Anthro-History Reading Group presents Shana Melnysyn - "The Mbailundu Revolt: Affective Dimensions of an Anticolonial Uprising"

In 1902, elites from the semi-independent Mbailundu kingdom in central Angola revolted against the Portuguese presence, killing traders and burning commercial properties, and finally attacking the Portuguese fort beside the seat of their kingdom. While previous scholarship on the Mbailundu Revolt has focused largely on its instrumental “causes,” in this chapter I trace the affective dimensions of the uprising captured in detailed descriptions of violence—awe, terror, incomprehension, outrage, triumph, revenge, betrayal. Where and how can we find traces of the attitudes and emotions that drove this conflict, and what can this tell us about the overlapping moral and social worlds people negotiated in this time and place?