Abstract
Stanard traces the fascinating historiography of Belgian ‘colonial culture’. For long, ‘colonial’ history was marginal in Belgium. There were few Congolese immigrants who might have asked harder questions about the past and fewer Belgian historians with first-hand knowledge of the colony. The ‘imperial turn’ in historiography, Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, a parliamentary inquiry into Patrice Lumumba’s murder, generational change, and anniversaries raised awareness of the colonial experience’s enduring consequences. Research has shown how colonial-era propaganda and former colonials sustained a positive vision of past overseas rule. The colonial era reshaped institutions, left colonialist monuments across the metropole and impacted migration. MacKenzie’s work can guide future research into Belgian post-colonial literature and empire’s effects on the monarchy and the Catholic Church.
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Notes
- 1.
The author thanks Larry Marvin, Rachael Loucks and the editors for comments on earlier versions of this essay.
- 2.
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- 3.
Guy Vanthemsche, ‘The Historiography of Belgian Colonialism in the Congo’, in Csaba Lévai, ed., Europe and the World in European Historiography (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2006), 89–119; Isidore Ndaywel È Nziem, ‘L’historiographie congolaise: Un essai de bilan’, Civilisations 54 (2006), 237–54; Idesbald Goddeeris and Sindani E. Kiangu, ‘Congomania in Academia: Recent Historical Research on the Belgian Colonial Past,’ BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review 126, no. 4 (2011), 54–75; and Jean Stengers, ‘Belgian Historiography After 1945’, in P. C. Emmer and H. L. Wesseling, eds., trans. Frank Perlin, Reappraisals in Overseas History (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1979), 161–81. See also Jean-Luc Vellut, ‘Itinéraires d’un rêveur’, in Françoise Rosart and Guy Zelis, eds., Dans l’atelier de l’historien contemporanéiste: Parcours d’historiens de l’Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve: Harmattan-Academia, 2012); and Jan Vansina, Living with Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).
- 4.
Jean-Luc Vellut, Congo: Ambitions et désenchantements, 1880–1960. Carrefours du passé au centre de l’Afrique (Paris: Karthala, 2017).
- 5.
Personal communication with John M. MacKenzie, 19 December 2016.
- 6.
See Zaïre 1885–1985: Cent ans de regards des belges (Brussels: Cooperation par l’Education et la Culture, 1985); and Lieve Joris, Mon Oncle du Congo, trans. Marie Hooghe (Arles: Actes Sud/Babel, 1990), first published as Terug naar Congo (1987).
- 7.
Clair Wills, Lovers & Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain (London: Allen Lane, 2017).
- 8.
John M. MacKenzie, et al., European Empires and the People: Popular Responses to Imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).
- 9.
Elizabeth Buettner, Europe After Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
- 10.
L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan, The Rulers of Belgian Africa, 1884–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 100.
- 11.
Guy Vanthemsche, Belgium and the Congo, 1885–1980, trans. Alice Cameron and Stephen Windross, revised by Kate Connelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 279.
- 12.
MacKenzie later carried out research in Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) between 1967 and 1976. He wrote about this experience in John M. MacKenzie, ‘Empire from Above and Below’, in Antoinette Burton and Dane Kennedy, eds., How Empire Shaped Us (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 37–48; and John M. MacKenzie, ‘Epilogue: Analysing “Echoes of Empire” in Contemporary Context: The Personal Odyssey of an Imperial Historian (1970s–present)’, in Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Berny Sèbe, and Gabrielle Maas, eds., Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 188–206.
- 13.
Sarah Demart, ‘Histoire orale à Matonge (Bruxelles): un miroir postcolonial’, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 29 (2013), 137; and Mumpasi B. Lututala, ‘L’élargissement de l’espace de vie des Africains: Comment le «pays des oncles» européens devient aussi celui des neveux africains’, Revue Tiers Monde 38 (1997), 338.
- 14.
Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Central Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
- 15.
When the museum reopened in 2018 following a five-year renovation, the room included an art installation by a Congolese artist that called attention to the Congolese killed during the Leopoldian era.
- 16.
Matthew G. Stanard, ‘Violence and Empire: The Curious Case of Belgium and the Congo’, in Robert Aldrich and Kirsten McKenzie, eds., The Routledge History of Western Empires (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 454–67.
- 17.
Sarah De Mul, ‘The Holocaust as a Paradigm for the Congo Atrocities: Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost’, in Elleke Boehmer and Sarah De Mul, eds., The Postcolonial Low Countries: Literature, Colonialism, and Multiculturalism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012), 174–75.
- 18.
Ludo de Witte, De moord op Lumumba (Leuven: Van Halewyck, 1999).
- 19.
Idesbald Goddeeris, ‘Postcolonial Belgium: The Memory of the Congo’, Interventions 17 (2015), 434–51.
- 20.
Jean Muteba Rahier, ‘The Ghost of Leopold II: The Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa and Its Dusty Colonialist Exhibition’, Research in African Literatures 34 (2003), 58–84; Matthew G. Stanard, Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); and Maarten Couttenier, Als muren spreken - Het Museum van Tervuren 1910–2010 Si les murs pouvaient parler - Le Musée de Tervuren (Tervuren: MRAC, 2010).
- 21.
Idesbald Goddeeris, ‘Colonial Streets and Statues: Postcolonial Belgium in the Public Space’, Postcolonial Studies 18 (2015), 397–409.
- 22.
Daniel de Almeida Cabral, ‘Tour Leopold, 2016’, 2017, https://www.danielcabral.org/tour-leopold.html [accessed 16 January 2018]; Lucas Catherine, Wandelen naar Kongo (Brussels: Epo, 2006); and Promenade au Congo: Petit guide anticolonial de Belgique, trans. Jacquie Dever (Brussels: Aden, 2010).
- 23.
Matthew G. Stanard, ‘King Leopold’s Bust: A Story of Monuments, Culture, and Memory in Colonial Europe’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 12 (2011).
- 24.
Marc Poncelet, L’Invention des Sciences Coloniales Belges (Paris: Karthala, 2008).
- 25.
Maarten Couttenier, ‘Anthropology and Ethnography’, in Prem Poddar, Rajeev S. Patke, and Lars Jensen, eds., A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures—Continental Europe and Its Empires (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 12–13.
- 26.
Ruben Mantels, Geleerd in de Tropen: Leuven, Congo & de wetenschap, 1885–1960 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007).
- 27.
Sarah Demart, ‘De la distinction au stigmate: Matonge, un quartier congolais à Bruxelles’, Bruxelles et le Congo, ed. Amandine Lauro, Cahiers de La Fonderie 38 (June 2008), 59; and Demart, ‘Histoire orale à Matonge’, 137.
- 28.
On the enormity of Congo’s recent travails, see Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).
- 29.
Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner, An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography (New York: Viking, 2006).
- 30.
In Koli Jean Bofane, Mathématiques congolaises (Paris: Actes Sud, 2008).
- 31.
Jamina Mertens, Wouter Goedertier, Idesbald Goddeeris and Dominique de Brabanter, ‘A New Floor for the Silenced? Congolese Hip-Hop in Belgium’, Social Transformations 1 (2013), 87–113.
- 32.
Florence Gillet, ‘Le pélerinage des anciens coloniaux en région bruxelloise’, Bruxelles et le Congo, ed. Amandine Lauro, Cahiers de La Fonderie 38 (2008), 54.
- 33.
Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, Recalling the Belgian Congo: Conversations and Introspection (New York: Berghahn, 2000), 72; and Laurent Licata and Olivier Klein, ‘Regards croisés sur un passé commun: anciens colonisés et anciens coloniaux face à l’action belge au Congo’, in M. Sanchez-Mazas and L. Licata, eds., L’Autre: Regards psychosociaux (Saint-Martin d’Hères: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2005).
- 34.
Dorien Van De Mieroop and Mathias Pagnaer, ‘Co-Constructing Colonial Dichotomies in Female Former Colonizers’ Narratives of the Belgian Congo’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23 (2013), E66–E83.
- 35.
Florence Gillet, ‘Congo rêvé? Congo détruit … Les anciens coloniaux belges aux prises avec une société en repentir. Enquête sur la face émergée d’un mémoire’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent-Bijdragen tot de Eigentijdse Geschiedenis 19 (2008), 101.
- 36.
Gillet, ‘Le pèlerinage’, 57.
- 37.
Matthew G. Stanard, ‘Imperialists Without and Empire: Cercles coloniaux and Colonial Culture in Belgium After 1960’, in Cheryl Koos and Cora Granata, eds., The Human Tradition in Modern Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 155–69.
- 38.
Debora L. Silverman, ‘Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part I’, West 86th 18 (2011), 151, 153, 156, and 164; Deborah Silverman, ‘Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part II’, West 86th 19 (2012), 175–95; and Deborah Silverman, ‘Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part III’, West 86th 20 (2013), 3–61.
- 39.
David Van Reybrouck, Congo: Een geschiedenis (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010).
- 40.
Vincent Viaene, David Van Reybrouck, and Bambi Ceuppens, eds., Congo in België: Koloniale cultuur in de metropool (Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 2009). See also this author’s recent book, The Leopard, the Lion, and the Cock: Colonial Memories and Monuments in Belgium (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2019). An earlier, more impressionistic volume is Luc Vints, Kongo Made in Belgium: Beeld van een kolonie in film en propaganda (Leuven: Kritak, 1984).
- 41.
Nathalie Tousignant, ‘Les Manifestations publiques du Lien colonial entre la Belgique et le Congo belge (1897–1988)’, Ph.D. Thesis, Université Laval, 1995, 16.
- 42.
Christraud M. Geary, In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885–1960 (London: Philip Wilson, 2002).
- 43.
Anne Cornet and Florence Gillet, Congo Belgique 1955–1965: Entre propagande et réalité (Brussels: SOMACEGES/Renaissance du Livre, 2010), 15–20.
- 44.
In addition to Propaganda and Empire, see John M. MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986).
- 45.
Beatriz Navarro, ‘Entrevista a Yves Leterme, presidente de Flandes y vencedor de las elecciones belgas’, La Vanguardia, 26 June 2007; Jean Quatremer, ‘Leterme à la tête d’un ‘accident de l’histoire’, Libération (Paris), 12 June 2007.
- 46.
Baudouin to Leopold III, 29 May 1955, quoted in Olivier Mouton, ‘Lettres de Baudouin’, Le Soir, 19 June 2010.
- 47.
Miles Taylor, ‘The British Royal Family and the Colonial Empire from the Georgians to Prince George’, in Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery, eds., Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 27–50.
- 48.
See Charles V. Reed, Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects and the Making of a British World, 1860–1911 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).
- 49.
See Guy Vanthemsche, ‘Belgian Royals on Tour in the Congo (1909–1960)’, in Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery, eds., Royals on Tour: Politics, Pageantry and Colonialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).
- 50.
Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London: New Left Books, 1977).
- 51.
John M. MacKenzie, ‘Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English Worlds? A Four-Nation Approach to the History of the British Empire’, History Compass 6 (2008), 1244–63.
- 52.
T. M. Devine, ‘The Break-Up of Britain? Scotland and the End of Empire: The Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 16 (2006): 163–80.
- 53.
Bambi Ceuppens, Congo Made in Flanders? Koloniale Vlaamse Visies op ‘Blank’ en ‘Zwart’ in Belgisch Congo (Ghent: Academia Press, 2003); and Nancy Rose Hunt, ‘Rewriting the Soul in a Flemish Congo’, Past and Present 198 (2008), 185–215.
- 54.
John M. MacKenzie, ‘Epilogue’, in Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Berny Sèbe, and Gabrielle Maas, eds., Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 197.
- 55.
Joris, Mon Oncle, 10.
- 56.
O. Degrijse, ‘La Belgique et les missions’, Eglise et mission 237 (March 1985), 7.
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Stanard, M.G. (2019). Lumumba’s Ghost: A Historiography of Belgian Colonial Culture. In: Barczewski, S., Farr, M. (eds) The MacKenzie Moment and Imperial History. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24459-0_15
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