Sleeping sickness in the history of northeast Congo (Zaire).

Abstract

The examination of responses to epidemic disease can reveal important social history. At times of epidemics, the true nature of social relations is often clearly revealed when different sectors of a society are brought into conflict (Morris 1976; Musambachime 198 1; Briggs 196 1; Richards 1983). The subject of disease in the historiography of Africa had been generally ignored until 1978. Whether one agrees with some scholars that disease, especially when epidemic, is a causative agent in history or accepts the view that epidemics act as mirrors or magnifying glasses to reveal elusive social history, I think it is impossible to deny the vital role of disease in history (Dols 1977; Gallagher 1983; Hartwig and Patterson 1978; McNeill 1977). 1 am studying the social history of northeastern Congo (Zaire) and the southern Sudan between 1892 and 1940 and the various ways in which Africans and Europeans reacted to sleeping sickness epidemics.