Luba people: Difference between revisions

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| rels = [[Christianity]], [[Islam]], [[African Traditional Religion]], [[Bantu Mythology]]

{{Infobox Bantu name|Mulubà|Balubà|[[Luba-Katanga language|Kiluba]] and [[Luba-Kasai language|Tshiluba]|Luba]]}}

The '''Luba people''' or '''Baluba''' are an Bantu ethno-linguistic group indigenous to the south-central region of the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]].<ref name="Gates2010p14">{{cite book|author= Elizabeth Heath| editor1=Anthony Appiah|editor2=Henry Louis Gates|title=Encyclopedia of Africa|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A0XNvklcqbwC |year=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-533770-9|pages=88–89, 14–15}}</ref> The majority of them live in this country, residing mainly in [[Katanga Province|Katanga]], [[Kasai regionProvince|KasaiKasaï]], [[Kasaï-Oriental]], [[Kasaï-Central]], [[Lomami Province|Lomami]] and [[Maniema]]. The Baluba Tribe consist of many sub-groups or clans who speak various dialects of Luba (e.g. [[Luba-Katanga language|Kiluba]], [[Luba-Kasai language|Tshiluba]]) and other languages, such as [[Swahili language|Swahili]].

</ref><ref name=bortolot>[http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/luba/hd_luba.htm Kingdoms of the Savanna: The Luba and Lunda Empires], Alexander Ives Bortolot (2003), Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, Publisher: The Metropolitan Museum of Art</ref> TheirThey successfound andrelative wealth grew greatlysuccess over time, but this alsoeventually caused their gradual decline towith marauding bands of [[Slavery in Africa|slavers]]{{source?|date=July 2020}}, robbers, and [[Terrorism|terrorists]]{{source?|date=July 2020}} from amongthe [[Kingdom of Portugal|Portuguese]] and [[Omani Empire|Omani]] empires led or influenced [[invasion]]s.

Archaeological evidence provessuggests that the Baluba had settlements around the lakes and [[marsh]]es of the [[Upemba Depression]] by the 5th century CE.<ref name="Reefe1981p67"/> The evidence suggesting an advanced Iron Age society by then comescame from multiple sites, and these are among the best developed archaeological records in [[Central Africa]]. The ''Kamilambian'', ''Kisalian'' and ''Kabambian'' series of evidence has been dated to be from 5th to 14th-century, suggesting a settled stable Luba culture over many centuries.<ref name="Reefe1981p67"/><ref name=maret233>Pierre de Maret (1979), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741910 Luba Roots: The First Complete Iron Age Sequence in Zaire], Current Anthropology, University of Chicago Press, volume 20, number 1 (Mar., 1979), pages 233–235</ref> Of these, the Kisalian period (8th to 11th century) pottery and utensils found,. were crafted with extraordinary excellence.<ref name=maret233/> The finds dated to pre-8th century by modern dating methods are iron objects or pottery, thereafter copper objects appear.<ref name=maret233/>

WithThe settledmetal communities,working statestechniques Thomasin Reefeuse – a professor of History,by the early Luba people hadincluded developeddrawing metalout extractionthin techniqueswires, skillstwisting tothem, makelaminating utilitariansthem, productsand fromplaiting them into items such as necklaces, bracelets and "highhooks degreefor offishing, craftneedles specialization"for sewing and such.<ref name="Reefe1981p70">{{cite book|author=Thomas Q. Reefe|title=The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8cv9-JlN0C |year=1981| publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-04140-0|pages=70–73}}</ref> The metal working techniques in use by the early Luba people included drawing out thin wires, twisting and laminating them, plaiting them into complex well designed shapes such as necklaces, bracelets and hooks for fishing, needles for sewing and such.<ref name="Reefe1981p70"/>

Around 1500, possibly earlier, the Luba people began to coalesce into a single, unified state which historians now call the Kingdom of Luba or [[Luba Empire]].<ref name="Falola285"/> The kingdom grew and became more sophisticated over time, reaching its peak between 18th to 19th-century.<ref name="Falola285"/><ref name="Reefe1981pxiv">{{cite book|author=Thomas Q. Reefe|title=The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8cv9-JlN0C |year=1981| publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-04140-0|pages=xiv, 3–4, 120, 118–194}}</ref> The"...[I]ntegration demands,into raidsthe andforward violenceedges of the 19th-centuryexpanding slavefrontiers andof ivoryinternational trade bytore the EuropeanEmpire colonialapart" empiresin suchtandem aswith the advances of the 19th-century slave and ivory trade from Belgium and the Arab-Swahili chiefs such as [[Tippu Tip]] and [[Msiri]], states Thomas Reefe, "tore the Empire apart" and ended it.<ref name="Reefe1981pxiv"/><ref name=wilson575>{{cite journal | last=Wilson | first=Ann | title=Long Distance Trade and the Luba Lomami Empire | journal=The Journal of African History | publisher=Cambridge University Press | volume=13 | issue=4 | year=1972 | pages=575–589 | doi=10.1017/s0021853700011944 | s2cid=162826940 }}</ref>

TheA politicalprominent sophisticationsociopolitical system of the Luba Empire was the adoption of two layers of power, one of ''Balopwe'' (hereditary kingship) and another a council of royals or elders. These provided governancegovernmental stability through mutual balancing, when there were disputes of succession from death or other causes. This idea was adopted by the neighboring Lunda people and other ethnic groups.<ref name=bortolot/>

The development and evolution of the Luba Empire, and the life of Luba people therein, has been unclear.<ref name=wilson575/><ref name="Reefe1981p10"/> This is in part because the Luba people were an entirely [[oral tradition]] culture where knowledge and records were held verbally preserved without the use of a written script. The orthography for the Luba language, called ''kiLuba'', was invented in the 19th century, and; thus, early information about the Luba Empire has been derived from foreign documents. written by others usually hostile and only aware of the communities at the Luba Empire's border, or by the Luba people only in the late 19th-century and the 20th-century after the best decades of the Empire were long over.<ref name="Reefe1981p10">{{cite book|author=Thomas Q. Reefe|title=The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8cv9-JlN0C |year=1981| publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-04140-0|pages=10–11, 14–19}}</ref> The later written texts suggest that the Luba people had developed sophisticated literary traditions around their concepts of good and evil, and integrated these concepts and their religious ideas into their legends about morality and people with power.<ref>Newell S. Booth, Jr. (1976), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4185640 Civil Religion in Traditional Africa], Africa Today, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1976), pages 59–66</ref> For example, one legend relates to two kings, one called the red king ''Nkongolo Mwamba'' and other called the black king ''Ilunga Mbidi Kiluwe''. According to the Luba people's oral history,

The ivory and slave trade had grown to the east of the Luba Empire by the mid 19th-century,; the natural supplies of ivory were exhausted whilewhilst the international demand for it was increasing. The region under the Luba people then had abundantly preserved herds of elephants. withFor theirexample, tusk.the Kanyembo region, states Thomas Reefe, for example had no ivory to sell.<ref name=reefe152/> In 1840, after Kumwimbe Ngombe died of old age, king Ilunga Kabale succeeded to rule the Luba people. Heuntil expandedhis thedeath empire further, tillin 1870 when he died. By then, the region of Luba people and their Empireempire covered much of what is now the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, extending for hundreds of kilometers from their early 19th-century heartland.<ref name=reefe152>{{cite book|author=Thomas Q. Reefe|title=The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8cv9-JlN0C |year=1981| publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-04140-0|pages=140–141, 148–152}}</ref>

===Guns, trade, and the colonial era===

The success and wealth of Luba people grew in relative isolation because they were far from the eastern and western coasts of Africa, living in difficultcomparatively to reachinaccessible terrain.<ref name="Reefe1981p159">{{cite book

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8cv9-JlN0C |year=1981|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-04140-0|pages=159–168, 172–175, 183–190}}</ref> The forests and mountains protectedprovided them,a asnatural didborder; additionally, their neighbors who blocked traders from direct and regular contact with distant international traders, in order to monopolize the gains from trade with international operatorsprofits.<ref name="Reefe1981p159"/> This originally shielded the Luba from the ill effects of the earlier slave trade. Later, however, the Luba people became victims of the slave demand and trading, in some cases selling people from their own lands as slaves.<ref name="Danver2015p52">{{cite book|author=Daniel Kabozi | editor=Steven L. Danver |editor-link=Steven L. Danver |title=Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vf4TBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA52 |year=2015| publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-46400-6| pages=52–53}}</ref> But, byBy the 1850s, the slavers began intruding into the Luba people lands. Despite a ban on slave trading in the Western world, the eastern and northern parts of Africa, led by Arab-Swahili slave and ivory traders entered into the eastern and northeastern regions of the Luba Empire.<ref name="Reefe1981p159"/><ref name=macola2015>{{cite book|author=Giacomo Macola |year=2015 |title= Luba–Lunda states, in ''The Encyclopedia of Empire''|publisher= John Wiley & Sons|isbn= 978-1118455074|doi= 10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe060|s2cid=155144291 }}</ref> These intruders came with guns, experience of running caravans, and other tools of raids and warswar. Although the weapons of the Luba people were not primitive (theywith had weaponsimplements such as bowsblades and arrows, swords, axes, poisonbows), the intrudersopposing forces had much more advanced weapons. David Livingstone, in his memoir, wrote how amazed the Luba people were with the guns, as they thought they were tobacco pipes, while; the gunfirearm was the weaponprimary thattool mowedused downagainst large populations of the Luba. The notorious slaveSlave and ivory trader,<ref name=macola2015/> [[Tippu Tip]] for example wrote, translates Thomas Reefe, "Luba had no guns, their weapons were bows and arrows; guns they did not know. The guns we have with us, they asked us, "'Are they pestles?"' The conquest of the Luba people was swift."<ref>{{cite book|author=Thomas Q. Reefe|title=The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8cv9-JlN0C |year=1981| publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-04140-0|pages=161–162, 165–167}}</ref><ref>Francois Renault (1988), "The structures of the Slave trade in Central Africa in the 19th century." Slavery and Abolition, volume 9, number 3, pages 146–165</ref>

[[Msiri]], a Tanzanian operator supplying ivory and slaves to the Sultan of Zanzibar, raided and took over the southeastern Shaba region of Luba people.<ref name="Reefe1981p159"/> Its other side, the southwestern borders were breached by the Ovimbundu ivory and slave hunters foroperating with the Portuguese interests. While slaves could no longer be exported to the Americas, they were used for work and caravan operations within Africa. Breaches from all sides, by better equipped armies, weakened the Luba Empire rapidly between 1860 and 1880s, and accelerated its demise.<ref name="Reefe1981p159"/> In parallel, the news of disarray and confusion from many corners of the Luba Empire, led to internal disputes on succession and strategy when the Luba king Ilunga Kabale died in 1870.<ref name="Reefe1981p159"/>

The Luba people were forced to work in the copper and gemstone mines of the Katanga province during the Belgian rule, causing numerous mining-related deaths. They rebelled in 1895, then again from 1905 to 1917, and these insurrections were crushedsubdued through military militarilyintervention.<ref name="Gates2010p89"/>

In 1960, the Belgians, faced with rising demand for independence and an end to colonial rule, granted independence to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That same year, [[Katanga Province]], which was home to a considerable number of Luba, attempted to [[Secession|secede]] under [[Moise Tshombe]] as the [[State of Katanga]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Melvin Page|title=Colonialism: An International Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qFTHBoRvQbsC&pg=PA356 |year=2003|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-335-3|page=356}}</ref> The Luba were divided, with one faction under Ndaye Emanuel supporting the secession, and another under Kisula Ngoye supporting the central government.

The United Nations peacekeepers in Congo, as part of the ONUC force came into conflict with the Luba. On the 8th of8 November, 1960, a patrol ofan Irish soldiersArmy werepatrol ambushedwas [[Niemba ambush|ambushed outside Niemba]]. In the fighting, the Irish soldiers reportedly killed dozens of25 Baluba with their firearms, and 9 of the 11 Irish were beaten or stabbed to deathkilled. Afterwards, lurid stories were told of tribesmen mutilating and even eating the bodies of the soldiers were told. To this day, in Ireland the word Baluba is derogatively used to describe someone not in control of themselves.

The Luba people, statesaccording to Mary Roberts, {{Who|date=February 2024}} developed "one [of] the most complex and brilliant mnemonic systems in Africa for recording royal history, king lists, migrations, initiation esoterica and family genealogies", such as the ''[[Lukasa (Luba)|Lukasa]] memory board''.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Roberts | first=Mary Nooter | title=The Naming Game: Ideologies of Luba Artistic Identity | journal=African Arts | volume=31 | issue=4 | year=1998 | pages=56–92 | jstor=3337649 | doi=10.2307/3337649 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Lynne Kelly|title=Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kLksCQAAQBAJ |year=2015|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-05937-5|pages=78–80}}</ref> TheseThis artworksartwork are now found in numerous museums of the world.<ref name="Danver2015p52"/>

*[[HeritaPepe IlungaKalle]], musician

*Kabongo, Kanundowi and Bilolo, Mubabinge, ''Conception Bantu de l'Autorité. Suivie de Baluba: Bumfumu ne Bulongolodi"'', African University Studies, Munich - Kinshasa (1994).

* The Maurer Collection, Amherst University. [http://www.amherst.edu/~jpembert/p3.html Slit gongs & Musical Oracles] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060225033057/http://www.amherst.edu/~jpembert/p3.html |date=2006-02-25 }}