Ndekendek: The Man Who Runs Like a Bird is an account of the life of Josse Flasschoen and his relationship with two boys he briefly met at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. Their lives are going different directions, but keep circling back resulting in confrontations between them.. Josse was nicknamed Ndekendek by the tribes of the Belgian Congo where he operated a palm oil plantation while working to uplift the people. The story expands to three continents before climaxing with disturbing results that deserve a reexamination for justice. The account is shared by George Flasschoen, son of Josse, who lives in Lees Summit, Missouri. Bob Wyatt is the writer.
What was it like to be colonized by foreigners? Highlighting a region in central Congo, in the center of sub-Saharan Africa, Being Colonized places Africans at the heart of the story. In a richly textured history that will appeal to general readers and students as well as to scholars, the distinguished historian Jan Vansina offers not just accounts of colonial administrators, missionaries, and traders, but the varied voices of a colonized people. Vansina uncovers the history revealed in local news, customs, gossip, and even dreams, as related by African villagers through archival documents, material culture, and oral interviews. Vansina’s case study of the colonial experience is the realm of Kuba, a kingdom in Congo about the size of New Jersey—and two-thirds the size of its colonial master, Belgium. The experience of its inhabitants is the story of colonialism, from its earliest manifestations to its tumultuous end. What happened in Kuba happened to varying degrees throughout Africa and other colonized regions: racism, economic exploitation, indirect rule, Christian conversion, modernization, disease and healing, and transformations in gender relations. The Kuba, like others, took their own active part in history, responding to the changes and calamities that colonization set in motion. Vansina follows the region’s inhabitants from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, when a new elite emerged on the eve of Congo’s dramatic passage to independence.
This book explains how and why Belgium, a small but influential European country, was changed through its colonial activities in the Congo, from the first expeditions in 1880 to the Mobutu regime in the 1980s. Belgian politics, diplomacy, economic activity and culture were influenced by the imperial experience. Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980 yields a better understanding of the Congo's past and present.
The definitive account of exploitation in the Congo, introduced by Adam Hochschild In the early twentieth century, the worldwide rubber boom led British entrepreneur Lord Leverhulme to the Belgian Congo. Warmly welcomed by the murderous regime of King Leopold II, Leverhulme set up a private kingdom reliant on the horrific Belgian system of forced labour, a programme that reduced the population of Congo by half and accounted for more deaths than the Nazi Holocaust. In this definitive, meticulously researched history, Jules Marchal exposes the nature of forced labour under Lord Leverhulme’s rule and the appalling conditions imposed upon the people of Congo. With an extensive introduction by Adam Hochschild, Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts is an important and urgently needed account of a laboratory of colonial exploitation.
This book presents the first anthology of Flemish prose on the Congo, the former colony of Belgium, in English translation. Because of the Dutch language barrier, Flemish literature on the Congo has traditionally remained inaccessible to and thus neglected by international scholarship, as opposed to French or English prose on this part of the African continent. That this particular perspective has thus far remained underexposed, or even disregarded, is all the more regrettable in light of the fact that the vast majority of Belgians who went to work in the African colony came from Flanders. The Congo in Flemish Literature now represents a key step towards filling this lacuna by providing an overview of the different societal attitudes towards the colonial undertaking prevailing in Belgium during and after the colonial era, the way the relationship between Belgium and the Congo changed over time, subject to the zeitgeist and sociopolitical and economic developments, and the individual authors' varying points of view with regard to the colonisation. Flemish Congo prose offers a fascinating glimpse into Belgium’s colonial past and legacy, primarily during the colonial era, but also at the time of its violent aftermath following Congolese independence on 30 June 1960, and well into the following decades.
Based on interviews with former missionaries, archival records, and secondary sources, Kasongo, a Methodist minister of the Central Congo Conference, presents a history of the church in this region. He covers the origins of its mission in the Central Congo, 1912-22, to the decline and fall of the Central Congo Episcopal Area, 1960-96, with the intervening years marked by expansion and responses to the shifting political environment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
A fascinating account of a huge Central African country, almost completely unprepared for liberation from colonial rule in 1960 and plunged into the anarchy of factional struggles for central power, against a background of regional separatism. A UN force stepped in to prevent the mineral-rich province of Katanga from breaking away and stayed for nearly four years, after which quarrelling warlords fought for central power, or for or against separatism. In 1965, Mobutu came to power, ruling as a dictator his Single-Party State, until he was finally toppled in 1997 by a Tutsi-backed invasion force led by Kabila.
