Macola's important book has the great merit of providing a broad and complex comparative narrative of gun domestication within the central African savannah. In so doing, it paves the way to further explorations on the challenges and rewards that precolonial African meanings present to the historian striving to understand their legacies to contemporary central Africa. [Macola] reveals the limits of the theory of technological determinism and ascriptions of agency in a provocative argument about the localization of technology that removes its independent power but enhances its significance in other ways. Students of nineteenth-century history and colonial conquest in Africa will find here many challenges to received opinion as well as new entrees into the history of other eras and even technologies. Macola's book, with its focus on the symbolic and social value of firearms, tells us something new and original about Africa's history and in particular about the different ways in which African societies actively incorporated the exogenous flow of technology brought by international trade. At the same time, it is undoubtedly a valuable book for scholars who wish to understand better the present dynamics of warfare in central Africa. The Gun in Central Africa ... is a methodological triumph ... Macola's command of language and local histories opens a new window on not just the Scramble for Africa but also the motivations of today's militias in eastern Congo. ...Provides a fascinating perspective on the evolution of societies, trade, ethnic rivalries, and war in the decades leading up to the European scramble for the continent... Macola's broader purpose is to place the study of precolonial Africa back on the scholarly agenda and show how it remains relevant today. The conclusion of his fine book suggests a link between the adoption of firearms in central Africa a century and a half ago and the motivations and actions of the young men in today's eastern Congo who join militias and spread insecurity and violence. In tracking the history of guns in late precolonial and early colonial history, Macola deftly draws on concepts from science, technology, and society (STS), consumption, and material-culture studies, placing African history in conversation with those fields...In his final chapter, [he] connects his story to recent histories of violence, intercontinental trade, and armament in central Africa, demonstrating anew that precolonial African history is both accessible in, and essential to, understanding contemporary Africa. Giacomo Macola makes a serious contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century African history, and specifically to the history of warfare and military organization in Africa. Few scholars have positioned firearms at the centre of their work in quite this manner, making this an innovative and distinctive intervention.
Richard Reid, professor of African history, SOAS