ABSTRACT

The so-called Kitara Empire of the Nyoro, which existed before non-African influences reached the area early in the nineteenth century, appears to conform to the author's idea of the segmentary state. The earliest possible available account of an African segmentary state, is that of the Kongo, a pristine kingdom in the fifteenth century. It seems clear that the Kongo kingdom cannot have been anything other than a segmentary state, in which the direct political power of the king was extremely limited, but his ritual and mystical suzerainty spread extremely wide, transmitted through the complementary opposition of territorial segments at several subsidiary levels. But this segmentary system was extremely large by African standards, a fact which renders even more absurd the idea of its having been unitary, centralized, and despotic. Its territory was some 600 kilometers long and 500 wide, with a possible population of several million.