Gabon

Roland Pourtier, Le Gabon, 2 vol. (1989), provides an introduction. Institut Pédagogique National (Gabon), Géographie et cartographie du Gabon (1983), is an illustrated atlas. Two studies of the Mpongwe are Henry Bucher, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Gabon Estuary: The Mpongwe to 1860,” in Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Africans in Bondage (1986), pp. 137–154, and “The Village of Glass and Western Intrusion: An Mpongwe Response to the American and French Presence in the Gabon Estuary: 1842–1845,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 6(3):363–400 (1973). James W. Fernandez, Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (1982), examines the most important syncretic cult. Pierre-Claver Maganga-Moussavou, Economic Development—Does Aid Help? (1983; originally published in French, 1982), critiques French economic involvement in independent Gabon. Marc Aicardi de Saint-Paul, Gabon: The Development of a Nation (1989; originally published in French, 1987), discusses economic policies and conditions.