This groundbreaking book explores the history and the cultural context of family claims to power in the Bamako kafu, or state (located in contemporary Mali in West Africa), primarily during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perinbam argues that the absence of precise information on the Bamako kafu's political status during this period empowered families to manipulate the myths, rituals, and ancestral legendsas well as belief systemsso that their claims to state power appeared incontrovertible. The French, on reaching the region, accepted these representations of...