“Elusive natives”: escaping colonial control in the Leverville oil palm concession, Belgian Congo, 1923–1941

Paths of authority, roads of resistance: Ambiguous rural infrastructure and slippery stabilization in eastern DR Congo

“…Well into the 1930s, a big part of the road network was considered 'impassable' during the rainy season (Devroey, 1939), curbing the administration's effective control outside of outposts and urban hubs (cf. Henriet, 2015). Even during the dry season, the passage of only a few hundred vehicles was enough to form potholes and corrugations on a newly levelled surface of desiccated road (Millard, 1962).…”

Governing economic interests: Interwar road construction in Belgian Congo

“…Henceforth, the majority of the local population sought employment in other industries, resulting in the migration of young men to the mines of Congo-Brazzaville, as well as to other exploitation sites in neighbouring districts 9 . The colonial state tried to limit these forms of indigenous nomadism, wanting to contain the Congolese population within their territoires to control the pool of indigenous labour force (Henriet, 2015;Mathys, 2014). The letter finished with Minister Jaspar's suggestion that Cooreman should focus on developing a way to use more mechanical means of exploiting the area, signifying that an industrial culture with mechanical transportation would be easier to consider because it would put less pressure on the scarcely available local workforce.…”

“…Drawing upon recent ideas in colonial historiography about the closereading of colonial archives (Allman, 2013;Stoler, 2009), this study is based on imperial sources in the context of the Master's dissertation of the author 1 , so native voices remain out of reach. Nevertheless, their agency can be partially highlighted through a detailed study of the strategies implemented by the colonial state to achieve their goals, be they profit maximisation or territorial control (Henriet, 2015).…”

Local elites’ extraversion and repositioning: Continuities and changes in Congo’s mineral production networks

“…Their leaders, who acted as the custodians of customary land on behalf of the ancestors, were responsible for the allocation of land rights. The Belgian colonial administration provoked the gradual erosion of this customary system of land distribution by declaring all unoccupied land property of the state, by demarcating the boundaries of chiefdoms (thus preventing the expansion of customary lands), by introducing a system of land registration and private ownership, and by confiscating considerable portions of land for the creation of national parks and anti-erosion forests (Van Acker 2005, Henriet 2015Vlassenroot & Huggins 2005).…”