#Belgian Congo

[labutansa]

via __shauntelle on instagram

Additional note from myself: I haven’t finish reading it yet, but I feel what is being spoken on in this video is also covered well and expanded upon a bit in the first chapter of The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History - if for some reason you can’t finish it, let me know and I will try to upload my PDF copy

[womblegrinch]

André Hallet (1890-1959) - Princesse, Mangbetu

Oil on strong cardboard. 16.1 x 13 inches, 41 x 33 cm.

Estimate: €700-900.

Sold Hotel de Ventes Horta, Brussels, Belgium, 7 Oct 2024 for €700 + B.P.

After travelling widely in Europe, Hallet was sent by the Belgian Ministry of Colonies to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1934, eventually settling in Kisenyi in what is now Rwanda, until his death.

The Mangbetu people of the northeastern Congo pursued a practice of what they called ‘lipombo’. New-born babies had their heads tightly wrapped with cloth and the soft, growing cranium would take on an elongated shape. The deformation didn’t affect the brain. Intracranial pressure remained the same as for a normal person, the brain simply growing into the new shape of the skull.

The Mangbetu believed the elongation denoted majesty, beauty, power and higher intelligence. The practice largely died out in the 1950s with increasing Westernisation and a ban imposed by the colonial authorities.

I've posted another painting by Hallet previously of a mother and child where you can see the binding on the infant's head.

[victusinveritas]

A 1900s colonial poster satirizing different kinds of European colonialism in Africa.

[postcard-from-the-past]

M'Pala Catholic mission in Belgian Congo, modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo

French vintage postcard

[w-m-pitt]

Maps of the Great Belgian Colonial Empire.

The Belgian Empire possessed the world's thirteenth largest population by 1939, was history's forty-seventh largest empire, was the third largest empire in the world by 1917 and reached it's greatest extent in 1946.

[southoffrance15]

Audrey Hepburn in Kisangani 🌴☀️

Audrey Hepburn at a local market in Kisangani by Leo Fuchs (1958) while on location filming “The Nun’s Story”

Private footage of Audrey Hepburn in the Belgian Congo:

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1903 – Roger Casement completes report about abuses in Belgian Congo.

‘Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off…

[dailyhistoryposts]

World Literature Series: L'anté-peuple

TITLE: L'anté-peuple (French) or The Antipeople (English)

AUTHOR: Sony Lab'ou Tansi (born Marcel Ntsoni)

DATE PUBLISHED: 1983

COUNTRY, REGION, OR PEOPLE: Congo

LANGUAGE: French

TYPE: Novel

BACKGROUND: Tansi was the oldest of seven children born in 1947 to a family living in a village in what was then the Belgian Congo. Tansi spoke three languages (Kikongo, French, and English), and he spent his life writing, teaching, and performing plays.

Tansi’s works speak of the difficulties of life in postcolonial Africa. Traditional wisdom lends strength to characters, but their surroundings are bleak, forcing people into rough situations and rougher choices with no good options.

L'anté-peuple won the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire in 1983.

SYNOPSIS: Dadou is the respected principal of a school for girls in Zaire. He is attracted to some of his students, and in his determination to resist them (especially Yavelde and her cousin Yealdara), he turns to drinking. 

However, Yavelde kills herself and, in a note, falsely accuses Dadou of making her pregnant. The village reacts with violence and Dadou is sentenced to prison, where he stays for four years until Yealdara can help him escape. Dadou escapes across the Congo River, but he can’t stay in the nearby fishing village forever, and Yealdara is having trouble finding him to reunite.

THEMES: Power, politics, the law, corruption, love, sex, existentialism

[A color photograph of Tansi, a Black man with short hair and a blue shirt]

Main post for the World Literature series.

[artstamps]

Native Woman. Printed in Belgian Congo in 1942.

[markettwain]

[thoughtlessarse]

The Belgian State has been summoned to appear in court to answer for the racial policy it pursued when it had guardianship over Congo (current Democratic Republic of the Congo) between 1908 and 1960. The appeal trial will take place on Monday and Tuesday. Five women, who were victims of the abduction and segregation of very young mixed-race children in Congo, have brought a civil action against the Belgian State. The legal procedure challenges the Belgian State for having organised this violent system of racial discrimination, which had profound consequences for their lives. The case, which is the first of its kind in Europe, was first heard in 2021 by the Brussels Civil Court, which rejected the claim by the five plaintiffs. An appeal was subsequently lodged. The five women, who were born in Congo between 1946 and 1950, are suing the Belgian State for civil liability for crimes against humanity. They are claiming damages for the serious harm caused to them when they were abducted and segregated. The women are the children of Belgian men and Congolese women conceived when Congo was a Belgian colony. They were taken from their home and forcibly placed in orphanages, like most very young mixed-race children. According to official documents from the colonial archives, abductions of mixed-race children were organised by officers of the Belgian State and carried out with the help of the Church.

continue reading

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Prince in Rio," Kingston Whig-Standard. June 26, 1942. Page 2. ---- Prince Ernst von Starhemberg, former Austrian vice-chancellor, arrives in Rio de Janerio from the Belgian Congo, where he was associated with Free French before break with General de Gaulle.

[AL: He broke with the Allies because they were allied to the Soviet Union. von Starhemberg was one of the founders of 'Austrofascism,' whatever his opposition to Hitler. Hilariously, he died from a heart attack while trying to hit a photographer for a left-wing newspaper with his cane.]

[1900scartoons]

An Appeal To the Congo Chief 

December 26, 1906

Ben Tillman rages with pitchfork and razor blade as an African-American man presents a petition to a stereotypical African chieftain. "To Sec of State Congo Free State From the Negro citizens of the United States - Flagrant inhumanities exist - Moral support prayed for."

The caption reads "One might be made by our negro citizens for his moral support against the flagrant inhumanity of United States senators and other 'southern gentlemen.'"

There was currently an international effort to end Belgium’s colonial abuses in the Congo, but lynch mobs were very active in the U.S. south, and rioters were attacking Blacks in Mississippi, among countless other abuses. Tillman was an extremely racist senator.

From Hennepin County Library

Original available at: https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/Bart/id/6555/rec/342

[postcard-from-the-past]

Hutu family from Belgian Congo, modern-day Rwada or Burundi

Belgian vintage postcard

[w-m-pitt]

Map of the Europeanisation of the World (1908)

[macden]

I bought a globe at an antique store from the mid 1940s and I love it because I am a nerd but I also feel like I need to print this out to display beside it