Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Against Elections
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 9/11/1971
WEBSITE: http://www.davidvanreybrouck.be/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Belgian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2002057234
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2002057234
HEADING: Van Reybrouck, David
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670 __ |a De Plaag, 2001: |b t.p. (David Van Reybrouck)
670 __ |a From primitives to primates, [2000?]: |b t.p. (David Grégoire Van Reybrouck; b. Bruges, Belgium, 11 Sept. 1971) C.V. (currently writing a book on Maurice Maeterlinck’s interests in entomology)
670 __ |a Waar België voor staat, c2007: |b p. 278 (David Van Reybrouck; born 1971 in Bruges)
670 __ |a Michel, Pierre. Cahiers Octave Mirbeau, 2009: |b p. 330 (David VAN REYBROUCK)
670 __ |a Wikipedia, Mar. 6, 2015 |b (David Van Reybrouck; David Grégoire Van Reybrouck (born in Bruges September 11, 1971) is a Flemish Belgian author. He writes historical fiction, literary non-fiction, novels, poetry, plays and academic texts; Van Reybrouck is a cultural historian, archaeologist and writer. He holds a doctorate from Leiden University)
670 __ |a Author’s website, viewed Mar. 6, 2015 |b (David Van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) read archaeology and philosophy at the universities of Leuven and Cambridge and holds a doctorate from Leiden; Van Reybrouck)
670 __ |a Email from author’s assistant, Feb. 24, 2017 |b (author prefers to be listed as “Van Reybrouck, David”)
953 __ |b sf02
PERSONAL
Born September 11, 1971, in Bruges, Belgium.
EDUCATION:Leiden University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, poet, playwright, cultural historian, and archaeologist.
AWARDS:Prize for best Flemish debut, 2002, for The Plague; Ark Prize of the Free World, 2008, for Missie (play); AKO Literature Prize, 2010, for Congo; Prix Medicis, 2012; Gouden Ganzenveer, 2014; European Book Prize, 2017, for Zink; Libris History Prize.
WRITINGS
Also author of The Plague, 2002; the nonfiction work What Belgium Stands For: A Scenario, 2007; the pamphlet A Plea for Populism, 2008; and the play Missie, 2008.
SIDELIGHTS
David Van Reybrouck is a Belgian writer, novelist, poet, and playwright. His work includes historical fiction, essays, and novels. His work has been recognized with Dutch literary prizes such as the AKO Literature Prize and the Libris History Prize. In addition to his work as a writer, Van Reybrouck is also a cultural historian and archaeologist. Van Reybrouck earned a doctorate from Leiden University.
Congo
Congo: The Epic History of a People presents Van Reybrouck’s large-scale history of the Congo. The author examines the region during three distinct eras: its status as the precolonial Congo Free State controlled (and exploited) by King Leopold II of Belgium; its time as a colonial region known as the Belgian Congo; and its independent status as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Van Reybrouck includes multiple interviews with people who were involved with Congo during these periods. “If it feels fresh in these pages it is largely thanks to Van Reybrouck’s decision to seek out rarely heard first-hand testimony,” remarked Spectator writer Michaela Wrong. These interviews sometimes include talks with quite elderly subjects whose memories may be unreliable, but Van Reybrouck readily acknowledges this possibility. His interview subjects include a man known as Papa Nkasi, who is old enough to have met Simon Kimbangu, a prophet who lived at the turn of the century, Wrong noted. Alphonsine Mpiaka was the first Congolese female paratrooper. Andre Kitadi worked as part of the Allied war effort during World War II. From a total of ten visits to Congo, Van Reybrouck “he managed to find Congolese veterans with memories of early white missionaries and colonial officials, and tales of religious uprisings and resistance movements. His witnesses from more modern times included musicians, footballers, political activists, warlords and child soldiers. The result is a vivid panorama of one of the most tormented lands in the world,” stated Washington Post contributor Martin Meredith.
The author doesn’t hold back on the negative factors that have influenced Congo over the years. He covers the thorough economic exploitation of the region by King Leopold. He gives a full accounting of the actions of Mobuto Sese Seko, military dictator and president of the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than thirty years, from 1965 to 1997. He also gives a careful assessment of the period following the fall of Mobutu’s regime. He assesses the causes and results of the violence and war that erupted in Congo in 1998, and the staggeringly large death toll that resulted. Successes and failures that occurred in all three periods under examination are given their due, as are the people involved and the results that occurred.
“After a rather slow start, his eye for the arresting human detail, combined with a wry appreciation for a peculiarly Congolese form of gumption, keeps you powering through this panoramic survey of 150 turbulent years,” Wrong stated.
“Van Reybrouck offers the perspective of ordinary Congolese caught in the broad sweep of that nation’s turbulent history,” commented Vanessa Bush in a Booklist review. In his book, 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,” commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor. The book’s “distinct scope and conversational style will appeal to the general reader of historical works,” observed Library Journal reviewer Sue Giffard. Nicholas van de Walle, writing in Foreign Affairs, found it to be a “carefully researched and elegantly written book” that treats the reader to “compelling portraits of ordinary people that enrich what would otherwise be a fairly conventional historical narrative.” Meredith called Van Reybrouck’s work a “valuable addition to the rich literature that Congo has inspired.”
Against Elections
As a cultural historian, Van Reybrouck is interested in the political process and, specifically, in elections and democracy. In Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, he makes the controversial and seemingly contradictory claim that elections are not compatible with democracy. Instead, “elections are anti-democratic, establishing a political aristocracy that is disconnected from and distrusted by voters,” noted a writer in Kirkus Reviews. The author believes that citizens have been afflicted with what he calls Democratic Fatigue Syndrome, in which few participants have much good to say about those who are elected but who hold the process of elections in such high regard that they can’t abandon it.
The author presents historical evidence to support his claim that the “electoral principle has long been understood as undemocratic,” noted Ben Margulies on the website LSE Review of Books. In ancient Athens, for example, elections were only held to fill positions that required specific knowledge or expertise. Other positions, such as those of magistrates, were chosen through a lottery process.
Van Reybrouck doesn’t advocate abandoning the democratic process. Instead he wants to see an even more rigorously democratic process implemented in the United States and elsewhere. “His solution is to bring back sortition—that is, the selection of public officials through the drawing of lots,” noted Margulies writer. In this scenario, ordinary citizens with a direct interest in the work of the government and in the outcome of the work would be chosen, essentially by lottery, to represent the people. They would then debate, research, and work until a satisfactory and mutually agreeable conclusion is reached in the matters that come before them. The sortition process, in Van Reybrouck’s view, would work similarly to the way that juries are selected today, and would reinvigorate an area of politics that is greatly in need of new ways of doing things.
In his review, Margulies contributor remarked, “Van Reybrouck certainly makes a valuable contribution to political theory and discussion with his book, and he is a skilled author and researcher.” Margulies further commented that Van Reybrouck “does politics a great service by opening up our discussions of political structure and agency, questioning age-old ideas about elections, representation and the division of powers.” The Kirkus Reviews writer concluded that “Readers who disagree with the cure may at least recognize the incisiveness of the diagnosis.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2014, Vanessa Bush, review of Congo: The Epic History of a People, p. 37.
Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2014. Nicolas van de Walle, review of Congo.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2014, review of Congo; February 1, 2018, review of Against Elections.
Library Journal, August 1, 2014, Sue Giffard, review of Congo, p. 108.
New York Times, May 5, 2015, J.M. Ledgard, “History’s Stranglehold,” review of Congo.
Publishers Weekly, December 9, 2013, review of Congo, p. 55.
Spectator, March 29, 2014, Michela Wrong, “Paving the Road to Hell,” review of Congo, p. 40.
Washington Post, April 4, 2014, Martin Meredith, review of Congo.
ONLINE
David Van Reybrouck website, http://www.davidvanreybrouck.be (July 17, 2018).
LSE Review of Books, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (October 10, 2016), Ben Margulies, review of Against Elections.
Synthetron, http://www.synthetron.com/ (July 17, 2018), interview with David Van Reybrouck.
David Van Reybrouck
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David Van Reybrouck
David Van Reybrouck.jpg
David Van Reybrouck.
Born 11 September 1971 (age 46)
Bruges
Occupation Author
David Grégoire Van Reybrouck (born 11 September 1971 in Bruges) is a Belgian cultural historian, archaeologist and author. He writes historical fiction, literary non-fiction, novels, poetry, plays and academic texts. He has received several Dutch literary prizes, including AKO Literature Prize (2010) and Libris History Prize.
Contents
1 Background and education
2 Writings
3 Awards and honors
4 Publications (English)
5 References
6 External links
Background and education
Van Reybrouck was born into a family of florists, bookbinders and artists. His father, a farmer's son, spent five years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a railway engineer immediately after independence. He holds a doctorate from Leiden University.
Writings
Van Reybrouck's first book, De Plaag (in English: The Plague), was a cross between a travelogue and a literary whodunnit set in post-apartheid South Africa. It received several awards, including the prize for the best Flemish debut in 2002 and a shortlist nomination for the Gouden Uil, one of the leading literary prizes in the Low Countries. It was translated into Afrikaans, French and Hungarian. A longtime op-ed writer for the Flemish national newspaper De Morgen, Van Reybrouck has co-edited a volume on the federal future of Belgium (What Belgium Stands For: a Scenario, 2007) and a thought-provoking pamphlet, Pleidooi voor populisme (A Plea for Populism, 2008), which has stirred quite some debate. The latter won Holland’s most distinguished essay prize.
His book Congo. Een geschiedenis (in English: Congo: The Epic History of a People) was published in 2010. Over the years, Van Reybrouck has travelled extensively throughout Africa. The book is as much the result of his ten journeys through the Democratic Republic of the Congo as of the months spent in libraries and archives. He has interviewed hundreds of individuals, with a particular predilection for so-called "ordinary people", precisely because their lives and choices are so often extraordinary. The book portrays slavery and colonialism, resistance and survival. It includes archival material, interviews and personal observations. Congo. A History is translated into English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Danish and Finnish. Van Reybrouck has also been actively involved in organising literary workshops for Congolese playwrights in Kinshasa and Goma.
Awards and honors
Libris Historical Award (2010)
2007, Royal Academy of Dutch language and literature
2008, Ark Prize of the Free Word, Missie (play)
2010, AKO Literature Prize, Congo
2012, Prix Médicis essai, Congo
2014, Gouden Ganzenveer[1]
2017, European Book Prize, fiction for Zink. Although a work of non-fiction, it won the fiction category.[2]
2018, European Press Prize, nominated with "Should media report differently in the wake of attacks? Think about it and join the discussion!"[3]
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Publications (English)
2000, From Primitives to Primates. A history of ethnographic and primatological analogies in the study of prehistory. Leiden, Sidestone Press, 2012. (Dissertation Leiden University, 2000). ISBN 978-90-8890-095-2
2008, Missie (play)
2014, Congo: The Epic History of a People. Transl. by Sam Garrett. HarperCollins, 2014. ISBN 9780062200112
2015, The First World War Now ISBN 978-9492081070
2016, Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, ISBN 978-1847924223
References
Gouden Ganzenveer 2014
"David Van Reybrouck wins the European Book Prize". Focus on Belgium. December 14, 2017. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
https://www.europeanpressprize.com/article/media-report-differently-wake-attacks-join-discussion/
This article is wholly or partly based on material from Dutch Wikipedia
External links
David van Reybroucks's personal website
David van Reybrouck's publishers website
David Van Reybrouck
David Van Reybrouck is one of the most versatile authors of his generation. In addition to his well-known work Congo , he wrote essays, prose, poetry and theater. This site offers an extensive selection from his oeuvre. The texts are chronological in the Archive. By making a selection according to genre, theme and language you get a Filter.
Interview with David Van Reybrouck
“Traditionally, with elections, people only have power for one minute. Nowadays, you don’t need to give away your vote, you can keep on contributing through social media”.
David van Reybrouck is a Belgian scientist, cultural historian, archaeologist and writer. In 2011 van Reybrouck was the originator of the G1000 in Brussels. Through this citizen summit,
1000 Belgians came together to discuss topics and contribute to a better democracy in Belgium.
In cooperation with van Reybrouck, Synthetron organised the online citizen summit in parallel with the live event.
David van Reybrouck has a clear vision on the current status of democracy and participation as expressed in his book: “Against Elections”. We are delighted that he has shared his thoughts with us for our newsletter.
“The most important development is the extent to which new technology like social media de-layers society.
This trend has been going on for 5-6 centuries already, but has accelerated in recent years. In the old days, a monarch or abbot used to decide what information should be made available to others and what should not.
From the Renaissance onwards that changed with the advent of the printing press. The owner of the printing press then had the power to disseminate information.
The transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance was made possible by the printing press. Nowadays, everybody owns their own printing press. We are on the verge of a new Renaissance.”
“The new empowerment of citizens makes it harder for formal authorities to claim delegated power.
Which in turn means that those with power are increasingly mistrusted. The current distribution of power is still based on a vertical structure,
but society is demanding that it become more horizontal.
“The basic idea behind democraagainst electionscy is that of delegation. Each citizen has power for only one minute, once every four years.
You give your vote and you outsource your power. Today that is no longer necessary.
You give your vote, and you get to keep it at the same time through Facebook, Twitter, etc. The elections set the boundaries, then explanations and interpretations can follow through smaller groups.”
How come that in practice it turns out to be rather hard to engage people and to convince them to contribute? Attendance at large scale participatory events can be disappointing.
“This can be caused by the fact that we are still in a transitional phase. Calls to join are often open-ended and non-committal. People are not yet sure if their contribution will have any real impact on policy development or if their invitation actually comes from a government source.
“And then people can get cold feet. They have grown up with a vertical power structure and think ‘My contribution is not relevant’ or ‘why should I bother?’ In short: it takes time and effort so if you’re not sure that it will pay off, that’s a barrier to participation.
“A successful example however is the G1000 that was organised in the Netherlands (Amersfoort) at the beginning of this year. A letter was send to 6000 people, signed by the Mayor and 600 people responded – many more than average for a mailing.
“It’s also very important to make sure that it’s not just the ‘usual suspects’ who participate. You should make an effort to involve the groups that are harder to reach – that will take more than just sending an invitation.”
What developments do you foresee in the future?David-g1000
“Some countries, like the Netherlands, do not have a compulsory voting system, but Belgium does. I can imagine a future where compulsory citizen consultation is in place for important matters, much like jury service operates today. The government decides in certain cases that people will have to show up to contribute and they will be compensated for giving their opinion on key issues.
“On May 25th, there will be elections in Belgium for local, regional and national governments. After that, we won’t have elections for another five years. I am a strong advocate of appointing a Secretary of Participation and Democratic Innovation. Their main task would be to renew democracy in the coming five years. Three years ago we held the G1000 citizen summit in Brussels. This created awareness within political parties and slowly but surely the traditional authorities are also becoming more convinced.
“Across Europe there is growing awareness that the current democratic system has reached its limits. There is a huge dislike of political parties and politicians. They are on the verge of drowning in a sea of suspicion. Small member states like Belgium, The Netherlands and Denmark, are starting to think about democracy in an innovative way. The larger member states are watching them closely before they renew themselves. The vertical system is falling apart.”
Print Marked Items
Van Reybrouck, David: AGAINST ELECTIONS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Van Reybrouck, David AGAINST ELECTIONS Seven Stories (Adult Nonfiction) $15.95 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-60980-810-5
A radical remedy to save the essence of democracy, which is diseased and potentially dying.
>The provocative title doesn't tell the whole story. As European intellectual Van Reybrouck (Congo: The Epic History of a People, 2014, etc.)
argues, what we need is not less democracy but purer democracy. Those who equate democracy with elections, he writes, are wrong. To the
contrary, elections are anti-democratic, establishing a political aristocracy that is disconnected from and distrusted by voters. Thus, "it would
appear that the fundamental cause of Democratic Fatigue Syndrome lies in the fact that we have all become electoral fundamentalists, despising
those elected but venerating elections." If DFS is the rapidly worsening disease, what is the cure? The author carefully builds a historical case for
a return to the classic Athenian principles of democracy, in which citizens contributed not by vote but by lot. Those representing the masses in
running the government were chosen the way that modern democracies generally choose juries, putting important decisions in the hands of
citizens chosen randomly rather than by vote or merit and allowing them to deliberate toward a consensus. A fairly recent inspiration for this
proposal comes from the concept of "deliberative democracy" advanced by a Texas academic, who proceeded from the oversized influence that
unrepresentative states such as Iowa and New Hampshire have on the presidential selection process to suggest that a smaller, more diverse group
be assembled to deliberate, a process that would be more likely to change minds than the polarization we have now. Among those most aghast at
such a radical shift have been the political parties and the media, who serve as gatekeepers, as well as others with a vested interest in the status
quo. However, "why do we accept the fact that lobbies, think tanks and all kinds of interest groups can influence policy yet hesitate to give a say
to ordinary citizens, who are after all what it's all about?"
Readers who disagree with the cure may at least recognize the incisiveness of the diagnosis.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Van Reybrouck, David: AGAINST ELECTIONS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461542/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d4f43f5a. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461542
van Reybrouck, David: CONGO
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
van Reybrouck, David CONGO Ecco/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $29.99 4, 1 ISBN: 978-0-06-220011-2
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 century-longer, 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.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"van Reybrouck, David: CONGO." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2014. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A359847820/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=897e43bd. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A359847820
Van Reybrouck, David. Congo: The Epic History of a
People
Sue Giffard
Library Journal.
139.13 (Aug. 1, 2014): p108+.
COPYRIGHT 2014 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Van Reybrouck, David. Congo: The Epic History of a People. Ecco: HarperCollins. 2014.656p. tr. from Dutch by Sam Garrett, illus. notes,
bibliog. index. ISBN 9780062200112. $29.99. HIST
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
Giffard, Sue
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Giffard, Sue. "Van Reybrouck, David. Congo: The Epic History of a People." Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2014, p. 108+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A377408411/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f4b5c864. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A377408411
Paving the road to hell
Michela Wrong
Spectator.
324.9683 (Mar. 29, 2014): p40.
COPYRIGHT 2014 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Full Text:
Congo: The Epic History of a People
by David Van Reybrouck
Fourth Estate, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 639, ISBN 9780007562909
Spectator Bookshop, 20 [pounds sterling]
When presented with a 639-page door-stopper which includes 82 pages of closely-written sources, notes and index, most of us feel a bit like a
patient about to swallow a strong dose of antibiotics: 'This isn't going to be pleasant, but it'll be good for me.' First published in Dutch in 2010,
translated into French and German, and only now coming out in English, Congo arrives trailing prizes and praise. And yet I quailed.
What I hadn't realised was that David Van Reybrouck, who spent a decade on this extraordinary work, is not primarily a historian. He is a
playwright, poet and novelist and, if this translation by Sam Garrett is anything to go by, has a beautiful feel for language (I loved the description
of the soil-laden Congo river as 'rusty broth'). After a rather slow start, his eye for the arresting human detail, combined with a wry appreciation
for a peculiarly Congolese form of gumption, keeps you powering through this panoramic survey of 150 turbulent years.
The story of how King Leopold II carved a colony the size of Western Europe from a Central African river basin, milking it of ivory and rubber
before handing it to the Belgian state, which granted hasty independence and paved the way for Lumumba, Mobutu and Kabila père et fils , has
been told before. If it feels fresh in these pages it is largely thanks to Van Reybrouck's decision to seek out rarely heard first-hand testimony.
It's an approach fraught with risk, as he acknowledges. Memories shift. In close-knit communities, what happened to a distant cousin blurs easily
into what happened to you. But Van Reybrouk does his best to buffer his on-the-ground perspectives with documented facts--hence those 82
pages of notes--and the resulting foot soldier's view of great events feels both intimate and immediate.
So we get Papa Nkasi, so old he met the turn-of-the-century prophet Simon Kimbangu; André Kitadi, a wireless operator in the Force Publique
who spent three months in 1943 trucking from Lagos to Cairo as part of the Allied war effort, and Alphonsine Mpiaka, the first Congolese female
paratrooper, trained to parachute by the Israelis.
Congo is not imbued with the blazing anger of some histories of the country, and that comes as a relief. The American writer Adam Hochschild
covered that ground so thoroughly in King Leopold's Ghost , which tracked E.D. Morel and Roger Casement's 19th-century campaign to halt the
atrocities used to extract booty, there is little to add.
Some may judge Van Reybrouck, whose father worked on the Benguela railway, to be soft on his immediate ancestors, who replaced outright
abuse with forced labour to extract Congo's minerals. But the point about mature colonial powers is that so much harm was done with such very
good intentions, by men and women who would be appalled at the modern-day assessment of their efforts.
I was glad to see Van Reybrouck, too, acknowledge that the early Mobutu was nothing like the cynical sybarite he became at the end. On the
contrary, as a young man he 'delivered a moral jolt to a nation in disrepair', launching a series of massive infrastructural projects, doing away with
ethnic division in army and education, and managing, via his 'authenticity' programme, to create an abiding sense of national identity.
I have a few quibbles. Turning to 'the first African world war', as the complex conflict which broke out in 1998 is sometimes termed, Van
Reybrouck falls into a much-frequented trap, reporting that 'as many as five million people have been killed in hostilities'. The International
Rescue Committee is the source of that staggering statistic and it has always made clear that most deaths were civilian, involved children under
five, and were caused by preventable diseases --a nuance Reybrouck himself acknowledges. This tragedy is one of negative development
exacerbated by war rather than the testosterone-fuelled conflict that the phrase 'killed in hostilities' implies.
The book closes with a fascinating account of a trip to Guangzhou, China, where the author discovers a community of 2,000-3,000 Congolese
traders who spend their days loading containers with mobile phones, cheap clothing, computer parts and tomato paste for export to Congo. So
vibrant is the trade, he meets a hyperactive young Chinese salesman who, installing SIM cards and replacing batteries, speaks to him the while in
fluent Lingala.
China's African legacy will be the stuff of many future books, but I couldn't help feeling Van Reybrouck placed too much emphasis on the
transformative potential of this entrepreneurial exchange. The Congolese are partly brilliant small traders by default, because this is one of the
few areas to escape a predatory state. If Congo is to break free of its current predicament, it will need more than individual survival skills,
however inspired.
Wrong, Michela
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Wrong, Michela. "Paving the road to hell." Spectator, 29 Mar. 2014, p. 40. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A365690832/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0ff40ebd. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A365690832
Martin K. Whyte Africa Nicolas van de Walle Congo:
The Epic History of a People
Nicolas van de Walle
Foreign Affairs.
93.3 (May-June 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
Full Text:
MARTIN K. WHYTE Africa Nicolas van de Walle Congo: The Epic History of a People by David Van Reybrouck. Ecco, 2014, 656 pp. $29.99.
A major critical and popular success in Belgium, this sweeping history of Congo begins during the precolonial era and brings readers all the way
up to the current era of warlords and civil war. Van Reybrouck's carefully researched and elegantly written book takes in the reader with
compelling portraits of ordinary people that enrich what would otherwise be a fairly conventional historical narrative. The book's best chapters
focus on Belgian colonialism and the decolonization process. Van Reybrouck eschews a Manichaean view and instead paints a nuanced portrait
of the successes and dismal failures of the colonial period. Under Belgian rule, Congo achieved one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. Yet
when the country finally won its independence, in 1960, its citizens included only 16 college graduates and not a single medical doctor. Van
Reybrouck's analysis of the political crises of the early 1960s focuses mostly on the power struggles among leading Congolese politicians and is
too perfunctory when it comes to the international dimensions of the fight for control of the country. The engaging final chapters, which cover the
period since the fall of the Mobutu regime in 1997, are built on highly personal accounts of Van Reybrouck's travels through the war-torn country
and are more impressionistic and less precise than the book's historical chapters.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Walle, Nicolas van de. "Martin K. Whyte Africa Nicolas van de Walle Congo: The Epic History of a People." Foreign Affairs, May-June 2014.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A367642575/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8a323582. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A367642575
Congo: The Epic History of a People
Publishers Weekly.
260.50 (Dec. 9, 2013): p55.
COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Congo: The Epic History of a People
David Van Reybrouck, trans, from the Dutch by Sam Garrett. Ecco, $29.99 (656p) ISBN 978-0-06-220011-2
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.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Congo: The Epic History of a People." Publishers Weekly, 9 Dec. 2013, p. 55. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A354182801/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ca289ac1. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A354182801
Congo: The Epic History of a People
Vanessa Bush
Booklist.
110.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2014): p37.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Congo: The Epic History of a People. By David Van Reybrouck. Tr. by Sam Garrett. Apr. 2014. 656p. Ecco, $29.99 (9780062200112). 967.24.
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 All 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.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bush, Vanessa. "Congo: The Epic History of a People." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2014, p. 37. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A357147499/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5aaa772f. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A357147499
Opinions
‘Congo: The Epic History of a People’ by David Van Reybrouck
By Martin Meredith
April 4, 2014
During the scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century, a period when European powers competed relentlessly for control of African territory, an avaricious monarch, Leopold II of Belgium, carved out a private empire in the heart of the continent, naming it the Congo Free State. Leopold’s property covered nearly 1 million square miles and was 75 times the size of Belgium. Pondering a choice of title for himself, Leopold at first considered “emperor of the Congo,” but he eventually settled for the more modest “king-sovereign.”
Once in control, he set out to amass as large a fortune for himself as possible. Ivory was at first his main hope. But when profits from the ivory trade began to dwindle, he turned to another commodity, wild rubber, to make his money. Several million Africans died as a result of his rubber regime, but Leopold became one of the richest men in the world.
The madness of greed and violence that engulfed Leopold’s Congo Free State was immortalized by Joseph Conrad in his novel “Heart of Darkness,” which he began writing in 1898 after working as a riverboat captain on the Congo River, collecting ivory from Leopold’s agents stationed deep in the interior. As Conrad writes: “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.” The central character in the novel, Kurtz, the head of Inner Station, is renowned for his exploits as an ivory collector. But he is a sick man, haunted by memories of his own savagery, and finally he dies, whispering in despair, “The horror, the horror.”
Ever since Conrad’s venture into the deep interior, a host of writers and historians has been drawn to Congo and its turbulent history. Among the recent accounts that stand out are Adam Hochschild’s “King Leopold’s Ghost,” a harrowing profile of Leopold’s Congo Free State; Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “The Poisonwood Bible,” the story of an American missionary family caught up in the turmoil of the early 1960s that accompanied independence; Ludo De Witte’s groundbreaking investigation into the murder of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first prime minister; Michela Wrong’s “In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz,” a riveting account of the last years of President Mobutu Sese Seko’s disintegrating regime; and Jason Stearns’s “Dancing in the Glory of Monsters,” which gives compelling insights into Congo’s interminable conflicts.
Now David Van Reybrouck has produced an overarching narrative covering the 140 years since the exploits of the journalist-explorer Henry Morton Stanley enabled Leopold to acquire what the king called “a slice of this magnificent African cake.” A Belgian writer based in Brussels, Van Reybrouck had no personal experience of Congo until 2003, when he decided to write a book about it. He embarked on the task intending not just to rely on historical research but to track down living witnesses to the many tragedies and upheavals that Congo has endured.
’Congo: The Epic History of a People’ by David Van Reybrouck (HarperCollins )
His efforts were well rewarded. During 10 visits to the country, he managed to find Congolese veterans with memories of early white missionaries and colonial officials, and tales of religious uprisings and resistance movements. His witnesses from more modern times included musicians, footballers, political activists, warlords and child soldiers. The result is a vivid panorama of one of the most tormented lands in the world.
Like most other African countries, Congo was a state constructed by European ambition. Before Leopold’s intervention, it was the homeland of about 400 disparate ethnic groups scattered across the great Congo Basin. This vast territory remained a blank space on European maps until Stanley’s epic journey down the Congo River in 1876-77 revealed that, beyond the chain of cataracts near the coast, which had hitherto blocked European exploration inland, lay a web of interconnecting rivers, navigable by steamboat, running for thousands of miles into the interior. Leopold duly hired Stanley on a five-year contract to build him a private empire and exploit whatever wealth he could find. By the time Stanley had completed his contract, he and his agents had collected some 400 “treaties” signed by local chiefs.
As a result of the public furor that eventually erupted over the Congo’s rubber regime and the system of slave labor, murder and mutilation that it spawned, Leopold was forced in 1908 to hand over his territory to the Belgian government. As a Belgian colony for the next 50 years, Congo remained an immensely profitable venture. No other European colony in Africa possessed such a profusion of copper, diamonds and uranium. The mineral riches of the province of Katanga, when first discovered, were memorably described as “a veritable geological scandal.”
A small management team in Brussels dictated events on the ground, keeping tight control and deliberately setting out to stifle the emergence of an African elite that might demand a change to the system. While Africans were encouraged to train as clerks, medical assistants or mechanics, they could not become lawyers, doctors or architects. The result was that when Belgium decided in a fit of panic to grant independence precipitately to Congo in 1960, no Congolese had acquired any experience of government, administration or parliamentary life. With bewildering speed, one disaster followed another. Indeed, since independence Congo has remained largely a disaster zone, plundered by all and sundry for its riches.
ADVERTISING
Van Reybrouck covers all this in engrossing detail, concluding with an account of the current agony of eastern Congo. His book is a valuable addition to the rich literature that Congo has inspired.
Martin Meredith is the author of “The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence.” His latest book, “The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour,” will be published in September.
CONGO
The Epic History of a People
By David Van Reybrouck
Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett
Ecco. 639 pp. $29.99
Book Review: Against Elections: The Case for Democracy by David Van Reybrouck
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If democracy is in a bad state and marred by chronic distrust, what is the remedy? In Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, David Van Reybrouck suggests an ancient solution: sortition, or the selection of officials from the general public through a lottery system. While the book does a great job of opening up discussions of elections, democracy and political power through comprehensive and well-presented historical research, Ben Margulies questions whether the solution to debates over political representation lies in a process of mere chance.
Against Elections: The Case for Democracy. David Van Reybrouck. Bodley Head. 2016.
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Against Sortition
The public sphere is full of analyses and lamentations about the inability of Europe’s current political parties and elites to represent their peoples/electorates/nations. Peter Mair’s Ruling the Void provides an excellent history of the problem. The end of the Industrial Revolution in the 1960s-70s saw the decline of large class structures, and thus the identities that allowed parties to represent big class or occupational groups; the end of Communism and the triumph of neoliberalism left existing parties with only one ideology to choose from. Parties became state-funded agencies run by media or policy experts as there was no mass base to provide a wider pool of leadership recruits; they became a ‘cartel’ of parties and a ‘caste’ of party leaders. These are despised by an increasingly disengaged, volatile, capricious and angry electorate. The end result is nasty or irresponsible populism.
This review looks at one author’s novel approach to solving our crisis of representation. David Van Reybrouck, a Belgian author and public intellectual, wrote an excellent history of The Democratic Republic of Congo. In his newest book, Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, he reprises some of Mair’s points about the decline of party-electorate linkages. His solution is to bring back sortition – that is, the selection of public officials through the drawing of lots. To Van Reybrouck, the problem isn’t democracy, it is ‘electoral-representative democracy’ and ‘electoral fundamentalists’.
Van Reybrouck argues that the electoral principle has long been understood as undemocratic. The ancient Athenian polis, whose constitution he discusses in great detail, only deployed election to offices requiring specific expertise, such as military positions; otherwise, magistracies were chosen by lot. This system found endorsement by Montesquieu and Rousseau, but was abandoned for the more aristocratic principle of election by the bourgeois meritocrats of the French and American revolutionary eras. It became the election of ‘men who possess the most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue the common good of society’ (The Federalist Paper #57). This mechanism eventually became embedded in a system of mass parties: a ‘democratisation of elections’ Van Reybrouck condemns as ‘a bogus process’ aided by the redefinition of the word ‘democracy’ and the association of sortition with military conscription.
against-sortition-image-4Image Credit: (Jeff Turner CC BY 2.0)
Key to Van Reybrouck’s diagnosis and proposed solutions is a specific idea of democracy, and an implicit idea of how society is organised and should be represented. Van Reybrouck seems to see elective representation itself as aristocratic, at least for offices not requiring special knowledge. ‘Democracy is not government by the best in our society, because such a thing is called aristocracy, elected or not […] Democracy, by contrast, flourishes precisely by allowing a diversity of voices to be heard’ (152-53). He wants to deal with the problem of the elite-electorate gap by collapsing it completely.
Van Reybrouck certainly makes a valuable contribution to political theory and discussion with his book, and he is a skilled author and researcher. His sketch of how classical Athens worked is one of the best parts of the book, and I would enjoy seeing him put his skills to a history of its democracy. Indeed, the book serves as a very good introduction to the history of sortition in classical, medieval and modern politics, using examples from Europe and North America. Anyone wanting to experiment with Van Reybrouck’s theories will find plenty of practical guidance here.
However, Van Reybrouck’s proposals, however innovative and fresh, only deal with a single aspect of modern disaffection: the alienation of voters from parties and politicians. That’s no small thing, but it is also not a freestanding problem. Politicians may seem like cookie-cutter reproductions of the same neoliberal PR account manager, but that is partly because free-market liberalism has been the only ideology on offer for something like a quarter century, because capital has broken free of national borders and eroded the public sphere. Those global pressures transcend national boundaries, and the ideologies that justify them do as well; simply changing the way states select officials fails to address that larger problem. Greece could pick a new government by drawing lottery balls tomorrow; that government would still have to deal with the bond markets. And Van Reybrouck’s model still relies on experts and officials to help advise the citizens chosen by lot. Nothing suggests that these counsellors would be any more ideologically diverse than the technocrats currently employed by the IMF, the European Union or various finance ministries.
Another problem is Van Reybrouck’s approach to structures other than parties that lie between the citizen and their state. It is perfectly legitimate to complain that ‘lobbies, think tanks and all kinds of interest groups’ have more access to the policymaking process than ordinary citizens (156), but he also seems to assume that those sorted into policymaking or review roles will neither be members of political parties nor engage in ‘tactical voting […] political haggling [or] back-scratching’, instead making decisions ‘according to their conscience, according to what he or she feels best serves the general interest in the long term’ (146).
This implies that there is only one definition of the general interest, which everyone can neutrally work out with enough ratiocination and good will. This ignores questions of class, race, occupation, sub-nationalism and all the other identities, material interests and philosophical concerns we carry into politics. How would this work in a federal system, where you effectively have not just one general national interest, but also the general interests of several states or provinces? From an economic standpoint, how do you come up with a general interest that distributes (or more challengingly, redistributes) resources? For all his condemnation of the first bourgeois republicans of the late-eighteenth century, Van Reybrouck borrows their ideas about a politics without party. That worked for Enlightenment liberals because they could pretend there was only one general interest, since the elected represent only one class of capital owners. He lists several examples of premodern political units that used lot-drawing, but in all of these cases, the ‘citizens’ were a homogenous group of a few thousand or ten thousand men of similar wealth.
In any case, choosing governors by lot does not automatically mean that the public will see those chosen as representing them. Sortition may produce a more representative assemblage of policymakers, but it does not actually empower ordinary citizens unless they are chosen. In Van Reybrouck’s touchstone, Athens, this was not a problem: every citizen was part of the legislature, and there were more than a thousand executive and legislative posts chosen by lot. Every citizen was in some way empowered (a task made easier by excluding most inhabitants from citizenship), and service in an executive role was almost impossible to avoid. In a modern state, this sort of mass participation is not possible, so most citizens will, at most, get to leave comments on the assembly website or vote in occasional referenda. Elections are democratic precisely because they grant choice to citizens, even if it is only a Schumpeterian choice between elites.
Finally, the book’s model for a system run on these ‘aleatory-democratic’ (‘aleatory’ meaning ‘based on chance’) lines, though very thoughtful, is also hugely complex. It involves no fewer than six types of assembly: An assembly to set the overall agenda; ‘interest panels’ to propose specific legislative topics; a review panel to prepare detailed bills; a ‘policy jury’ that would vote on the bills (but not debate them); an oversight council to handle complaints and judicial review; and a rules council to set rules for the other bodies. It is unlikely even the most educated, wonkish voter would find such a Rube Goldberg machine an attractive model. It reminded me of Olivier Bernier’s description of the legislature in Napoleonic France: ‘The Tribunat was composed of one hundred members who discussed the bills brought to it by the executive, but could not vote on them. The Corps Législatif had three hundred members who voted the bills into law, but could not discuss them’ (65).
Van Reybrouck does politics a great service by opening up our discussions of political structure and agency, questioning age-old ideas about elections, representation and the division of powers. That, and his considerable and well-presented historical research, make this book well worth reading. But in an age of such profound citizen dissatisfaction, it is far from clear we can leave something as central as representation to mere chance; leaving things to the supposedly ‘aleatory’ justice of the market is, after all, part of what got us into this mess.
Ben Margulies is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick. Ben’s research background is primarily in comparative and European politics, especially the quantitative analysis of trends across countries. He is also interested in the ways that nations and party systems respond to migration and globalisation. He obtained his PhD from the University of Essex in 2014, and has published articles in Comparative European Politics, the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica and the Australian Journal of Political Science. Ben earned a master’s in comparative politics at the London School of Economics in 2007, and did his undergraduate work at New York University. He is originally from Dallas, Texas.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.
History’s Stranglehold
Image
King Leopold’s choking grip on the Congolese as shown in a 1906 Punch cartoon.CreditStock Montage/Getty Images
By J. M. Ledgard
May 1, 2014
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.
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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.”
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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?”
CONGO
The Epic History of a People
By David Van Reybrouck
Translated by Sam Garrett
639 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $29.99.
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.