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The man-leopard murders : history and society in colonial Nigeria / David Pratten.
LIBRA HV8079.H6 P755 2007
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Pratten, David.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Murder--Investigation--Nigeria, Southern.
- Murder.
- Anang (African people)--Nigeria, Southern.
- Anang (African people).
- Social conditions.
- Murder--Investigation.
- Nigeria, Southern--Social conditions.
- Nigeria, Southern.
- Nigeria--History--1900-1960.
- Nigeria.
- History.
- Southern Nigeria.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 425 pages : bill., maps ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Blooimington : Indiana University Press, [2007]
- Summary:
- In The Man-Leopard Murders, David Pratten focuses on the deaths of about 200 people in southern Nigeria in the mid-1940s. At the time, the deaths were explained as predation by shape-shifting leopard-men and native witchcraft. As Pratten sets out to discover how and why these murders took place, he leads readers on a tortuous road to discoveries about local resistance to colonial and missionary encroachment. Pratten reveals how secret societies worked behind the scenes to impose authority at a time when traditional values were losing ground. Could the leopard murders have been a convenient way to take care of the spread of information that placed too much knowledge about native society in the hands of European authorities? Pratten masters conflicting evidence with sensitivity and insight in this powerful book about encounter and social change in Africa.
- Contents:
- 1 Introduction: The Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries 1
- 'Murder at Ikot Okoro - Leopard Alleged' 1
- Leopard Men in Fact and Fiction 8
- A Social History of Murder 20
- 2 Of Leopards and Leaders: Annang Society to 1909 26
- Power and Personhood 26
- Trade and Transformation 45
- Conversion and Conquest 63
- 3 Resistance and Revival, 1910-1929 82
- The Landscape of Power 82
- The Spirit Movement 99
- The Women's War 114
- 4 Progressives and Power, 1930-1938 130
- Americans and Anthropology 131
- 'We Shall Not Be Ruled By Our Children' 141
- Women and the 'Infamous Traffic' 158
- 5 War and Public, 1939-1945 168
- 'John Bull' and the Reading Public 169
- Cassava and Crime 185
- 'Audacious Leopards' and 'Atrocious Deeds' 197
- 6 Inlaws and Outlaws, 1946 208
- 'The Time of Accusation' 208
- 'What is at the Bottom of the Leopard Man Epidemic?' 220
- 'The Leopard That Hides Its Spots' 239
- 7 Divinations and Delegations, 1947 261
- Police and Prophecy 262
- The Ibibo Union Touring Delegation 277
- The Man-Eating Leopard of Ikot Udoro 298
- 8 The Politics of 'Improvement', 1947-1960 311
- The Leopard's Legacy 312
- Nationalist Trajectories 319
- Expectations Revisited 327
- 9 Echoes of Ekpe Owo 339.
- Notes:
- Originally published: Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, c2007.
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [343]-417) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780253349569
- 0253349567
- OCLC:
- 148984568
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