A History of Martial and Spiritual Entrepreneurship in Central Africa

FAIN: FT-291201-23

Charlotte Marie Walker-Said
CUNY Research Foundation, John Jay College (New York, NY 10019-1007)

Research and writing of a book about the religiously inspired insurgencies in Central Africa in the modern period.  

This project examines religiously-inspired insurgencies that have gripped the Central African nations of Congo-Brazzaville and Central African Republic over the past sixty years and locates them in a longstanding history of African grassroots resistance to authoritarian violence. The book that will emerge from this study builds on Central African economic, military, and political histories and is also in conversation with scholarship rooted in the Black Atlantic that identifies the religious corollaries of forced migration, slavery, insurrection, and military campaigns. This work deepens analysis of the fusion of local African spiritual beliefs with a Christ-inspired ambition to be free from radical evil by studying the hymns, prayers, speeches, poems, and military strategies of local societies in Congo-Brazzaville and Central African Republic during the colonial and post-colonial periods. This book manuscript will be submitted to the University of Pennsylvania Press for publication.