Oral Sources and the Interpretation of the Documentary Record

The 1960s and 1970s was a heyday for fieldwork by foreign scholars in the Congo. The uneasy Pax Mobutu, facilitated by a Cold War alliance with the USA and post-colonial support of France and Belgium, allowed scholars to visit Congo for long periods and to travel to remote areas. They were inspired by the doyen of Congolese anthropology and history, Jan Vansina, who had by then gained recognition for African oral sources and thereby revolutionized (or even created) the field of Central African history. Even then, there were thorny methodological questions, however. Scholars observed changes in the nature of Congolese individual and social memories that would threaten and challenge commitment to their oral sources. With reference to the case under discussion, Thomas Turner’s research during this period revealed a gulf between the memories of the oldest inhabitants, who may have been eyewitnesses to the exploits of contemporaries of Ngongo Luteta and that of younger generations who molded narratives into their evolving ethnic and national identities.^{Footnote 8} Turner subsequently preferred to employ his oral sources as features of ethnic memory work. A similar example is Allen Roberts’s recent study of the assassination of a minor warlord, Lusinga, by an officer of King Leopold’s International Africa Association (IAA), Émile Storms, based on interviews he conducted in the 1970s. The analysis of the principal narrative Roberts collected about this assassination rests on the recognition of the memory work of his interviewees, which involves “the sedimentation of different narrators’ inspirations” over some ninety years.^{Footnote 9}

These fieldwork and interpretive experiences of the 1970s fed into considerable debate, much of it reflected in articles found in this journal, on how best to analyze oral tradition, and on the structural and historical features of such traditions.^{Footnote 10} Beyond these analytical questions, however, fieldwork-based collection of oral tradition could, literally, only go so far. Vernacular language acquisition and the time and logistical demands of the collection of local oral sources often meant that the number of locales and the geographic spacing between them was limited. To reach at broader processes, historians turned to documentary sources in regions where they had not conducted their own fieldwork. Efforts to introduce chronology and dating also led to the use of documentary sources. As these sources were introduced, they began to structure much scholarship, despite the emphasis on African evidence and voice through fieldwork-based oral sources. Vansina’s own work is an example of this transition. His first study was based on his Kuba fieldwork and his interpretation of their oral traditions; subsequently, his broader and better-known work concerning this region, Kingdoms of the Savanna, was based almost exclusively on published records of ethnographers, missionaries, and explorers (many of the unpublished sources discussed below were not available to Vansina in the 1950s and 1960s).^{Footnote 11} In this work, Vansina often employed testimonies recorded by these Europeans, but with little attention to the methodological problems that such documents might pose.^{Footnote 12} Vansina was hardly alone: a perusal through much of this pioneering generation of Africanist historians, reveals their extensive use of documentary sources, even while they argued so much over the interpretation of oral tradition.

Given the methodological and disciplinary focus on fieldwork-derived oral evidence, the consultation of available documentary sources by historians was often haphazard, lacked rigor, and did not entail critical methodological discussion. Africanist historians were rewarded for the amount of time they conducted in the field and for the interviews they conducted, and not for their mastery of archival material, including critical reflections on the nature of the documents. Vansina and his students spent much time insisting that oral evidence could be treated with the same interpretive rigor as documentary sources. Unfortunately there was little interpretive rigor when documentary sources on the African past were used. In this journal, for example, the many archival reports of new documents uncovered were not always matched by a critical conversation on their use. The situation has not significantly improved even twenty-five years after Beatrix Heintze and Adam Jones made an appeal for such a critical discussions in the publication of papers from a symposium about the use European sources in African history.^{Footnote 13}

The division between documentary and oral sources is not precise. Ethnographers, missionaries, and explorers have recorded oral traditions, for example, transforming them into the documentary record (and perhaps transforming “African” sources into “European” ones). Moreover, “feedback” of written sources into the oral has long been a feature of oral traditions. For this reason, the imperfect contrast drawn in this article is that between oral data generated by the fieldwork of the historian (fieldwork-derived oral data), and documentary sources, which are generally written by historical actors who engage in the events they describe, although they can also be written records of oral tradition and interviews.

One of the most basic lacunae in methodological reflections on documentary sources concerns the distinctions between published and unpublished documentary sources. Often they are lumped together as sources from a “European” perspective, even while such sources have different evidentiary qualities. Unpublished sources by their nature are not meant for a public readership (with the obvious exception of unpublished manuscripts intended for publication). Unpublished sources are generated to intervene in the immediate historical context, and not to convince a broader readership by appealing to their tastes, fashions, and perspectives. This is important when considering primary sources on Africa, since so many published sources have been propaganda for certain causes (colonialism or anti-colonialism; anti-slavery; the civilizing mission; development; human rights etc.). Most relevant to the case under discussion are the many propaganda publications against or in support of the Congo Free State.^{Footnote 14} Unpublished private or official correspondence is of course steeped in the perspectives and purposes of the writers; indeed, one of their chief values is that the historian can unravel these perspectives. However, these writers, like spies, also had a vested interest in understanding and communicating what they observed, and not persuading others of the value of their causes or gaining a readership for their books. Published texts might be helpful when discussing the appeal of these texts to sentiments of the day or their disciplinary legacy, both of which, for example, Johannes Fabian achieves in his book on late nineteenth-century European explorers in Africa. Fabian’s exclusion of unpublished documentation limits the work’s engagement with the personal perspectives of his actors, despite his claims otherwise.^{Footnote 15}

Unpublished sources come in many shapes and sizes, all with their distinctive evidentiary qualities. As the accounts of the early explorers gave way to the rudiments of a colonial administration, the position of the colonial officer would have an important bearing on the quality and nature of the report. Generally speaking the reports of upper-level officers are steeped in official doctrine, subordinating what they saw – or what lower-level officials reported to them – to what they wanted to see. Lower-level officers, by contrast, provide some of the most detailed and uncensored descriptions of African societies. Mistakes and misunderstanding were frequent; nevertheless, writings of lower-level and less-celebrated colonial officers, who would never have the opportunity to publish their work or views, provides a particularly under-appreciated source base.

Even while academic historiography tends to promote the use of unpublished sources compared to published sources, much central African historical writing about the pre-colonial and early colonial periods came to rest on published documentary accounts. In part, as demonstrated below, this seems to have been the case because the discipline valued oral sources even while these oral sources could not answer some basic questions. Thus, historians turned to the published documentation to provide the skeletal infrastructure of their accounts. To be sure, in some cases, which represent some of the best historical scholarship of the region, historians went beyond published accounts to consider unpublished manuscript sources, especially as they extended the geographic and temporal scope of their original scholarship. The work of west-central and south-eastern Africanists scholarship is particularly important here.^{Footnote 16}

These remarkable studies aside, much of the efflorescence of pre-colonial and early colonial African history from the central African interior would rely on a combination of the collection of oral tradition accompanied by a haphazard collection of published documentary sources, which were not critically discussed. Many examples of this type of scholarship can be found. A few that concern the rise and fall of the Ngongo Luteta illustrate the point.

Ngongo Luteta in Central African Historiography

The case of Ngongo Luteta is particularly interesting because he is mentioned in almost all histories of the conquest of the Congo and several published sources written by collaborators of Ngongo Luteta. He also remains a feature of Congolese memory making. He is thus a figure that has left substantial oral and written traces and has made an appearance in diverse historiographies of the Congo.

Detailed descriptions of Ngongo Luteta appear in the published memoirs of several Congo Free State officers, most importantly Alexandre Delcommune, Oscar Michaux (who claimed to know him better than anyone), and Francis Dhanis. He is mentioned in most European accounts of Kasai between 1885 and 1895, as well as in the well-known autobiography of Tippo Tip (Hamed ben Mohammed el-Murjebi).^{Footnote 17} These European and Arab visitors spent limited time (from around a fortnight to a few months) with Ngongo Luteta while their caravans were replenished and porters and slaves supplied. Each one of these authors published (or recited in the last case) their accounts in very particular historical circumstances, which sought to convince readers of their mission and their role. Unless these circumstances are understood, their use as historical sources is highly problematic.

One example best illustrates the over – and often uncritical – use of a published documentary source. The most-cited published source in both the French and English language historiography is the idiosyncratic account of the Canadian doctor who accompanied Francis Dhanis’s expedition, Sydney L. Hinde. His gripping book, The Fall of the Congo Arabs, was published in English and French, almost contemporaneously, and reprinted in 1969.^{Footnote 18} Its narrative of Western triumph over the savagery of Arab slave traders, and his vivid depiction of characters, tactics, cannibalism, and landscape makes for compelling reading. Hinde was fond of Ngongo Luteta, as were most of the Belgian officers who published their accounts.

Most historians have relied on Hinde’s description of Ngongo Luteta, even compared to other available published sources. Given his Canadian nationality and his service to different imperial projects (he was later to serve in British East Africa), Hinde appears to provide historians with a kind of neutrality, at least compared to the Belgian officers. Hinde’s account is, however, subjective, partial, and reveals far more about his very particular perspective than those of the Belgians or Congolese. For one, besides his attachment to Dhanis, he was rather marginal to events of the Congo Free State military campaign that he claims to represent, and shows only a superficial understanding of African and Belgian politics and interests. Hinde is also fascinated with violence, perhaps because up to that point in his young life he had been exposed to so little of it. Much of the book dwells on cannibalism: Ngongo Luteta’s men are “inveterate cannibals,” who rip apart captives as “as quickly as a hare is broken up by a pack of hounds.”^{Footnote 19} In fact, he considered himself a student of central African cannibalism, with an appendix in the book devoted to the subject, which in turn informed the “professional” ethnographies of Emile Torday and Melville Hilton-Simpson.^{Footnote 20}

Hinde’s narrative contains successive clichés. There is an American cowboy-and-Indian quality, with Dhanis as the Lone Ranger who brought a rough justice to the frontier, and Ngongo Luteta as his “Tonto” companion, with considerable “pluck” (a word used by Hinde to describe Ngongo Luteta on more than one occasion). Hinde viewed Luteta’s displays of violence as necessary for authority over his men. In fact, for Hinde, Luteta displayed great potential as an agent for civilization: Luteta was disgusted by the excessive cannibalism of his men; and he displayed honor in that he “exceeded his compact with us.” Hinde’s most-cited passage is his description of Luteta’s impressive fortified headquarters, in particular the approach to his enclosure, “ornamented by a pavement of human skulls (…) of a snowy whiteness, and polished to the smoothness of ivory by the daily passage of hundreds of naked feet.”^{Footnote 21} Like Luteta’s leadership, his fortress shows signs of savagery but also of initiative and the potential for civilization. This potential is tragically cut short by the mistaken colonial officers who, defying the orders of their superiors, execute Luteta for treason and brutality. Hinde’s description is carefully cultivated propaganda for the Congo Free State and its alliance with such warlords. This is not unlike nineteenth-century European descriptions of Shaka Zulu.^{Footnote 22}

Hinde’s book is heavily relied on by those historians who celebrate their fieldwork-derived data. The best and most renowned English-language scholarly study that features Ngongo Luteta (although it is not focused on him) by the generation of scholars who undertook fieldwork in the 1960s and 1970s is that of the veteran scholar of the Tetela, Thomas Turner. He spent two years in the Sankuru District in the early 1970s, where he conducted some 150 interviews and consulted local-level archives. The material he collected is rich, and sustained his doctoral dissertation and several trail-blazing studies of Tetela ethnogenesis and Congolese nationalism. His sources are however limited with respect to the historical reconstruction of the nineteenth century. Turner’s interview material on Ngongo Luteta, displaying subjectivity and generalization, is evidence of decades of ethnic and nationalist memory work, as he acknowledges.^{Footnote 23} Turner turns to published accounts, especially that of Hinde, to describe precise events, such as the execution of Ngongo Luteta and its consequences.^{Footnote 24}

A second less-celebrated English-language example of fieldwork-focused scholarship from the same era that discusses Ngongo Luteta in some detail is Alan P. Merriam’s Culture History of the Basongye. Most of this short and generally ignored monograph is a comprehensive discussion of published literature that relates to Ngongo Luteta and nearby warlords, including those discussed above and several shorter items found in the journal founded by Leopold’s International Association of the Congo (IAC) (the successor to the IAA), a type of propaganda publication for Leopold’s ventures, the Le Mouvement Géographique. For detailed descriptions of Ngongo Luteta and his soldiers, Merriam draws on the conventional paragraphs from Hinde. To move to a more detailed level of investigation, Merriam discusses his own fieldwork in the Basongye village of Lupupa Ngye, conducted in 1959–1960. Yet, except for pointing to accounts of the cruelty of Ngongo Luteta (as did Turner’s older informants), this evidence does not inform or integrate with his previous discussion of the published sources. His fieldwork does not problematize the published European accounts or add information about the events that they detail. The narrative of historical events is derived from the European published accounts; the Songye narrative provides only a taste of local detail and cosmology.

The most recent generation of post-modern historiographies has mined documents less for their ability to reconstruct historical context than for the way in which later meanings have been attached to them. The focus of their fieldwork has not been an unmediated historical reconstruction but a demonstration of how fieldwork subjects have engaged with textual or visual recordings. The methodology has contributed to a fascinating set of studies on a diverse range of themes. Most relevant to this case is Isabelle de Rezende’s recent study of visuality in which she uses select archival and published documents as a tool for her fieldwork by inquiring after Congolese interpretations of these documents. The methodology is fascinating, but as with studies already mentioned, the result is an account of memory work that heightens our understanding of the importance of history for present-day Congolese. It does not critically consider how these documents can be used for the reconstruction of past processes and events. Since her focus is on visual representations (or, in other similar studies, on “hegemonic” colonial texts) the documents examined are understandably published accounts. Unfortunately when it comes to historical reconstruction, these same hegemonic texts feature: in De Rezende’s thesis, once again, Hinde remains prominent.^{Footnote 25}

This is not to deride the value of fieldwork and oral sources. The problem is when oral fieldwork distracts from a consideration of the available documentary sources, and a critical discussion of them. For example, the oral data of the abovementioned scholars does not reach nearly the complexity and nuance of an account of Ngongo Luteta collected in the 1950s and published in 1957–1958. Joseph Okito’s interviews led to a detailed reconstruction of Luteta that among other details includes his early childhood, the development of his names, the influences of family members and sorcerers, rivalries that aided his rise and fall, and local understandings of him.^{Footnote 26} Despite the emphasis on African voices that Africanist historiography has attempted to generate, such rich sources are often ignored. When they are used or cited they tend to be subordinated (or masked by) an author’s discussion of their own more recently collected fieldwork data. In some cases there is hubris concerning an author’s fieldwork experiences, as if their collection of oral data provides superior perspectives to earlier efforts.

Belgian historiography has come closest to an appreciation of the available archival sources, in part because of the accessibility of these sources to Belgian historians. Here, oral fieldwork has mattered less than the attitude of the historian towards Leopold’s Congo Free State. Colonial-era historians, participants in what Guy Vanthemsche terms a “Leopoldian cult,” published heroic accounts of the war against the Arab slave traders, generally repeating the perspectives of earlier published accounts and selectively culling (and under-referencing) unpublished documents.^{Footnote 27} A new generation of Belgian historians, beginning with Jean Stengers and, then, especially Jean-Luc Vellut, offered critical perspectives often based on unpublished documentation. In a path-breaking analysis of violence in the Congo Free State that offers more historical nuance than either the proponents of the Leopoldian cult or the anti-Leopoldian arguments of other accounts from the 1980s (such as Daniel Vangroenweghe and Jules Marchal), Vellut has an extended discussion of warlordism, and, in particular, Ngongo Luteta.^{Footnote 28} Yet he mostly relies, once again, on Hinde’s account. An exception is the thorough Dutch-language study of the Arab Campaign in Maniema by Phillipe Maréchal, which mines the archival documents under discussion for a reconstruction of Luteta’s role in the campaign and his subsequent execution.^{Footnote 29} There are several Belgian studies that have a less direct relationship with this case, but still examine the nineteenth century history of the southern Congo basin, and should be noted for their careful use of archival sources, notably studies of Storme, Legros, and Ceyssens.^{Footnote 30} Vellut has also provided a good example of what an unpublished Portuguese report about late nineteenth-century trade in the western reaches of this region adds to current historical understandings.^{Footnote 31} In sum, while Belgian historians have fruitfully engaged with archival documents, their interpretations have generally remained connected to what they reveal about Leopoldian abuses. As Vanthemsche notes, there might be a “revival” of Belgian historiography on the Congo covering a range of topics in colonial history: their strategies of documentary interpretation remain to be seen, however.^{Footnote 32}

Ngongo Luteta is also a subject of Congolese historiography. Nationalist historians generally treat Ngongo Luteta as an early anti-colonial hero, or emphasize his leading role in the combat against Arab slave traders. In Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem’s exhaustive history of the Congo, Ngongo Luteta was executed since the Congo Free State feared his extensive influence; for Ndaywel è Nziem this deprived Luteta of his legacy as the founder of a savanna kingdom.^{Footnote 33} Professional Congolese historians have done an admirable job in their attempts to support oral interviews with available archival material; unfortunately, within the Congo archival material is lacking. An illustrative example related to the history of Ngongo Luteta is Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwembu’s reconstruction of the social and cultural roles of firearms in the Songye region by using recent interview material. Ultimately, however, much of his historical detail is drawn from the usual primary and secondary published sources: Hinde, Delcommune, and Vansina.^{Footnote 34} Sankuru-based historians, generally publishing in online forums, are heavily invested in Luteta’s history, and in particular seek to establish him as an authentic “Tetela,” in part by insisting that his name should be spelled as “Luteta” (the runner), as opposed to “Lutete” (supposedly a Songye orthography). Arguments garnered from oral evidence loom large in their accounts (often influenced by Okito’s account). But generally these sources are employed to answer questions regarding Luteta’s ethnicity. Hinde also forms an important source: in particular, he is used to describe Luteta’s fortifications, his physique, and his Kussu (or Tetela, it is claimed) ethnicity.^{Footnote 35} However, Congolese historians can hardly be faulted for a lack of critical engagement with documents that they have not had occasion to examine.

Correspondence from Officers of the Congo Free State

Unpublished manuscript sources are no richer and no less problematic than other types of sources; they need at least as much interpretation, and a great deal of contextualization. The remainder of this paper offers a critical discussion the unpublished documentary material written by lower-level colonial officials for the historical reconstruction of Ngongo Luteta’s role in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Congolese history. Most manuscript sources for this case reside in two colonial archives in Belgium: the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in Tervuren (in the separate historical and ethnographic archives), and the Archives Africaines in Brussels.^{Footnote 36}

The most under-discussed sources for the nineteenth century are the original writings of lower-level military officers involved in the conquest and early administration of the Congo Free State. There are several practical reasons that scholars have not consulted these collections. For one, they have been augmented over the last few decades. A catalogue that updated the acquisitions since 1960 was only completed in 1997; before then historians did not have the opportunity to consult many of these documents.^{Footnote 37} Some of the richest collections in the Royal Museum at Tervuren consist of multiple boxes of sometimes barely legible longhand correspondence, written on rare scraps of paper, and sometimes with ink that has blotted and degraded. Only long visits to the archive and careful scrutiny allow for fruitful analysis. Fortunately, at least in the case of the Royal Museum, digital copies can be made for later analysis. The legibility of the text can then be improved at a later point by image-enhancing software. There is currently a well-funded collaborative effort to employ spectral imaging technology to restore David Livingstone’s original writings to legibility.^{Footnote 38} In many cases such a costly approach may be overkill; for the writings described here, widely available photo editing software proved adequate to enhance the images and decipher the material.

One of the richest collections found at the RMCA historical section is that of Francis Dhanis, who led an expedition to relieve Paul le Marinel, and became the commander of the Kasai-Lualaba region, based at Lusambo. Ngongo Luteta formally submitted to him in 1892 (although he had also submitted to Alexandre Delcommune the previous year). Dhanis led the campaign against Arab control in Lualaba-Kasai and Maniema, for which he was named a Baron, and returned to Congo as Vice Governor-General. During his tenure he led the expedition against the Tetela rebels, many of whom had been troops of Ngongo Luteta and had fought on behalf of Dhanis against the Maniema Arabs.^{Footnote 39} His vast collection of documents amounts to eighteen boxes, and includes correspondence with subordinate officers stationed at more remote outposts; correspondence with superior officers who communicated official policy and instructions; logbooks; lists of military details; and commercial transactions. These sources provide a wealth of under-utilized data on African societies prior to conquest, the process of conquest, and the establishment of Congo Free State authority, and rubber and ivory exploitation. Their perspective derives from that of the on-the-ground junior officers who wrote to Dhanis, with their particular interests, their observational skills, and the quality of their relationships with their informants all having a bearing on the nature of the documentation.

One section of this vast collection concerns the relationship of Ngongo Luteta to Dhanis and his subordinate officers. After the submission of Ngongo Luteta, Dhanis appointed two officers, Duchesne and Scheerlinck, to oversee relations, or put less diplomatically, to spy on Ngongo Luteta.^{Footnote 40} At the same time, Ngongo Luteta assessed these officers as representatives of his new patrons. The documentation is best viewed as a window into the evolving relationship between these actors.

In between various tours across eastern Kasai, Scheerlinck and Duchesne resided at Ngongo Luteta’s capital, Ngandu, for longer than any other European visitors. There are approximately twenty-five substantial letters from Duchesne to Dhanis and sixteen from Scheerlinck to Dhanis (this excludes minor notes which do not contain useful information or are illegible), with lengths that range from one to eight longhand pages. Supplementary material attached to the letters includes lists of men and supplies at the station adjacent to Ngandu. Sometimes the letters were sent in concentrated almost daily batches, and others at more significant intervals. They detail daily life at Ngandu, political relationships with Ngongo Luteta and between Ngongo Luteta and his subordinates and surrounding chiefs and warlords, commercial transactions, military strategy, supplies and communication, and the composition of military forces. Like all sources, however, this collection offers its rewards only after careful scrutiny.

The correspondence is direct and pragmatic. The officers are not concerned with the sense of civilizing mission found in missionary writings of the same period or administrative purpose that characterizes later colonial correspondence. Instead of composed reports that feed into a colonial hierarchy, this correspondence is personalized, revealing intimate details of the thoughts and relationships of the officers concerned. They only rarely describe the violence that predominates in published literature, especially that influenced by either the Congo Reform Movement or those who wanted to portray a primal African savagery. Of the skull-lined pavement of Ngongo Luteta’s enclosure that had so impressed Delcommune and Hinde (and captured the imagination of their readers), Scheerlinck writes that it “ne signifie pas grand chose.”^{Footnote 41} This hardly means violence did not occur; these officers were either so enmeshed in it that it had become mundane, or they did not deem it important enough to write about.

In part due to their pragmatic nature, these documents offer rare insight into the direct interests of the colonial officers, which tends to be repressed in later colonial reports. Consider, for example, the glee that Duchesne and Scheerlinck express upon learning of the terms and promises that accompanied Ngongo Luteta’s submission to the Congo Free State: “Ildonnera * au blanc tout son ivoire.” [his underlining and emphasis] [with note in margin “*ne pas confondre avec le verbe ‘vendre’”] Il veut aller au Katanga! Il organisera le service des transports et fournera des postes!”^{Footnote 42} Even here important interpretive questions emerge: do these exclamations signify the extraordinarily self-interested nature of the early colonial administration or a certain naiveté in writing about them? Some answers are suggested when such documentation is placed in the context of the orders that Dhanis gave to Scheerlinck and Duchesne, specifically that Luteta was to surrender a quantity of ivory and to provide porters to Dhanis.^{Footnote 43} Whatever the case, the documentation provides an insider’s view of the machinations and the vulnerabilities of the early Congo Free State. There is constant attention to revenue-collection, the shortage of soldiers, the shortage of supplies to feed soldiers, and the problems of communication.

It hardly surprising that the documentation reveals colonial desires, imperatives, and shortcomings. However, it is also revealing of African interests, and their clash with the early colonial officers. Indeed, the interactions and relationships between these officers and Luteta and the consequences of these relationships, as evident in the documentation, provides new historical insights. These revolve around the two most important consequences of the Congo Free State – Luteta relationship: the outbreak of the war with the Arabs and the execution of Luteta.

The standard interpretation of the outbreak of the war with Sefu and Rashid (the Arabs), is derived from Ngongo Luteta’s claims that the Arabs were to advance on him, and hence the Congo Free State, due to his surrender to the Congo Free State. A close examination of the documentation reveals that the claim of Arab aggression needs to be reconsidered. The documentation shows a consistent pattern of political maneuverings by Luteta: he makes claims of an imminent threat (such as by neighboring warlord, Lumpungu), and thus requests closer alliance with the Congo Free State, proclaiming his loyalty, his willingness to fly the Congolese Free State flag, and his need for arms to deal with these opponents.^{Footnote 44} It was in this context that Luteta made threats of an Arab advance on himself and on colonial positions. He was also one of the principal informants against the Arabs concerning their treatment of the Congo Free State agents, Lippens and De Bruyne, and spread rumors through Duchesne regarding the Arab interception of Congo Free State communications.^{Footnote 45} Most importantly Luteta made the claim of an Arab advance in the context of a demand for powder and bullets; on this occasion, he managed to secure a promise of at least one barrel of powder.^{Footnote 46} At the very least, the documentation demonstrates the self-interested nature of Luteta’s accusations against the Arabs.

Duchesne was suspicious of Luteta’s claims; when he first heard the news of Sefu allegedly marching on Luteta for not paying him tribute, Duchesne wanted to wait for independent verification from Luteta’s lieutenant, Lupaka, who was then out on a punitive expedition.^{Footnote 47} These efforts to secure independent verification also led to alternative power and patronage structures at the outpost. Duchesne’s evolving relationship with Lupaka was important in Duchesne’s ability to ultimately replace Luteta with Lupaka after the defeat of the Arabs and the execution of Luteta.

Luteta’s tactics rested on a careful monitoring of the colonial outpost combined with a colonial official who was particularly susceptible to his misinformation. Probably to keep an eye on the whites, Luteta decided to build a house for his son, Lumpungu, next to the colonial station.^{Footnote 48} Moreover, Duchesne was the perfect dupe for this ploy. We learn of Duchesne’s ongoing sickness, which not only prevented him from travelling far from Ngandu but sometimes left him bedridden for weeks at a time. Even while Duchesne wanted independent interactions with others like Lupaka, he was reliant on Luteta, which made him vulnerable to be the problem of limited information and to Luteta’s version of events. When he emerged from his bed, his high fevers and prolonged hematuria left him weak and unable to make accurate observations. This, in turn, was recognized by Scheerlinck (and later Gillain) who commented on the misinformation that Luteta fed Duchesne and that Duchesne was not able to restrict the activities of Luteta.^{Footnote 49} In the past, Luteta’s version of events, as recorded in the published documentation of the period, has been taken as fact. Instead, a careful reading of the letters provides evidence of the context and politics behind Luteta’s claims.

Ngongo Luteta was executed on 15 September 1893, after a peremptory military trial presided over by Scheerlinck, together with Duchesne and a third officer, Lange. As with other details regarding Ngongo Luteta, much existing scholarship relies on Hinde’s version of events, even though Hinde only arrived the day after Luteta’s execution. The most detailed published scholarly source on the execution is Maréchal’s Dutch-language study of the Arab campaign, which reproduces some of the documentation discussed below in its appendix.^{Footnote 50} A recent Congolese nationalist tendency has viewed the execution as a result of colonial fears of Ngongo Luteta’s growing influence.^{Footnote 51} At the very least, a critical examination of the documentation allows for a more nuanced view of such claims.

The unpublished sources in the Dhanis collection provide substantially greater immediate detail of the Luteta’s imprisonment, trial, and execution than the published sources. There are two types of documentation. The first concerns reports that Scheerlinck and Duchesne sent to Dhanis to explain the reasons for the execution of Luteta. These include a transcript of the accusations against Luteta, with his responses to the accusations, and the testimony given under oath by his various lieutenants and two concubines. There are also personal letters from Duchesne to Dhanis that describes the events and accusations surrounding his arrest and accusation. This correspondence lays out the principal reasons for the execution: Luteta’s refusal to surrender prisoners of war and other loot after the defeat of the Arabs at Kassongo, subsequent threats against the Congo Free State agents, and his treatment of subordinates including the massacre of some of them (especially Mutambwe, who had his eyes torn out and was burnt alive). It also demonstrates the number of Luteta’s underlings, from his concubines to his war chiefs, who were willing to testify against him.^{Footnote 52} Scheerlinck does not correspond directly with Dhanis about Luteta’s execution. He does, however, write to a close personal friend, “Henri,” revealing the details of the trial and execution.^{Footnote 53} These documents all have to be interpreted as part self-justification and part official justification of the lower-level officers for their execution of Luteta.

The second type of documentation regarding the execution derives from an officer, Gillain, sent by Dhanis to investigate the trial and execution. The reports of Gillain, in contrast to the above, are the principal sources for those who blame the execution of Luteta on the mismanagement of affairs and relationships by Duchesne and Scheerlinck. They provide more background and context to the anti-Duchesne/Scheerlinck perspective than that of the published documentation, such as Hinde.^{Footnote 54} As a result of Gillain’s critical reports, there is also an additional series of letters between Duchesne and Dhanis, in which Duchesne defends his position against Gillain’s accusations.^{Footnote 55} Other nearby officers, especially those still campaigning with Luteta’s soldiers, also wrote to Dhanis to express their dismay at the execution of their loyal ally and reflect on the military and political ramifications.^{Footnote 56} The claims and accusations of Luteta’s innocence or guilt as revealed in this documentation have to be placed in the context of these struggles within the Congo Free State administration.

In addition to understanding this administrative context, the documentation regarding the execution requires an interpretation of the position of particular individuals. Duchesne, in his frustrated and fever-ridden state and after he emerged from a month of convalescence, came to realize some of Luteta’s deceptions, and his own vulnerability. There were also significant divisions among Luteta’s underlings, which led Luteta to deal severely with some of them (including the burning alive of Mutambwe). These divisions, however, enabled Duchesne to act against Luteta with less immediate fear of a counter-attack. In any event, Duchesne gauged the capture – and later execution – of Luteta as the lesser danger. Two Congo Free State officers at Kasongo, Lippens and Debruyne, had been killed by the Maniema Arabs (as was the better-known Emin Pasha), and, after his imprisonment, Luteta had allegedly threatened to do the same to Duchesne, or at least so Duchesne imagined.^{Footnote 57} Personal insecurity and fear for his life thus seems paramount in Duchesne’s decision to keep Luteta in prison. Moreover, upon his arrival, Scheerlinck decided to execute Luteta, as after Luteta’s imprisonment, even if the initial charges were incorrect, Scheerlinck seemed convinced that Luteta would avenge himself against the whites.^{Footnote 58} In making the decision, however, Luteta’s violent and sometimes cruel tactics, including the burning of his underling Mutambwe, provided a convenient justification. This analysis only scratches the surfaces of the complicated interests and motivations reflected in this documentation; much remains to be done. It does, however, point to the need for sustained, close, and critical attention to the archival record.

The principal historiographic justification for the turn to oral sources was the African perspectives that such sources provided. Yet, as indicated in this discussion, early colonial records need not only reveal colonial perspectives. In the case of Ngongo Luteta, interpreting colonial correspondence exposes Luteta’s interests, his military tactics, his alliances and conflicts with neighboring polities and his own subordinates, his duplicitous relationship with the Congo Free State officers, and the desperate need for arms and ammunition that drove him to seek outside alliances and foment local conflict.

Unpublished colonial documentation reveals more diverse historical perspectives and interests than published materials. Published accounts present perspectives that emerged from historical circumstances as historical facts, such as the causes of the Arab War or the reasons for Luteta’s execution. An interpretation of the contemporaneous colonial documentation, by contrast, reveals that previously assumed historical facts emerged from the claims and counter-claims in the struggles of early colonial officers and African warlords who were all desperate to secure loot, security, and armaments.

Historical Investigations by Administrators of the Belgian Congo

There is no single interpretive strategy for colonial documentation: strategies depend on the nature of the colonial documentation. The second type of source for the early history of the Congo Free State available in Belgian archives are reports written by lower-level colonial officers of the Belgian Congo, which are collected as reports of the Affaires Indigène et de la Main d’Œuvre (AIMO). They are uneven in quality, and depend on the enthusiasm of the particular colonial official who wrote them, his knowledge, linguistic competence, length of stay at his post, and the rapport that he had with the subject populations. A few of them were published in the Bulletin des Jurisdictions Indigènes du Droit Coutumier Congolais or collected and published by enterprising colonial officials, as in Edmond Verhulpen’s Baluba et Balubaïsés, both of which were important sources for Vansina’s Kingdoms of the Savanna.^{Footnote 59} The unpublished reports are available in unabridged and unedited form, with far greater range, in Belgian archives.^{Footnote 60}

Unlike the earliest colonial correspondence discussed in the previous section, these reports were written a few decades after the consolidation of the Belgian Congo, and are not contemporary to many of the events described. They were often inspired by requests to investigate particular practices and histories. Essentially they are ethnographic and historical investigations by on-the-spot colonial officials rather than correspondence relating to contemporary affairs. An additional complication resides in the fact that while these reports were not a direct result of the politics of the period investigated, they do emerge from the politics of the period in which they were written.

Previous historians have treated these reports in an inconsistent manner. In the methodological sections of their studies, they are sometimes dismissed in a pro forma manner; however, careful examination of references reveals that they are frequently used. In his PhD dissertation, for example, Turner informs us that: “As a guide to the theory and practice of Belgian colonial administration in Sankuru [the district that came to incorporate Ngongo Luteta’s polity], and to the Belgians perceptions of the society of Sankuru, they [the colonial reports] are very useful; as descriptions of that society, they are much less useful. This is in part because the Congolese perceived correctly the Belgians’ purpose in enquiring into their history, political institutions and processes, and replied in an attempt to influence administrative practices.”^{Footnote 61} This is probably true; although as a blanket statement it understates efforts by colonial officials and Congolese to embark on effective historical inquiry. Regardless, this critique did not prevent Turner from using precisely such documents to describe the conquest of Sankuru: his chapter on the conquest of Sankuru is derived from such documentation. Turner even uses such reports specifically to voice the claims of particular Sankuru inhabitants.^{Footnote 62} Other scholars have offered more careful readings of these reports. In his trail-blazing study of the Luba kingdom, Thomas Reefe recognized their value and used them extensively through his study, even while acknowledging some of their shortcomings.^{Footnote 63} Like all sources, their quality and value is uneven. Moreover, they need to be interpreted through an understanding of the context in which they were written.

The argument that these reports are best understood as a reflection of Belgian colonial administrative policy derives from a particular view of the colonial state and of colonial officials. The image of the Belgian colonial official who wrote such reports has become one of a racist brute who lorded it over his subjects with the chicotte whip. Administrators were well practiced in the particular mixture of paternalism and direct and indirect rule (ultimately supported by violence), which came to justify colonial domination by the rapid promise of economic development and social welfare (described as “dominer pour servir” by the reformist Belgian Governor-General of the Congo, Pierre Ryckmans). This led to a colonial state that political scientist Crawford Young claims to have existed above and separate from African society, the alien crusher of rocks, or Bula Matari, as the Congolese came to know the Belgian colonial edifice.^{Footnote 64} However, as Bruce Berman points out in a critique of Young’s version of a colonial state: “Rather than being autonomous from local African societies, colonial states were, from their inception, deeply imbricated with them and dependent on collaboration with African authorities.”^{Footnote 65} The “imbrication” of the colonial state – and colonial officials – with African society means that many colonial reports, far from portraying events and processes only from a European perspective, portrayed perspectives that were entwined with those of African subjects.

Even though the colonial state was a dominating enterprise, domination required some understanding. Especially during and after the tenure of the Flemish proponent of indirect rule, Louis Franck, as Minister of Colonies, colonial officials were trained in local customs and in languages (which was tested by the colonial administrative service). Unlike the military class of “commandants” that dominated the Congo Free State, a degree of professionalization came to characterize the officers of the Belgian Congo. Some of their reports display remarkable inquisitiveness about African society and history.^{Footnote 66} None of this means that these reports were free from political interests and intrigues; quite to the contrary, these intrigues and interests allow us to view divergent perspectives and adds to their historical value, provided the historical conditions under which they are produced are understood.

In the case of Ngongo Luteta, there are at least three categories of reports. The first, found at both the RMCA ethnographic section, and also in the Archives Africaines (although the collections do not always overlap), concern reports on culture and history of particular groups, which in some cases delve into considerable detailed histories and ethnographies. These reports were commissioned specifically in response to requests for histories of the chieftaincies under Belgian rule. For example, in the ethnographic section of the RMCA, in a box of reports on Kasai, there are several histories relevant our case: local histories of the Tetela auxiliaries of the Maniema Arabs; a note concerning the history of one of the generals (nyampara) of Luteta and his successor, Lupaka, and histories of subjected and dispersed “Luba” populations due to late nineteenth century raids of Ngongo Luteta and other warlords.^{Footnote 67} Some colonial officers chose to follow research requests with great enthusiasm and wrote reports that became that became the equivalent of short monographs. Without intimate knowledge of the other sources, it is difficult to identify what is novel and what is simple repetition (or plagiarism). For example, a report on the conquest of Arab influence plagiarizes long portions of Hinde’s work. However, even here there are occasional interesting descriptions from local informants; the trick is to be able to discern the local research.^{Footnote 68}

The second category of reports was generated by specific requests to investigate native customs. In 1918, “Commissaires de districts” (CdD) were asked to send reports on “coutumes barbares” in their particular districts. In response, they submitted reports written by lower-level administrators, the “Administrateur Territorial” (AT).^{Footnote 69} An interesting example for the case under discussion is a report on the division of Tetela society into the Goat and Leopard clans and their particular functions.^{Footnote 70} Inquiries of particular value concern indigenous forms of servitude and slavery, which were first conducted in response to a League of Nations commission in 1925. For the Sankuru District, a report details the indigenous terms for coerced labor, dependents, and captives, how they relate to domestic arrangements, and the history of manumission since the onset of colonialism.^{Footnote 71} In 1934 even more detailed reports appear in response to a study conducted by the Institut Royal Colonial Belge, in which administrators were asked to respond to a thorough questionnaire regarding slavery and servitude, although in this case the material on Katanga seems more valuable than that of Kasai.^{Footnote 72} These reports generally ignore colonial coerced labor, and to varying degrees display a triumphalist attitude regarding Belgians efforts to end slavery and the slave trade. And yet, their diversity stems from the character of the individual “Administrateur Territorial” and their particular investigations. Documentation at this level precedes colonial sanitization.

The real jackpot for AIMO reports is the third category: a specific inquiry relating to an issue that disturbs the colonial administration. For Ngongo Luteta, such an enquiry concerned questions of his civil inheritance and political succession. After his execution, Ngongo Luteta’s lieutenant Lupaka was appointed to administer the region. His success in coercing surrounding villages to collect rubber muted the angry proclamations of Dhanis and his allies regarding the execution of Ngongo Luteta. The mutiny of troops at Luluaburg in 1895, which included many of Ngongo Luteta’s former soldiers, also left the colonial administration reticent to allow for the re-emergence of Ngongo Luteta’s polity under his sons. Luteta had nevertheless ensured that his sons would be tutored by the Europeans, with the eldest son sent to school in in Belgium and two other sons educated by missionaries at Stanleyville (Kisangani), all with the support of Dhanis. After their education, Ngongo Luteta’s sons wanted to return to their father’s former capital, Ngandu, with their most faithful followers, and inquired after the remains of his substantial wealth. This led to a flurry of correspondence: 179 letters, between the Ngongo Luteta’s sons and the colonial administration and between the different levels of the colonial administration, which lasted from 1899 to 1956. The correspondence goes far beyond a question of colonial logistics to reflect on the history of Luteta’s polity, insofar as this history informed the rights of political and civil inheritance held by his sons.^{Footnote 73}

While archival files that explore questions of political and civil inheritance are not found for many subjects of historical inquiry, such finds are also not unique. In many colonial files, letters from Africans present their interests and perspectives directly. Colonial officials are forced to confront these letters, discuss them, and often, with a culturally particular diplomacy, disagree among themselves. There is much vested interest in such colonial reports and correspondence; indeed, revealing these interests is at the heart of historical inquiry. And since colonial documentation holds clues to the uneven ways that such interests and desires were thwarted, undermined or fulfilled, the enterprising historian can portray the battlefield of European and African agents that makes African historiography so compelling.