Invisible Agents shows how personal and deeply felt spiritual beliefs can inspire social movements and influence historical change. Conventional historiography concentrates on the secular, materialist, or moral sources of political agency. Instead, David M. Gordon argues, when people perceive spirits as exerting power in the visible world, these beliefs form the basis for individual and collective actions. Focusing on the history of the south-central African country of Zambia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his analysis invites reflection on political and religious realms of action in other parts of the world, and complicates the post-Enlightenment divide of sacred and profane.
The book combines theoretical insights with attention to local detail and remarkable historical sweep, from oral narratives communicated across slave-trading routes during the nineteenth century, through the violent conflicts inspired by Christian and nationalist prophets during colonial times, and ending with the spirits of Pentecostal rebirth during the neoliberal order of the late twentieth century. To gain access to the details of historical change and personal spiritual beliefs across this long historical period, Gordon employs all the tools of the African historian. His own interviews and extensive fieldwork experience in Zambia provide texture and understanding to the narrative. He also critically interprets a diverse range of other sources, including oral traditions, fieldnotes of anthropologists, missionary writings and correspondence, unpublished state records, vernacular publications, and Zambian newspapers.
Invisible Agents will challenge scholars and students alike to think in new ways about the political imagination and the invisible sources of human action and historical change.
This collection of essays examines Zambia’s efforts to promote economic reform during the 1990s. Following the restoration of democratic rule, the government of Zambia adopted an ambitious program designed to stabilize the economy and lay the foundation for sustained growth and development. These essays describe the adjustment program, highlighting the attempts to reform the budget, the tax system, the financial system, agriculture and mining, and to create the human capacity to sustain the reforms.
Major improvements in economic performance occurred from 1992 to 1995. After that, however, economic performance deteriorated as a result of the government’s selective abandonment of key elements of the reform program and the emergence of major governance problems. In response to international pressure, by 2001 the government completed the sale of the copper mines and qualified for large-scale debt relief. The long delays involved seriously undermined economic performance.
The volume concludes that for economic reform to succeed in Zambia, the government should scale back its development agenda to match its financial and human capacities, reduce dependence on foreign aid, adopt and maintain prudent macroeconomic policies, and support the expansion of both mining and agriculture.
This first comprehensive and thoroughly documented study of the political development of two of the newly formed nations of Central Africa presents the full story of the successful efforts of the people of Malawi and Zambia to achieve self-government. Following a detailed examination of the impact of British colonial rule, the author provides a new interpretation of the earliest demonstrations of native discontent and he explains how the forces of protest found expression through proto-political parties and the formation of religious sects and millennial movements. He also interprets the objectives and tactics of the ruling white settlers in their abortive effort to establish the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
Basing his analysis on archival and other primary sources, including interviews with leading figures, Robert Rotberg traces the origins of the full-fledged political parties in both countries and describes the early congresses which were to become the dominant movements during the struggle for independence in Central Africa. He ends with an analysis of that struggle, bringing the story to its successful conclusion in late 1964. A postscript discusses the important changes of 1965.
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