Pamphlets on the Congo Slave State
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 504 pages
File Size : 40,31 MB
Release : 1906
Category : Congo (Democratic Republic)
ISBN :
Selling the Congo
Author : Matthew G. Stanard
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 20,69 MB
Release : 2012-01-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0803239882
Book Description
Belgium was a small, neutral country without a colonial tradition when King Leopold II ceded the Congo, his personal property, to the state in 1908. For the next half century Belgium not only ruled an African empire but also, through widespread, enduring, and eagerly embraced propaganda, produced an imperialist-minded citizenry. Selling the Congo is a study of European pro-empire propaganda in Belgium, with particular emphasis on the period 1908–60. Matthew G. Stanard questions the nature of Belgian imperialism in the Congo and considers the Belgian case in light of literature on the French, British, and other European overseas empires. Comparing Belgium to other imperial powers, the book finds that pro-empire propaganda was a basic part of European overseas expansion and administration during the modern period. Arguing against the long-held belief that Belgians were merely “reluctant imperialists,” Stanard demonstrates that in fact many Belgians readily embraced imperialistic propaganda. Selling the Congo contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of twentieth-century propaganda by revealing its successes and failures in the Belgian case. Many readers familiar with more-popular histories of Belgian imperialism will find in this book a deeper examination of European involvement in central Africa during the colonial era.
Recalling the Belgian Congo
Author : Marie-Bénédicte Dembour
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 37,33 MB
Release : 2000-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0857457128
Book Description
When the author embarked on her study, her aim was to approach former colonial officers with a view to analyzing processes of domination in the ex-Belgian Congo. However, after establishing a rapport with some of these officers, the author was soon forced to revise her initial assumptions, widely held in present-day Belgium: these officers were not the "baddies" she had expected to meet. Exploring the colonial experience through the respondents' memories resulted in a far more complex picture of the colonial situation than she had anticipated, again forcing her to question her original assumptions. This resulted not only in a more differentiated perspective on Belgian colonialist rule, but is also sensitized her as regards the question of anthropological understanding and of what constitutes historical fact. These two aspects of her work are reflected in this study that offers specific material on the way Belgian colonialism is remembered and reflects on its conditions of production, thus combining ethnographic analysis with a theoretical essay.
Congo Stories
Author : John Prendergast
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 43,34 MB
Release : 2018-12-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1455584614
Book Description
From the author of the New York Times bestselling and award-winning Not on Our Watch, John Prendergast co-writes a compelling book with Fidel Bafilemba--with stunning photographs by Ryan Gosling--revealing the way in which the people and resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been used throughout the last five centuries to build, develop, advance, and safeguard the United States and Europe. The book highlights the devastating price Congo has paid for that support. However, the way the world deals with Congo is finally changing, and the book tells the remarkable stories of those in Congo and the United States leading that transformation. The people of Congo are fighting back against a tidal wave of international exploitation and governmental oppression to make things better for their nation, their neighborhoods, and their families. They are risking their lives to resist and alter the deadly status quo. And now, finally, there are human rights movements led by young people in the United States and Europe building solidarity with Congolese change-makers in support of dignity, justice, and equality for the Congolese people. As a result, the way the world deal with Congo is finally changing. Fidel Bafilemba, Ryan Gosling, and John Prendergast traveled to Congo to document some of the stories not only of the Congolese upstanders who are building a better future for their country but also of young Congolese people overcoming enormous odds just to go to school and help take care of their families. Through Gosling's photographs of Congolese daily life, Bafilemba's profiles of heroic Congolese activists, and Prendergast's narratives of the extraordinary history and evolving social movements that directly link Congo with the United States and Europe, Congo Stories provides windows into the history, the people, the challenges, the possibilities, and the movements that could change the course of Congo's destiny. Chosen by Amazon as the Best Book of the Month for December 2018 in Biographies & Memoirs, History, and Nonfiction. Featuring the life story of Dr. Denis Mukwege, winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize
The River Congo
Author : Peter Forbath
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 10,1 MB
Release : 1978
Category :
ISBN :
Book Description
The War That Doesn't Say Its Name
Author : Jason K. Stearns
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 13,99 MB
Release : 2023-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 069122451X
Book Description
Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a “forever war”—a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity. Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time. The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003—accompanied by the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world and tens of billions in international aid—has failed to stop the violence. Jason Stearns argues that the fighting has become an end in itself, carried forward in substantial part through the apathy and complicity of local and international actors. Stearns shows that regardless of the suffering, there has emerged a narrow military bourgeoisie of commanders and politicians for whom the conflict is a source of survival, dignity, and profit. Foreign donors provide food and urgent health care for millions, preventing the Congolese state from collapsing, but this involvement has not yielded transformational change. Stearns gives a detailed historical account of this period, focusing on the main players—Congolese and Rwandan states and the main armed groups. He extrapolates from these dynamics to other conflicts across Africa and presents a theory of conflict that highlights the interests of the belligerents and the social structures from which they arise. Exploring how violence in the Congo has become preoccupied with its own reproduction, The War That Doesn't Say Its Name sheds light on why certain military feuds persist without resolution.
A Nervous State
Author : Nancy Rose Hunt
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 41,77 MB
Release : 2015-12-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0822375249
Book Description
In A Nervous State, Nancy Rose Hunt considers the afterlives of violence and harm in King Leopold’s Congo Free State. Discarding catastrophe as narrative form, she instead brings alive a history of colonial nervousness. This mood suffused medical investigations, security operations, and vernacular healing movements. With a heuristic of two colonial states—one "nervous," one biopolitical—the analysis alternates between medical research into birthrates, gonorrhea, and childlessness and the securitization of subaltern "therapeutic insurgencies." By the time of Belgian Congo’s famed postwar developmentalist schemes, a shining infertility clinic stood near a bleak penal colony, both sited where a notorious Leopoldian rubber company once enabled rape and mutilation. Hunt’s history bursts with layers of perceptibility and song, conveying everyday surfaces and daydreams of subalterns and colonials alike. Congolese endured and evaded forced labor and medical and security screening. Quick-witted, they stirred unease through healing, wonder, memory, and dance. This capacious medical history sheds light on Congolese sexual and musical economies, on practices of distraction, urbanity, and hedonism. Drawing on theoretical concepts from Georges Canguilhem, Georges Balandier, and Gaston Bachelard, Hunt provides a bold new framework for teasing out the complexities of colonial history.
Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980
Author : Guy Vanthemsche
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 44,70 MB
Release : 2012-04-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0521194210
Book Description
This book explains how and why Belgium, a small but influential European country, was changed through its colonial activities in the Congo, from the first expeditions in 1880 to the Mobutu regime in the 1980s. Belgian politics, diplomacy, economic activity and culture were influenced by the imperial experience. Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980 yields a better understanding of the Congo's past and present.
King Leopold's Soliloquy
Author : Mark Twain
Publisher : LeftWord Books
Page : 98 pages
File Size : 38,24 MB
Release : 2020-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 818749655X
Book Description
Dear, dear, when the soft-hearts get hold of thing like that missionary's contribution they completely lose their tranquility they speak profanely and reproach Heaven for allowing such a find to live. Meaning me . They think it irregular. They go shuddering around, brooding over the reduction of that Congo population from 25,000,000 to 15,000,000 in the twenty years of my administration; then they burst out and call me the King with Ten Million Murders on his Soul. They call me a 'record'. - From King Leopold's Soliloquy
The Truth about the Congo
Author : Frederick Starr
Publisher :
Page : 158 pages
File Size : 32,74 MB
Release : 1907
Category : Belgium
ISBN :
