politique Etrangère 13(4–6) July–November: 401–1112. Brussels: Institut Royal des Relations Internationales. van Lierde, Jean, ed. 1963. La Pensée Politique de Patrice Lumumba. Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. Paris: Presence Africaine. ———, ed. 1972. Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba. Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. Boston: Little Brown. van Rensburg, Carol. 2009. Newsletter. South African Airforce Association 1–8. Van Reybroucke, David. 2014 (2010). Congo: The Epic History of a People. Trans. Sam Garrett. New York: HarperCollins. Vanderstraeten, Louis-Francois. 1985. De la Force Publique à l’Armée Nationale Congolaise: Histoire d’une Mutinerie. Brussels/Paris: Academie Royale de Belgique/Duculot. ———. 1992. La Force Publique et le Maintien de la “Pax Belgica” 1944-Janvier 1959. In Receuil d’Etudes Congo 1955–1960, 495–524. Brussels: Academie Royale des Sciences d’Outre Mer. Vandewalle, Frederick J.L.A. 1970. L’Ommegang: L’Odyssée et Reconquête de Stanleyville. Brussels: Le Livre Africain. ———. 1971. Avatars de la Sûrete. Brussels: Publisher s.n. ———. 1974–1977. Mille et Quatre Jours. Contes du Zaire et du Shaba. 13 volumes. Brussels: Self-published. ———. 1979. Une Ténébreuse Affaire, Ou Roger Trinquier au Katanga. Brussels: Tam Tam Ommegang. Vandewalle, Frederic J.  L. and Jacques Brassinne. 1973. Les Rapports Secrets de la Sûreté Congolaise 1959–1960. 2 volumes. Gamma: Arts et Voyages and Editions. Vangroenweghe, Daniel. 2010. Du Sang sur les Lianes: Leopold II et Son Congo. Rev and corrected ed. Brussels: Aden. Vanthemsche, Guy. 2012. Belgium and the Congo, 1885–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vellut, Jean-Luc, ed. 2005. La Memoire du Congo: Le Temps Colonial. Brussels: Musée Royale de L’Afrique Centrale and Snoeck. Verhaegen, Benoit. 1966. Rebellions au Congo. 2 vols. Brussels: CRISP. Volksgazet. 1961. G. Munongo: Loemoemba moet verdwidjnen! Volksgazet 15(2): 3. Von Horn, Carl. 1967 (1966). Soldiering for Peace. New York: David McKay Company. von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Burkard. 2001. The Abduction and Death of Moise Tshombe – The End of Hope for the Congo. Oxford: Worldview Publishing. Wagoner, Fred E. 2003. Dragon Rouge: The Rescue of Hostages in the Congo. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific. Waldron, D’Lynn. 2006 (1960). Lumumba. www.dlwaldron.com/lumumba. Accessed 22 Aug 2011. Weber, Guy. 1982. Ces Coloniaux … Histoires du Zaire. Brussels: Louis Musin. ———. 1983. Le Katanga de Moise Tshombe ou le Drame de La Loyauté. Brussels: Louis Musin. ———. 1991. Comme Je Les Ai Connus. Dinant: L. Bourdeaux-Capelle. ———. 2001a. Confidential Curriculum Vitae. Belgian Government Archives, Contemporary History Museum, Gerard-Libois collection. Tervuren. ———. 2001b. Transcript of taped testimony to the Belgian Parliamentary Commission of Investigation. Belgian Government Archives, Contemporary History Museum, Gerard-Libois collection, Tervuren. Weissman, Stephen R. 1974. American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960–1964. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1980. The CIA and U.S. Policy in Zaire and Congo. In Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa, ed. Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karl van Meter, and Louis Wolf, 183–207. Secaucus: Lyle Stuart. ———. 1981. The CIA and US Policy in Zaire and Angola. In American Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance, ed. René Lemarchand, 415–466. Lanham: University Presses of America.

174

A. C. Roosevelt

———. 2002. Opening the Secret Files on Lumumba’s Murder. Washington Post Outlook Section. July 21. P. B03. ———. 2010. An Extraordinary Rendition. Intelligence and National Security 25 (2): 198–222. ———. 2014. What Really Happened in the Congo? The CIA, the Murder of Lumumba, and the Rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs, July–August: 14–24. Wells, Ida B. 1892. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. New York: The New York Age Print. Wheelock, Keith and M. Crawford Young. 1965. The Congolese Rebellion of 1964. Unpublished report for the CIA. Wilford, Hugh. 2008. The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Willame, Jean-Claude. 1967. The Military Intervenes. In Footnotes to the Congo Story: An Africa Report Anthology, ed. Helen Kitchen, 161–172. New York: Walker and Company. ———. 1990. Patrice Lumumba: La Crise Congolaise Revisitée. Paris: Editions Karthala. Williams, Susan. 2011. Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa. London: Hurst. Williams, Juan. 2013 (2002). Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. Anniversary ed. New York: Penguin. Williams, Susan. 2016a (2006). Colour Bar: A United Kingdom. London: Penguin Books. ———. 2016b. Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II. New York: Public Affairs. Woodward, C. Vann and William S. McFeely. 2002 (1955). The Strange Career of Jim Crow. 3rd Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Wrong, Michela. 2001 (2000) In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo. New York: HarperCollins. Young, M. Crawford. 1965a. Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1965b. The Congo Rebellion. Africa Report: 6–11. ———. 1966. Post-Independence Politics in the Congo. Transition 26: 31–41. ———. 1967. Congo Political Parties Revisited. In Footnotes to the Congo Story: An Africa Report Anthology, ed. Helen Kitchen. New York: Walker & Company. ———. 1971. Rebellion and the Congo. In Rebellion in Black Africa, ed. Robert L.  Rotberg, 209–246. London: Oxford University. Young, M. Crawford and T. Turner. 1985. The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Zangato, E. and A. F. C. Holl. 2010. On the iron front: New evidence from north-central Africa. Journal of African Archaeology 8(1): 7–23. A. C. Roosevelt is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A four-field anthropologist, she studies the evolution of humans and their societies in their environments, using methods ranging from geoarchaeology and botany to ethnohistory and ethnography. A leading archeologist studying tropical forests, she has published 8 books and more than 100 articles. Her field research in Amazonia showed, contrary to expectations, human occupation going back to Paleoindians and culminating in late prehistoric complex societies. Her edited work Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present demonstrates the need to interpret modern societies in relation to the historic and prehistoric societies and vice versa. Her current research on human occupation in the Congo Basin looks at countries of the former Belgian Congo in archaeological and ethnohistorical context. Funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Endowments, Wenner-Gren, and Fulbright, she has received numerous awards for her work, including the MacArthur Fellowship.  

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors Bilinda Straight, Amy Naugle, Jen Farman, Cecilia Root, Stephen Lekalgitele, and Charles Owuor Olungah

In 2016, a minimum of 145,109 persons were killed directly in armed conflicts worldwide (Wikipedia Armed Conflicts page 2017).1 Armed conflict deaths are not normatively construed as murders even if each “side” condemns the other. Rather, these deaths are accomplished by “normal” individuals culturally conditioned and often trained to kill. The question of whether violence is an aspect of human nature, perhaps conferring an evolutionary advantage, is an enduringly controversial one. Although we do not take a position on either side of the debate in this paper, our concerns are relevant to it. For background, we discuss the conditions under which “normal” humans will inflict harm on other humans in the context of social pressure. This research complements and amplifies the “web of violence” approach insofar as it attempts to overcome the “tendency to see violence as the consequence of aberrant behavior committed by deviant individuals at the margins of society” (Turpin and Kurtz 1997:207), showing instead the way violence and human conflict play a central role in society. Our overarching concern is with the role of empathy

1  This is for direct deaths only, not “excess deaths” indirectly caused by armed conflict, such as from famine or disease.

B. Straight (*) · J. Farman · C. Root Department of Anthropology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Naugle Department of Psychology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA S. Lekalgitele Laikipia University, Maralal Campus, Maralal, Kenya, US C. O. Olungah Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, US © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_8

175

176

B. Straight et al.

both in the choice to inflict harm and in the cultural and individual implications of that choice. The core of our paper describes an experimental situation we created with warrior participants in a small-scale pastoralist society through which we elicited self-­ratings of empathy toward culturally constructed enemies in comparison to members of the participants’ own social group. While limitations include a small sample size, our findings point to empathy toward enemies even for participants who had engaged in potentially lethal coalitional (group-organized) violence, and negative emotional arousal positively associated with increased combat experience. Our findings contribute key details to the widely observed phenomenon that engaging in potentially lethal aggression against culturally constructed “out groups” comes at an emotional cost. Empathy is an adaptive motivator that can activate humans to aggressively protect members of their kin and social group. Yet, it may be that what makes empathy so adaptive for cognitively nuanced humans is a flexibility that makes it contextual, conditional, and nonetheless supported by a prosocial species architecture that motivates humans to spring into action to follow the rules of contingent “games” while potentially feeling terrible because, in the universal game, humans are on the same team.

Empathy and Conditioning to Do Harm Recent work on empathy in psychology, anthropology, and the neurosciences is rapidly assembling a portrait of empathy as a constellation of emotions that motivate humans (and nonhumans to varying degrees) to have positive feelings for some individuals and potentially negative feelings for others. Moreover, the motivation to feel may (or may not) transform into action to help or even to harm in the name of helping someone else. Psychologists and neuroscientists define empathy as “a sense of similarity between the feelings one experiences and those expressed by others” (Lamm et  al. 2007:42).2 C. Daniel Batson specifies that empathic concern may produce altruistic helping (Batson 2011), or what primatologist Frans de Waal refers to as directed altruism (De Waal 2008). Social scientists point to parental care and the environmentally induced necessity of cooperative child-rearing for the evolution of empathic emotions (de Waal 2008; Hrdy 2009; Powers et  al. 2016) and related social attachment processes (Decety 2011). The biological and neural systems supporting empathy involve the entire organism, are complex and flexibly adaptive, and furthermore, probably developed from simpler systems, regulating parental behavior, for example, to more complex systems well beyond their early evolutionary basis. As Decety notes: Cognitive, sensorimotor, and somatovisceral mechanisms are intimately connected, as stressed by embodied cognition and simulation models, and older systems are co-opted by newer systems. Similar systems that regulate parental behavior and affective processing

 For anthropology’s contribution to empathy as culturally shaped and understood, see Hollan 2012; for neuroscientific studies relating empathy and neural pathways, see Morelli et al. 2014 and work by Decety, Lamm, and colleagues cited in this paper. 2

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

177

interact with newer cortical systems to produce the flexible and generalized forms of nuturant care found among humans. (2011:43)

Humans are “wired” to feel empathy, to need social attachment, and to cooperate – traits that served humans well from early in their hominid history. Because of their cognitive complexity and representational communication skills, humans creatively applied these traits well beyond their probable selective function in parental and other kin care. Finally, it is important to consider empathy’s impact on those who experience it. While much work in empathy studies has focused on the positive feelings and behaviors with which it can be associated, the use of bias-producing narratives in experimental studies has pointed to the role of positive and negative culturally shaped moral evaluations in modulating empathy – adjusting it upward or downward (Decety et al. 2010; Decety 2011). Empathy’s Janus-faced attributes operate in ways that bear importantly on the evolution of cooperation, in addition to empathy potentially motivating aggressive as well as helpful behavior. Many are familiar with the classic social-psychological experiments led by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo in the 1960s and 1970s that investigate the relative ease or difficulty with which apparently “normal” humans will inflict suffering on one another. These are studies whose methods trouble us today  – they would not be approved today by Institutional Research Boards reviewing the ethics of research because of the extreme emotional harm they caused. At the same time, these studies have had enduring consequences for how we think about human behavior. Attempts have been made to replicate them using more ethical methods, and their results have been endlessly discussed in scholarly and popular venues. However, the popularized accounts of these experiments often emphasize the behavior of the participants willing to inflict harm without noting sufficiently the implications of participants’ emotional suffering throughout the experiments. In 1963, Stanley Milgram published the first article about experiments he cited as evidence of “destructive obedience”—the possibility of convincing “normal” humans to agree to administer what they believed were painful shocks to strangers as punishment for failing at a learning task. As Stephen Reicher et al. (2014) point out in an assessment of Milgram’s studies 50 years on, Milgram conducted his work during Eichmann’s trial for atrocities committed during the Holocaust. The concept of “normal” humans’ unreflective obedience to authority, coinciding with Hannah Arendt’s (1958) notion of “the banality of evil” as Reicher and colleagues also point out, offered a way to explain the unexplainable. In Milgram’s experiments, participants were deceived into believing they were contributing to knowledge about the learning process. The experiments consisted of the experimenter (Milgram and colleagues), the participant, and a confederate (member of the experimental team) playing the role of “learner.” They were asked to administer what they were told was a series of electric shocks that grew more painful each time the “learner” reportedly made an error. Each time participants hesitated, the experimenter “prodded” them with increasingly coercive prompts. Milgram eventually conducted over 18 studies that varied in the percentage of participants willing to administer (fictional) shocks. “Obedience” ranged from zero to 100% depending on demographics, and various study conditions such as whether

178

B. Straight et al.

participants heard the (fictional) learner crying in (fictional) pain versus the learner being anonymous, inaudible, and invisible (Reicher et al. 2014). In Milgram’s initial 1963 findings however, he cites that 26 out of 40 participants “obeyed” and provided shocks all the way to the experiment’s conclusion. He comments that this high percentage surprised him, but he additionally notes surprise at the emotional responses of both those who “disobeyed” by refusing to continue and those who continued to the end. Of subjects generally he says: Many subjects showed signs of nervousness in the experimental situation, and especially upon administering the more powerful shocks. In a large number of cases the degree of tension reached extremes that are rarely seen in sociopsychological laboratory studies. Subjects were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh. These were characteristic rather than exceptional responses to the experiment. (Milgram 1963:375)

Of participants who “obeyed” throughout the experiment, Milgram states that “they often did so under extreme stress…. After the maximum shocks had been delivered, and the experimenter called a halt to the proceedings, many obedient subjects heaved sighs of relief, mopped their brows, rubbed their fingers over their eyes, or nervously fumbled cigarettes” (376). Finally, Milgram also quotes the words of those who observed the experiments through two-way mirrors: I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobe, and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: “Oh God, let’s stop it.” And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and obeyed to the end. (377)

In his 1963 article, Milgram offers numerous explanations for participants’ willingness to administer electric shocks. Several explanations focus on participants’ perceived obligations to the experimenter, the scientific enterprise, and the reputation of the university. Additionally, however, Milgram highlights the moral conflict participants experienced between the demands of the experimenter and those of the learner fictionally experiencing the shocks and concludes with a more abstract conflict between the imperative not to cause harm versus the apparent need to obey authority (378). Recent alternative analyses of the experiments have focused on the not inconsequential number of participants who refused and the strategies they used (Gibson 2014); the role of personality and the importance of social convention (Staub 2014); and commitment to a cause (Reicher et  al. 2014). All of these are important and are further evident in the context of Philip Zimbardo’s work. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo and colleagues (Haney et al. 1973) invited participation from a group of apparently “normal” – after extensive screening – US male college students, 23 self-identified White and 1 Asian, whom the researchers randomly assigned to roles as either prisoners or guards. The students were kept in these roles for approximately 1 week. The results were so emotionally intense and psychologically devastating that some individuals were released from the experiment early. While those assigned the role of prisoner “experienced a loss of personal identity” that “resulted in a syndrome of passivity, dependency, depression and helplessness,” the “guards (with rare exceptions) experienced a marked gain in social power, status and group identification which made

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

179

role-­playing rewarding.” Further: “At least a third of the guards were judged to have become far more aggressive and dehumanizing toward the prisoners than would ordinarily be predicted in a simulation study” (69). In discussing the results, Zimbardo and colleagues note that both “prisoners” and “guards” “became increasingly negative” and their “self-evaluations were more deprecating as the experience of the prison environment became internalized” (80). The five volunteers – all “prisoners” – who were released early expressed “extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety,” and one of them was “treated for a psychosomatic rash which covered portions of his body” (81). “Prisoners” overall experienced more fluctuations in mood, while “guards” remained more mood-stable. “Guards,” however, were not uniform in their behavior, and the variations are noteworthy. The researchers described some “guards” as “tough but fair,” others “passive” and “rarely” instigating “coercive control over the prisoners,” while “some went far beyond their roles to engage in creative cruelty and harassment” (81). The impact of the experiment on its participants is particularly striking in the statements some made during the debriefing process. One of the “prisoners” said, “…I began to feel I was losing my identity, that the person I call _______, the person who volunteered to get me into this prison (because it was a prison to me, it still is a prison to me, I don’t regard it as an experiment or a simulation…) was distant from me, was remote until finally I wasn’t that person, I was 416. I was really my number and 416 was really going to have to decide what to do” (88). Another said, “I learned that people can easily forget that others are human” (88). While participants in the Milgram studies were distressed in the context of believing they were actually administering painful shocks to strangers, Zimbardo’s experiment is striking for the degree to which known role-play was experienced as real, particularly by those assigned the “prisoner” category. Humans are primed for social scenarios and acutely emotionally responsive to them even during “play”: as already noted, in Zimbardo’s experiment both guards and prisoners reportedly exhibited an increase in negative emotions and self-deprecation. Nevertheless, in spite of negative emotions, the majority, as in Milgram’s study, remained in the study. Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s troubling experiments highlight, among other features of human behavior, the apparently strong need to commit to social contexts and cooperatively follow the conventions or “rules of the game” even when moral conflict is involved. Conversely, Milgram’s experiment (and to a lesser extent Zimbardo’s) draws attention to empathy being ever present in the background as evidenced by the negative emotional consequences when the game at hand demands harm of fellow humans. There is evidence concerning the biological mechanisms by which empathy motivates humans to harm or act aggressively. In a pair of studies, Anneke Buffone and Michael Poulin (2014) conclude that empathy “predicts aggression and may do so by way of aspects of the human caregiving system in the form of oxytocin and vasopressin,” the biological mechanisms they test with statistically significant results (1406). By “human caregiving system,” the researchers mean an “attachment system” that features a motivation “to reduce the suffering and/or increase the well-­ being of a valued individual perceived as being in need, perhaps especially when suffering is perceived as undeserved” and emotions “collectively referred to variously as empathy, compassion, or empathic concern” (1406–1407) (see also Batson

180

B. Straight et al.

1991). As the researchers note, empathy predicts prosocial helping in experimental as well as natural conditions (Buffone and Poulin 2014; see also Batson 1991; Buffone 2015; Straight 2017; de Waal 2008). In order to empirically test the logical hypothesis that empathy could motivate individuals to help others by acting aggressively toward a third party, Buffone and colleagues set up a natural and a laboratory study. They measured vasopressin and oxytocin in receptor genes of participants of both studies as an indirect method of linking these neurohormones to empathy-linked aggression. For the natural study, they asked participants to think of one time over the past 12 months when they witnessed someone close to them being harmed whether physically or emotionally by someone else. They were subsequently prompted to answer questions concerning their feelings and actions during that event, perceptions of the cared for person’s distress, and empathy self-rating toward the latter during the event. For this study, “empathy predicted aggression on behalf of a close other if the close other was perceived to be distressed” (1413). For the second study, participants were told that they would rate the personality of one of a pair of (fictional) math-test takers seated in another room, competing for a $20 cash prize and that one of the competitors would be exposed to hot sauce before competing, a “painful but harmless stimulus” (1414). As part of the deception, participants were told that the study measured the impact of pain on performance. Empathy was manipulated in participants through reading an essay reported to have been written by one of the math contestants (the empathy target). The essay content manipulated distress of the empathy target by outlining financial hardships the person was experiencing in relation to paying for school and personal obligations. One half of participants read an essay version in which empathy targets expressed high distress. Participants were then told that their role was to assist with the blind part of the experiment by assigning hot sauce in variable amounts to the competitor about whom participants knew nothing. The relation between aggression (hot sauce assignment) and empathy interacting with empathy target distress was statistically significant: participants induced to feel empathy assigned more hot sauce to the competitor on behalf of empathy targets in the highly distressed essay condition compared to the low distress condition. Moreover, variation in participant vasopressin and oxytocin receptor genes moderated the effects of empathy in both studies. Their study demonstrates the role of vasopressin and oxytocin as mechanisms for empathy and empathy as motivating aggressive actions toward third parties on behalf of individuals expressing distress even if both the beneficiaries and victims of that aggression are complete strangers. This bears importantly on empathy in the context of coalitional lethal aggression.

Cultural Background to the Samburu Empathy Study Samburu are livestock herders in Northern Kenya who raise cattle, sheep, goats, and some camels, in addition to relying on the cash livestock trade and some wage labor (Fig.  1). Samburu County is predominantly a semiarid region, prone to periodic

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

181

Fig. 1  Map of Kenya, with study area shaded in green

extreme drought that threatens pastoralists’ subsistence livestock economy. Based on research on warfare that Straight has undertaken individually, and with collaborators since 2003, Samburu affirm the humanity of their self-defined enemies even though cultural norms endorse killing (Holtzman 2016; Straight 2009b). Those cultural norms include deliberate glamorization of warriorhood and Samburu song and story styles that provide a celebrated shape for Samburu war narratives. However, just as with abortion and infanticide, which Straight has discussed elsewhere

182

B. Straight et al.

Fig. 2  Samburu warriors

(Straight 2005b), no collective narrative form exists for a warrior’s suffering and grief. For that, he must draw upon the cultural idioms available to him in private, ephemeral ways (see also Oushakine 2006). Those private ways amount to discourses of mercy, clever cowardice, and remorse (Straight 2017; Straight et al. n.d.). All Samburu young men are initiated into warrior cohorts in their teens and 20s and remain as unmarried, bachelor warriors for periods lasting up to 15 years (Fig. 2). During their time as warriors, these young men are responsible for hazardous long-distance herding of larger stock, especially cattle but sometimes also camels. They face environmental challenges on rough terrain but also predators such as lions, leopards, and hyenas. Additionally, they alternately defend their own herds from their self-defined enemy ethnic groups and attack and steal livestock from those same enemies. Over the past several decades, Samburu and their neighbors

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

183

fight with military style weapons and for reasons that go beyond livestock theft to include fighting over political representation, postcolonial land issues, and even as mercenaries for clandestine organizations and individuals (Bollig 1990; Bollig and Österle 2008; Boye and Kaarhus 2011; Greiner 2012, 2013; Hendrickson et  al. 1996; Holtzman 2016; Straight 2009a). Mortality is frequent, but the fact that the casualties of any particular battle may be in the single and double digits keeps international attention to a minimum.3 When media attention does occur, the focus is typically on so-called cattle rustling, governmental neglect, and poverty. What goes unexamined are warriors as complicated human beings with conflicted motivations and emotions. In the global north, attention to post-traumatic stress in soldiers has been widespread. Discussions of post-traumatic stress in soldiers often focus on trauma caused by the continual threat of one’s own death and from witnessing other deaths particularly of fellow soldiers (e.g., Beckham et al. 1998; Schnurr et al. 2004; Tanielian and Jaycox 2008). However, over the last decade, research on perpetrator-induced traumatic stress and moral injury has shifted attention to the additional trauma of participating in the killing of other human beings (Betancourt et al. 2010; MacNair 2002; Maguen et al. 2010; Maguen et  al. 2011). Such attention to the emotional lives of combatants remains rare in discussions of global south warriors, particularly of livestock herders who are ethnic marginals in their own countries. Samburu themselves describe their warriors – who are young men in their teens and 20s – as full of ltau, heart-spirit. They are hot, impulsive, and explosive in ways that bear comparing to the Ilongot headhunters that Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo classically described in her path-breaking book Knowledge and Passion (1980). “Men went headhunting, Ilongots said, because of their emotions. Not gods, but ‘heavy’ feelings were what made men want to kill; in taking heads they could aspire to ‘cast off’ an ‘anger’ that ‘weighed down on’ and oppressed their saddened ‘hearts’” (19). In the “cool” reflection that characterizes Samburu elders’ comportment, elders criticize warriors and even their younger, hot-spirited selves. As one elder said, “The old men would just say don’t go but no one hid what they were saying so that they weren’t heard by warriors because warriors were painful. The warrior doesn’t think of dying. He doesn’t know anything himself because he doesn’t have a child.” And even more emphatically he said, “So you see that thing called warriorhood is nothing. Samburu didn’t get the work of warriorhood right because it wastes your time when you’re still strong. And you’re brought home when you’re no longer strong, when you’re no longer strong enough to care for your property” (MKRH2004). Similarly, like most elders, this individual reflected remorsefully on the institution of warriorhood: People just make you waste time for nothing because you would get up and go and get into some other person’s property and that person is poor, and you get his property and you

3  State-sponsored intervention is often the driver of media attention, with accurate reporting of violence and casualties inadequate.

184

B. Straight et al.

come back yourself with his tears. You come back with those. It becomes that you are the one who has his, those [tears] of that poor man. And sometimes you would go and get bad luck. It might happen that some warrior is killed who might be the only one in the house. So that family would now just run on a loss just because of this warrior who has lost his life. And it’s not God who has taken him. He just went to look for what – he went to look for that death. He just went looking for death, looking for death. (MKRH2004)

Like Ilongot headhunters, young Samburu men are culturally primed to be impulsive, even ready to kill. Nevertheless, as our empathy experiment and Straight’s ethnographic work demonstrates, they do not do so without reflection. Their future predilections for criticizing hot-headed warriors have a basis in emotionally fraught moral conflicts experienced during the period of warriorhood itself (Straight 2017).

Methods This paper presents data from the first phase of a study that enrolled 85 Samburu warriors by its second phase, and 48 for the phase reported on here. Warriors were recruited in groups of combat-experienced versus inexperienced, with 22 reporting no experience, 24 reporting at least 1 organized raid, and 2 refusing to disclose while cooperating in other elements of the study (Tables 1 and 2). Before participating in the empathy experimental condition, warriors were invited to respond to an instrument assessing potentially traumatic life experiences (Life Experience Checklist DSM-V), a post-traumatic stress disorder screen (PTSD Checklist for DSM-V), and an interview Straight designed that extensively documented their combat experiences. Of the 24 combat-experienced participants recruited in the first phase, 12 were available in the second phase to respond to whether or not they had chosen to spare an enemy during combat. Those data were included for t-tests in the findings presented in this paper. All instruments were modified for use in Samburu in consultation with Samburu community members, translated by Samburu native speakers, and back translated. Combat data was subsequently subjected to corroborative interviews (see Straight 2017). For the empathy experimental pilot, a Samburu community member constructed two realistic narratives, each depicting warriors injured during organized raiding between Samburu and the neighboring Turkana. Samburu and Turkana frequently engage in coalitional lethal violence against one another, while nevertheless Table 1  Descriptive data; N/A = 2 participants not disclosing raid data Experimental condition Samburu Protagonist Samburu Protagonist Enemy Protagonist Enemy Protagonist

Narrative version 1 2 1 2

Participants w/raids =0 6 19 16 3

Participants w/raids >0 6 22 18 2

N/A 2 1 0 1

Total 14 42 34 6

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

185

Table 2 Descriptive data on reported raids and Warzone Mercy; 2 participants did not disclose combat Participants reporting 0 raids N = 22

Participants reporting 1 raid N = 13

Participants reporting 2–5 raids N = 11

Participants (of 12 responding) reporting Warzone Mercy N = 6

intermarrying and engaging in mutual trade. An empathy self-rating instrument was designed to measure participant perceptions of three important components of empathy: affective (self-other merging  – how participants feel emotionally and somatically while listening to narratives, distinguished in our study between affective-­somatic and affective-emotional), perspectival (imagine-other – how much pain participants perceive the narrative protagonist was feeling), and prosocial appraising (in our study, participants’ prediction of outcome for the protagonist and how much concern participants express about that outcome). These three domains are based in psychological and neuroscientific empathy research (e.g., Batson 1991, 1997; Batson et al. 1997; Buffone et al. 2017; Decety 2011; Morelli et al. 2012). Narratives and self-ratings were tested with a panel of Samburu experts – Samburu community elders of varying ages. In Narrative 1, the protagonist is injured while defending their herd against an offensive attack, while in Narrative 2, the protagonist is injured while engaging with fellows in an offensive raid. Both narratives were translated two ways, to feature a Samburu as the injured protagonist and a Turkana “enemy” as the injured protagonist. This created two experimental conditions: Samburu Protagonist and Enemy Protagonist. Narratives were digitally recorded by a single Samburu speaker performing all versions. The study was designed so that half of the participants would listen to a Narrative 1 Samburu Protagonist/Narrative 2 Enemy Protagonist combination, while the other half listened to a Narrative 1 Enemy Protagonist/Narrative 2 Samburu Protagonist combination. This would take two biasing scenarios into account for both Enemy and Samburu conditions  – offensive (less sympathetic) versus defensive (more sympathetic) victim. However, based on comprehension tests conducted after participants listened to each narrative, several participants experienced challenges when listening to Narrative 2 in the Enemy Protagonist condition. Six participants comprehended correctly, but seven understood both narratives as featuring Samburu Protagonists. It was determined that the attribution of ethnicity in this narrative was too subtle for some individuals. This was corrected by eliminating this version of the narrative and giving all subsequent participants the Narrative 1 Enemy Protagonist/Narrative 2 Samburu Protagonist combination. The ordering of the two narratives continued to be randomized for each participant. While the elimination of Narrative 2 Enemy Protagonist reduced the number of participants exposed to a less sympathetic injured enemy, this did not skew the results (Table 3). As noted in the discussion section below, empathy self-ratings were uniformly high for these participants, and there were no statistically significant differences between self-ratings for Samburu versus Turkana enemies.

186

B. Straight et al.

Table 3  Summary data for participants completing Samburu-Narrative 1/Enemy Narrative 2 condition combination; ratings  =  participants’ reporting of the degree of pain they believe protagonists experienced (perspectival) and strength of their somatic or emotional feelings in response to hearing narrative (affective) and in considering their prediction of what will happen (cognitive/appraising) SAMBURU PROTAGONIST NARRATIVE 1 Participant Perspectival

Affective-­ Affective-­ somatic emotional

40

9

1

4

5

10

10

10

8

10

10

8

21 11

10 10

0 10

0 8

6

10

9

8

59 ENEMY PROTAGONIST NARRATIVE 2 Participant Perspectival

40

38

40

9

1

1

5

10

10

10

8 21

10 10

10 9

9 10

11 6

10 10

9 9

8 5

TOTALS

59

48

43

TOTALS

Affective-­ Affective-­ somatic emotional

Cognitive/ appraising prediction Dies family will cry Dies & family cries Dies & families cries Survives Dies & family and friends cry Dies & family cries

Appraising rating

# raids

0

0

10

0

7

0

0 9

N/A 1

5

2

31

Cognitive/ appraising prediction Survives and can work Dies & family cries Dies Survives someone rescues him Survives Dies & family crying unhappy

Appraising rating

# raids

5

0

10

0

9 10

0 N/A

8 6

1 2

48

Each participant listened with high-quality headphones to each of two narratives in succession, with the ordering of narratives randomized. After listening to each narrative, participants responded to the empathy self-rating questions and were then tested for comprehension of the narrative. Data was recorded simultaneously by two researchers, Straight and Farman, and discussed between participant visits. Data

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

187

was subsequently entered and cross-checked twice, with several months elapsing between cross-checks.

Empathy Experiment Findings In order to examine whether there were differences in participant ratings of the three components, affective (affective-somatic and affective-emotional), perspectival, and prosocial appraising dimensions in the Samburu versus Turkana enemy conditions, a series of t-tests were conducted. No statistically significant differences were found for affective-somatic ratings (t = −0.778, p = 0.439), affective-emotional ratings (t = −0.142, p = 0.887), perspectival ratings (t = −0.381, p = 0.704), or prosocial appraising ratings (t = −0.964, p = 0.338). A series of t-tests were conducted to see whether combat-experienced participants who reported showing mercy during raids (sparing an enemy in the midst of combat – see Straight 2017) rated the affective-somatic, affective-emotional, perspectival, or prosocial appraising dimensions differently than participants who did not report showing mercy. No statistically significant differences were found for any of the dimensions. A series of simple linear regression analyses were conducted to determine whether total number of raids experienced by participants predicted their ratings on affective-somatic, affective-emotional, perspectival, or prosocial appraising dimensions. The regression equations for participant ratings of affective-somatic (F (1,76) =1.94, p = 0.169; R2 = 0.025), perspectival pain of the protagonist (F (1,76) =0.877, p = 0.352; R2 = 0.011), and prosocial appraising ratings (F (1,76) = 0.496, p = 0.483; R2 = 0.006) were not statistically significant. The regression equation for participant ratings of affective-emotional ratings (F (1,76) =4.8, p = 0.032; R2 = 0.059) was statistically significant. The number of raids experienced explained a significant proportion of the variance in affective-emotional ratings with more raids being associated with stronger affective-emotional reactions to the scenarios.

Discussion The empathy pilot findings reported here are part of a larger study on the emotional well-being, perspectives, and life experiences of Samburu warriors in the context of challenging environments and the practice of lethal coalitional violence (e.g., Straight 2005a, 2009a, b, 2017; Straight et al. n.d.). The study is also embedded in the lead author’s long-term ethnographic research on Samburu warfare. Samburu, like their neighbors, express a cultural ambivalence toward all forms of violence against humans, including coalitional killing of enemies. This ambivalence is expressed in oral histories, cleansing practices, daily conversations between Samburu, and in the lead author’s interviews and conversations with active and

188

B. Straight et al.

retired warriors. Based on this research to date, empathy toward enemies, particularly one’s self-identified ethnic neighbors, is consistent with Samburu cultural sensibilities just as is, unfortunately, killing them (see also Holtzman 2016). Looking more broadly, empathy toward enemies and the moral conflict created in coalitional lethal violence is consistent cross-culturally4 and is implicit in the phenomenon of PITS – Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress (MacNair 2002). Our findings are important in two ways. First, they offer preliminary evidence empirically demonstrating warrior self-perceptions of empathy toward enemies who are in distress. This study found no statistically significant difference between self-perceptions of empathy toward fellow Samburu versus enemies in distress. Our sample size was small, and our empathy experiment was a pilot. Future work with a larger sample and refined methods may show significant differences in favor of fellow Samburu but are unlikely to contradict the strength of our correlation supporting warriors’ self-rated experiences of empathy toward enemies in distress. These results are likewise consistent with warriors’ reports of showing mercy toward enemies (sparing their lives) in actual battles, and cross-cultural evidence of reluctance to kill enemies (Straight 2017).5 The moral contradiction, between killing enemies as actions at least partly empathically motivated “on behalf of” individuals, groups, and even of ideas one identifies with versus feeling empathy (possibly acted upon) toward those same enemies as fellow humans, is important because it reveals a consistency in empathy as a complex, evolutionary adaptive set of processes. Second, these findings point to the importance, even in the context of warfare, of a key element of empathic concern: the experience of negative arousal when another person is in distress. Negative arousal has neurocortical correlates and is responsive to culturally mediated human experience (Batson et al. 1997; Decety 2011). Anneke E. K. Buffone and colleagues’ most recent work draws on Batson and colleagues’ earlier work to make an important distinction between empathy-associated negative arousal, which happens when individuals vicariously and affectively experience the suffering of others, versus taking another person’s perspective. In Buffone’s newest experimental studies, while the negative arousal associated with “self-other merging” (imagine-self, or affectively experiencing another’s suffering) is “experienced as anxiety-provoking and debilitating,” imagine-other perspective taking leads to “a state of relatively greater challenge, or invigorating arousal” (Buffone et  al. 2017:166). In our study, the association between affective-emotional self-ratings and number of raids experienced was statistically significant. That is, warriors

4  Straight 2017. On restraint in killing conspecifics in both human and non-human primates, see Fry and Szala 2013; on the avoidance of killing in war, see Grossman 1995. 5  As outlined in Straight 2017, Samburu rules for warfare call for the sparing of women, small children, the old, and the frail. Additionally, anyone, including enemy warriors, who beg for mercy through culturally recognized gestures such as grabbing grass or climbing a tree should be spared. These rules are followed and broken in different instances, and some warriors spare for what appear to be their own reasons. Some warriors note that they want cattle, not killing while others say they do not want to see anyone, even enemies, die.

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

189

perceive themselves to experience emotional distress when listening to stories about the distress of other warriors, both fellows and enemies, in proportion to the number of combat experiences they have experienced. This is clear evidence of self-other merging and may be important to both the empathy-warfare interaction and its psychosocial toll. We report physiological evidence to support this in a separate paper (Straight et al. 2019).

Conclusion In light of what we are beginning to understand about cooperation, empathy, and altruism, it seems worth considering that empathy is an important part of the evolutionary and psychosocial “glue” driving humans to cooperate at high enough levels to take risks and engage in apparent self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Where groups are concerned, violence and negative behavior are the underside, the necessary entailment, of love and care for others. That is, our need to support those within our social circles makes us naked to being manipulated into harming one group for the sake of another even when empathy persists for the group we harm. Recognizing this dimension of the human condition also supports an analysis of systemic violence as permeating social contexts, producing what some researchers have termed a “web of violence” (Turpin and Kurtz 1997). In some situations, we may achieve a seemingly complete dehumanization of enemies – we know this all too well. Yet the range of emotions frequently operates on a slider, flexibly weighing, and even abruptly changing empathy positively or negatively for particular individuals. Further, as messy, language-complicated humans, our commitment can be to an idea itself, not just to a human social group, if it has living things at its core. Notably, we do not simply hate because we love. We are capable of negative, even horrific actions because we need to be included, to belong, and to act cooperatively on the basis of that belonging. Elements of what is most adaptive and promising about humans can have negative entailments. Nevertheless, the more rigor and precision we bring to bear on the biological mechanisms, neural correlates, and psychosocial consequences of empathy, the better we will be positioned to invoke the most positive dimensions of our creatively flexible human selves. Authors’ Roles Straight conceived and implemented the project, supervised and collected data, entered data, interpreted results, and wrote the paper draft. Naugle consulted on empathy self-rating instrument, performed statistical analyses, and commented on paper drafts. Root and Farman consulted on project design, collected data, assisted with field logistics, and commented on paper drafts. Olungah provided an intellectual contribution in the field and during writing; both Olungah and Lekalgitele provided field support and commented on paper drafts. This paper follows the scientific convention in which first, second, and final author roles are most important.

190

B. Straight et al.

Acknowledgments  In Kenya, I would like to thank the  National Commission for Science, Technology & Innovation (NACOSTI) for permission to conduct research, Laikipia University and University of Nairobi for affiliation and collegial interaction in Kenya, and the Samburu participants and their families for supporting and participating in the research. In the United States, I am grateful to Western Michigan University Office of the Vice President for Research and College of Arts and Sciences for kind support of the research. Background research on Samburu warriors and coalitional gun violence was supported by National Science Foundation Senior Grant 0413431 (co-PI Jon Holtzman). Ethics approval was given by Western Michigan University Human Subjects Institutional Review Board. Additional appreciation is extended to Charles Hilton for comments and advice along the way; and participants and organizers of the 2015 Warfare, Environment, Social Inequality and Peace Studies (WESIPS) Conference for comments on a preliminary version of this paper, particularly the organizers Richard J. Chacon and Yamilette Chacon, and participants Paul Valentine and Stephen Beckerman.

References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Batson, C. Daniel. 1991. The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. ———. 1997. Self-Other Merging and the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis: Reply to Neuberg et. al. (1997). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (3): 517–522. ———. 2011. Altruism in humans. New York: Oxford University Press. Batson, C., K. Daniel, E. Sager, M. Garst, K. Rubchinsky Kang, and K. Dawson. 1997. Is Empathy-­ induced Helping Due to Self-Other Merging? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (3): 495–509. Beckham, Jean C., Michelle E.  Feldman, and Angela C.  Kirby. 1998. Atrocities Exposure in Vietnam Combat Veterans with Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Relationship to Combat Exposure, Symptom Severity, Guilt, and Interpersonal Violence. Journal of Traummatic Stress 11 (4): 777–785. Betancourt, T.S., Jessica Agnew-Blais, Stephen E. Gilman, David R. Williams, and Ellis B. Heidi. 2010. Past Horrors, Present Struggles: The Role of Stigma in the Association Between War Experiences and Psychosocial Adjustment Among Former Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone. Social Science & Medicine 70: 17–26. Bollig, M. 1990. Ethnic Conflicts in North-West Kenya: Pokot-Turkana Raiding, 1969-1984. Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 155: 73–90. Bollig, M., and Matthias Osterle. 2008. “We Turned Our Enemies into Baboons”: Warfare, Ritual and Pastoral Identity Among the Pokot of Northern Kenya. In In the Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence, ed. M.B. Aparna Rao and Monika Bock, 23–51. New York: Berghahn Books. Boye, Saafo Roba, and Randi Kaarhus. 2011. Competing Claims and Contested Boundaries: Legitimating Land Rights in Isiolo District, Northern Kenya. Africa Spectrum 46 (2):99–124. Buffone, Anneke E.K. 2015. Perspective Taking and the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat: Effects of Imagine-Other and Imagine-Self Perspective Taking on Active Goal Pursuit. Ph.D. dissertation. Buffalo: State University of New York at Buffalo. Buffone, Anneke E.K., and Michael J. Poulin. 2014. Empathy, Target Distress, and Neurohormone Genes Interact to Predict Aggression for Others—Even Without Provocation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40 (11): 1406–1422. Buffone, Anneke E.K., Michael Poulin, Shane DeLury, Lauren Ministero, Carrie Morrisson, and Matt Scalco. 2017. Don’t Walk in Her Shoes! Different Forms of Perspective Taking Affect Stress Physiology. Journal of Experimental Psychology 72: 161–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jesp.2017.04.001.

Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors

191

de Waal, F.B.M. 2008. Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy. Annual Review of Psychology 59: 279–300. Decety, Jean. 2011. The Neuroevolution of Empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1231: 35045. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06027.x. Decety, J., S. Echols, and J. Correll. 2010. The Blame Game: The Effect of Responsibility and Social Stigma on Empathy for Pain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22: 985–997. Fry, Douglas P., and Anna Szala. 2013. The Evolution of Agonism: The Triumph of Restraint in Nonhuman and Human Primates. In War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views, ed. Douglas P. Fry, 451–474. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gibson, Stephen. 2014. Discourse, Defiance, and Rationality: “Knowledge Work” in the “Obedience” Experiments. Special Issue: Milgram at 50: Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology’s Most Famous Studies. Journal of Social Issues 70 (3): 424–438. Greiner, Clemens. 2012. Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial Conflict in Northern Kenya. Human Ecology 40 (3):415–425. Greiner, C. 2013. Guns, Land, and Votes: Cattle Rustling and the Politics of Boundary (Re)making in Northern Kenya. African Affairs 112 (447):216–237. Grossman, D. 1995. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown. Haney, Craig, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo. 1973. Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1: 69–97. Hendrickson, D., Robin Mearns, and Jeremy Armon. 1996. Livestock Raiding Among the Pastoral Turkana of Kenya: Redistribution, Predation, and the Links to Famine. IDS Bulletin 27: 17–30. Hollan, D. 2012. Emerging Issues in the Cross-Cultural Study of Empathy. Emotion Review 4: 70–78. Holtzman, Jon. 2016. Killing Your Neighbors: Friendship and Violence in Northern Kenya and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hrdy, S.B. 2009. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lamm, C., C.D. Batson, and J. Decety. 2007. The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-Taking and Cognitive Appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19: 42–58. MacNair, R. 2002. Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing. Westport: Praeger. Maguen, S., B. Lucenko, M. Reger, G. Gahm, B. Litz, K. Seal, S.J. Knight, and C.R. Marmar. 2010. The Impact of Reported Direct and Indirect Killing on Mental Health Symptoms in Iraq War Veterans. Journal of Traumatic Stress 23: 86–90. Maguen, S., D. Luxton, N. Skopp, G. Gahm, M.A. Reger, T.J. Metzler, and C.R. Marmar. 2011. Killing in Combat, Mental Health Symptoms, and Suicidal Ideation in Iraq War Veterans. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 25: 563–567. Milgram, Stanley. 1963. Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (4): 371–378. Morelli, Sylvia A., Lian T. Rameson, and Matthew D. Lieberman. 2012. The Neural Components of Empathy: Predicting Daily Prosocial Behavior. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9 (1): 39–47. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss088. Oushakine, S.A. 2006. The Politics of Pity: Domesticating Loss in a Russian Province. American Anthropologist 108: 297–311. Powers, Simon T., Carel P. van Schaik, and Laurent Lehmann. 2016. How Institutions Shaped the Last Major Evolutionary Transition to Large-Scale Human Societies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371: 20150098. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0098. Reicher, Stephen D., S. Alexander Haslam, and Arthur G. Miller. 2014. What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and Methodological Arguments for Revisiting Milgram’s Research on the Influence of Authority. Special Issue: Milgram at 50: Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology’s Most Famous Studies. Journal of Social Issues 70 (3): 393–408. Rosaldo, M. 1980. Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self & Social Life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

192

B. Straight et al.

Schnurr, Paula P., Carole A. Lunney, and Anjana Sengupta. 2004. Risk Factors for the Development versus Maintenance of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Journal of Traumatic Stress 17 (2): 85–95. Staub, Ervin. 2014. Obeying, Joining, Following, Resisting, and Other Processes in the Milgram Studies, and in the Holocaust and Other Genocides: Situations, Personality, and Bystanders. Journal of Social Issues 70 (3): 501–514. Straight, B. 2005a. Cutting Time: Beads, Sex, and Songs in the Making of Samburu Memory. In The Qualities of Time: Temporal Dimensions of Social Form and Human Experience, ed. W. James and D. Mills, 267–283. New York: Routledge. ———. 2005b. In the Belly of History: Memory, Forgetting, and the Hazards of Reproduction Among Samburu in Northern Kenya. Africa 75: 83–104. ———. 2009a. Making Sense of Violence in the Badlands of Kenya. Anthropology and Humanism 34 (1): 21–30. ———. 2009b. The Sense of War Songs. In Encountering Violence in the Field, ed. Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, 71–78. New York: Berg. ———. 2017. Uniquely Human: Cultural Norms and Private Acts of Mercy in the War Zone. American Anthropologist 119 (3): 491–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12905. Straight, Bilinda, Belinda L. Needham, Georgiana Onicescu, Puntipa Wanitjirattikal, Todd Barkman, Cecilia Root, Jen Farman, Amy Naugle, Claudia Lalancette, Charles Olungah, and Stephen Lekalgitele. 2019. Prosocial Emotion, Adolescence, and Warfare. Human Nature 30 (2):192–216. Tanielian, T., and L.H. Jaycox, eds. 2008. Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation. Turpin, Jennifer, and Lester R.  Kurtz, eds. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Wikipedia. Armed Conflicts Page. 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_ conflicts#cite_note-28. Accessed July 31 Bilinda Straight holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan and is a Professor of Anthropology and Gender and Women’s Studies at Western Michigan University. She works with pastoralists in northern Kenya on chronic warfare and climate extremes as these relate to gender, lived experience, and physical and psychosocial health. She has additionally worked on religion, material culture, and oral history. She has published a book and several edited collections in addition to numerous articles and book chapters, and her work has been supported by National Science Foundation, Fulbright, and others.  

Amy Naugle Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Reno and completed her internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina with a primary emphasis in PTSD and interpersonal trauma. Her scholarly work focuses primarily on the use of innovative methodologies to study risk and resilience factors related to adverse experiences, including the constructs of experiential avoidance and emotion regulation. In addition, she trains doctoral students in the use of evidence-based psychological treatments in both research and clinical contexts. She has published numerous book chapters and articles related to this work. Dr. Naugle also serves as the Chair of the Institutional Review Board at Western Michigan University.  

Charles Owuor Olungah holds a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of Nairobi and an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. He is currently an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, University of Nairobi. He has conducted researches on maternal health, gender and economic empowerment, and harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation. He worked on the Samburu research as part of the institutional collaboration. He has published articles in reproductive health rights, conflict, gender and economic empowerment among others.  

Conclusions and Commentary William P. Kiblinger

The chapters in this volume underscore the interplay of evolutionary forces, environmental pressures, cultural practices, patterns of perception, and social structures in generating human conflict and resolving it throughout history. Only within such structural contexts can the agency of individual actors be understood. It is instructive to review some of these structures and to reflect on both the substance of the findings presented here as well as the methods we may employ to interpret them.

The Early Years From the Paleolithic era, we find forms of human conflict arising in relation to Neanderthal competitors. As Valerius Geist explains, that competition likely produced a détente based on a “balance of terror” between the two groups due to the different adaptations of each. The Neanderthals were winter-adapted apex predators, expert in nocturnal hunting. Modern human beings would have been wise to guard against direct confrontations with them. Instead, the moderns became desert-­ adapted generalists, good at surviving in marginal habitats. However, the two groups did enter into an eventual but largely indirect conflict over resources. As the moderns became more adept in hunting migratory deer (and later other megafauna) and learned to store excess meat as surplus, they cut off much of the food supply that the Neanderthals had depended on hunting for themselves. This process became, in effect, a war of attrition, though not a premeditated one. Incidentally, the process of honing these more advanced hunting techniques involved the development of new W. P. Kiblinger (*) Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. P. Kiblinger (ed.), Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46824-8_9

193

194

W. P. Kiblinger

cognitive capacities. The concept of historical time became essential in planning for the migration periods, and the surplus of resources generated further time for a luxury economy in which new cognitive capacities could flourish. Geist situates the origin of art and religion in this context. These emerging capacities expressed through art and religion will contribute to the fully fledged capacity to act with awareness of self and purpose, which I will discuss below as an indispensable element of moral action. Finally, the surplus economy promoted a key moral development: the sharing economy. Hunting is literally hit-or-miss, but a successful outcome for one individual or a small group can produce such an excess supply of food that sharing becomes not only possible but advisable given the uncertainty of the future and the benefits of mutual cooperation. I will return below to the evolution of the moral and cognitive traits required for this sort of social system. Continuing with the overview of these early years, the next period of human history engaged in this volume reveals some of the consequences of the changes that resulted from the developing surplus economy. Dietrich et al. show us how the tools of hunting changed as its practice declined due to greater efficiency in the new luxury economy, and they argue that the design of weapons changed to fit the new social system. Rather than being designed to emphasize skill in hunting, the new weapons accentuated the martial prowess of its owner. Interpersonal and intergroup conflict would likely be common for these displays of warrior-status to become common and necessary. Some studies of these displays find them to be a key element of an “honor ideology” in which revenge killings were a common means to maintain social status as well as balance between the human and sacred realms (Kuschel 1988; Strathern and Stewart 2017; Wlodarczyk 2017). In fact, these observations and those of Dietrich et al. are undergirded by recent findings of such conflict predating the Late Neolithic period. Mirazón Lahr et  al. (2016) discovered evidence of intergroup violence among the Nataruk hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya. The Nataruk massacre occurred approximately 10,000 years ago, but it shows that such conflicts were not simply possible but actual. Thus, the developments in weapon technology found by Dietrich et al. make sense in this context. With these early stages of human history in mind, we can examine some of the later developments of human conflict paying similar attention to the role that historical and environmental contexts play.

The City of Antioch: A Web of Violence In his sociological study of the rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark (1996) assembles a thick description of the city of Antioch during its six centuries of intermittent Roman rule, and it parallels the findings of Turpin and Kurtz regarding the “web of violence” that societies develop on a macrolevel scale (Turpin and Kurtz 1997). As such, Stark’s research sets the stage for the findings in the rest of the book, beginning with Gibson’s investigation of medieval Ireland. Stark’s research on the history of Antioch reveals a pattern of endogenous human conflict as well as exogenous

Conclusions and Commentary

195

catastrophic disasters, but it also reveals a seemingly unlikely outcome: the survival and growth of a Christian society at a time when other Roman populations were in decline. The biologist David Sloan Wilson (2002) builds on Stark’s investigations to interpret these findings by using the notion of group selection as the explanatory force in producing this outcome. The case begins with Stark’s description of Antioch as a web of violence.1 During the period of Roman rule, Antioch was invaded 11 times and besieged twice and was thoroughly plundered and sacked in five of those cases. Fires destroyed most, if not all, of the city on four occasions, and many other violent fires occurred during its six periods of rioting. At least eight major earthquakes occurred, destroying almost everything each time. Furthermore, outbreaks of three devastating epidemics sent the mortality rates above 25% in each case. Finally, five serious famines occurred. Altogether, Antioch underwent a major catastrophe every 15  years on average. Thus, the city of Antioch in this period of history embodied the notion of a web of violence. Wilson uses group selection theory to explain the persistence and growth of the Christian community in Antioch amidst these unrelenting calamities (Wilson 2002:147–157). According to this theory, groups of organisms can be understood as organisms themselves, which respond to group-level pressures to form group-level traits as well as to select for adaptive individual traits. Thus, human groups can be adaptive units; for instance, the evolution of moral virtues appears to be designed to promote the good of the group. Charles Darwin proposed this idea in Descent of Man (1871:166): It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe … an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.

This idea of sociobiology went out of favor many decades ago in the twentieth century, but its contemporary counterpart—multilevel selection theory—has gained support in newly modified form in recent years. By focusing on groups (as well as individuals) through a multilevel selection theory, Wilson argues that “cultural evolution is not merely a handmaiden of genetic evolution but changes the parameters of the evolutionary process, favoring traits that would not evolve by genetic evolution alone” (2002:34). Group-level selection theory provides a corrective to models that reduce all cultural traits to byproducts of genetic evolution and the pressures that produce it (Alexander 1987; Wilson and Wilson 2007; Boehm 2008, 2012). E.O. Wilson and D.S. Wilson argue that multilevel selection is required to assess various levels of fitness: “between genes within individuals, between individuals within groups, between groups within a population of groups, and so on, each presenting traits that are separate targets for selection” (2007:338). Agreeing with this approach, Christopher Boehm uses “selection by reputation” to exemplify the social force (reputation) that selects for group-beneficial traits (trustworthiness,  Stark does not use this term, but it is apt in light of the work by Turpin and Kurtz (1997).

1

196

W. P. Kiblinger

generosity, altruism) in individuals, thereby benefitting the group as a whole (the group in question being late-Pleistocene foraging societies and contemporary models of such societies) (Boehm 2012:63–64). With respect to the case of Antioch, the cultural evolution of particular traits can best be understood as adaptive in a web of violence. For example, the willingness to provide care to those with contagious diseases was typical of this group but atypical in the wider society. Thus, Wilson argues that Stark’s portrait of the early Christian community in Antioch reveals “an organismic unit adapted to survive and reproduce in the chaotic environment of the Roman empire” (Wilson 2002:149). This conclusion makes sense in light of Geist’s point, discussed earlier, that modern humans evolved to survive in marginal habitats. Cases like the Indigenous peoples of Manaus, as described in the chapter by Soares, show a similar kind of resistance to the pervasive web of violence. From Stark and Wilson, we learn that several norms of the Christian society deviated beneficially from the Roman standard at the time: openness to new members but with strict requirements to maintain good-standing, loyalty and caring for those in the group even when stricken with contagious illnesses, encouragement of reproduction, and positive roles for women to fulfill in addition to childbearing (Wilson 2002:151–153). In this way, group selection operated at the social level to make certain norms and behaviors adaptive to the fitness of the group. In a web of violence, these pressures develop over time and through many long-lasting hardships that, in retrospect, can be described as catastrophes. Soares also makes clear how the endemic violence of such societies can be too focused on single dramatic acts of violence rather than the protracted impact of pervasive violence.

Discerning Patterns of Conflict Using New Evidence Just as Soares reaches her conclusions by drawing on newly available evidence that has come to light, the works by Blair Gibson on medieval Irish warfare and that of Anna Roosevelt on the Congo make similar advances. Both chapters challenge a standard view of the history and offer evidence for alternative accounts. In Gibson’s case, he challenges the “cycling” theory of conflict in medieval Ireland advocated by Henry Wright (1977), which describes the history of Irish conflicts as repetitions of coalescence and collapse of chiefdoms without accounting for the changing character of those conflicts. Gibson draws on Irish ethnohistorical sources to reveal new patterns emerging from different phases of history. Rather than each cycle rendering an isomorphic constellation of chiefdoms at its close, Gibson discerns an evolving configuration of confederacies with increasing power of self-assertion. These conditions make a new kind of warfare possible, one in which an alliance formation of confederacies could assume a hegemonic position relative to its rivals. In some cases, more is simply more, but here more becomes different. The hegemonic alliances require organizational changes that precipitate the emergence of a true state system. In this way, Gibson offers a corrective to the prevailing sociohistorical account of medieval Irish conflict, and the specific content of his account reveals the

Conclusions and Commentary

197

interplay between different levels of agency. On the one hand, there are individual agents such as Brian mac Cennétig and their personal and political motivations such as concern for status rivalries; on the other hand, there are increasingly complex and centralized polities that take on a life of their own in the sense that new forms of conflict and new kinds of resolutions not only become possible but also become the terminus ad quem of the inertia created by their formation. Stepping back from this case, we see that it is instructive in a broader way regarding the method for asking questions about human conflict. As we have already seen, the evolutionary approach that uses multilevel selection as a model can provide useful insights into the emergence of deeply ingrained traits at both the individual and group level. However, that approach leaves an ambiguity about the agency or power that drives the change: genetic inheritance or social selection. For many evolutionary biologists, the ambiguity is unacceptable, and the urge to reduce the latter to the former prevails. However, other biologists such as D. S.  Wilson and E. O. Wilson have maintained their support of the multilevel approach and resisted this reductionism. Another model—in this case, a sociological one—may elucidate the nonreductive method of the evolutionary biologists by also emphasizing a multilevel approach. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has developed the concept of habitus to name a key aspect of this approach. For Bourdieu, the twin temptations of assigning agency to a process are (1) the philosophy of the subject and (2) structuralism without a subject. In extreme form, the philosophy of the subject posits the locus of agency in the rational subject who metaphysically stands apart from the material substrate of existence and exercises a spontaneous authority over the historical process of events. This is the constructivist subject with the power to construct reality, including the subject itself, through the activity of the transcendental ego. The heritage of this notion stems from Plato and, in Bourdieu’s writing, finds further expression among the German idealists from Kant to Hegel (especially in Fichte and Schelling) and later with existentialists like Sartre. In its various forms, this doctrine has sought to safeguard human autonomy from heteronomous determination by nonhuman forces. At the other end of the spectrum lies structuralism without a subject. In its extreme form, this theory denies agency and even metaphysical existence to the notion of a subject. Insofar as human beings think and act in the world, their perceptions and actions are merely events that register as meaningful only because of the symbolic systems that guide and constrain them (Bourdieu 1990:123). In fact, the structures constitute the reality of the subject. The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has aptly described structuralism as “Kantianism without the transcendental subject” (Ricoeur 1974:52). Kantianism represents the move in philosophy of internalizing the Platonic formal categories of reality as infrastructures within the mind of the subject (Taylor 2004:47). Instead of perceiving these categories as independent realities, the subject constructs reality according to the infrastructure of its forms of intuition (e.g., space and time) and categories of the understanding (e.g., causality). Reality has a coherence and meaning because the transcendental subject is the ultimate unifier of the products of its activities of intuition and understanding.

198

W. P. Kiblinger

Structuralism, then, makes a further move of discarding the role of this transcendental unifier (Dosse 1997). The human being is not a free and self-determining subject but instead a machine operating within the larger machines of society and nature. Bourdieu proposes the concept of habitus as the name for a mediating position between these two poles, making it “a way of escaping from the choice between a structuralism without subject and the philosophy of the subject” (1990:10). The term carries the resonance of Aristotelian second nature (hexis), combining the active element of habit-formation and the ingrained trait of a natural propensity. According to Bourdieu, “the habitus—embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history—is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product” (1980:56). Thus, the term describes actions that are the spontaneous creations of an individual agent and yet embedded within a group-level form of agency. Thus, the individual has self-consciousness of purpose but not necessarily full consciousness of the role of this larger agency. “The habitus is the principle of a selective perception of the indices tending to confirm and reinforce it rather than transform it, a matrix generating responses adapted in advance to all objective conditions identical to or homologous with the (past) conditions of its production” (1980:64). In this way, the habitus represents a principle of selection that is at once naturally given and culturally constructed; history provides the “givens,” but that history is coevolving with the selective perceptions of individuals and the groups (or fields) within which they operate. Nathalie Wlodarczyk describes the value of this concept for understanding the intersection of warfare and religion: Bourdieu’s theory of practice is useful in that it helps us understand the logic of the choice of action, or creation of practice, that underpins the means-ends process. That is, it shows why a particular means is thought to be suitable for a given end, even when the means and ends themselves go beyond the material (as in the case of spiritual beliefs). And in so doing it in a way also designates instrumental rationality—or function. But as opposed to limiting the explanation to one-dimensional functionalism it allows us to explore the interplay of the agents’ dispositions, the space in which they operate, and the resources that are available to them without assigning primacy to one over the other. (2009:49)

This exploration of the interplay between agents’ dispositions, the sociohistorical space they occupy, and the environmental resources and conditions they face is precisely what we gain from  the study of medieval Irish warfare and  the  conflicts among the Western Dani and the Samburu.

Traits, Practices, and Morality Thus far, we have seen that two methodological approaches can prove to be useful in explaining and interpreting the traits and behaviors involved in many forms of human conflict: the multilevel selection theory of evolutionary biology and the habitus theory of practice from sociology. They help to explain the development of warrior-status markers in prehistoric eras, and they complement the “web of violence” concept that contextualizes the emergence of many individual- and

Conclusions and Commentary

199

group-level traits and practices. When we think about human conflict, giving descriptions and explanations of its origin, emergence, and development provides the needed insight, but it inevitably raises moral questions in our minds: Are conflicts a sign of moral failure? What are the moral imperatives that we face in light of the prevalence of violence? Finally, what shapes our morality and can it be improved? When we begin to ponder these and many other related normative questions, the terms of the debate shift towards axiology; value claims become explicit and necessary. However, the lessons of the methodologies we have already employed must inform the normative debate, lest it become untethered from the forces of nature, the facts of history, and the practices of society. In different ways, the chapters by Douglas Hayward, Ana Soares, Anna Roosevelt, and Bilinda Straight et al. broach the moral dimensions of this research into human conflict, but each does so while placing a premium on the rigorous methods of their social science. Hayward draws on a depth of experience as well as scholarship to study the Western Dani people of West Papua, Indonesia, focusing on the moral life of the “peaceful warrior” who seeks to deter aggression and overcome the so-called state of “warre,” which could be likened to the Hobbesian state of nature—a war of all against all that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The peaceful warrior strives to exercise power in order to overcome that lawless state of violence and mistrust. Similarly, Straight et al. draw on extensive field experience to study the sociopsychological traits of warriors from the Samburu people of Kenya. Like Hayward, they find that the warrior’s psychology is not purely or intrinsically aggressive, but that empathy plays a key role. To underscore this point, they show that greater experience in warfare leads to greater displays of empathy, which in turn induces mercy and altruism toward friends and enemies alike. However, they note that empathy can also create protective feelings for one person or group, which then increases the motive for aggression against the foe of the protected one or ones. This point highlights two important issues from moral theory: (1) that aggression and violence may be motivated by emotions like empathy and, more generally, (2) that the relation of emotions to moral action prompts further inquiry into moral theory. On the first point, both Hayward and Straight  et  al. draw our attention to the ambiguity of the so-called moral emotions. As Straight argues, “human beings are ‘wired’ to feel empathy, to need social attachment, and to cooperate—traits that served humans well from early in their hominid history.” Straight goes on to note, however, that cognitive and communicative developments have enabled humans to apply these traits in ways that surpass or deviate from their likely selective function in parental care. The phenomenon of the “peaceful warrior,” as described by Hayward, illustrates one such divergence from the original pattern for empathic concern. Straight studies further variations, focusing on the ambiguity of empathy in generating both kindness towards the enemy and, at other times, aggression towards them due to empathy for those the warrior wishes to protect. To explain this seeming contradiction, Straight provides the provocative analysis of empathic concern as a phenomenological “self-other merging”—an imaginative ability to occupy the place of another and to experience the other’s suffering. This self-other merging can occur with friend or foe alike.

200

W. P. Kiblinger

As Straight mentions, this trait of empathy and the capacity for self-other merging are an inheritance from early hominid history. In fact, the research of Frans de Waal on primates shows that the phenomenon exists in the nonhuman animal realm as well (de Waal 2006). Thinking about his research underscores the findings of both Straight and Hayward, but it also raises a second issue—the one from moral theory—that is worth discussing: the relation of emotions to moral action. In order to explore that issue against the background of de Waal’s primate studies, it is worth noting that his research represents a response to, and critique of, the provocative work On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz (1966), in which Lorenz attributes an aggressive drive to Australopithecus, who is then described as a lustful killer. Lorenz postulates a genetic determinant for the aggressive instinct, which then builds up aggressive energy in the individual’s body so that a release is required either through outright violence in warfare or mitigated violence in sport. The operating assumption for Lorenz and many other theorists attempting to explain this type of behavior is that aggression is antisocial and endemic to the human condition. This assumption reflects a broader account of human nature called “veneer theory,” which presupposes that human beings are at their core selfish, competitive, and aggressive, though a veneer of socially acceptable morality can disguise this fact (de Waal 2006:7–12). Insofar as human beings do not see themselves as deeply selfish and antisocial, veneer theory explains that we are self-deceived by having disguised our true selves from ourselves (Badcock 1986; Wright 1994). However, de Waal’s research points to the contrary position. He opposes veneer theory and allies with the proponents of multilevel selection theory in evolutionary biology (Sober and Wilson 1999) to argue for a more ingrained sense of morality. To do so, he presents an understanding of both antisocial emotions (e.g., resentment and revenge) and prosocial ones (e.g., empathy and reconciliation) as equally constitutive of all species that rely on cooperation. As opposed to theories that focus only on individual selection and therefore ignore the evolutionary role of the cooperative society within which individuals exist, de Waal claims that we require a new model of antisocial and prosocial behaviors by thinking of them within the social context of a cooperative society. For example, primate societies are characterized by cooperation, and aggression must therefore be understood as a social tool that is constrained by other evolved tools to counteract its most disruptive consequences (de Waal 2000:586–587). More generally, “all species that rely on cooperation— from elephants to wolves and people—show group loyalty and helping tendencies” (de Waal 2006:15), and these tendencies (loyalty, helping, empathy, sympathy, and so on) bring benefits to the societies that foster them (resolving, managing, and preventing conflicts of interests). The techniques for achieving these benefits include reciprocity and food sharing, reconciliation, consolation, conflict intervention, and mediation (Flack and de Waal 2000:1). The net result of evolutionary history for all such cooperative species is to have forged these tendencies and techniques, which constitute the “building blocks” of morality in human societies (Flack and de Waal 2000). Thus, veneer theory—that human morality is a thin veneer on an essentially amoral human nature—is mistaken. The upshot of this point for the argument that Straight makes is that empathy should be understood as one of these building blocks

Conclusions and Commentary

201

of morality produced by natural selection. However, as de Waal notes, this building block, when put to use by human beings, can become “divorced from the consequences that shaped its evolution” (de Waal 2006:15). Straight’s chapter illustrates this divorce in discussing how empathy can generate moral ambiguity by at times motivating aggression and violence as protective measures. Similarly, Boehm discusses the ways in which suppression of free riders in Late Pleistocene societies would have been necessary to maintain the benefits of these building blocks of morality and that suppression could have required the use of force. Furthermore, the suppression of free riders would become a group-level evolutionary pressure in disfavoring the enemies of the altruistic members (Boehm 2012:64–70). Wilson notes a similar ambiguity in the case of the Christian society in Antioch: the call to incorporate new members and yet the need to suppress those who are hostile to its core values. The suppression of free riders (“brethren in poor standing”) through social control and punishment may have been part of their story, but D. S. Wilson notes that the onset of plagues produced a different method. It was the contemporary Roman practice to punish and shun those with diseases, whereas the Christian societies would minister to their needs despite the threat of contagion (Wilson 2002:151–157). Again, empathy can lead in many directions once it has slipped the leash of the original evolutionary pressure that produced it. Having noted the role of evolution in producing the building blocks of morality and yet some of the ambiguities in the exercise of those tendencies within various social contexts, it is worth considering the second point mentioned earlier about the relation of emotions like empathy to moral action. If the emotional building blocks of morality can be ambiguous, the moral value of their enactment depends on a further feature of the agent: intention. This point can be seen with a contrast between two identical acts in which one was carried out intentionally and the other by accident. The moral quality of the act depends on the intention involved. For example, an act of helping could be intentional or inadvertent, where moral evaluation of the former seems appropriate but not for the latter. Having underscored the importance of intention or purpose in the act of an agent, further analysis of intention creates new ambiguities. Three types of intentional or purposive behavior for an individual being are possible: (1) the functionally describable movements of a plant turning towards the light or the heart pumping blood, wherein the action is purposive but need not include any consciousness or awareness of it; (2) acting instinctively or mechanically based upon perception as when a spider recognizes and reacts to prey caught in its web, wherein the movements have purpose though awareness of that purpose may not be involved; and (3) cognitive purposiveness in which the agent has awareness of itself and the purpose its actions are designed to achieve. The Kantian philosopher Christine Korsgaard describes this third type as the only truly moral category for human beings because only self-awareness and consciousness of the reason for action can count as having an intention (Korsgaard 2006). The human cognitive capacity allows for the input of the building blocks of morality, such as the feeling of empathy, but the self-conscious agent can then determine whether and how that input should count as a ground of action. Merely having the feeling of empathy does not itself constitute the moral valence of the agent at the time. The

202

W. P. Kiblinger

moral decision requires the further step of choosing whether and how to act on that feeling. In order to understand the “logic of the choice of action,” Bourdieu recommends the concept of habitus to reintroduce the subject back into structuralism’s “Kantianism without the transcendental subject.” As Wlodarczyk puts the point, this notion allows the interpreter to “explore the interplay of the agents’ dispositions, the space in which they operate, and the resources that are available to them without assigning primacy to one over the other” (2009:49). Korsgaard maintains that one of those resources is the self-reflective capacity to enact or overrule the input of an emotional sensation. Without such a resource, no action could be judged as moral. Making such a judgment, then, involves a thorough understanding of many elements: the evolutionary products that comprise the building blocks of morality; the background historical context, including cultural norms and practices; contemporaneous environmental and social pressures, including the web of violence facing the agents; and the agents’ dispositions, including emotions and the patterns of perception that inform action based on them. Furthermore, note that these elements contain the ambiguity of agency: there are individual- and group-level forms of agency involved. This complicated composite of factors must be understood in order to render a judgment. The chapters by Soares and Roosevelt illustrate this monumental task. Through painstaking research into state violence in the history of Manaus and Congo in the periods during and shortly after the end of colonial rule, Soares and Roosevelt identify the sources of culpability for crimes that have long been concealed and suppressed by the perpetrators and their functionaries as well as by broader systems of corruption. In the case presented by Roosevelt, the former Belgian Congo was marked by coups, assassinations, civil wars, and mass killings. Social chaos, stark inequality, and economic failure ensued, accompanied by epidemics, displacements, and degraded environments. It was a web of violence. Furthermore, most accounts of these calamities in the western media portrayed them as the result of Africans’ failings, such as their inexperience with democracy, radicalism, corruption, tribal divisions, and violent natures. Roosevelt draws on declassified documents, media, academic studies, memoirs, diaries, and interviews with witnesses on the mid-twentieth century Congo crisis to uncover the truth that these accounts had been manipulated to frame Africans for the crimes of western functionaries, who were tasked with maintaining a system of white political control and thus a monopoly of the region’s natural resources. One of the most insidious tools of this cover-up was the invention of an essential “African character” that could be blamed as the underlying cause of all the instability, violence, poverty, and environmental degradation. Roosevelt’s research not only shows that invention to be a false accusation in this case but also exposes the flaws in any type of essentialism that purports to explain the actions of agents on the basis of some sort of metaphysical basis in their nature and character. Such explanations reveal a disregard for the self-reflective capacity that Korsgaard emphasizes as indispensable to moral action. If such an essential character were truly present and unavoidably action-guiding, the agents would not be morally culpable. To blame an

Conclusions and Commentary

203

agent for an immoral deed, one must assume consciousness not only of the ground of action (e.g., that something is either desired or feared) but also that the agent is conscious of the ground as a ground (Korsgaard 2006:113). The agent cannot be culpable if the feeling of desire or fear automatically prompts an action without any awareness of it as the ground of action. Thus, the prevalence of the fictive “African character” in the manipulated record of the Congo crisis represents two things: (1) an attempt to foist blame where it does not belong and (2) a flawed conception of moral blameworthiness. Roosevelt’s record of this period brings the actual ground of action (the desire for white political power and a monopoly on natural resources) into view and exposes this ground as the self-conscious ground of action for the true culpable actors. Setting the record straight is a key step in resolving long-standing patterns of human conflict because it assigns agency and moral culpability not only to individual perpetrators but also to the background conditions that made the assumption of an “African character” seem plausible and gave the whole operation inertia. Roosevelt’s work—and that of Soares in an analogous way—can  raise to our self-conscious awareness these complex moral factors so that we can become the moral agents of our future. If we have any chance of making moral improvement, this sort of process will be required in order to revise the habitus of unjust practices that tend to perpetuate themselves when they are not brought to full self-awareness.

References Alexander, Richard. 1987. The Biology of Moral Systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Badcock, Christopher. 1986. The Problem of Altruism: Freudian-Darwinian Solutions. Oxford: Blackwell. Boehm, Christopher. 2008. Purposive Social Selection and the Evolution of Human Altruism. Cross-Cultural Research 42: 319–352. ———. 2012. Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. New  York: Basic Books. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1990. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Trans. Matthew Adamson. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Darwin, Charles. 1871. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. New York: Appleton. de Waal, Frans. 2000. Primates—A Natural Heritage of Conflict Resolution. Science 289: 586–590. ——— 2006 Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Edited by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dosse, François. 1997. History of Structuralism, 2 vols. Trans. Deborah Glassman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Flack, Jessica, and Frans de Waal. 2000. ‘Any Animal Whatever’: Darwinian Building Blocks of Morality in Monkeys and Apes. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (1-2): 1–29. Korsgaard, Christine. 2006. Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action. In Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, ed. Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober, 98–119. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

204

W. P. Kiblinger

Kuschel, Rolf. 1988. Vengeance Is Their Reply: Blood Feuds and Homicides on Bellona Island. Copenhagen: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Lahr, Mirazón, F. Marta, R. Rivera, K. Power, A. Mounier, B. Copsey, F. Crivellaro, J.E. Edung, J.M.  Maillo Fernandez, C.  Kiarie, J.  Lawrence, A.  Leakey, E.  Mbua, H.  Miller, A.  Muigai, D.M.  Mukhongo, A.  Van Baelen, R.  Wood, J.-L.  Schwenninger, R.  Grün, H.  Achyuthan, A.  Wilshaw, and R.A.  Foley. 2016. Inter-Group Violence Among Early Holocene Hunter-­ Gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya. Nature 529: 394–398. Lorenz, Konrad. 1966. On Aggression. London: Methuen Publishing. Ricoeur, Paul. 1974. The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Edited by Don Ihde. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Sober, Elliott, and David Sloan Wilson. 1999. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stark, Rodney. 1996. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Strathern, Andrew, and Pamela J. Stewart. 2017. Religion and Violence in Pacific Island Societies. In Violence and the World’s Religious Traditions: An Introduction, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson, 189–208. New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Mark. 2004. Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turpin, Jennifer, and Lester Kurtz, eds. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Wilson, David Sloan. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, David Sloan, and Edward O.  Wilson. 2007. Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology. Quarterly Review of Biology 82 (4): 327–348. Wlodarczyk, Nathalie. 2009. Magic and Warfare: Appearance and Reality in Contemporary African Conflict and Beyond. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2017. African Traditional Religion and Violence. In Violence and the World’s Religious Traditions: An Introduction, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson, 173–188. New York: Oxford University Press. Wright, Henry. 1977. Toward an Explanation of the Origin of the State. In Explanation of Prehistoric Change, ed. James N. Hill, 215–230. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Wright, Robert. 1994. The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Pantheon. William P. Kiblinger is an associate professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on continental philosophy and theology as well as issues in religion and science. He has published work on evolutionary theory and subjectivity in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science as well as on religious imagination in the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology. He teaches courses in philosophy and religious studies, and he has co-taught interdisciplinary courses in biology, anthropology, and political science.