Historical Studies Program, Dean of the College, and Africana Studies Program Present

How to Eat Copper: Indigenous Mining in 19th and 20th-century Central Africa

In mid-May each year, following the annual sorghum harvest, the heads of the Bayeke and Basanga of the southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), known as Katanga, declare: tuye tukadie mukuba, “let’s go eat the copper.” But what does it mean to “eat” copper? This talk traces the evolution of this unique idea during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. In drawing together copper artifacts, oral accounts, colonial ethnographies, historical images, and postcolonial propaganda, this talk suggests that the “eating” of copper represents the deep material and conceptual tie between agriculture and mining in Central African environmental systems.

Indigenous miners consistently re-imagined modes of human engagement with the earth and its resources to foster new economic and ecological potentials. The historical persistence of this notion of “eating copper” underscores the profound cultural and economic attachments that have shaped Congolese communities’ relationships to extraction in a locale that has become the epicenter for global decarbonization and inequality initiatives.

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Peter Vale is a historian of Africa, specializing in environmental systems, political economy, and empire to decolonization. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His present book project, The Copper Eaters: Inventing Capitalism in Central Africa, asks why, despite persistent economic decline and devastating ecological consequences, Congolese (DRC) workers, residents, and officials have maintained such a deep attachment to a copper mining industry dominated by extractive, foreign capital. Drawing on community bulletins in Kiswahili, Kisanga, and French; interviews with miners and executives; and archives across seven countries, he traces the layering of social institutions, environmental knowledge, and political interests that have shaped Congolese expectations towards mineral extraction. He is also working on developing a second research project, tentatively titled Pan-African Skies, which will offer the first transnational history of African airlines.

For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium

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