Análisis e interpretación de los resultados de las zoonosis parasitaria

The misconception that trade in Africa only began when the Portuguese first came to find gold, ivory and slaves in the late fifteenth century has been a common one (Curtin 1984: 15). In reality, when the Portuguese arrived at the mouth of the Congo River, they stumbled upon a developed Kingdom endowed with a centralised commercial system: the Kongo kingdom (Thorn- ton 1981: 183-184). The Kongo kingdom was by no means an isolated case. To many central African societies, including that of the Luba and Lunda, the long-distance trade was simply the latest stage of a long process of economic interaction carried out ‘inter-communally’ as well as ‘extra-communally’. It has been noted in the first section of this chapter that archaeological evi- dence points at the existence, at least from the beginning of the second mil- lennium or even earlier, of extended regional trade systems thanks to which subsistence and prestige goods travelled widely. In turn, this extended re- gional trade seems to have contributed to the appearance of a high degree of specialisation (in metalwork, for example) and a complex system of tribute (Reefe 1981: 93-6; Wilson 1972: 579). Moreover, the importance of certain commodities may explain why the expansion of certain states went in a cer- tain direction or why certain states became more centralised than others. Ka- tanga, where – not incidentally – the comparatively highly centralised Luba state emerged, possessed all three highly-prized ‘prestige’ goods in great de- mand all over central Africa at the time: iron, salt and copper. No wonder, then, that Katanga should be highly coveted. It could be supposed therefore that the eastwards expansion of the Lunda in the early eighteenth century and the related growth of the kingdom of Kazembe had the ambition to se- cure access to the mineral resources of southern Katanga. At least, this is what is suggested by the fact that traditional accounts attribute great impor- tance to the salt-producing district on the upper Lualaba River (Macola 2002: 44). The salt pans were located all around the Katanga lakes, and at Kiburi on the Upper Lualaba and Mwashya on the Upper Lufira. These were con- trolled first by the Mwata Yamvo, then by the Kazembe, whilst the Luba con-

trolled the salt and mineral mines north of the lake. From these Lunda and Luba strongholds, salt from the Mwashya and lake salt pans was apparently exported to eastern Katanga (Vansina 1962b: 386). As it happens, the main deposits of copper were located in the same area, at Mwilu near the salt pans of the Lualaba. The principal copper mines belonged to chief Katanga (after whom the province of Katanga was later named), and copper was exported in the form of bars or crosses, northwards, to the Luba, and southwards, to Kazembe (Ibid.). And indeed, most of the copper found by archaeologists in Zambia came from Katanga (Roberts 1976: 104). As Vansina argues, ‘the fact that copper was in use everywhere in the whole area suggests strongly that all of central Africa between the Kasai, the Zambezi and the great lakes had a single net of interlocking regional trade systems’ (Vansina 1962b: 387). 2.4.2 Long-Distance Trade in Central Africa

The first European contact with African shores south of the equator was made when the Portuguese encountered the Kingdom of Kongo in 1482. Trade started sometime after 1493 (Thornton 1981: 183), but it was not until the eighteenth century that the search for commodities such as gold, ivory and slaves was carried as far as the unknown country deeper inside the inte- rior. By the 1650s, traders had reached Kasanje, the capital of the Imbangala near the upper Kwango. There, traders exchanged European goods for ivory and slaves with the Imbangala, who themselves organised caravans to the capital of the Lunda kingdom, and vice versa.17 _{Meanwhile, while contact was} established between the main Lunda kingdom and the Atlantic coast, Ka- zembe was already in contact with the eastwards trade route and the Indian Ocean. The Kazembe kingdom had been active in long-distance trade since its inception in the early eighteenth century, collaborating for that purpose with neighbouring peoples, mainly the Bisa and the Yao. The Yao, who lived on the eastern side of Lake Malawi were by then well established as the lead- ing African traders in east central Africa (Roberts 1976: 109-10; Wilson 1972: 579). At the same time, as soon as Kazembe’s suzerain had consistent access to European goods, which happened around 1740, some of these were sent to Kazembe’s capital in the East to be exchanged for salt and copper. By the later eighteenth century, Kazembe was also sending slaves to Mwata Yamvo,

17 The western trade route occasionally bypassed the western Lunda kingdom, especially when Kasanje was replaced by Bihe, capitals of the Ovimbundu as main trading town in the West around 1750. By 1795, a new pattern of long-distance trade passing through Bihe, rather than Kasanje, was well established and extended as far as Cokweland, their direct neighbour, and made contact with the Lwena. By 1835, they had reached Loziland (western Zambia), the south- ern Lunda states and Katanga. See Vansina (1962b: 382-385).

who exported them on the Atlantic trade route. Thus, the east and west trade routes converged at Kazembe’s territory, thereby forming a single trade route that crossed the entire continent from east to west. This was made possible by the fact that the widely-spread territories of the Lunda Empire were con- nected by a complex web of tributary and trading networks, which was suc- cessfully recycled for the purpose of the long-distance trade. Since these trib- ute/trade routes also ran through the salt- and copper-producing districts of Katanga, where they intersected with the regional networks of the Luba area (Reefe 1981: 162-8; Vansina 1962b: 382-383), these items were easily availa- ble to be exported internationally. In this way, the two networks of economic exchanges not only interpenetrated, but also fed upon each other. Although it is problematic to posit that there was ever a clear-cut partition between re- gional and long-distance trade, it is probable that their amalgamation boost- ed the regional networks’ capacity and reach, and therefore stimulated the traditional economy.