Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Zande Kings and Princes

1957; George Washington University; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3316548

1534-1518

E. E. Evans‐Pritchard,

African history and culture analysis

All who have been in contact with the Azande people of Central Africa have remarked on the bearing of their rulers, the Avongara clan, and they have often given us a sketch of their appearance and an estimate of their character and intelligence. I have myself met many members of this ruling house and I have been most impressed by--in general, for not all are alike-their proud bearing, their politeness, fastidiousness, reticence, even shyness; their intelligence, sharpened by suspicion of Europeans to cunning; their conservative clinging to tradition, a demeanour and manners unsurpassed by any aristocracy in the world, even among those who have no political position, and a superiority which requires for its acceptance neither display of force nor ornament; the ability to take in a situation and assess a man quickly and decisively, combined with, among those with power, the capacity to act decisively and with great severity-some would say cruelty-when that is required; and in some cases a nervous aloofness, a self-consciousness, a loneliness, which are sometimes almost pathological; and a tendency in middle age to corpulency, the result of a life of ease, absence of exercise, venery, and beer. These characteristics are, of course, a product of their social status. Even under European rule their prestige was quite considerable and their power, though curbed by alien governments, was strongly exercised behind the scenes; their subjects, in spite of European efforts to undermine their dominion, continuing to submit to them to the point of subservience. I never heard a commoner question their authority. I was not, of course, able to meet an independent Zande king. All had lost their independence over twenty years before I first visited their country in 1927. I obtained detailed accounts of one such king, Gbudwe, from many of his erstwhile subjects, among whom I lived for many months in the Sudan (what was the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan). I have recently published a descrip-