THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE CAMERA IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY WESTERN ZAMBIA

Abstract

THE FIVE PLATES discussed in this article illustrate three different dimensions of the principal conflict which occurred in the Kingdom of Bulozi between 1884 and 1916. It was a struggle for metaphysical power between the Lozi Litunga (King) Lewanika and the waves of Europeans (traders, missionaries and administrators) who sought to cross the Zambezi and, in different ways, to supplant his power in his realm. The most important of these challengers was FranFois Coillard of the Paris Evangelical Mission, one of the most experienced missionaries to participate in the European expansion north of the Zambezi and the photographer of all these images except Plate I I I . Coillard was defeated by Lewanika on 22 March 1886 when, against his will and in order to gain access to the country, he made a sacrifice at a royal tomb. Having lost metaphysical predolminance, Coillard's mission was thereafter understood by the Lozi nation to be under more than the King's physical control. Among other things, Lewanika used Coillard as his negotiator with the next wave of Europeans, the agents of the British South Africa Company and the Crown. When in 1897 the first political Resident arrived, the reinforcement of the King's temporal power during the 1890s, which had been made possible by earlier establishment of spiritual hegemony over the missionary who had challenged and lost in those terms, meant that Lozi society was specially, perhaps uniquely, self-confident among central African peoples in its subtle management of the Europeans during the early colonial period. In this the King had given the lead, but he did not lack general support. After 1897, the King's tactics changed. It was a story of surprising success. Its essence was that the European and Lozi views of the importance and inter-relationships of various types of metaphysical, temporal, customary and formal power differed radically. The Lozi task was to conform outwardly as much as possible to their understanding of what the Buropeans expected. This expectation was shaped by Indirect Rule, that hybrid compound of formal, bureaucratic power above and of orderly and cooperative traditional power below. The colonial authority, thus satisfied, would not pry into areas where, hidden from European eyes, Lozi power expressed