In the Forest of No Joy : The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism THE Congo -Ocean Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism by J. P. Daughton. -2021- 368 Pages

 "From 1921 to 1934, men from “the Batignolles” lived near the coast in Middle Congo, often referred to by the French as simply “the Congo,” a region in the southern part of French EquatorialFrom 1921 to 1934, men from “the Batignolles” lived near the coast in Middle Congo, often referred to by the French as simply “the Congo,” a region in the southern part of French Equatorial Africa. They worked on building the Congo-Océan railroad, a massive construction project that the colonial government undertook in the years just after the First World War. Long heralded by Frenchmen as essential to the economic development of the region, the railroad would connect the city of Brazzaville, the colony’s largest settlement

on the upper Congo River, to Pointe-Noire, on the Atlantic coast, where the French planned to build a deepwater port. Covering only some 512 kilometers, fewer than 320 miles, the railroad was not terribly long. But it crossed difficult terrain, especially the dreaded Mayombe, where the rails wound atop unstable, sandy soil, through a region of thick forests, mountains, and gorges." From In The Forest of No Joy

Prior to today's work I have read two very good accounts of the exploitation of the people of the Congo area of Africa by Western countries in order to enrich themselves on the incredible natural resources of the Congo.

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives By Siddharth Kara details the extreme cruelty with which modern Congo residents are treated while mining cobalt. Cobalt is essential in batteries for vehicles, tablets and smart phones. Workers are paid around $2.00 a day.

And 

In King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild  I learned of the millions of residents of the Congo who died collecting rubber for tires.

To me there is a deep sadness in the exploitation of incredibly impoverished Congolese used to produce essential supplies for cars, knowing the having of such a vehicle would be an impossible dream for them.

An unwavering belief in white supremacy was an article of faith to Europeans working on the construction of the railway.

The story of the Congo-Océan certainly

 demonstrates all too clearly the devastating potency of assumptions of racial superiority. But the faith that France could accomplish the impossible, that it could transform the Cinderella of the empire, was also an essential theme in the tragedy. The chief administration of the project were educated French men, many of the front line supervisors were from other parts of Europe. The French brought in African soldiers from other regions to supervise railroad workers. Whopping and worse was commonly employed. The Congo workers were seen as lazy, stupid, and without a work ethic.

The narratives of empire that were spun in defense of the railroad were worrisomely effective at burying prolonged human misery, the deaths of thousands of people, and the disappearance ofcommunities. They even helped Europeans claim credit for building a railroad across an unforgiving forest while simultaneously erasing the sacrifices of the tens thousands of men and women who made it possible. For the French who oversaw the Congo-Océan, white triumph would always discount African trauma. The narratives and ideals thatanimated liberal empires have not been entirely dismantled in the wake of decolonization. The voices and experiences of the men and women who worked on projects offer one line of defense against future hubris. In their stories is the wisdom needed to see the potential duplicity of those who confidently inspire with promises of transformation, wealth, and humanity.

The were reports made to French authorities about the atrocities. Andre Gide spend time there. He was shown totally perfect conditions in camps, well fed healthy workers.

In a kind of cosmic revenge many medical scholars think Aids orginated in the area of the project about 1930, eventually killing millions.

In the Forest of Joy is very illuminating. (It is a trifle repetious.) 

J. P. Daughton is an award-winning historian of modern Europe and European colonialism and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. He has provided media commentary for the Atlantic, Newsweek, Time, and CNN. He lives in San Francisco, California. From the publisher 

Mel Ulm

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives By Siddharth Kara -January 31, 2023 - 288 Pages

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

By Siddharth Kara -January 31, 2023 - 288 Page

This powerful account of how and why cobalt especially along with other minerals like uranium found almost exclusively in the Congo brought great misery to millions of Congo residents and great wealth to international corporations like Apple and Tesla will shock anyone of integrity who reads it.

Cobalt is an essential ingredient in rechargeable lithium batteries that power tablets, smart phones and electric vehicles. Billions of people depend on these devices, I am writing this on a tablet.Lithium batters helped make Apple the most valuable brand in the world, Elton Musk incredibly wealth, and are behind Kamala Harris's visit to Africa and China 's huge investments there. All this depends on mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kara details profusely Chinese control of Cobalt mining.

Kara vividly details the horrid lives of miners in the Congo. He provides a brief history of European exploitation of the resources of the Congo.

From the start of the Slave trade, King Leopold's rule over rubber which lead to millions of deaths, up to post colonial leadership of the country Kara shows us a cruel history 

Miners make about $2.00 at most under terrible totally unsafe conditions. The air and the water are horrifyingly unsafe. Health care is nonexistent. Miners are watched over by armed guards. Mining companies pay huge bribes to Congo officials. Middlemen exploit miners, child labor is supposed to be illegal but Kara says under seven work in dangerous mines. People are so desperate and scared of armed guards, government forces they flock from all over to the mines. Injuries and respiratory illness are common place. Girls get pregnant in their middle teens and work with their babies strapped on their backs. Prostitution is an alternative taken by many women.

Kara tells us most Congolese are fervent Catholics, escapism for them.

Rich foreign corporations state they do not deal with any suppliers who use children as miners or provide unsafe working conditions. Kara says never in his extensive close up visits to mining areas did he ever see an inspector from these companies. 

Kara describes his conversations with miners, with women left alone after their husbands death, with a teenage boy left crippled for life in a mining accident, with officials who gave him life saving stamp of approvals to visit mines. He describes in detail the huge mines and the work of miners. Millions of trees have been cut for mines.

"The path begins with accountability. The biggest problem faced by the Congo’s artisanal miners is not the gun-toting soldiers, unscrupulous Chinese buyers, exploitative mining cooperatives, or collapsing tunnels. These and other antagonists are but symptoms of a greater menace . The biggest problem faced by the Congo’s artisanal miners is that stakeholders up the chain refuse to accept responsibility for them, even though they all profit in one way or another from their work. Rather than issue vacant statements on

zero-tolerance policies and other hollow PR, corporations should do the one, simple thing that would truly help: treat the artisanal miners as equal employees to the people who work at corporate headquarters. We would not send the children of Cupertino to scrounge for cobalt in toxic pits, so why is it permissible to send the children of the Congo? We would not accept blanket press statements about how those children were being treated without independently verifying it, so why don’t we do it in the Congo? We would not treat ourhometowns like toxic dumping grounds, so why do we allow it in the Congo? If major technology companies, EV manufacturers, and mining companies acknowledged that artisanal miners were an integral part of their cobalt supply chains and treated them with equal humanity as any other employee, most everything that needs to be done to resolve the calamities currently afflicting artisanal miners would be done." From the Epilogue 

He is a British Academy Global Professor and an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University. Kara has authored three books on modern slavery and won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Kara's first book was adapted into a Hollywood film, Trafficked. A feature film inspired by Cobalt Red is currently in preproduction. He divides his time between the U.K. and the US.

Mel Ulm 

 

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild - 1999- 326 Pages

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild   (1999, 306 pages, 1266 KB, non-fiction)

I have wanted to read Adam Hochschild's 

 account of the terrible exploitation by King Leopold of Belgium of the Congo for some time and I was very to happy to see it was now available in my preferred reading mode, as a Kindle book.   The story told in this book is a horrible one.   I will not repeat the history of the colonial rule of the Belgium Congo  other than to say about six million  people died just to make a King Leopold very rich (several billion in contemporary dollars).   The slaughter was simply beyond easy comprehension.   European employees of the companies owned by the King often shot locals just for sport and horrible methods were used to make them collect rubber and ivory.   Leopold personally owned the Congo and cheated his own country in the process.  

King Leopold (1835 to 1909-King from 1865 to his death) always tried to tell the world, through a lot of vehicles, some were paid writers and others just fools, that he was wanted to rule the Congo (he never went there) in order to keep Arab slavers from capturing the people.  He played on the racism of Europeans to portray the Arabs as monsters and the Africans as children in need of protection.   There is a lot of fascinating data about  European politics in the book.    Belgium does not come through looking very well.

King Leopold emerges from the book a horribly despicable person and a one man argument for the abolition of royalty.  He hated his wife, hated his three daughters.  He spend huge sums on absurd palaces and public works and even  more on the 16 year old prostitute he made his mistress.  His upbringing, which is not talked about in the book, must have been very dysfunctional as his sister, who was at one time the Empress of Mexico, spent about 50 years locked up in a palace in Belgium still thinking she was in Mexico.   He liked young girls, 10 to 15 and had them imported from England.   He got in trouble for this and bought his way out.   You will leave this book hating him.

Hochschild also talks about the life of people like Henry Stanley who helped open up the Congo to white rule (famous for allegedly saying "Doctor Livingston, I presume) and goes into a lot of detail about people who tried to expose what was going on in the Congo.

This is an ugly story.   King Leopold might have been the worse villain but he was far from the only one.   African chiefs sold their own people as slaves and gladly captured those of opposing tribes for bounty to become rubber workers.   Many many left Europe to go to the Congo in search of big money and the ability to be feudal masters.   African women were used as sex slaves.

Hochschild makes some interesting connections.  It was the creation of the rubber tire in the United States by B. F. Goodrich that lead to the huge demand for rubber (rubber plantations were about a decade away at this point in history) that lead to the extreme demand for rubber which lead the workers in the Congo to be killed in the millions in order to "motivate" them to meet demand.   Hochschild does a brilliant job in letting us see just how the rubber farming and collection system worked.

Hochschild does not tell his story in isolation.  He relates it to the other terrible holocausts of the 20th century.   He suggests it is less thought of because the victims were Africans and it is hard to argue with this.

The exploitation of  residents of the Congo continued after the death of Leopold.   During WWII people were forced to mine uranium (and were killed for not working hard enough) and 80 percent of the uranium used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs came from a mine in the Congo were slackers were shot.  He also talks about The Heart of Darkness in a very illuminating if not entirely accurate way.

If you are interested in Colonialism, the history of Africa, or have any romantic notions about European royalty, you need to read this book.  There is a lot in it I have not covered including a story about a very brave Irishman.   Queen Victoria was a cousin of Leopold's.

This is a great book, both for how it is written and for the forgotten story it tells.  There is also a 2005 end note in which the author talks about  reaction to the book.

Mel Ulm