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Louisa's Reviews > Congo: een geschiedenis
Congo: een geschiedenis
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If you are looking for an honest account of what happened in Congo Free State under the rule of king Leopold II, read Adam Hochschild's book instead, read Conan Doyle's The Crime of the Congo, read Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy with excerpts of the Casement Report. I don't know if Van Reybrouck's version of the history of Congo is deliberately misleading or just naive, but there are many sentences here that made me cringe.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
August 25, 2013
–
Finished Reading
August 31, 2013
– Shelved
September 1, 2013
– Shelved as:
africa
September 1, 2013
– Shelved as:
history
September 1, 2013
– Shelved as:
non-fiction
May 17, 2016
– Shelved as:
congo
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Sep 01, 2013 03:33AM
So much waste of page length then.
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Yes, there is only one chapter dedicated to the years under Leopold II (1885-1908) and most of that chapter went into discussions of the missionary work, descriptions of how impressed the Congolese were with Belgian life-style and how king Leopold II was dedicated to end slavery in Congo. Van Reybrouck does write about the committed atrocities, but seemed to talk down the severity of the acts and the responsibility of king Leopold II, as if it really wasn't so bad as Twain and Conan Doyle would have us believe. Roger Casement is only mentioned once, very briefly.
It's great you included alternative titles in your review. Have you heard of Atxaga's Seven Houses in France? It apparently has an odd take on Congo too.
A satire translated from Basque, I see! Could even be interesting, I had never heard of it.
Dont't know whether it is the translation, but in the original Dutch the author states clearly that fighting slavery was just a convenient excuse for carving out a new colony. Furthermore, the book is about the history of the Congo, not only the Congo Free State. Hence only the single chapter and perhaps the impression that Van Reybrouck tends to downplay the atrocities committed. The intentions behind his book and Hochschild's are very different: Hochschild concentrates on the atrocities during a given period and the role of a group of persons, King Leopold and his henchmen, Van Reybrouck tries to show in my opinion that the atrocities did not end with the end of the Free State, only their most inhuman excesses. The complete disregard for the Congolese has never stopped, up to this day: a country possessing incredible natural ressources has evolved into one the world's poorest nations through a combination of economic exploitation by the more industrialized countries (China just being the latest in a long list), poor leadership and downright bad luck.
Louisa I’m curious to know why you found this book dishonest - on what grounds you judge other books you read about Congo more honest than this one.
I could not agree more. Van Reybrouck’s whitewash of the Leopoldian terror regime which led to the death of ten million Congolese was curious to say the least.
