author
D. E. C. Stirke
A British colonial administrator who turned years of firsthand experience in Barotseland into a detailed travel and cultural account. His writing offers a vivid early-20th-century view of life among the Barotse people and the colonial world around them.
1 Audiobook
Barotseland : eight years among the Barotse
by D. E. C. Stirke
About the author
Best known for Barotseland: Eight Years Among the Barotse, this writer drew on his own time living and working in Barotseland, in what is now Zambia. Library of Congress authority data identifies him as D. E. C. Stirke, and also links him to A Sikololo Phrase Book from 1915.
Contemporary references describe him as a Native Commissioner at Nalolo, Barotseland. That background helps explain the close, on-the-ground detail in his work, which mixes travel writing, observation, and commentary on local customs, language, and political life.
Today, his book is mainly read as a historical document: a record of the Barotse kingdom and of the colonial viewpoint from which he wrote. For listeners interested in African history, empire, and firsthand accounts from the early 1900s, his work offers a revealing and often striking perspective.