About the Book
The Man-Leopard Murders is an account of murder and politics in Africa and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press, and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in southeastern Nigeria attributed to the "man-leopard society." These murder mysteries, reported as the "biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world," were not just forensic but also historical. The murders were related to the broad impact of commercial, Christian, and colonial relations on Annang society, and debate and conflict over the moral order of Annang society.
About the Author :
David Pratten is Lecturer in African Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, St. Antony's College.
Review :
"[T]he book succeeds... in using the murders as a path into a rich social and cultural history of the Annang.... The result is... an impressive and vital contribution." --Jonathan Sadowsky, Case Western Reserve University, International Jrnl of African Historical Studies, Vol. 42.2 2009
"In the mid-1940s, 200 people were murdered in mysterious circumstances in southern Nigeria, allegedly killed by voracious man-leopards. A public worldview attributed the deaths to witchcraft. However, as anthropologist Pratten... points out, an anonymous letter written to the Nigerian Eastern Mail newspaper on March 10, 1945, exposed how a head court messenger was ultimately implicated in the murder; the messenger was executed in March 1946. The shape-shifting leopards were killing for motives that could not be explained by witchcraft or attributed to animals. The author's main contribution, based on solid evidence, cogent arguments, clear prose, and thick description, is to explain the causes.... Recommended." --T. Falola, University of Texas, Choice, September 2008
"Pratten does an excellent job of situating administrative approaches to--and understandings of--the murders within a matrix of broader colonial anxieties about the persistence of supernatural beliefs and practices in the African empire, and he attends to concomitant colonial attempts to criminalize anything that could be construed as occult. A major strength of the book is its subtle treatment of the more far-reaching issue of the emergence of colonial networks of "anthropological" knowledge for policymaking. This focus would render the book useful to scholars of areas outside of Nigeria, or even
outside of Africa, who work with the same genres of evidence as Pratten." --Katherine Luongo, Northeastern University, AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW, Vol. 52.1 April 2009
"Pratten's book is a triumphant achievement. Taking its cue from the sensationally reported leopard killings of 1945-1947, it opens out into a rich meditation on the nature of Nigerian society in the twilight years of colonialism. Wide-ranging and subtle, this is a major contribution to African studies and a wonderfully well realised conversation between the concerns of the anthropologist and the historian." --T. C. McCaskie, School of Oriental and African Studies
"Read as a historical-anthropological murder mystery (and it has clearly been recieved as such by some reviewers), this is a very satisfying book.... Due to the wealth of detail and desription provided, Pratten's book can be read as a contribution to a wide range of inquiries, and undoubtedly, those looking for specific material within the historical social sciences wil read it with profit and delight.... it will surely stand the test of time." --H-Africa Reviews, February 2010
"This is historical anthropology in full splendour. Pratten takes a series of enigmatic 'man--leopard' murders as a seminal starting point for sketching a surprisingly full picture of the explicit tensions in colonial Nigeria. The man--leopard murders prove to be about a breakdown of trust, particularly in the intimate sphere, but this interpretation leads in all sorts of directions. A true masterpiece!" --Peter Geschiere, University of Amsterdam
"Utilizing a remarkable array of sources, from European and African archives to contemporary oral-history interviews, Pratten weaves a rich tapestry that brings alive the complexity of the colonial period, incorporating police and court records, British administrators' reports, newspaper accounts, colonial anthropological research, Christian mission documents, and much more. The book is written in the manner of a detective
story, drawing readers into the mystery of what really underlay these murders and the multiple and lively debates that they engendered in both local Nigerian and British colonial accounts..." --Daniel Jordan Smith, Brown University, JRNL INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY
In the mid-1940s, 200 people were murdered in mysterious circumstances in southern Nigeria, allegedly killed by voracious man-leopards. A public worldview attributed the deaths to witchcraft. However, as anthropologist Pratten (Oxford) points out, an anonymous letter written to the Nigerian Eastern Mail newspaper on March 10, 1945, exposed how a head court messenger was ultimately implicated in the murder; the messenger was executed in March 1946. The shape-shifting leopards were killing for motives that could not be explained by witchcraft or attributed to animals. The author's main contribution, based on solid evidence, cogent arguments, clear prose, and thick description, is to explain the causes. Pratten argues for multivarious explanations set in resistance to British rule, the need to contest the European domination of local knowledge, competition over land and jobs, and intracommunity rivalries. The author reveals a series of tensions among individuals with different ambitions: husbands engaged in polygamous marriages; chiefs eager to collect tributes; nationalists who wanted to inherit power from the British; and criminals who wanted to challenge the police. The murders intersected with these rivalries and reveal the 'rarely glimpsed intimacies of everyday life.' Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty.T. Falola, University of Texas, Choice, September 2008
