Nachituti’s Gift: Economy, Society, and Environment in Central Africa (review)

Nachituti’s Gift is an impressive account of the interplay of social, economic, and ecological forces over the past two centuries in the Luapula Valley (a Zambia/Democratic Republic of the Congo borderland). David Gordon grapples with a complex set of historical trajectories: precolonial waves of conquering societies altered local political ecologies; Belgium and Britain established distinct paths of colonial and capitalist incorporation, and thus local polities and economies were restructured differently; the postcolonial states of Zaire and Zambia erected new bureaucracies, commercial cultures, and resource management policies; and more recently Zambia’s multiparty experiment and the collapse of Mobutu’s rule in the 1990s had powerful local effects. Yet despite this challenging array of circumstances, the author produces a nuanced interpretation of the broader dynamics that have shaped the history of Luapula actors and their use of local fishery resources across the generations. Focusing on the themes of tenure, wealth, and environment, and informed by Gordon’s extensive fieldwork in the region in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this study reveals the importance of locating ongoing economic development and dilemmas about resource access in deeper historical perspective.

One of Gordon’s main intentions is to upset the “expected trajectories of capitalist development” assumed by resource economists and other theorists: that the spread of commercial economies and the increased commoditization of resources will necessarily lead to more formalized tenure arrangements, which in turn will generate greater capital-based investment. (23, 202). The book sets up a two-pronged attack on such models. In part 1, Gordon shows that colonial states imposed the novel idea that local fishery resources were held as communal property. However, through his careful interpretation of oral traditions, the author establishes that precolonial authority centered on reciprocal (though contested) obligations between autochthonous communities (represented by the title’s Nachituti heroine) and conquering Lunda kings and aristocrats.

While Lunda elites asserted symbolic “ownership” of local populations, they legitimized their rule through autochthonous “owners of the land”—those who, on behalf of local populations, mediated with the ancestral and nature spirits that ultimately controlled resources. Colonialism jettisoned such principles of resource tenure in two ways: in the Congo, by promoting state and European traders’ control of the Luapula Valley’s vital fishery resources as a way to feed a growing labor force; in Northern Rhodesia, by appointing chiefs to administer “communal” fishery resources on behalf of their “tribal” subjects. Yet despite this erosion of preexisting tenure principles, local people continued to invest in social forms of wealth. Some African businessmen became economic “big men” under colonial structures, for example, by utilizing independent religious associations (such as Watchtower) to enhance their influence.

In part 2, successive chapters devoted to three commercially significant fish species offer further examples. In the postcolonial period, as rural populations and resource competition grew, and as Luapulans faced local effects of the states’ declining capacities, misguided policies, and predatory practices, traders and fishermen came to rely on their own patronage networks to accrue wealth. From the 1970s a growing number of women (generally excluded from the male-dominated commercial networks described thus far) accumulated wealth through small-scale chisense fishing, investing in their matrikin and children. Such examples demonstrate how succeeding generations of Luapulans have found social investments to provide the most secure safety nets.

Throughout, Gordon’s narrative is enriched by his creative references to oral traditions, life histories, and songs. At times, however, his methodology also leads to questions that are not fully resolved in the text. For example, Gordon describes the foundational “Nachituti’s Gift” narrative as a collective “charter” used by different groups to legitimize control over people and resources—though its meaning has been ideologically contested between the descendants of Lunda rulers and autochthonous Shila “owners of the land” (11, 28–31). Yet as I read more into the popular struggles over socioeconomic inequalities, I was...