More than red rubber and figures alone: A critical appraisal of the memory of the CONGO exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 471-486

  Gewald, Jan Bart ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950113306     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness ([ 1902] London, 1995), 20.
2. Full details of the exhibition can be accessed at http://www.congo2005. be/. Details of the colloquium organized in conjunction with the museum can be downloaded at: http://home.pi.be/ ∼hv980630/activiteiten/violence/ Colloquium-NL.pdf.
3. Surely an echo of Jean Stengers, "Les malaises de l'histoire coloniale," in Bulletin des séancesl Académie Royal des Sciences d'Outre-Mer (1979), Vol. 4, 583-93, who in pleading for the continued study of colonial history declares that this should occur "dans lésprit de sérénité de la recherche scientifique."
4. Jean-Luc Vellut, Sabine Cornelis, Danielle Raphaelle De Lame, and Gauthier De Villiers, Het Geheugen van Congo: De Koloniale Tijd (Tervuren, 2005).
5. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (London, 1999).
6. Selection of Exhibition Texts, Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era, under the scientific direction of Prof. Jean-Luc Vellut, Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika, 19. This brochure can be downloaded at http://www.congo2005.be/ geheugen/brochureEN.pdf.
7. Vellut, Memory of Congo, 43.
8. Robert Harms, "The World Abir Made: The Maringa-Lopori Basin, 1885-1903," African Economic History 12 (1983), 125-39, 124.
9. This essentially is also the argument put forward by Jean Stengers, who argued that reforms and the suppression of forced labor following the Belgian takeover in 1908 ended the abuses associated with Red Rubber. Jean Stengers, "The Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo," in Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan, eds., Colonialism in Africa (Cambridge, 1969), 1, 270-71.
10. Robert Harms, "The End of Red Rubber: A Reassessment," Journal of African History 16, 1 (1975), 73-88;
11. Jules Marchal, L'état libre du Congo: Paradis perdu: L'histoire du Congo 1876-1900 (Borgloon, Belgium, 1996);
12. Daniel Vangroenweghe, Leopold II & Kongo: Het Evenaarsdistrict en het Kroondomein, 1885-1908 (Brugge, Belgium, 1985).
13. Readers interested in developments in Congo Brazzaville at the same time are advised to look at Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo au temps des grandes companies concessionaires, 1898-1930 (Paris, 1972).
14. Needless to say this popularization of material has led to the raising of hackles in the academic community. What to think of the following brutal exchange, "Vansina advised the talented interpreter of Marchal's rather pedestrian production, Adam Hochschild, to concentrate on Marchal's work and to keep clear of historians such as Stengers and Vellut." Jean-Luc Vellut, Jan Vansina on the Belgian Historiography of Africa: Around the Agenda of a Bombing Raid: A Reply to 'History Facing the Present: An Interview with Jan Vansina,' accessed on 25 April 2005 at: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/∼africa/africaforum/ Vellut.htm.
15. David Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (New Haven, Conn., 2004).
16. Edgar Canisius was a young American who served in the Congo Free State and was stationed in Province Orientale. After his tour of duty he joined a concessionaire company as an agent. His detailed descriptions of rubber collecting throws up an interesting example of the combination between bureaucracy and violence: "As each man stepped up I noticed that he carried, attached to his neck by a cord, a small disc of metal evidently cut from the zinc lining of a packing case, and that each disc bore a number corresponding with that entered in the book opposite the man's name." Edgar Canisius, "A Campaign Amongst Cannibals," in Captain Guy-Burrows, The Curse of Central Africa (London, 1903), 74-80.
17. Harms, "The End of Red Rubber," 79.
18. Harms, "The End of Red Rubber," 77.
19. For an overview of the exploitative conditions that existed in the Congo following Red Rubber, see Jules Marchal, Travail forcé pour le cuivre et pour l'or; L'histoire du Congo 1910-1945 (Borgloon, 1999);
20. Jules Marchal, Travail forcé pour lerail; L'histoire du Congo 1910-1945 (Borgloon, 2000);
21. Jules Marchal, Travail forcé pour l'huile de palme de Lord Leverhulme; L'histoire du Congo 1910-1945 (Borgloon, 2001).
22. A good starting point would be, Felix Driver, "Henry Morton Stanley and His Critics: Geography, Exploration, and Empire," in Past & Present 133 (November 1991), 134-64.
23. A notable exception is the work of Sven Lindqvist, "Exterminate all the Brutes" (London, 1997).
24. Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (London, 1991 ), 38.
25. Édouard Bustin, Lunda under Belgian Rule (Harvard, 1975), 32.
26. Hochschild, Ghost, 67
27. Ian R. Smith, The Emin Pascha Relief Expedition, 1886-1890 (Oxford, 1972);
28. Frank McLynn, Stanley: Sorcerer's Apprentice (London, 1991).
29. Namibian National Archives, Windhoek, Accessions, A. 547, A. Henker, 1890-1904, Diary Manuscript of a Schutztruppler who accompanied Curt von Francois to Namibia in 1890. The show was, "an African piece,... [we] were very satisfied with the beautiful jungles and the ample water, but when we later landed in Sandwich harbour we were very disappointed."
30. L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan, The Rulers of German Africa: 1884-1914 (Stanford, 1978), 67.
31. Curt von Francois, Die Erforschung des Tschuapa und Lulongo: Reisen in Centralafrika (Leipzig, 1888), v. "Die Ankunft de Lieutenant Wissmann, welcher von seiner in Begleitung des hochverdienten Afrikaforschers Herm Dr. Paul Pogge unternommenen Reise im Mai 1883 ruhmgekrönt heimkehrte, brachte mich dem Ziele meiner Wünsche nahe. Lieutenant Wissmann übernahm im Auftrage Sr. Majestät des Königs der Belgier Leopold II. die Führung ein der neuen Forschungsexpedition nach dem Innern Afrikas, und es war mir eine sehr grosse Freude, mich derselben als Geodät amschliessen zu können."
32. Hermann Wissmann, Ludwig Wolf, Curt von Francois, Hans Mueller, Im Inneren Afrikas: Die Erforschung des Kassai während der Jahre 1883, 1884 und 1885 (Leipzig, 1891). The book bears the following dedication: "His Majesty Leopold II King of the Belgians in deepest respect and gratitude."
33. Curt von Francois, "Francois' Bericht über seine Reise zu Mona-Tenda," in Wissmann, Inneren Afrikas, 265-93.
34. Wissmann, Inneren Afrikas 364-367.
35. Francois, Erforschung des Tschuapa und Lulongo, 14. Von Francois wrote of him: "Salamolume, mein kleiner Muluba, war, als ich ihn übernahm, etwa acht Jahre alt, gut gewachsen und kräftig entwickelt. Er war gewandt, willig und recht gelehrig, sodass er mir nach nicht langer Zeit schon als Dolmetscher gute Dienste leistete. Sein Name war mir für den täglichen Verkehr zu unbequem, ich taufte ihn deshalb rundweg Pitti."
36. See http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mcnelly/vbg/spicheren.htm for information on the battle of Spicheren.
37. See in this regard von Francois's descriptions of shooting at Africans while traveling with missionary Grenfell on the steamer, Peace. Francois, Erforschung des Tschuapa und Lulongo, 105-6; 136; 143; 156; 162-63.
38. Cited in Lindquist, Exterminate, 17.
39. On von Francois in Togo see Arthur J. Knoll, Togo under Imperial Germany 1884-1914: A Case Study in Colonial Rule (Stanford, 1978). In later years Curt von Francois would come to found the German colonial army in German South West Africa, and command the soldiers (who attended the theater production in Berlin of Stanley in Afrika) in the first skirmishes between the forces of Imperial Germany and the inhabitants of what is today Namibia.
40. As regards the Nazi Genocides, historians can do no better than to read the materials associated with the charge of defamation that was lodged, and subsequently dismissed in a court of law, against Deborah Lipstadt. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (London, 1994);
41. Richard J. Evans, Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (New York, 2001);
42. Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (Bloomington, 2002).
43. As regards the genocides perpetrated by Imperial Germany in Namibia, see Tilman Dedering, "The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography?" Journal of Southern African Studies 19, 1 (1993), 80-88;
44. Brigitte Lau, "Uncertain Certainties: The Herero-German War of 1904." Mibagus No. 2, (1989), 4-8.
45. Jean-Luc Vellut, "Beelden van de koloniale tijd," Het Geheugen van Congo, 16.
46. Exhibition Brochure, Selection of Exhibition Texts, page 9, accessed at http://www. congo2005.be/geheugen/brochureEN.pdf on 31 October 2006.
47. Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government. Proposals for Redress (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law, 1944), 79.
48. "Professor Daniel Vangroenweghe is niet Mals voor Kongo-expo in Tervuren," De Morgen, 16 February 2005 (page number not provided by the archive). Accessed via: http://www.demorgen.be/archief/index.html 7 March 2006.
49. E.D. Morel, The Black Man's Burden: The White Man in Africa from the Fifteenth Century to World War 1 (London, 1920), 109.
50. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990), 244.
51. Morel, Black Man's Burden, 125.