Luba people: Difference between revisions

| image = [[File:Appuie-tête Luba-RDC.jpg|150px]]

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

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 Province|Kasaï]], [[Kasaï-Oriental]], [[Kasaï-Central]], [[Lomami Province|Lomami]] and [[Maniema]]. The Baluba Tribe consist of many sub-groups or clans.

</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> They found relative success over time, but this eventually caused their gradual decline with the [[Kingdom of Portugal|Portuguese]] and [[Omani Empire|Omani]] empires led or influenced [[invasion]]s.

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> “"...[I]ntegration into the forward edges of the expanding frontiers of international trade tore the Empire apart”apart" in tandem with 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.<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>

|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 provided a natural border; additionally, their neighbors blocked direct and regular contact with distant international traders in order to monopolize the profits.<ref name="Reefe1981p159"/> This originally shielded the Luba from the effects of the 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> By the 1850s, 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 war. Although the weapons of the Luba people were not primitive (with implements such as blades and bows), the opposing forces had 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; the firearm was the primary tool used against large populations of the Luba. Slave and ivory trader,<ref name=macola2015/> [[Tippu Tip]] for example wrote, "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'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>

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. Following these events, stories were exported of tribesmen mutilating and cannibalizing the soldiers. As a result, the word “Baluba” is derogatively used to describe someone not in control of themselves (chiefly Irish).

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 }}