Review by Choice Review
This witty, broad overview of the Democratic Republic of Congo's turbulent history since the advent of colonization deserves a wide audience. Flemish writer van Reybrouck draws on a very wide range of Congolese informants to provide an engaging panorama of Congolese culture and politics. Specialists as well as those less familiar with the country will learn a great deal. The author deserves praise from academic historians for highlighting the lives and perspectives of his Congolese interlocutors, from centenarians to beer company executives busy negotiating with Congolese music stars. As a means of understanding the country's changing relationship with the global economy, van Reybrouck also met with Congolese expatriates living in China. He thankfully avoids simple narratives of victimization, even as he acknowledges the economic exploitation and authoritarian politics of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Historians will find some of the author's arguments dubious at times, but these minor weaknesses do not detract from the book's value as a general overview. The bibliography discusses work in Flemish as well as French and English. A very impressive book. --Jeremy McMaster Rich, Marywood University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
ON JUNE 5, 1978, the Congolese dictator Joseph-Désiré Mobutu stood on a hot grassy bluff in the south of his vast country - then named Zaire - and watched as the engines on a space rocket ignited. "Slowly, the rocket rose from the launching pad. A hundred kilometers into the atmosphere, that's where it was headed, a new step forward in African space travel." After a few moments, though, "the rocket listed, cut a neat arc to the left and landed a few hundred meters away, in the valley of the Luvua, where it exploded." For David Van Reybrouck the rocket represents Mobutu's regime: "A parabola of soot. ... After the steep rise of the first years, his Zaire toppled inexorably and plunged straight into the abyss." Watching the failed rocket launch on YouTube is both Pythonesque and distressing. How did the West German space company Otrag get absolute control of an area of Congo the size of Iceland? Imagine if Mobutu's state had been better run, not just that Congo had become a launchpad for interstellar travel, but that it had been able to project a stabilizing influence on neighboring Rwanda, heading off the 1994 genocide there. Imagine that the subsequent Congolese wars never happened, that five million Congolese never died; imagine that Congo's minerals and timber were sold transparently and at fair market value. Imagine all the people Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian, spent years working on this overview of the Congolese people. Its translation from Dutch, by Sam Garrett, is a piece of luck for English-speaking readers. This is a magnificent account, intimately researched, and relevant for anyone interested in how the recent past may inform our near future. Van Reybrouck begins with a quotation from a Congolese writer: "Le Rêve et l'Ombre étaient de très grands camarades." The Dream and the Shadow were the best of comrades. It is beautifully judged; dreams and shadows really are the way into Congo. You are first of all overwhelmed by its immensity. If you placed the Democratic Republic of Congo on a map of Europe, its eastern border would sit at Moscow and its western border would be at Paris: 905,000 square miles. Few good roads. Van Reybrouck estimates that an hour of travel in the Belgian Congo would now take an entire day. In an age when connectivity is a definition of prosperity, Congo has been running backward. Van Reybrouck's bibliography alone is worth the cover price. But what distinguishes the book is its clearheadedness. He patiently reminds us that Congo will always be a case apart because of its wealth. From Congo have come the materials of modernity: rubber for tires, copper and iron for industry, diamonds, uranium for nuclear warheads, coltan for cellphones. No hacking at the rock in Congo, no freeway, no Hiroshima, no iPhone. Washington think tanks are obsessed with Afghanistan, that other plummeting state, but Afghanistan looks like a distraction in planetary terms compared with what Congo is and what it becomes, what is kept alive there and what is dug up there. Scientists say the Congolese rain forest must survive if we are to temper our climate. Equally important is to preserve the genetic diversity of microbial, plant and animal life on which Congo's future wealth will depend. Congo's mineral resources are unmatched - China is in Africa for Congolese ore. The Congo River provides unceasing freshwater and hydroelectric potential. Then there is us. There were 15 million Congolese at independence from Belgium in 1960. There are 71 million now. There will be an estimated 150 million before the middle of the century. Kinshasa is projected by then to be bigger than New York and Chicago combined. Van Reybrouck skips a smooth stone across the deepness of days that form Congolese prehistory. We fast-forward through seasonal expeditions for catfish on streams flowing into the Great Lakes to the capture of Pygmies in the rain forest by ancient Egyptians and their journey up the Nile to dance for the Pharaohs. Plantain was introduced, more plentiful than yams, and its greenery did not draw the malarial mosquito. At some point drumming was invented. Drummers were capable of sending complex messages 370 miles in a day. Most people died where they were born. Then the Portuguese incursions on the Atlantic coast began. They left Catholic kingdoms. Maize was introduced, intensifying farming and trade. Slaves were hauled out. Four million Congolese were shipped to the Americas - 30 percent of the Atlantic slave trade. Ivory from forest elephants went along as well, to be turned into billiard balls in the industrial north. The deep memory of the Congolese was powerful beyond words then, but it went unrecorded. We can track languages, music, genes and pathogens, but monuments were grass, and artifacts were skins; there was no writing. The recorded history is short, dramatic and one-sided. Whatever Congo had was fed into the maw of the world - and the world was indifferent. In 1874, The New York Herald and The Daily Telegraph of London financed Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh explorer and journalist, to travel the length of the Congo River. Stanley arrived at the Atlantic in 1877. He was taken on the payroll of King Leopold II of Belgium, whose ministate had been created in 1830 as a buffer between France and Prussia. Leopold wanted a large slice of Africa and got it the Belgian way: Congo would be a free trade buffer between other colonial interests. Some villagers rose against the whites because they were white as bones; they must have come from the land of the dead. (Echoes of that feeling persist.) Traders and missionaries followed in Stanley's footsteps. A third of the early Baptist missionaries died in the field. It was the Catholics who mostly won out. Catholic schools, Scout troops and sports clubs provided the basis of the Congolese elite. Leopold's bet paid off. John Boyd Dunlop's invention of the inflatable rubber tire created a demand for Congolese rubber. The profits went to build Belgium at the cost of Congolese lives. Murder was casual. Since bullets were in short supply, there was a habit of cutting off the hands of those who had been shot as proof a bullet had been used to shoot a person and not an animal. It was worse than slavery: "For while an owner took care of his slave, ... Leopold's rubber policies by definition had no regard for the individual." It would be absurd to talk of genocide or a holocaust, Van Reybrouck says, "but it was definitely a hecatomb." Leopold's dynastic rule could not last. In 1908 Belgium assumed full responsibility. The Belgian Congo was racist, objectionable in its inequity and plunder. Colonial officers and particularly commercial officers were skittish; tiny numbers held the enterprise together. Yet many older Congolese today remain wistful for it. Compared with what followed, the colony was in some ways admirable. Mortality fell, education rose. A large chunk of the colonial budget was locally raised. Working conditions became better than in most other places in Africa. A gold miner in the Kilo-Moto mines, for instance, received a daily ration of meat or fish, beans, rice, bananas, salt and oil - a diet many Congolese today can only dream of. Congo had a good Second World War. The colony was manful where the mother country folded. Congolese troops helped liberate Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). The managing director of the state mining concern flooded the uranium mines at Shinkolobwe and shipped 1,375 tons of uranium to New York, a stockpile that enabled the Manhattan Project. The postwar period was curiously calm. Whites and a very few educated Congolese lived sunny lives in the highly socially engineered campuses around the country's larger enterprises. In 1955, King Baudouin was rapturously received right across Congo. But back in Belgium an obscure article in a Flemish Catholic workers' magazine suggested Congo should become independent in the year 1985. The article was a sensation in Congo. It was the first time a date had been mentioned: Independence was suddenly not a matter of if, but when. As late as 1959, the handover still looked years away: "Of the 4,878 higher-ranking positions, only three were occupied by Congolese in 1959." That explained the desire for independence, but also showed how unprepared the country was. Independence came on June 30, 1960 - so fast, like a craft careening over a waterfall. The Congolese Army under the command of Gen. Émile Janssens, "the most Prussian of all Belgian officers," collapsed after only a few days. If it had remained under external command for another four years or so, while Congolese staff officers were trained in Belgium, it might have been of service to the country. As it was, angry corporals became greedy colonels overnight. Most of the Belgians left within weeks. There were four Congolese leaders - Joseph Kasavubu, Moïse Tshombe, Patrice Lumumba and Mobutu - who triumphed. Lumumba was canonized as a peerless anticolonialist by Pan-Africanists after being executed by Tshombe, with Mobutu's connivance. Van Reybrouck quotes Congolese and Belgians as saying that Lumumba was vain, weak and empty-headed. His possible turn toward the Soviet Union and determination to keep Congo as a centralized unitary state meant there was C.I.A., MI6 and Belgian intelligence collusion in his death. Alas, there is no space here to go into Van Reybrouck's treatment of the presidency of Kasavubu, the early Mobutu years, the rotting out of the state, the horrors of the first and second Congolese wars, the entry of China into Congo. Nor can justice be done to the numerous personal stories of Congolese that Van Reybrouck tells. I will pick out just two. Simon Kimbangu was born in 1889. He believed himself to be a divine messenger of Christ. He saw visions. Kimbanguists to this day believe he raised the dead. He said, "The whites shall be black and the black shall be whites." The Belgians did not like that. Kimbangu was sent to prison in 1921 and died there in 1951. He's important because he pioneered the mix of populism and Pentecostalist fervor that is arguably the strongest social force in Africa. With its large numbers of unemployed youth, new divines are sure to rise up in Congo. These Kimbangus will most likely be more violent and explosive - a kind of counterreformation against secularism, science and individualism. Finally, Van Reybrouck offers one of the most extraordinary African stories I have come across in recent years. He sought out elderly Congolese to get their memories. That was how he met Étienne Nkasi in a shack in Kinshasa. Van Reybrouck went into the dimness and was greeted with a Roald Dahl scene. Nkasi sat up in bed. "His glasses were attached to his head with a rubber band. Behind the thick and badly scratched lenses I made out a pair of watery eyes." How old was he? "Je suis né en mille-huit cent quatre-vingt deux." I was born in 1882. A 126-year-old man, one of the oldest men who ever lived? Born three years before King Leopold took control of Congo? Van Reybrouck checked and double-checked. Nkasi knew the names of missionaries apparently held only on records in Belgium. He personally knew Kimbangu, who was born in a nearby village. "Kimbangu was greater than me in pouvoir de Dieu, but I was greater in years." Nkasi died in 2010, aged 128. Van Reybrouck says he met Nkasi for the first time right after Barack Obama won the presidency. "Is it true," Nkasi asked in wonderment, "that a black man has been elected president of the United States?" Whatever Congo had was fed into the maw of the world - and the world was indifferent. J.M. LEDGARD is the author of the novel "Submergence," director of the Future Africa initiative at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a longtime Africa correspondent for The Economist.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 4, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
Beyond the retelling of slave and ivory trading, Belgian colonialism, and unstable independence, Van Reybrouck offers the perspective of ordinary Congolese caught in the broad sweep of that nation's turbulent history. The usual historical figures are here, from the adventurer Henry Morton Stanley to Belgian King Leopold II, from liberator Patrice Lumumba to the brutal ruler Mobotu Sese Seko, later overthrown by Laurent Kabila. But also present are elders, some in their hundreds or nineties, recalling their everyday lives in the midst of malaria outbreaks, missionaries, racial designations by colonial whites that exacerbated tribal differences, violence and oppression, economic instability and political upheaval, even the joy of hosting the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Van Reybrouck draws on interviews and anthropological research to offer dense detail of dress, custom, diet, beliefs all the ingredients of everyday life. This is a compelling mixture of literary and oral history that delivers an authentic story of how European colonialism, African resistance, and the endless exploitation of natural resources affected the lives of the Congolese.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Belgian author Van Reybrouck begins this prolonged tale of woe with the first arrival of Europeans in this central African land, whose imperialistic intention toward its inhabitants was to "free them from the wolf trap of prehistoric listlessness." His ensuing history relates the Congo's Christianization by Portuguese Jesuits, Italian Capuchins, and eventually Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the role played by foreign foodstuffs-such as Mexican corn and Brazilian manioc-in everyday Congolese life. Addressing the historical complexities of slavery, Van Reybrouck avers that, to many Congolese, "[s]lavery was not being subjugated, it was being separated, from home." The narrative also portrays larger-than-life personages, including charismatic prophet Simon Kimbangu and long-reigning dictator Joseph Mobutu. While the Congolese adapted over time to the European lifestyle, many eventually wished "to be civilized Congolese, not 'Europeans with a black skin.' " The prospect of independence from Belgium in June of 1960 held out hope for the nation, but "the breakneck emancipation of Congo was a tragedy that could only end in disaster." Van Reybrouck's extensive account reveals the depth and breadth of exploitation, particularly under Belgian colonial rule, and how Congo's story is one fraught with the toxic cycle of "desire, frustration, revenge." (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This sprawling history describes the country throughout three eras: the precolonial Congo Free State privately controlled by Leopold II of Belgium, the colonial Belgian Congo, and the postindependence Democratic Republic of the Congo. Included are numerous interviews that aim to provide a "bottom-up" view of the country. These interviews, intertwined with historical sources, lead to a somewhat muddled presentation of the colonial period but successfully describe contemporary times. Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian, frequently resorts to creative nonfiction as he imagines the responses of the Congolese to Europeans. He criticizes the starkness of Adam Hochschild's best seller King Leopold's Ghost, a recounting of the exploitation of the country by Leopold, and instead aims for "nuance" in his portrayal. While briefly mentioning the extreme violence imposed by colonial policies, the author's scrupulous attempts at subtlety fail to provide specifics, and he avoids a discussion of the death toll, simply saying that it is "impossible" to know. VERDICT Despite these problems, the distinct scope and conversational style will appeal to the general reader of historical works. The postindependence narrative is engaging and untangles the events behind recent civil wars. Sue Giffard, Ethical Culture Fieldston Sch., New York (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Sprawling portrait of a land that, by Belgian writer van Reybrouck's account, has been at the center of world history as well as a continent. The subtitle is a touch off, for as the author notes, Congo is home to hundreds of peoples, even if there is "great linguistic and cultural homogeneity" owing to the dominance of Bantu-speaking tribes. About 10 percent of all Africa falls within its borders, as well as most of the 2,900-mile-long river that gives it its name. It has been independent of Belgian colonialism for half a centurylonger, observes the author, than most of its people have been alive. Still, van Reybrouck turns up some old-timers (one claiming to have been born in the 19th century) to frame his long story of the land's development, one that hinges on generations of trade along the river. Since independence, the country has fallen into disrepair born of political discord and official corruption. The country's four major cities are no longer connected by road, of which Congo possesses only 600-odd asphalt miles; as a rule of thumb, "a journey that took one hour during the colonial period now corresponds to a full day's travel." Yet this is no paean to past colonial splendor; van Reybrouck well recognizes the murderous policies of Belgium's King Leopold, and he sees some hope for stability emerging from conditions that otherwise have served as a recipe for a failed state. The causes for the decline have been many, but as the author notes, the country had to endure in just the first six months of independence a flight of the European colonials, an invasion by the Belgian army, a military mutiny, a coup d'tat, widespread secession and a protracted hot season in the long Cold War. Though the book is overlong, van Reybrouck makes a good case for the importance of Congo to world history and its ongoing centrality in a time of resurgent economic colonialism, this time on the part of China.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
