Abstract: This paper deploys the concept of “warlordism” to make sense of the bloody history of the Congo basin between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Growing out of the ruins of older and less predatory models of governance, “warlord states” came of age in the central African interior in the second half of the nineteenth century, the era of the long-distance caravan trades in ivory and slaves. The essay examines their emergence and distinguishing attributes. It then argues that the extractive warlord states of the Congo basin prefigured, and consequently easily adapted to, the looting economy of the Congo Free State, which therefore granted them an extended lease of life during the “Scramble for Africa” and the early colonial period. The essay’s epilogue briefly raises the question of historical continuities and asks whether the concept of warlordism might prove helpful in accounting for the Congo’s exceptionally violent postcoloniality.