Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the regional experience of nationalist thought and practice in the two Copperbelt regions of Zambia and Katanga. It analyses why the Copperbelt was central to Zambian nationalism, whilst Katangese autochthons challenged Congolese nationalism with their own nationalist project.

Paper long abstract:

Studying the regional manifestations of nationalist thought and practice may enable researchers to avoid the teleological hazards of studying 'nationalism' through the rearview mirror of the successful nation-states that resulted from it. This paper examines nationalist discourses and practices in two inter-linked regions with ostensibly similar political economies, but which played very different roles in their countries' respective nationalist movements. It explores the ways in which mineral wealth, ethno-regional identities, migrant labour and expectations for independence interacted within and between the Northern Rhodesian and Katangese copperbelts. It seeks to explain why the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt was in the vanguard of an incorporative nationalist project (which nevertheless contained within it the seeds of later discontentment with post-colonial government policies) whilst in Katanga, autochthonous tendencies not only resisted incorporative Congolese nationalism but generated a Katangese nationalism of its own. The paper also explores interactions between Zambian and Congolese/Katangese nationalisms and assesses to what extent they were constructed in relation to each other during this formative period. It briefly examines the legacy of these experiences for the independent nation-states of both Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.