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Belgian Colonial Rule (African Studies)

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Jun 17th, 2017
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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Central Africa’s long history witnessed growing connections to the world beyond as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and then increasing activity by East African Swahili traders and Europeans in the 1800s. Strictly speaking, the official period of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo did not begin until 1908, lasting until 1960, when the Congo achieved its independence. But Belgian involvement began earlier. In 1885, the United States and European states—including Belgium—recognized King Leopold II of Belgium as the sovereign of a huge state roughly contiguous with the Congo River basin called the État Indépendant du Congo, or the EIC. (Leopold II’s colony is generally called the Congo Free State in English. One sees the French term État Libre du Congo and the Flemish terms Onafhankelijke Staat Congo and Onafhankelijke Kongostaat much less frequently.) Although Leopold’s rule (1885–1908) was in many ways an international endeavor, it became increasingly Belgian over time, as the white colonial population became majority Belgian. African populations in many areas of the EIC suffered atrocities at the hands of European and African colonial agents because of Leopold II’s approach of extracting natural resources by force. Missionary and other documentation of this suffering prompted a humanitarian campaign, foreign criticism, and finally Belgian reproaches. In an unfolding of events that was anything but inevitable, Leopold ceded his colony to Belgium in 1908, after which Belgium ruled it as a colony known as the Congo belge (Belgian Congo) until 1960. As with all of Africa during the colonial era, the Belgian Congo was a European creation, and its borders and very existence did not reflect African interests or ethnic, linguistic, economic or other groupings. Belgians never completely ruled all of their huge colony, but they intensified their administration, enacted reforms, and introduced medical advances, Christianity, the French language, and much else. After World War I, Belgium gained Ruanda-Urundi, which the Belgians governed not as the League of Nations mandate it was but rather as just another part of their colonial empire. In 1960, Congolese realized their independence, creating the Democratic Republic of the Congo (renamed Zaire 1971–1997). The dividing of what follows into the Congo Free State period, the Belgian Congo period, and the postcolonial period is somewhat arbitrary; even though 1908 and 1960 were key milestones, the situation changed primarily in a juridical fashion in those years, and in important ways there was more continuity than change.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
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  7. Until relatively recently, overviews of Belgian colonialism in central Africa clearly centered on Europe and the colonial administration, and scholars acted as if African history began with the arrival of Europeans in the 19th century. Today one can say that overviews fall into two categories: those focused on Belgium, the colonial administration, and the colonial experience from a European viewpoint, and those centered on African history, the Congo, Congo’s peoples, and the variety of ways in which Africans experienced European colonial rule. In the former category is Buelens 2007, which examines colonial companies and colonial finance in great detail. A quite different kind of work focused on Belgium is Ewans 2003, a brief article providing a quick overview of Belgium’s overseas expansion, including how it fits into Belgian history and memories. Among Afrocentric works is Manning 1998, which provides a concise but necessarily broad-ranging history of all of Francophone Africa south of the Sahara 1880–1995, including the Belgian Congo. Also among those works focused on Africa is Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002, whose subtitle, “A People’s History,” indicates its deliberate focus on common people. Van Reybrouck 2010 also fits into this latter category, drawing as it does on everyday Africans’ experiences with and memories of the colonial era, drawn from Van Reybrouck’s work as a journalist, historian, and traveler in Africa. Early academic histories of Belgian imperialism, as opposed to those that were popular or nostalgic, were written mainly by non-Belgians, such as Slade 1962 (cited under Congo Free State Period) and Anstey 1966 (cited under Belgian State Rule Period). Generational change, additional archival resources becoming available, and perhaps the appearance of Hochschild 1998 (cited under Red Rubber) have led to a growth in history writing among Belgians and Congolese, among others. This has resulted in such fine syntheses as Vanthemsche 2007 and Ndaywel è Nziem 2009, both of which advance our knowledge and show us that more work needs to be done. Recent history writing and generational change also contributed to Vellut 2005, which brings together a plethora of expertise. In addition to the overviews listed here, see others in the Precolonial Period, Congo Free State Period, and Belgian State Rule Period sections.
  8.  
  9. Buelens, Frans. Congo 1885–1960: Een financieel-economische geschiedenis. Berchem, Belgium: EPO, 2007.
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  11. Buelen’s encyclopedic history of the Congo during the colonial period focuses on the metropole’s finances and the colonial economy, including colonial companies. It constitutes a massive resource for further research. It is much less valuable as a narrative or analytical history of colonial finance, political economy, or administration.
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Ewans, Martin. “Belgium and the Colonial Experience.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 11.2 (2003): 167–180.
  14. DOI: 10.1080/1460846032000164609Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. This short journal article serves as a quick introduction to Belgium and empire, including Belgians’ “amnesia” regarding their contentious colonial past.
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  17. Manning, Patrick. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa 1880–1995. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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  19. Although this revised edition suffers from a surprisingly large number of typographical errors, it is an extremely useful overview from an Africanist perspective. It is somewhat unusual to find historical treatment of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo placed in the larger context of francophone sub-Saharan Africa.
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  21. Ndaywel è Nziem, Isidore. Nouvelle histoire du Congo: Des origines à la République Démocratique. Brussels: Le Cri, 2009.
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  23. This new history of the Congo from its origins to the Democratic Republic is the revised and updated edition of Ndaywel’s Histoire générale du Congo (Paris: De Boeck, 1998), a huge narrative and analytical history of Congo, the first such work written by a Congolese scholar. To be read with Vellut 1999 (cited under Historiography).
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  25. Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. London: Zed Books, 2002.
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  27. Nzongola-Ntalaja is a renowned Congolese scholar. This ambitious volume covers Congo’s history from the advent of European rule to the end of the 20th century in less than 300 pages. It is strongest on the post-1960 period. Appropriate for undergraduates.
  28. Find this resource:
  29. Van Reybrouck, David. Congo: Een geschiedenis. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010.
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  31. Award-winning and best-selling history of the Congo from the late 1800s to the present written by journalist Van Reybrouck, based on his travels and numerous interviews. It deals quickly with the precolonial and Leopoldian periods to delve into Belgian colonial rule and the postcolonial period.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. Vanthemsche, Guy. La Belgique et le Congo: Empreintes d’une colonie 1885–1980. Brussels: Complexe, 2007.
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  35. Vanthemsche sets the standard in an impeccably researched volume on the Congo’s effects or “imprints” on Belgium’s domestic politics (limited), foreign affairs (allowed Belgium to “punch above its weight”), and economy (slight, except in certain areas). The costs and benefits analysis goes beyond the more limited scope of Stengers 1957 (cited under Congo Free State Period).
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  37. Vellut, Jean-Luc, ed. La mémoire du Congo: Le temps colonial. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 2005.
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  39. Some unjustly criticized this book on memory and the colonial era (and the Royal Museum for Central Africa exhibition from which it emerged) as an apologia for empire. Instead, it shows colonialism as an episode, albeit a violent one, in Africa’s long history. Contributors include an astonishing range of experts.
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  41. Reference Works
  42.  
  43. There is a wealth of reference works on Belgian rule in central Africa, only a few of which can be noted here. Useful statistics are to be found in the Annuaire statistique de la Belgique et du Congo belge 1910–1959. Official statistics and reports for the EIC period are to be found in the Bulletin officiel de l’État indépendant du Congo. With the Belgian state takeover of the EIC in 1908, the Bulletin officiel de l’État indépendant du Congo became the Bulletin officiel du Congo belge, which was published until 1960. The counterpart for official Belgian documentation on the League of Nations mandate of Ruanda-Urundi (later a United Nations trust territory after World War II) is the Bulletin officiel du Ruanda-Urundi, whose print run began in 1924 and ended in 1962, when Rwanda and Burundi gained their independence. An important source and publisher of scholarship has been Belgium’s foremost colonial academic group, today known in English as the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences, in French as the Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer (ARSOM), and in Flemish as the Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen (KAOW). ARSOM-KAOW has published a journal since 1929, as well as numerous monographs in various special series, for example Slade 1959 (cited under Missionaries and Religion). They also publish the Biographie belge d’outre-mer/Belgische overzeese biografie (Belgian overseas biography). These studies on Belgian colonialism, published by an official organization sponsored by the monarchy—especially those dating to the colonial era itself—need to be approached with caution. Yet ARSOM-KAOW undoubtedly has published works of great value over the many decades of its existence, right down to today. Finally, Poddar, et al. 2008 is a solid reference, especially but not only on colonial literature.
  44.  
  45. Biographie belge d’outre-mer/Belgische overzeese biografie. 8 vols. Brussels: Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer and Koninklijk Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen, 1948–1998.
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  47. Biographies of figures who contributed to Belgian history, especially colonial history. Subjects are overwhelmingly Belgian. Many entries are uncritical. One can find information on even the most obscure of colonial actors. Its name changed over time: early volumes are titled Biographie coloniale belge/Belgische koloniale biographie. Its publisher’s catalogue is available online.
  48. Find this resource:
  49. Bulletin officiel de l’État indépendant du Congo. 1885–1908.
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  51. Government reports, arrêtés royaux, and other official EIC government documentation produced during the Congo Free State period of Leopoldian rule.
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  53. Bulletin officiel du Congo belge. 1908–1959.
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  55. Government reports, arrêtés royaux, and other official government documentation of the Belgian Congo.
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  57. Bulletin officiel du Ruanda-Urundi. 1924–1962.
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  59. Government reports, arrêtés royaux, and other official government documentation of Ruanda-Urundi, which was a League of Nations mandate under Belgian control and later a United Nations trust territory after World War II.
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  61. Institut National de Statistique. Annuaire statistique de la Belgique et du Congo belge. 1910–1959.
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  63. Series of annual reports on Belgium and the Belgian Congo that provide a wealth of data.
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  65. Poddar, Prem, Rajeev S. Patke, and Lars Jensen, eds. A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures—Continental Europe and Its Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
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  67. The essays on Belgian overseas empire are of particular interest in this reference covering all the European overseas empires, from Denmark to Spain. It emphasizes literature but covers a variety of historical developments. Bibliographies offer guidance for research into history and literature.
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  69. Bibliographies
  70.  
  71. Dumoulin and Hanotte 1987 is short, and thus manageable. By far the most valuable bibliography is that of Vellut, et al. 1996, although still useful are several from the colonial era by Heyse, including Heyse 1952. As it is now somewhat dated, and since scholarship on Belgian colonial rule in the Congo has expanded dramatically as of late, Vellut, et al. 1996 can be supplemented by the references in historiographical essays Vanthemsche 2006 and Goddeeris and Kiangu 2011 (both cited under Historiography).
  72.  
  73. Dumoulin, Michel, and Jean Hanotte. “La Belgique et l’étranger: 1830–1962: Bibliographie des travaux parus entre 1969 et 1985.” In La Belgique et l’étranger aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Edited by Michel Dumoulin and Eddy Stols, 245–323. Brussels: Nauwelaerts, 1987.
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  75. A shorter bibliography of works published between 1969 and 1985 that examines Belgium and its relations with places abroad from 1830 to 1962, including of course the Congo. Because it focuses on works that appeared 1969–1985, there is overlap with Vellut, et al. 1996.
  76. Find this resource:
  77. Heyse, Théodore. Bibliographie du Congo belge et du Ruanda-Urundi (1939–1951): Documentation générale: Bibliographies et centres d’études, expositions, presse et propagande. Cahiers belges et congolais 19. Brussels: G. van Campenhout, 1952.
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  79. Heyse published several bibliographies during the colonial period listing various studies on the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. Although dated, the researcher can find useful primary and secondary sources in this and other similarly titled Heyse bibliographies. Use in concert with Vellut, et al. 1996, since their bibliography begins c. 1960.
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  81. Vellut, Jean-Luc, Florence Loriaux, and Françoise Morimont. Bibliographie historique du Zaïre à l’époque coloniale (1880–1960): Travaux publiés en 1960–1996. Louvain, Belgium: Centre d’histoire de l’Afrique, 1996.
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  83. Exhaustive. This historical bibliography of the Congo during the colonial period is more useful than the historiographical essays Vanthemsche 2006 and Goddeeris and Kiangu 2011 (both cited under Historiography) because it is a true bibliography, including not only major published works but also little-known monographs, doctoral theses, and master’s theses, many available only in Belgium.
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  85. Historiography
  86.  
  87. Belgian colonial history, strictly speaking, was not much of a field of inquiry for most of the 20th century. Early large-scale historical studies such as Stengers 1957 (cited under Congo Free State Period) of the Congo’s cost to Belgium are rare. When they first appeared, such accounts were generally Eurocentric and looked on colonialism favorably, which paralleled mainstream viewpoints reflected in the historiographies of the other European colonial powers. Historical research in Belgium into the Congo and Belgium’s colonial past dropped off dramatically after Congo’s independence in 1960, and, with rare exceptions (e.g., Louis and Stengers 1968), few studied Belgium’s colonial past, as is made clear in Stengers 1979. Meanwhile, higher education had only just begun for Congolese with the establishment of the University of Lovanium in 1954. Thus research was dominated by non-Belgians until the recent resurgence of interest in Belgium itself, as Vanthemsche 2006 and Goddeeris and Kiangu 2011 make clear. Congolese historians have begun to make their mark as well; see Likaka 1997, cited under Agriculture and Rural Life, and Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002, cited under General Overviews. Vellut 1999 interrogates the role of nationalism in the writing of Congolese histories, such as Ndaywel è Nziem 2009 (cited under General Overviews). Roes 2010 is a solid introduction to violence and colonialism during the Leopoldian period, which has received the lion’s share of scholars’ attention. Quite a different work is Vansina 1994, which is something between an autobiography of Vansina’s professional life and a history of African history.
  88.  
  89. Goddeeris, Idesbald, and Sindani E. Kiangu. “Congomania in Academia: Recent Historical Research on the Belgian Colonial Past.” BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review 126.4 (2011): 54–74.
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  91. A recent, up-to-date overview of literature on Belgian colonial history and African history. An excellent companion to Vanthemsche 2006.
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  93. Louis, W. Roger, and Jean Stengers, eds. E. D. Morel’s History of the Congo Reform Movement. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968.
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  95. Contains Morel’s history of the Congo Reform Movement, an essay by Roger Louis on Morel and the Congo Reform Association, and an essay by Stengers on Morel and Belgium. Stengers and Louis’s enlightening commentary on Morel’s history is alone worth reading.
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  97. Roes, Aldwin. “Towards a History of Mass Violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo, 1885–1908.” South African Historical Journal 64.4 (2010): 634–670.
  98. DOI: 10.1080/02582473.2010.519937Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. An introduction to the contentious and difficult topic of violence and colonialism during the period 1885–1908, which is the subject of an extensive literature. Roes breaks down the overemphasis on monolithic top-down approaches that focus too much on Leopold II and the colonial state.
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  101. Stengers, Jean. “Belgian Historiography since 1945.” In Reappraisals in Overseas History. Edited by P. C. Emmer and H. L. Wesseling and translated by Frank Perlin, 161–181. Leiden, The Netherlands: Leiden University Press, 1979.
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  103. An early and still useful consideration of the historiography of Belgian imperialism in central Africa, but it needs to be complemented now by Vanthemsche 2006 and Goddeeris and Kiangu 2011.
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  105. Vansina, Jan. Living with Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
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  107. In this autobiography, Vansina revisits his professional life, which overlaps with the advent and development of historical studies of Africa in Europe, the United States, and Africa itself. Does not deliberately introduce historians, other scholars, and their works, but gives the reader a feel for the zeitgeist.
  108. Find this resource:
  109. Vanthemsche, Guy. “The Historiography of Belgian Colonialism in the Congo.” In Europe and the World in European Historiography. Edited by Csaba Lévai, 89–119. Pisa, Italy: Pisa University Press, 2006.
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  111. Essential for understanding the historiography of Belgian colonialism in Africa. The best starting point for specialists.
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  113. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “Prestige et pauvreté de l’histoire nationale: A propos d’une histoire nationale du Congo.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis 77.2 (1999): 480–517.
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  115. A thought piece on the landmark national history of the Congo, Histoire du Zaire, by Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem (see Ndaywel è Nziem 2009, cited under General Overviews, first published in 1998). Vellut questions the pros and cons of a national history of the Congo.
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  117. Journals
  118.  
  119. Unlike some other fields of “imperial history,” Belgian colonial history has just one journal dedicated to it: the Bulletin des séances/Mededelingen der Zittingen of the Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer/Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen. The Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer/Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen also publishes other works, including monographs. Since 1980 the journal Annales Æquatoria has been published each year by editor Honoré Vinck at the Centre Æquatoria in Bamanya, Équateur province. Annales Æquatoria focuses on African history, languages, and culture, especially of the Mongo people. It was originally published as the journal Æquatoria from 1937 to 1962. The current journal and back issues have much to offer historians, anthropologists, and others. In Belgium, only more recently does one find increasing numbers of articles and reviews on colonial subjects finding their way into other journals, including what is probably Belgium’s flagship historical journal, the Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis.
  120.  
  121. Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer/Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen.
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  123. In addition to its Bulletin des Séances, the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences publishes monographs and edited collections in series such as Mémoires in-8°/Verhandelingen in-8° and Fontes Historiæ Africanæ. Subject areas include humanities, social and natural sciences, religion, and medicine, among others. A catalogue is available online.
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  125. Annales Æquatoria.
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  127. A successor to the journal Æquatoria (1937–1962), founded by Edmond Boelaert and Gustaaf Hulstaert in the Belgian Congo. Relaunched in 1980, it publishes research into the languages, cultures, and histories of the peoples of central Africa. Full text available online for 1980–2009.
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  129. Bulletin des séances/Mededelingen der Zittingen.
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  131. Since 1929 the journal of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences, Belgium’s premier colonial academy. Known as the Institut royal colonial belge (1928–), Académie royale des sciences coloniales (1956–), and ARSOM (1959–). In Flemish: Koninklijk Belgisch Koloniaal Instituut, Koninklijke Academie voor Koloniale Wetenschappen, and Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen, respectively.
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  133. Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis.
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  135. The country’s flagship journal of historical research covering all time periods; its name means Belgian Journal of Philology and History. For most of its history, the journal only occasionally addressed colonial subjects, although this has begun to change in recent years.
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  137. Primary Sources
  138.  
  139. Leopold II supposedly burned all the Congo state archives, saying that while he might have to give up his colony, no one had the right to know what he had done there. This tale may be apocryphal, because plentiful archival sources on Belgian colonialism exist, although much less on African history strictly speaking. The abundance of primary sources on African history from a European or Western perspective is due in part to the early involvement of foreigners, including the humanitarian campaign against the Congo Free State atrocities. Benedetto 1996, along with Vellut 2005 and Vellut 2010 (both cited under Missionaries and Religion), makes this clear. There is also the fact that the Belgian state rule period was more than twice as long as the Leopoldian period, and the colonial administration generated a huge archive. Most of it is located in the Archives africaines of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères/Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken in Brussels, which took over the Ministry of Colonies’ archives once the latter ceased to exist. Deslaurier 2003 is a great, quick introduction to how to navigate the Archives africaines. There are other materials in the Belgian state archives, the Archives générales du Royaume/Algemeen Rijksarchief, and critical collections at the Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale/Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika. Although not official, the journal Congo: Revue générale de la Colonie belge/Algemeen tijdschrift van de Belgische Kolonie is a great primary source to understand the development of the official mind of Belgian imperialism. Also providing insights into the official mind is the recent publication in Vanthemsche 2009 of the correspondence between King Albert and Belgium’s first Minister of Colonies, Jules Renkin.
  140.  
  141. Archives africaines.
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  143. The Archives africaines at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives in Brussels are those of the former Ministry of Colonies and, as such, essential. Deslaurier 2003 provides a guide to how to navigate the Archives africaines.
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  145. Archives générales du Royaume/Algemeen Rijksarchief.
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  147. These are the kingdom’s official state archives. Some collections are in the provinces, but the chief ones are in Brussels. The main ones include collections on key parts of the Belgian colonial endeavor, including the archives of Union minière du Haut-Katanga. The website identifies its colonial holdings.
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  149. Benedetto, Robert, ed. Presbyterian Reformers in Central Africa: A Documentary Account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the Human Rights Struggle in the Congo, 1890–1918. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1996.
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  151. An example of an extended printed primary source.
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  153. Congo: Revue générale de la Colonie belge/Algemeen tijdschrift van de Belgische Kolonie. 1920–1940.
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  155. Formed from the merger of Revue Congolaise and Onze Kongo, Congo was a semiofficial journal that offers the researcher a wealth of articles and data as well as reprinted (sometimes abridged) articles from foreign governments and publications. Renamed Zaïre 1947–1961.
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  157. Deslaurier, Christine. “La documentation africaine à Bruxelles: Les fonds du ministère belge des Affaires étrangères (Burundi, Congo, Rwanda).” Afrique & Histoire 1.1 (2003): 223–234.
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  159. This is a succinct guide for finding “African documentation” in Brussels. Thus it is a guide to the archival holdings of the Archives africaines at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which are the archives of the defunct Ministry of Colonies.
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  161. Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale/Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika.
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  163. Located outside Brussels in Tervuren, the Royal Museum for Central Africa is vital for researchers, including historians, anthropologists, and scientists. It holds Henry Morton Stanley’s papers and has an extensive film archive. The Archives historiques privées (private historical archives) hold private papers, including those of prominent colonials, explorers, and administrators.
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  165. Vanthemsche, Guy, ed. Le Congo belge pendant la Première Guerre mondiale: Les rapports du ministre des Colonies Jules Renkin au roi Albert Ier 1914–1918. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique/Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België, 2009.
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  167. This book on the Belgian Congo during World War I contains written correspondence between Minister of Colonies Renkin and King Albert. Africanists will find few details about what was happening on the ground in the Congo, but the correspondence offers insights into the two men’s minds and their relationship.
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  169. Precolonial Period
  170.  
  171. For a long time scholars did not consider central Africa as having had its own history, since history supposedly began with the arrival of Europeans. This is no longer the view. Moreover, no longer is it presumed that European intervention was determinative, as Thornton 1983 shows. Fabian 2000 (cited under Creation of the Congo Free State) critiques traditional understandings of supposedly rational Europeans embarking on expeditions of discovery in central Africa. Birmingham and Martin 1983 is a good introduction to the precolonial period for specialists and generalists. Vansina 1990 is an incredible book in terms of its clarity and scope, and especially in terms of the strength, variety, and use of his sources. Vansina brings his expertise to bear on Rwanda’s precolonial past in Vansina 2004. On the precolonial period of the Congo, see also Ndaywel è Nziem 2009 (cited under General Overviews).
  172.  
  173. Birmingham, David, and Phyllis M. Martin, eds. History of Central Africa. Vol. 1, The Early Years, to 1870. London: Longman, 1983.
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  175. Like the other volumes in their three-volume series with Longman (Birmingham and Martin 1983, cited under Belgian State Rule Period, and Birmingham and Martin 1998, cited under Decolonization and Independence), this edited collection covers much more than just the area that became the Congo.
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  177. Thornton, John K. The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
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  179. Thornton’s Annales school (longue durée) approach decenters the history of the Kongo Kingdom from Portuguese intervention, revealing that indigenous developments rather than Portuguese influence primarily shaped the past. NB: the area that was the Kingdom of Kongo was just a corner, in the west, of what became the Belgian Congo.
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  181. Vansina, Jan. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
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  183. This remarkable synthesis of thousands of years of equatorial Africa’s history is acutely conscious of sources, modes of interpretation, and limits of possible understanding. Historian Vansina uses his background in anthropology and philology to unveil a central African political tradition that ultimately could not withstand stresses of the colonial period.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Vansina, Jan. Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
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  187. Using oral histories and analyses of language, as he does in Vansina 1990, the author not only traces the origins of the Hutu-Tutsi divide much further back than the colonial period but also upends traditional understandings of the kingdom’s past based on court historians’ histories.
  188. Find this resource:
  189. Congo Free State Period
  190.  
  191. The Congo Free State has been shrouded in murkiness and controversy since its inception in the 1880s. Although in recent decades debate has shifted to the cost of colonization borne by Africans, an early argument among Europeans focused on how much the Congo cost Belgium, which Stengers 1957 investigates. Slade 1962 is still a useful and evenhanded survey of the earliest period of Belgian involvement in central Africa. Stengers and Vansina 1985 is also evenhanded, but shorter and more recent. Although criticized by some for leaning pro-colonial, or even being an apologist for empire, Jean Stengers dedicated years to the careful study of Belgian colonialism when it was a subject outside the mainstream of historical research in Belgium. Thus the value of Stengers 1989, which provides in some ways a synthesis of some of his thinking. Vanthemsche 2007 (cited under General Overviews) covers the Congo Free State and Belgian rule eras, with a focus on the colony’s effects on Belgium. Biographies of Leopold II (Ascherson 1999 and Emerson 1979, both cited under Leopold II) necessarily delve into the Congo Free State extensively. Wynants 1997 is not a broad overview but rather a detailed and well-illustrated case study of Belgian-Congolese interactions at the 1897 Tervuren colonial exposition. Hochschild 1998 (cited under Red Rubber) focuses mainly on the Congo Free State period, the abuses in the Congo, and the humanitarian campaign against Leopold II. Hochschild engaged the public and helped precipitate a great deal of research on Belgian colonialism, even if some of his claims, such as that the population of the Congo dropped by ten million people, have been questioned. Fetter 1990 addresses the question of demographics. On Ruanda-Urundi during this early period, in addition to Louis 1963, see Vansina 2004 (cited under Precolonial Period) and Des Forges 2011 (cited under Belgian State Rule Period).
  192.  
  193. Fetter, Bruce, ed. Demography from Scanty Evidence: Central Africa in the Colonial Era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990.
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  195. These essays provide an introduction to demography and the history of central Africa and also many references for further research. Specific chapters focus on the Congo, showing the variety of forces at work leading to population decline from the 1880s, which was not reversed until the 1920s.
  196. Find this resource:
  197. Louis, W. Roger. Ruanda-Urundi, 1884–1919. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.
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  199. Emphasizes the diplomacy and politics that created Ruanda-Urundi, the German colonial administration, and the peace settlement that turned it over to Belgium. Remains the standard account.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Slade, Ruth M. King Leopold’s Congo: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Congo Independent State. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
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  203. An early survey of Leopoldian rule in the Congo. Although many new materials have been located and used since it appeared, it remains solid and evenhanded.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Stengers, Jean. Combien le Congo a-t-il coûté à la Belgique? Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, 1957.
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  207. Now surpassed (see Vanthemsche 2007, cited under General Overviews), Stengers’s study of how much the Congo cost Belgium is an early, ambitious consideration of colonial economics and finance. Its focus on metropolitan finances and whether Belgium benefited from the colony, as opposed to the reverse, reveals the mindset of the time it was written.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Stengers, Jean. Congo, mythes et réalités: 100 ans d’histoire. Paris: Duculot, 1989.
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  211. Stengers never published a full-length study of Belgian colonial history; this essay collection on myths and realities in Belgium’s colonial past might be as close as he got. It reflects careful scholarship but muted willingness to question commonly held myths. Like his other works, it is primarily focused on Belgium.
  212. Find this resource:
  213. Stengers, Jean, and J. Vansina. “King Leopold’s Congo, 1886–1908.” In The Cambridge History of Africa. Vol. 6, From 1870 to 1905. Edited by Roland Oliver and G. N. Sanderson, 315–358. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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  215. A short introduction to the Leopoldian era in central Africa. The whole sixth volume of The Cambridge History of Africa is worthwhile; for the researcher of Belgian colonialism, chapters by A. E. Atmore on pre-partition Africa and G. N. Sanderson on the causes of European imperialism provide good overviews.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Wynants, Maurits. Des ducs de Brabant aux villages congolais: Tervuren et l’exposition coloniale 1897. Translated by Chantal Kesteloot. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 1997.
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  219. French translation of Van hertogen en kongolezen: Tervuren en de Koloniale Tentoonstelling 1897 (Tervuren, Belgium: Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika, 1997). Richly illustrated, it explores connections between the Saxe-Coburg dynasty’s landholdings outside the village of Tervuren, the 1897 colonial exposition, and Africans from central Africa—connections forged by Leopold II’s colonial ambitions.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Creation of the Congo Free State
  222.  
  223. An untold number of works have touched on how Leopold II’s colony came into being in the first place, either by specialists focusing on the Congo or generalists working on the “Scramble for Africa.” Fabian 2000 looks into the precolonial period and tears down myths of the lone, white, rational European explorer who supposedly “opened up” central Africa for the imperialism that followed. As Förster, et al. 1988 demonstrates, the Berlin Conference and the recognition of the Congo Free State are complex developments, although they are not the first to point this out, of course. Maréchal 1992 furthers our understanding of how the Congo Free State’s administration and very nature were in many ways tantamount to an armed force. Vandersmissen 2009 reveals the significance of other people and forces besides Leopold II in the creation of the Congo colony.
  224.  
  225. Fabian, Johannes. Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
  226. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520221222.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  227. By questioning the concept of rationality, Fabian forces us to reassess explanations for explorations, imperialism, and conquest, for which rational motives were supposedly central. In a fascinating study of explorers in central Africa, not all of them Belgian, he finds that Europeans often operated beyond sane frames of mind.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Förster, Stig, Wolfgang Mommsen, and Ronald Robinson, eds. Bismarck, Europe, and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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  231. Focuses not on the Congo but on the Berlin Conference. Provides a wealth of information, including German-language scholarship for English readers. It contextualizes the Congo Free State’s creation, which is important because it is still often held that the conference partitioned Africa and first recognized the EIC; it did neither.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Maréchal, Philippe. De “Arabische” campagne in het Maniema-gebied (1892–1894): Situering binnen het kolonisatieproces in de Onafhankelijke Kongostaat. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 1992.
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  235. Few have studied colonial wars under the EIC, so Maréchal’s work on the “Arab” campaign in the Maniema region is exceptional. He reminds us that Leopold’s so-called civilizing mission entailed not just “campaigns” against slavers but warfare, and he explains how myths about the campaigns took hold, justifying colonial rule.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Vandersmissen, Jan. Koningen van de wereld: Leopold II en de aardrijkskundige beweging. Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2009.
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  239. For years we have known about the important roles British, French, and German geographical societies played in their respective countries’ overseas conquests, but in the Belgian case the scholarship on this subject was skimpy until Vandersmissen’s synthesis on Leopold II and the geographical movement, titled “kings of the world.”
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  241. Leopold II
  242.  
  243. Although scholars continue to debate the origins of European imperialism in Africa and the nature of Belgian colonial rule, there is little disputing that Leopold II was the central figure who initiated Belgian involvement in central Africa, as Stengers 1949–1950 shows. This is amply confirmed in the biographies Ascherson 1999 and Emerson 1979 and later retellings like Hochschild 1998 (cited under Red Rubber). As such, Leopold II has been and continues to be a dominant figure in the historiography. In some cases, this tends to obscure more than it reveals, because much more determined the course of Belgian colonial history than one man in Europe who never set foot in central Africa. Recent scholarship such as Viaene 2008 (cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians) decenters history away from the king. Hochschild 1998 (cited under Red Rubber) and others have attacked Leopold II and Belgians generally for the use of bloody Congo profits in the rebuilding of the urban infrastructure in Belgium during Leopold’s rule. Ranieri 1973 puts the king’s ambitious urban renewal projects funded by his Congo monies into perspective.
  244.  
  245. Ascherson, Neal. The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the Congo. London: Granta, 1999.
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  247. An early work (originally published in 1963), perhaps reprinted to capitalize on growing interest following the publication of Hochschild 1998 (cited under Red Rubber). Although Leopold II’s colonial ambitions come through clearly, he focuses more on Leopold’s machinations to hide Congo profits rather than on the effects of colonialism in Africa.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Emerson, Barbara. Leopold II of the Belgians: King of Colonialism. New York: St. Martin’s, 1979.
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  251. Gives a sense of the king as a person. Recognized as sovereign over the Congo River basin in 1885, Leopold II then had to establish control there, which he did with gusto, including a serious attempt to grab territory along the Nile. Reveals Leopold II’s unbounded ambitions.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Ranieri, Liane. Léopold II: Urbaniste. Brussels: Hayez, 1973.
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  255. This study of Leopold II as urban planner is notable not only for its descriptions of the king’s urban projects funded by colonial profits—one of his most contentious legacies—but also how it places those Congo-funded projects in the context of the king’s refashioning of urban space in Belgium.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Stengers, Jean. “La place de Léopold II dans l’histoire de la colonisation.” Nouvelle Clio 1–2 (1949–1950): 515–536.
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  259. The literature on the causes of European imperialism in the late 19th and 20th centuries is immense. Stengers situates Leopold II’s place in the history of colonialism by arguing that in the Belgian case it was the king that drove overseas conquest rather than nationalism, capitalism, or other causes.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Red Rubber
  262.  
  263. The EIC’s regime of terror, which exploited African labor, naturally occurring rubber, and ivory, came to be known as “red rubber.” Leopold II’s colonial regime became famous for two reasons. First, it was brutal, as was publicized at the time and as numerous works of scholarship have shown since, including Harms 1983 and Vangroenweghe 1986. Second, dedicated humanitarians, political journalists, and authors publicized the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State, the best known being Briton E. D. Morel, who created the Congo Reform Association. Hochschild 1998 retold the story of the regime’s abuses and the struggle of Morel and others against it in gripping fashion, gaining an international audience. Much of his book was based on the work of other scholars, such as Vangroenweghe 1986 and especially Marchal 1996b, Marchal 1996a, and Marchal 2008. Hochschild stated that Leopold II burned all the Congo state records in order to cover up his tracks. Yet the outpouring of research over the years on Leopold’s regime, much of it based on official state archives, shows that many records survived. Although Hochschild and others have rightly lauded Morel for his humanitarian campaign that forced Leopold’s hand by 1908, thereby helping end abuses in the Congo, Harms 1975 does show that the end of red rubber preceded the turnover of the colony to Belgium rather than following from it.
  264.  
  265. Harms, Robert. “The End of Red Rubber: A Reassessment.” Journal of African History 16.1 (1975): 73–88.
  266. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700014110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. Shows that rubber as part of the Leopoldian colonial economy and budget was already greatly diminished well before the Congo was turned over to Belgium in 1908. Thus, claims that post-1908 Belgian reforms ended the abuses of red rubber are moot, if not disingenuous.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Harms, Robert. “The World Abir Made: The Maringa-Lopori Basin, 1885–1903.” African Economic History 12 (1983): 125–139.
  270. DOI: 10.2307/3601320Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. A short study of one region of the Congo that provides a quick introduction to the atrocities of the Leopoldian period in the Congo and the cause of the abuses, which was the maximum extraction of resources at the lowest possible cost.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
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  275. A bestselling book that retells the history of the abuses of the Leopoldian regime and of the humanitarian campaign to stop them in a riveting, journalistic fashion. Suitable for undergraduates.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Marchal, Jules. E. D. Morel contre Léopold II: L’histoire du Congo 1900–1910. 2 vols. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996a.
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  279. First appeared as E. D. Morel tegen Leopold II en de Kongostaat (Antwerp: EPO, 1985) under the pseudonym A. M. Delathuy. Addresses the later years of Leopold’s EIC rule. Includes long quotations from what were then new sources, but sometimes without adequate context or interpretation.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Marchal, Jules. L’État libre du Congo: Paradis perdu: L’histoire du Congo 1876–1900. 2 vols. Borgloon, Belgium: Paula Bellings, 1996b.
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  283. Examines the “paradise lost” of the Congo Free State’s first two decades. Marchal’s books (sometimes under the pseudonym A. M. Delathuy) are useful because they reveal new sources and findings, but their tendency toward extended quotations from archival sources with little context or engagement with the literature lessens their effectiveness.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Marchal, Jules. Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo. Translated by Martin Thom. London: Verso, 2008.
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  287. English abridgment of Travail forcé pour l’huile de palme de Lord Leverhulme: L’histoire du Congo 1910–1945 (Borgloon, Belgium: Paula Bellings, 2001), the third volume of L’Histoire du Congo 1910–1945. Reveals what were new sources at the time, but the author’s tendency toward extended quotations from archives with little context or engagement with the literature lessens its effectiveness.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Vangroenweghe, Daniel. Du sang sur les lianes: Léopold II et son Congo. Brussels: Didier Hatier, 1986.
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  291. Originally published in Flemish as Rood rubber: Leopold II en zijn Kongo (Brussels: Elsevier, 1985). Trained as an anthropologist, Vangroenweghe wrote about “blood on the vines” to reveal the nature of Leopoldian rule in the Congo. Well-written and shocking; one wonders why Hochschild 1998 was so startling when published later on.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. African Responses and Resistance during the Congo Free State Period
  294.  
  295. Whereas there are many sources for understanding the Leopoldian regime and European experiences during the colonial era, African sources about the experiences of Africans are terribly limited. In some cases, we have to fill in the blanks to reconstruct what happened in the past, as Etambala 1993 does. Many scholars have taken to reconstructing the past based on oral interviews, for example Harms 1987 (cited under African Reactions and Resistance to Belgian Colonialism) and Van Reybrouck 2010 (cited under General Overviews). In addition to what Martin 1983 (cited under Belgian State Rule Period) says about the violence of empire, Isaacman and Vansina 1985 demonstrates from an Africanist perspective how people fiercely resisted the coming of Congo Free State rule and its successor regime under the Belgians. As the Congo Free State–Belgian state rule periodization is in many ways arbitrary, many works consider African history across this time period, such as Fabian 1986, Geary 2002, Harms 1987, and Vansina 2010 (all cited under African Reactions and Resistance to Belgian Colonialism). Thus it is also useful to consult the section on African Reactions and Resistance to Belgian Colonialism.
  296.  
  297. Etambala, Zana Aziza. “Carnet de route d’un voyageur congolais: Masala à l’Exposition Universelle d’Anvers, en 1885. Première partie.” Afrika Focus 9.3 (1993): 215–237.
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  299. Continued in Afrika Focus 10.1–2 (1994): 3–28, available online. This two-part essay recreates one African’s travels to Antwerp’s 1885 World’s Fair. Masala’s rather favorable experience in Belgium reveals European imperialism’s complexity. Although Etambala had to fill in some blanks, the excellent result suggests a novel approach to writing history.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Isaacman, A., and J. Vansina. “African Initiatives and Resistance in Central Africa, 1880–1914.” In The General History of Africa. VII. Africa Under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Edited by A. Adu Boahen, 169–193. London: Heinemann, 1985.
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  303. Now dated, this essay will offer few references for further research. It is nonetheless useful because it concisely discusses resistance in what became Leopold’s Congo in the broader context of Central Africa, that is, not only the Congo but also Zambia, Malawi, Angola, and Mozambique.
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  305. Belgian State Rule Period
  306.  
  307. After Leopold II turned the Congo Free State over to Belgium in 1908, it became a Belgian colony known as the Congo belge, or Belgian Congo. Stengers 1963 provides a detailed look at the negotiations that led up to the creation of the Charte coloniale, or colonial charter, the legal document Belgium created to take over the colony. Anstey 1966 is the first full-length history in English of the Belgian colony, and although dated and somewhat uneven in its analysis, it remains a rare work treating the whole of the state rule period with the goal of examining Belgian colonial rule specifically. Jewsiewicki 1986 is a shorter and more recent general account of the Belgian state rule period. Essays in Birmingham and Martin 1983 bring an Africanist perspective to the colonial period and make available to English readers interpretations of the Congo and its neighbors and their colonial eras. For example, Martin 1983 in the collection addresses colonial violence in central Africa generally, and is thus useful for those seeking to place the violence of the EIC in perspective. Vellut 1983 (cited under Mining) unveils the centrality of mining to the Belgian colonial economy, as well as its effects on Africans. On the later period of colonial rule and decolonization, Thomas, et al. 2008 adds a comparative perspective, although its approach is top-down and institutional. Davidson 1955 provides a personal account of the effects of Belgian rule on the ground in central Africa. Des Forges 2011 reveals the complexity of the situation in Rwanda as German colonialism became Belgian rule.
  308.  
  309. Anstey, Roger. King Leopold’s Legacy: The Congo under Belgian Rule 1908–1960. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
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  311. Anstey discusses the Congo Free State, the post-1908 colonial administrative structure, the role of private capital, pressures put on Congolese society, medicine, religious movements, post–World War II investment, urbanization, race problems, and the momentum leading to independence. Although atrocities would have been known to Anstey, he downplays them.
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  313. Birmingham, David, and Phyllis M. Martin, eds. History of Central Africa. Vol. 2, The Colonial Era, 1870–1960. London: Longman, 1983.
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  315. Like the other two books in this series (Birmingham and Martin 1983, cited under Precolonial Period; and Birmingham and Martin 1998, cited under Decolonization and Independence), the essays cover much more than just the areas of Africa under Belgian rule, from the perspective of historians of Africa. Of particular interest are essays by Jewsiewicki, Martin, and Vellut.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Davidson, Basil. The African Awakening. London: Jonathan Cape, 1955.
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  319. An Africanist recounts his experiences traveling through central Africa in the early 1950s, revealing a contrast between thriving Belgian colonial territories and moribund Portuguese colonies, complicating the picture for anyone who wants to see Belgian colonial rule as an unmitigated disaster.
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  321. Des Forges, Alison Liebhafsky. Defeat Is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896–1931. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
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  323. Des Forges’s dissertation from 1972, published by Wisconsin after her untimely death. Important in how it smashes the colonizer-colonized dichotomy by showing competition not only between Europeans and Africans but among Africans.
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  325. Jewsiewicki, B. “Belgian Africa.” In The Cambridge History of Africa. Vol. 7, From 1905 to 1940. Edited by A. D. Roberts, 460–493. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
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  327. A short introduction to Belgian imperialism in the Congo in the 20th century.
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  329. Martin, Phyllis M. “The Violence of Empire.” In History of Central Africa. Vol. 2. Edited by David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin, 1–26. London: Longman, 1983.
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  331. Discusses both the structural and individual causes of colonial violence. Places violence in the Belgian Congo in the context of the rest of central Africa. Shows how multiple factors and actors contributed to violence, not just Europeans intervening from abroad.
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  333. Stengers, Jean. Belgique et Congo: L’elaboration de la Charte coloniale. Brussels: La Renaissance du Livre, 1963.
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  335. An early work on Belgium, the Congo, and the development of the Colonial Charter. Goes into great detail as to the political, juridical, and constitutional debates that went into the turnover of the Congo to Belgium, in 1908. Should be read in conjunction with Viaene 2008 (cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians).
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Thomas, Martin, Bob Moore, and L. J. Butler. Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918–1975. London: Hodder Education, 2008.
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  339. In this careful study, the Belgian Congo figures only as a shorter chapter, written by Martin Thomas, an expert on French empire. The perspective is generally Eurocentric. The book places Belgian Congo developments in the context of what was going on in the British, French, and Portuguese empires.
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  341. Administration
  342.  
  343. It would be a mistake to read the Belgian colonial state period back into the past. The Congo Free State administration under Leopold II was in many ways international, even if most soldiers and functionaries were Belgian by the last years of his rule, as Gann and Duignan 1979 shows. Although the Congo Free State was in many ways a military operation to extract maximum wealth at the lowest possible cost, there were other colonials involved, and Salmon 2004 provides insight into Belgian colonial mentalities. During the Belgian state rule period, Belgium was known for a colonial administration that treasured practical results over theory. Gann and Duignan 1978 provides biographical sketches of key Belgian colonial administrators, while Vanderlinden 1994 provides an in-depth and sympathetic portrayal of just one, Pierre Ryckmans. More circumspect are Vellut 1982 and Vellut 1996, which show the administration was ideological and marked by close collaboration between capital and administration. Dembour 2000 takes a more anthropological approach to get into the minds of colonial administrators.
  344.  
  345. Dembour, Marie-Bénédicte. Recalling the Belgian Congo: Conversations and Introspection. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000.
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  347. An anthropological study that plumbs former administrators’ memories to inform us about colonial administration and history and memory.
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  349. Gann, L. H., and Peter Duignan, eds. African Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa. New York: Free Press, 1978.
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  351. Gann and Duignan take a biographical approach to European rulers in colonial Africa. Of particular interest are the two essays by Bruce Fetter and William B. Norton on Belgian Congo governors-general Martin Rutten and Pierre Ryckmans, respectively.
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  353. Gann, L. H., and Peter Duignan. The Rulers of Belgian Africa, 1884–1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.
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  355. One in a series of works by these authors on colonial rulers in Africa. They posit that there were positive as well as negative aspects of Belgian rule in the period to 1914. The emphasis is on the structure of Belgian rule and the social background of those who ruled.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Salmon, Pierre. “Lettres et carnets de route de pionniers belges: Étude des mentalités colonials.” Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer Bulletin des séances/Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen Mededelingen der Zittingen 50.2 (2004): 167–182.
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  359. By looking at the letters and travel diaries of Belgian “colonial pioneers,” Salmon gives a sense of Belgian colonialist attitudes.
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  361. Vanderlinden, Jacques. Pierre Ryckmans, 1891–1959: Coloniser dans l’honneur. Brussels: De Boeck Université, 1994.
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  363. A detailed if poorly referenced biography of a significant colonial administrator. That it is uncritical is reflected in its subtitle: “to colonize in honor.” Ryckmans served as governor-general for twelve years, including during World War II, and later served at the United Nations, defending Belgian colonial rule before the world.
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  365. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “Hégémonies en construction: Articulations entre état et entreprises dans le bloc colonial belge (1908–1960).” Canadian Journal of African Studies 16.2 (1982): 313–330.
  366. DOI: 10.2307/484299Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. This article, whose title means “Hegemonies under construction: linkages between state and businesses within the Belgian Colonial Bloc (1908–1960),” is an examination of the interconnections and overlap among financial, industrial, and government figures and entities in Brussels during the Belgian state rule period.
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  369. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “Episodes anticommunistes dans l’ordre colonial belge (1924–1932).” In La peur du rouge. Edited by Pascal Delwit and José Gotovitch, 183–190. Brussels: Université de Bruxelles, 1996.
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  371. A short piece on anticommunism as an aspect of the Belgian colonial order reveals Belgian fears that outside influences like communism would spoil the colonial endeavor. Such fears contributed to the isolation of the Congo and Congolese from external influences.
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  373. Mining
  374.  
  375. After World War I, mining, especially for copper ore, was central to the development of the Belgian colonial economy. This had major repercussions for the colonial economy and state, as Vellut 1983 shows. Mining became not only a dominant industry but provided the bulk of colonial state revenue. Higginson 1989 demonstrates how mining also affected the nature of colonial settlement and Africans’ experience with Belgian administration, and how Africans reacted.
  376.  
  377. Higginson, John. A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise, and the African Mineworker, 1907–1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
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  379. Asserts that past studies gave short shrift to Africans workers’ contributions to the making of a working class. Higginson says African workers in the mines developed a shared consciousness, despite the fact that the mining company tried to create a proletariat without a working-class consciousness that might cause problems.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “Mining in the Belgian Congo.” In History of Central Africa. Vol. 2. Edited by David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin, 126–162. London: Longman, 1983.
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  383. In addition to showing the impact of mining on the Congo and its inhabitants and the variety of mining enterprises and zones, Vellut demonstrates how dominant the mining sector and mining companies were in the Belgian colonial economy and state, especially the giant Union minière du Haut-Katanga.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Agriculture and Rural Life
  386.  
  387. The red rubber period and the importance of mining during the Belgian state rule period tends to obscure the fact that most Africans in the colony were agriculturalists. Moreover, the ratio of people living in rural areas remained constant throughout the colonial period. Although urban populations grew rapidly under the Belgian colonial administration, especially in the 1950s, cities grew in step with overall population growth. Likaka 1997 unveils how colonialism affected rural society through a case study of one crop, cotton. Both Likaka 1997 and Jewsiewicki 1983 show how colonial plans and policies were anything but determinative of what actually happened on the ground in rural areas.
  388.  
  389. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. “Rural Society and the Belgian Colonial Economy.” In History of Central Africa. Vol. 2. Edited by David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin, 95–125. London: Longman, 1983.
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  391. Jewsiewicki interprets Belgian colonial objectives and African reactions to them, especially in rural areas, showing that African actions were not ultimately determined by colonial policies and activities. African actions and the characteristics of their societies placed constraints upon the scope of colonial economic activity.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Likaka, Osumaka. Rural Society and Cotton in Colonial Zaire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
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  395. Congolese scholar Likaka contributes to social history from the viewpoint of the colonized. Cotton was among the crops the colonial state targeted for development, forcing its adoption on farmers. Many Congolese did not do well, but others did. Nonetheless, the fact that cotton had to be imposed reveals a great deal.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Health and Medicine
  398.  
  399. Medical care became one of the hallmarks of Belgian colonialism in the Congo, providing Belgians a large part of their justification for ruling there. In defending their colonial rule, they pointed to the medical infrastructure they created, touting their record throughout the last years of colonialism. Vellut 1997 traces the early history of European medicine in central Africa, before the Belgian state rule period. It is important to remember that, as Vanthemsche 2007 (cited under General Overviews) shows, all the money that Belgians invested in the Congo was raised there. Lyons 1992 and Hunt 1999 have gone beyond the history of medicine strictly speaking to explore the social history of medicine.
  400.  
  401. Hunt, Nancy Rose. A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
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  403. A study of colonial medicine combining social history, ethnography to study medicine (as practiced and contested), and the medicalization of birth. A work on missions and gender as much as medicine. Tells us about Belgian rule and Africa’s history, also suggesting ways to do history. Exemplary scholarship and research.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Lyons, Maryinez. The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire, 1900–1940. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  406. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511583704Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407. Fighting sleeping sickness (human trypanosomiasis) figured to a large extent in Belgian rule and in what they told themselves and others about it. This social history shows reactions to diagnosis and care, for example the imposition of quarantine and lazarets, and how medical care made up part of the colonial order.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “European Medicine in the Congo Free State (1885–1908).” In Health in Central Africa since 1885: Past, Present, and Future. Edited by P. G. Janssens, M. Kivits, and J. Vuylsteke, 67–87. Brussels: King Baudouin Foundation, 1997.
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  411. Vellut not only provides a rare analysis of medicine during the early period of Belgian rule but also makes clear the international nature of the Congo Free State by pointing out that most doctors in the Congo Free State were not Belgian but Italian.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Colonial Investment
  414.  
  415. Jewsiewicki 1977 shows how Belgians foisted the costs of the global economic downturn of the 1930s onto Africans. By the post–World War II era, Belgians could point to a growing standard of living and rising investments in infrastructure, medical care, and primary education. Vanthemsche 1994 describes the origins and extent of Belgium’s postwar colonial investment scheme, which unfolded over ten years and was simply called the “Ten Year Plan.” Yet Vanthemsche 2007 (cited under General Overviews) reminds us that Belgian rule was anything but altruistic, since Belgians raised all the money they invested in the Congo in the colony itself. Vanthemsche also shows how colonial businesses surreptitiously repatriated vast amounts of capital on the eve of decolonization. Buelens and Marysse 2009 shows how large profits were made by investing in the stocks of colonial enterprises.
  416.  
  417. Buelens, Frans, and Stefaan Marysse. “Returns on Investments during the Colonial Era: The Case of the Belgian Congo.” Economic History Review 62.S1 (2009): 135–166.
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  419. Much research has gone into the profitability of empire in the British and French cases, considerably less so in the Belgian case. The authors demonstrate that investments made in stocks of colonial companies were more profitable than those in Belgian stocks, especially if invested in colonial mining enterprises.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Jewsiewicki, B. “The Great Depression and the Making of the Colonial Economic System in the Belgian Congo.” African Economic History 4 (1977): 153–176.
  422. DOI: 10.2307/3601245Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. Jewsiewicki contends that the 1930s economic downturn was central to creating a “colonial mode of production” (p. 153) that formed the dominant economic order in the Congo up to the period when he was writing. During the Great Depression, Belgians extended and systematized their economic control and shifted its costs onto Africans.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Vanthemsche, Guy. Genèse et Portée du “Plan décennal” du Congo belge (1949–1959). Mémoires/Verhandelingen in-8, New Series 51, No. 4. Brussels: Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer, 1994.
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  427. On the genesis and scope of post–World War II colonial planning and Belgium’s “Ten-Year Plan” for the Congo from 1949 to 1959, which can be compared to other European variants in Thomas, et al. 2008 (cited under Belgian State Rule Period). Results were mixed, revealing what Vellut 1982 (cited under Administration) calls the disarticulation of the colonial bloc in the 1950s.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Science and Education
  430.  
  431. The literature on Belgian colonialism and science is not as developed as it is for other European empires, in particular Britain’s and France’s, where there is an abundant literature. But this has begun to change in the past decade, with focused studies like Couttenier 2005 on anthropology and Mantels 2007 on the connections between Leuven and the colony. Poncelet 2008 is a more general consideration of science and colonial rule. Yates 1981 shows how Belgians very early on adopted a policy to keep Congolese from traveling to Europe for education.
  432.  
  433. Couttenier, Maarten. Congo tentoongesteld: Een geschiedenis van de belgische antropologie en het museum van Tervuren (1882–1925). Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2005.
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  435. Not only a history of the Royal Museum for Central Africa into the interwar era but also a history of anthropology’s development alongside colonialism. It is only recently that studies like this have systematically tackled connections between colonialism in Africa, science, and the production of knowledge in Belgium.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Mantels, Ruben. Geleerd in de tropen: Leuven, Congo en de wetenschap, 1885–1960. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2007.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. This study on Leuven, the Congo, and science from 1885 to 1960—or what was “learned in the tropics”—explores the many links connecting the university and its community in Leuven with empire in the Congo.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Poncelet, Marc. L’invention des sciences coloniales belges. Paris: Karthala, 2008.
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  443. Encyclopedic in approach, this history of “the invention of the Belgian colonial sciences” remains the only attempt to produce a synthesis on the Belgian colonial sciences. It identifies extensive primary and secondary sources that the reader can use for further original research.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Yates, Barbara A. “Educating Congolese Abroad: An Historical Note on African Elites.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 14.1 (1981): 34–64.
  446. DOI: 10.2307/218113Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. Reveals early attempts at educating Congolese in Belgium. Authorities stopped such education because of fears that Congolese would be negatively influenced by outside factors, revealing the paternalistic and isolationist approach of Belgian colonial rule. Shows how this approach represented a continuity from the Leopoldian era.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Missionaries and Religion
  450.  
  451. European missionaries were active in central Africa before the advent of official colonial rule that came with Leopold II’s Congo Free State. The majority of missionaries at the outset of colonial rule were non-Belgian, and thus the importance of Slade 1959 on English-speaking missionaries and the recent documentation on American Presbyterians in Benedetto 1996 (cited under Primary Sources). It was really not until after World War I that Belgian missionaries began to arrive in the Congo in large numbers, after which they played a central role in colonial control, as Markowitz 1973 indicates. Whereas the focus of much research has been on European activity in central Africa (Markowitz 1973, Slade 1959), Africanists have unveiled important Christian, indigenous, and syncretic movements that were critical during the Belgian colonial rule period (Vellut 2005, Vellut 2010). De Craemer, et al. 1976 provides an early thought piece on how to research and study religion in central Africa. Hunt 2008 and Maxwell 2008 break down typical barriers dividing academic inquiry such as national or disciplinary boundaries to unveil the complexity of life lived on the ground in the Congo.
  452.  
  453. De Craemer, Willy, Vansina, Jan, and Renée C. Fox. “Religious Movements in Central Africa: A Theoretical Study.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 18.4 (1976): 458–475.
  454. DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500008392Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. Not only presents a case for a common religious culture in central Africa, but also provides a useful (though dated) historiographical introduction.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Hunt, Nancy Rose. “Rewriting the Soul in a Flemish Congo.” Past and Present 198 (2008): 185–215.
  458. DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtm049Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. Reveals colonialism’s complexity as a historical subject. Hunt eschews binaries like religious-secular or Belgian-African, telling the story of interrelations among three Belgians in the Équateur region—two Flemish missionaries, one Walloon planter—revealing connections among proselytizing, language, Flemish nationalism, medicine, fertility, colonialism, memory and history, and written and oral sources.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Markowitz, Marvin D. Cross and Sword: The Political Role of Christian Missions in the Belgian Congo, 1908–1960. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973.
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  463. An overview of missionary activity. If in the 1880s Protestant missionaries dominated, this had changed by the Belgian Congo period, when Catholics overshadowed them. Catholics’ authority was interwoven with and constitutive of the colonial state’s power, an intertwining that did not fray until the 1950s. The sources are an excellent resource base.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Maxwell, David. “The Soul of the Luba: W. F. P. Burton, Missionary Ethnography and Belgian Colonial Science.” History and Anthropology 19.4 (2008): 325–351.
  466. DOI: 10.1080/02757200802517216Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. Part of the effort (see Hunt 2008) to move beyond the links between missionaries and the state to the connections between missionaries and knowledge formation in the colonial context. Notable also for the interconnections drawn between Belgian and British involvement in central Africa.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Slade, Ruth M. English-Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State, 1878–1908. Brussels: Académie royale des sciences coloniales, 1959.
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  471. Belgian (Walloon or Flemish) missionaries were slow to arrive in the Congo, and therefore most missionaries there during the Congo Free State period were English-speaking (American or British) or Scandinavian.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Vellut, Jean-Luc, ed. Simon Kimbangu: 1921: De la prédication à la deportation: Les sources. Vol. 1, Fonds missionnaires protestants (1) Alliance missionnaire suédoise (Svenska Missionsförbundet, SMF). Brussels: Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer, 2005.
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  475. Part of a multivolume effort that makes available in French original documents of the Swedish Missionary Alliance. Swedish missionaries viewed Simon Kimbangu and the movement he started as challenges. Translations of documents and reports from Africans are sources for further research. Vellut’s commentaries, introductory notes, and biographical sketches are useful.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Vellut, Jean-Luc, ed. Simon Kimbangu: 1921: De la prédication à la deportation: Les sources. Vol. 1, Fonds missionnaires protestants (2) Missions baptistes et autres traditions évangéliques: Le pays kongo entre prophétismes et projets de société. Brussels: Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer, 2010.
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  479. Part of a multivolume effort that makes available, in French, original Protestant missionary documents from the Congo. Vellut 2005 tackles Swedish missionaries, in particular their relations with Simon Kimbangu. These translated documents address Baptist and other evangelical missionary societies’ reactions to Kimbanguism (e.g., the Baptist Missionary Society).
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Women and Gender
  482.  
  483. There were very few European women in central Africa until the end of the colonial period, and few historians have undertaken studies of African women specifically in the Belgian colonial situation. The literature on women and gender in the Belgian case is thin compared to other empires, and collections like Vellut 1987 and even essays like Jacques and Piette 2004 are all too rare. Hunt 1988 provides an unusual examination of the role of colonial women and the depth of colonial intervention into Africans’ personal lives. Bouwer 2010 is suggestive of the advantages to be gained by studying gender and African women.
  484.  
  485. Bouwer, Karen. Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  486. DOI: 10.1057/9780230110403Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. A rare use of gender as a category of historical analysis in this field, in this specific case to examine not only Lumumba and decolonization but also women activists and literature.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Hunt, Nancy Rose. “‘Le bébé en brousse’: European Women, African Birth Spacing and Colonial Intervention in Breast Feeding in the Belgian Congo.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 21.3 (1988): 401–432.
  490. DOI: 10.2307/219448Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. Reveals colonial concerns about fertility and population growth in the Belgian Congo—the unofficial mind of imperialism, perhaps—as well as the roles of European women in the colony and the depth of colonial interventions into Africans’ lives.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Jacques, Catherine, and Valérie Piette. “L’Union des femmes coloniales (1923–1940): Une association au service de la colonisation.” In Histoire des femmes en situation coloniale: Afrique et Asie, XXe siècle. Edited by Anne Hugon, 95–117. Paris: Karthala, 2004.
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  495. This study of the women’s group known as the Union of Colonial Women reveals connections between interwar colonialism and women from the metropole. It shows how women shaped Belgian understandings of the Congo, and thus played a role in imperialism. Includes some useful references.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Vellut, Jean-Luc, ed. Femmes coloniales au Congo belge: Essais et documents. Louvain, Belgium: Centre d’histoire de l’Afrique, 1987.
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  499. A collection of essays on colonial women in the Belgian Congo that offers a starting point for further research on gender, women, and the Belgian Congo.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Cities and Urban Architecture
  502.  
  503. Until relatively recently, urban areas in the Congo were comparatively small, and perhaps unsurprisingly, there has not been much work on urbanization during the period of Belgian colonialism. Rapid growth during the colonial period, as in Leopoldville, only occurred during the 1950s, and therefore local studies like Fetter 1976 on Elisabethville (today Lubumbashi) and Union minière du Haut-Katanga are rare. Gondola 1997 examines Kinshasa and Brazzaville as one large urban zone. Lagae 2004 is less focused on urbanization and urban space and more on city planning and architecture. See also Lagae’s essay on connections between the urban landscapes of Brussels and Kinshasa in Viaene, et al. 2009 (cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians).
  504.  
  505. Fetter, Bruce. The Creation of Elisabethville 1910–1940. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1976.
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  507. More than a history of a city. Fetter reveals the founding and importance of the Union minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK); Belgian fears of British influence; the connections among UMHK, the city, and the Katanga region; and how far Elisabethville (today Lubumbashi) was from the administrative center of the colony.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Gondola, Charles Didier. Villes miroirs: Migrations et identités urbaines à Kinshasa et Brazzaville, 1930-1970. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997.
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  511. Gondola examines movements of people and identity in what he calls the “mirror cities” of Brazzaville and Kinshasa. Has the advantage of considering Brazzaville and Kinshasa not as separate cities but rather as one large urban area.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Lagae, Johan. “Colonial Encounters and Conflicting Memories: Shared Colonial Heritage in the Former Belgian Congo.” The Journal of Architecture 9 (2004): 173–197.
  514. DOI: 10.1080/1360236042000230161Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  515. There was no particular Belgian “colonial” architecture or urban planning. The main focus is Leopoldville and Elisabethville, today Kinshasa and Lubumbashi. Examines the handling of the shared architectural heritage in the postcolonial period and memories of the past in today’s Congo. Provides references to general studies.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Fiction and Literature
  518.  
  519. Other empires in the 1800s and 1900s spawned much more so-called colonial literature than the Belgian Congo, whether by Europeans, Africans, Asians, or others. A good guide to colonial literature broadly speaking is Poddar, et al. 2008. In any case, there are no Belgian counterparts to works by well-known colonials like Marguerite Duras or Elspeth Huxley, or famous metropolitan sojourners like E. M. Forster. As Halen 1993 points out (p. 45), the author of Belgium’s first “colonial” novel, Udinji (1905), Charles Cudell, never traveled to the Congo, basing the novel instead on letters his brother sent him from Africa. Geeraerts 1975 made a splash because of the immorality it portrayed at the heart of the Belgian colonial administration in the 1950s. But Geeraerts is not known outside Belgium. Instead, it is non-Belgian works like Conrad 1999 and Naipaul 1997 which became famous for depictions of European imperialism and its aftermath in the Congo. Just as there are no Belgian counterparts to famous European colonial novelists, there are no Congolese counterparts to Bernard Dadié, Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, or Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Unsurprisingly, the secondary literature on French and British colonial literature is massive, and it is substantial in the case of the German and Italian empires. There are reasons why there was less literature in the Belgian case. The Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi were not settler colonies, and not until the very end of the colonial period did significant numbers of settlers move there. Moreover, Belgium is divided by language between Dutch- and French-speakers. Analysis of francophone colonial literature can be found in Halen 1993; Halen and Riesz 1993; and Quaghebeur, et al. 1992. For Flemish colonial literature, see Renders 2009, Ceuppens 2003, and Matthijs de Ridder’s essay in Viaene, et al. 2009 (the latter two cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians).
  520.  
  521. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 1999.
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  523. Among the world’s greatest English-language novels, this enigmatic tale is based on Conrad’s experience as a boat captain in the Congo during the ivory-gathering boom and before the red rubber era. NB: The “heart of darkness” is located not up the Congo River but in Europe. First published in 1902.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Geeraerts, Jef. Gangrene. Translated by Jon Swan. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.
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  527. English translation of Gangreen 1: Black Venus, which shocked when first published in 1968. Based on Geeraerts’s experience as a colonial administrator. Set in the waning years of Belgian rule, with an assistant regional governor as protagonist. Depicts depravity of colonial administration: sex with co-opted Congolese women, heavy drinking, antireligious stances.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Halen, Pierre. Le petit belge avait vu grand: Une littérature coloniale. Brussels: Labor, 1993.
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  531. This study of “the little Belgian who thought big” is a broad overview of francophone colonial literature in Belgium.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Halen, Pierre, and János Riesz, eds. Images de l’Afrique et du Congo/Zaïre dans les lettres françaises de Belgique et alentour: Actes du colloque international de Louvain-la-Neuve (4–6 février 1993). Brussels: Textyles-éditions, 1993.
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  535. Examines images of Africa and of the Congo/Zaire in French-language literature in Belgium and surrounding countries. It resulted from an international conference at Louvain-la-Neuve in 1993. A useful work for any investigation into French-language literature and the effects of empire.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Naipaul, V. S. A Bend in the River. New York: Modern Library, 1997.
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  539. The bend in the river that is the setting for this now classic tale of postcolonial Africa is almost certainly Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville. Naipaul’s narrator, although frustratingly passive, takes in the changes afflicting an independent Congo and reveals connections to the colonial past.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Poddar, Prem, Rajeev S. Patke, and Lars Jensen, eds. A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures—Continental Europe and Its Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
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  543. As its title suggests, this companion to postcolonial literatures examines literature across the many European states and their empires, including Belgium and its overseas colonies. The essays provide historical context as well as bibliographies offering research guidance not only into literature but also colonial and postcolonial history.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Quaghebeur, Marc, Émile Van Balberghe, Nadine Fettweis, and Annick Vilain, eds. Papier blanc, encre noire: Cent ans de culture francophone en Afrique centrale (Zaïre, Rwanda et Burundi). 2 vols. Brussels: Labor, 1992.
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  547. A collection of reflections and essays based on original research into French-language culture as it relates to Belgians’ experiences with colonialism in central Africa. Many of the essays deal with fiction, but others delve into comic books, art, music, textbooks, poetry, missionary literature, and so forth.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Renders, Luc. “In Black and White: A Bird’s Eye Overview of Flemish Prose on the Congo.” Tydskrif vir letterkunde 46.1 (2009): 109–122.
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  551. A very quick look, in English, at Flemish-language literature on the colony.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Art
  554.  
  555. “Colonial art” from the colonial period is not easy to define. Does it include art by Belgian artists in the colony, regardless of the subject matter? Or is it artwork by Africans influenced by the colonial experience? Or could it be artwork by Belgians completed in Belgium but inspired by the colony? What about Congolese artwork after 1960 shaped by experiences with or recollections of—or even only the study of the history of—the colonial past? Flynn 1998 and Silverman 2011 unveil the nexus of empire, colonial raw materials, and art production in Belgium. Schildkrout and Keim 1998 examines a different nexus, that of exploration, conquest, art, knowledge about art, and art markets. Other works, like Van Schuylenbergh and Morimont 1995, consider the introduction of Congolese artwork into Belgium, as does Vellut 1991, and it bears noting that Vellut’s essay is less a book review and more a brief survey of critical issues to keep in mind when thinking about African artwork and its circulation. Jewsiewicki 1999 focuses more on Congolese artwork. Petridis 2001 gets at colonial art by investigating one of its greatest experts, Frans Olbrechts. See also Sabine Cornelis’s essay in Viaene, et al. 2009 (cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians).
  556.  
  557. Flynn, Tom. “Taming the Tusk: The Revival of Chryselephantine Sculpture in Belgium during the 1890s.” In Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture, and the Museum. Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, 188–204. London: Routledge, 1998.
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  559. This illustrated essay offers insights into the use of ivory in Belgian artwork. When such artwork was displayed publicly alongside other items, Belgian and African, it wove a tapestry that promoted overseas imperialism while simultaneously naturalizing it, thereby dissipating the controversy surrounding Leopold II’s colonial rule.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art. New York: Museum of African Art, 1999.
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  563. Jewsiewicki wrote extensively on colonial history, especially economics (1977, 1979, 1983), and became a recognized expert on the Belgian Congo (Jewsiewicki 1986 under Belgian State Rule Period). Then he turned to art. These essays focus on representations of Lumumba in urban art of the colonial period through to the postcolonial era.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Petridis, Constantine, ed. Frans M. Olbrechts 1899–1958: In Search of Art in Africa. Antwerp, Belgium: Antwerp Ethnographic Museum, 2001.
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  567. Olbrechts was a polymath who became a major student of the cultures and arts of the Belgian Congo and the director of the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Yet he never carried out research in the Congo itself. Here we learn his contributions to art history and anthropology.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Schildkrout, Enid, and Curtis A. Keim, eds. The Scramble for Art in Central Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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  571. Explores European and American discovery and collecting of African art. The essays are nuanced, exploring both the seizure of art implied in the book’s title but also showing that many collectors sought to validate African art and to shed a positive light on African peoples and cultures.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Silverman, Debora L. “Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part I.” West 86th 18.2 (2011): 139–181.
  574. DOI: 10.1086/662515Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. Silverman shows overt ways in which colonial figures, imagery, and shapes fed into Belgium’s well-known art nouveau style, but more importantly, she teases out unacknowledged ways in which the colony influenced artists. There is a particular emphasis on Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta in this beautifully illustrated article.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Van Schuylenbergh, Patricia, and Françoise Morimont. Rencontres artistiques Belgique-Congo, 1920–1950. Enquêtes et documents d’histoire africaine 12. Louvain, Belgium: Centre d’histoire de l’Afrique, 1995.
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  579. This book on Belgian-Congolese artistic encounters 1920–1950 is essentially two essays. Van Schuylenbergh examines the appreciation of African art in Belgium, including the role of Gaston-Denys Périer, a figure who awaits a fuller treatment. Morimont looks at Catholic missionary understandings of African art. The book’s references are a great source.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “La peinture du Congo-Zaïre et la recherche de l’Afrique innocente: Présentation du livre de J. A. Cornet, R. De Cnodder, I. Dierickx & W. Toebosch: ‘60 ans de peinture au Zaïre.’” Académie royale des sciences d’outre-mer Bulletin des séances/Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen Mededelingen der Zittingen 36 (1991): 633–659.
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  583. Vellut reviews 60 Years of Painting in Zaire by Cornet, et al. and examines Congolese art from the 1920s to the 1980s. It is a thought piece on the history of colonial (Belgian) and African art and how to write about it. A treasure trove of insights and references.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Radio and Film
  586.  
  587. The age of Belgian empire in central Africa overlapped with the advent and golden age of cinema. Belgians, like the French and others, learned early on that film had great value for communicating to audiences in the Congo, in Belgium, and beyond. The “bible” of Belgian colonial film studies is Ramirez and Rolot 1985, which draws on the extensive film collection at the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Van Schuylenbergh and Etambala 2010 discusses not only the content and making of colonial films but how to interpret them, and includes a number of films on DVDs. It is no surprise that these and other authors focus almost exclusively on Belgian film producers and directors, since during the colonial period there were virtually no Congolese directors involved in filmmaking, only assistants. Convents 2003 shows how much this has changed since 1960. Pauwels-Boon 1979 is a rare work on radio and Belgian colonialism. In addition to these works, see Leen Engelen’s essay in Viaene, et al. 2009 (cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians).
  588.  
  589. Convents, Guido. L’Afrique? Quel cinéma!: Un siècle de propagande coloniale et de films africains. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, 2003.
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  591. This overview of a century of colonial propaganda and African films is really about African cinema more than colonial films specifically. An excellent starting point because it places colonial film in broad perspective. The extensive bibliography lists Convents’s many other works, all useful, on Belgian colonial film.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Pauwels-Boon, Greta. L’origine, l’évolution et le fonctionnement de la radiodiffusion au Zaïre de 1937 à 1960. Annalen/Annales. Reeks/Série in-8°, Historische wetenschappen/Sciences historiques 5. Tervuren, Belgium: Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika/Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 1979.
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  595. This study of the origin, development, and functioning of radio broadcasting in Zaire (the Congo) from 1937 to 1960 is useful for understanding the development of radio in Belgium’s colony.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Ramirez, Francis, and Christian Rolot. Histoire du cinéma colonial au Zaïre au Rwanda et au Burundi. Série in-8°. Sciences historiques Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale 7. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 1985.
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  599. This history of colonial film in Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi has rightly been called the “bible” of Belgian colonial film studies. It analyzes the content and images of Belgian films made in the colony, whether for Africans or Europeans. Extraordinarily useful as a reference. Includes extensive lists of directors and films.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Van Schuylenbergh, Patricia, and Mathieu Zana Aziza Etambala, eds. Patrimoine d’Afrique centrale: Archives films: Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, 1912–1960. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 2010.
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  603. This consideration of the cinematic legacy of central Africa (specifically in the former Belgian colonies of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi) not only provides a series of excellent interpretive essays on colonial films and their production, it also makes available to the public some twenty films on four DVDs.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. African Reactions and Resistance to Belgian Colonialism
  606.  
  607. Early work on Belgian colonialism, such as Anstey 1966 (cited under Belgian State Rule Period) and Slade 1962 (cited under Congo Free State Period), tended to view Belgian colonial rule as something imposed from outside, originating in Europe, and against which Africans reacted. Recent research reveals a more complex picture, from the Belgian “side” (e.g., Hunt 2008, cited under Missionaries and Religion) to the African “side.” Mumengi 2005, for example, examines the first “Congolese nationalist,” Paul Panda Farnana, who lived in Belgium and used his influence there to speak out for African rights. In its analysis of language, Fabian 1986 addresses not the French-Flemish language divide in the Congo but the importance of Swahili in Katanga. The colonial administration tried to manipulate Swahili in language manuals and on the ground at mines in order to better control miners and the Katanga province on the whole, but Fabian shows how such control over language, and thus people, was terribly elusive. Whereas in the past photography was seen as something European that was brought to Africa, Geary 2002 shows the role Africans played in “colonial” photography. Put otherwise, Vansina 2010 points out that the very title of its work Being Colonized is misleading because in many instances Africans were the active agents, in regard to both Europeans and other Africans. Approaches such as that in Vansina 2010 might make those of the likes of Turnbull 1962 seem quite dated, since Turnbull takes a more “traditional” approach of investigating the effects of the colonial administration. Yet the searing portraits Turnbull paints and his insightful commentary say volumes. Vellut 1982 turns the tables to reveal the ambivalence at the heart of the Belgian colonial project, as many doubted the worth of imposing European culture. Vellut 1982 also shows how Africans assigned nicknames to Europeans as an everyday form of resistance. Likaka 2009 takes Congolese name giving as a kind of primary source in a book-length analysis of names. Likaka unveils the oftentimes vicious effects of colonial rule at the village level, as well as the seldom-appreciated means of resistance to it in the form of naming. He shows how names can be used as a source to explore the effects of colonialism on everyday people. Works such as Harms 1987 and the essays in Vellut 2005 (cited under General Overviews) reveal the colonial period not as the starting and ending points of African history in the 1800s and 1900s but rather a passing episode—albeit a violent and critical one—in a longer span of African history.
  608.  
  609. Fabian, Johannes. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880–1938. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
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  611. Strongly suggestive of the role of language in power and control. Draws on a wide breadth of source material and a unique approach to examine the nexus of language and colonial control through a case study of the use of Swahili in the Katanga province of the Belgian Congo.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Geary, Christraud M. In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885–1960. London: Philip Wilson, 2002.
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  615. This richly illustrated book examines photography, with a special emphasis on the Belgian colony, the main focus being photographer Casimir Zagourski. Geary reveals African photographers’ roles and provides a vivid and broad introduction into the production and dissemination of photographs from central Africa during the colonial period.
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  617. Harms, Robert. Games Against Nature: An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
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  619. Based heavily on fieldwork and oral histories. Reveals the Nunu’s interaction with their environment and how it changed over time. Motivated by competition, the Nunu altered the environment to the extent they could to maximize its production, and in this way the environment becomes an actor on the historical stage.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Likaka, Osumaka. Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870–1960. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.
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  623. Likaka unlocks a multitude of largely untapped primary sources to study African history through the names Congolese gave people. Many names reflected the cruelty and destruction of colonial rule and the disruption of village life it caused. Naming Europeans was also an everyday form of resistance to Belgian colonialism.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Mumengi, Didier. Panda Farnana: Premier universitaire congolais (1888–1930). Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005.
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  627. Mumengi calls Paul Panda Farnana the first Congolese university student. Panda Farnana was a rare figure on Belgium’s colonial scene. He fought in World War I, spent the war in a German POW camp, and afterward defended African issues in Belgium and abroad—a Congolese nationalist avant la lettre.
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Turnbull, Colin M. The Lonely African. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962.
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  631. Chapters alternate between sketches of Africans’ experiences with Belgian rule from an African perspective to ones more analytical, told in Turnbull’s voice. These engaging portraits draw the reader in, even if much of what they have to tell is quite disturbing.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Vansina, Jan. Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880–1960. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010.
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  635. Vansina uses a variety of sources to reconstruct the experience of one region. His approach is that of history from the ground up, resulting in a rich tapestry of power and everyday life. He does not neglect the influence of those wielding power, whether Africans or Europeans.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Vellut, Jean-Luc. “Matériaux pour une image du blanc dans la société coloniale du Congo belge.” In Stéréotypes nationaux et préjugés raciaux aux XIXe et XXe siècles: Sources et méthodes pour une approche historique. Edited by Jean Pirotte, 91–116. Louvain, Belgium: Collège Érasme, 1982.
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  639. Provides material to reconstruct an image of “the white,” revealing the colonizer’s ambivalence about imperialism and Africans’ views of Bula Matari, or the “breaker of rocks,” the eponymous figure of Belgian colonialism. Bula Matari was not totalizing, and Vellut shows everyday forms of resistance, for example African nicknames for Europeans.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians
  642.  
  643. Much research has gone into the effects of overseas empire on Britain and France, much less into the effects of colonies on Europe’s lesser colonial powers. Vints 1984 is an early exception. This tendency has begun to change with works like Stanard 2011, although the essays in Viaene, et al. 2009 show that many are still doubtful about how or even if the Congo really affected Belgium in any significant way. Ceuppens 2003 is an extended examination of the colony’s effects on Flanders specifically. Viaene 2008 is focused less on the colony’s effects on culture generally and more on the impact of the colony, and more specifically the “colonial question,” on domestic politics.
  644.  
  645. Ceuppens, Bambi. Congo Made in Flanders? Koloniale Vlaamse visies op “blank” en “zwart” in Belgisch Congo. Ghent, Belgium: Academia, 2003.
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  647. On Flemish culture and Flemish experiences with the colony and other external factors; put differently, it analyzes colonial Flemish visions of “white” and “black” in the Belgian Congo. Chapters treat diverse subjects like the Rijke Roomse Leven, Frans Deckers, and immigrants. A heterogeneous, lengthy treatment of colonialism’s effects in Belgium.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Stanard, Matthew G. Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
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  651. Stanard examines pro-empire propaganda, suggesting Belgians were not the reluctant imperialists many have claimed. Although missionaries and colonial companies had major roles, the Belgian state took the lead in promoting the empire, which suggests that it had the most to lose from any change in the colonial status quo.
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Viaene, Vincent. “King Leopold’s Imperialism and the Origins of the Belgian Colonial Party, 1860–1905.” Journal of Modern History 80 (2008): 741–790.
  654. DOI: 10.1086/591110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  655. Viaene decenters our gaze from the figure of Leopold II and shows connections between Belgium and the colonial enterprise. An important contribution to the developing subfield of imperial history that focuses on the relationship between European society at home and the colonies overseas.
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Viaene, Vincent, David van Reybrouck, and Bambi Ceuppens, eds. Congo in België: Koloniale cultuur in de metropool. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2009.
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  659. Essays on colonial culture in the metropole address a range of subjects including architecture, artwork, missionaries, journalism, memory, and more. Some contributors believe empire profoundly affected Belgium, while others are circumspect. The tensions among their views, subjects, and scholarly approaches allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Vints, Luc. Kongo, Made in Belgium: Beeld van een kolonie in film en propaganda. Leuven, Belgium: Kritak, 1984.
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  663. A short volume on images of the colony in film and propaganda that is more impressionistic than comprehensive. One of the first book-length treatments of pro-empire propaganda in Belgium.
  664. Find this resource:
  665. Decolonization and Independence
  666.  
  667. Nationalism developed late in the Congo. Decolonization happened quickly in 1960, and independence was achieved without a war, although certainly not without bloodshed. For a long time, many accounts of decolonization were personal and focused narrowly on Belgium and the Congo, which Kent 2010 remedies by taking a much broader view that includes other groups such as the United Nations. The earliest histories, such as Stengers 1982, tend to view decolonization from a European perspective, although Young 1965 is a thorough reading of decolonization, independence, and Congolese politics. More recent studies such as Etambala 2008 seek more comprehensive understandings. Dumoulin, et al. 2012 explores memories of the late colonial and early independence periods and also bring in seldom-used sources such as television. Only recently have works such as Bouwer 2010 (cited under Women and Gender) brought in gender. Witte 2001 is a detailed accounting that assigns much blame for the assassination of Lumumba to the Belgian government. Birmingham and Martin 1998 provides a broad view of the postcolonial period, and Young 1994 zeroes in on post-1960 Congo to show failures under Mobutu. In addition to these works, see Godfried Kwanten’s essay on Jef Van Bilsen in Viaene, et al. 2009 (cited under The Colony’s Effects on Belgium and Belgians).
  668.  
  669. Birmingham, David, and Phyllis M. Martin, eds. History of Central Africa. Vol. 3, The Contemporary Years since 1960. London: Longman, 1998.
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  671. As with volumes one (Birmingham and Martin 1983, cited under Precolonial Period) and two (Birmingham and Martin 1983, cited under Belgian State Rule Period) of this series, this book covers much more than just the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). Of particular relevance is Crawford Young’s chapter, “Zaire: The Anatomy of a Failed State.”
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Dumoulin, Michel, Anne-Sophie Gijs, Pierre-Luc Plasman, and Christian Van de Velde, eds. Du Congo belge à la République du Congo 1955–1965. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2012.
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  675. A reconsideration of the change from the Belgian Congo to the Republic of the Congo from 1955 to 1965 that draws on a range of new sources. The many essays consider a broad range of topics from historians to colonial administrators to finance to post-independence cooperation and development.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Etambala, Zana Aziza. De teloorgang van een modelkolonie: Belgisch Congo 1958–1960. Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2008.
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  679. An analysis of the demise of the Belgian Congo, deemed by many to have been a “model colony.” Based on numerous new sources, it actually considers almost a decade of developments leading up to 1960, stopping abruptly at independence.
  680. Find this resource:
  681. Kent, John. America, the UN and Decolonisation: Cold War Conflict in the Congo. London: Routledge, 2010.
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  683. Demonstrates the international aspects of decolonization in the Congo, in particular the roles of the United Nations, the United States, and Britain.
  684. Find this resource:
  685. Stengers, Jean. “Precipitous Decolonization: The Case of the Belgian Congo.” In The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization 1940–1960. Edited by Prosser Gifford and W. Roger Louis, 305–335. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982.
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  687. The focus really is decolonization, that is to say, the loss of empire from a European perspective, as opposed to the achievement of independence from the viewpoint of Congolese.
  688. Find this resource:
  689. Witte, Ludo de. The Assassination of Lumumba. Translated by Ann Wright and Renée Fenby. London: Verso, 2001.
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  691. Translation of De moord op Lumumba (Leuven: Van Halewyck, 1999). Approach is heavy-handed, sources are occasionally lacking, and the translation is sometimes clunky. By pinning blame on the Belgian government, it provoked a Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry. There is no more in-depth treatment of Lumumba’s death.
  692. Find this resource:
  693. Young, Crawford. Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
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  695. Young presents some general points on the colonial era before delving into an in-depth discussion of the breakup of the colonial regime, Congolese nationalism and political organization, the politics of decolonization, and the first several months of independence.
  696. Find this resource:
  697. Young, Crawford. “Zaïre: The Shattered Illusion of the Integral State.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 32.2 (1994): 247–263.
  698. DOI: 10.1017/S0022278X0001274XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  699. The integral state is not totalitarian but exists autonomously and separate from society, maintaining hegemony over a passive civil society and accumulating wealth. Young sketches three visions of it (Belgian colonial, Lumumbist, Mobutist) and the end of the illusion after the decline of civil society and the state apparatus.
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