A Violent History

The first long-durée history of large-scale violence in the Congo Basin

Since the early nineteenth century, political and military violence has played an exceptionally significant role in the territory corresponding to the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. By emphasising the periodic re-occurrence of “warlordism” and the economy of plunder that characterises it, Giacomo Macola offers new analytical tools to interpret the history of the societies of the Congo Basin over the past two hundred years. In the concluding chapters, the author dwells on more recent events, detailing the collapse of Mobutu’s Zaire, the “Great African War” and the reasons for the continuing armed instability in the east of the country. Supplementing analyses of the contemporary dimension of African conflicts, Macola makes a case for the enduring importance of studying precolonial history.

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Maps
Abbreviations
Preface to the English Edition
Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. The “Ancien Régime”
1.1 The “equatorial tradition”
1.2 The Luba kingdom
1.3 The Lunda “commonwealth”

Chapter 2. Traders, Raiders and Warlords in the Nineteenth Century
2.1 Long-distance trade networks
2.2 Msiri’s warlord state
2.3 Tippu Tip and the Arab-Swahili of eastern Congo

Chapter 3. The État Indépendant du Congo and the Occupation of the Congo Basin
3.1 The “système domanial”
3.2 The Force Publique
3.3 Van Kerckhoven, the Congo–Arab War and Ngongo Luteta
3.4 Mukanda Bantu and Clément Brasseur

Chapter 4. “Red Rubber”
4.1 The rubber companies
4.2 “Collaborators”: from the waungwana to Lupaka
4.3 A genocide in Congo?
4.4 The Congo reform movement

Chapter 5. The Belgian Congo
5.1 Administrative structures
5.2 The mining sector
5.3 Forced crops and forced labour
5.4 The Pende revolt and the “weapons of the weak”
5.5 The “creation of tribalism”
5.6 Belgian paternalism

Chapter 6. Decolonisation and Secession
6.1 A “precipitous decolonisation”
6.2 The secession of Katanga between neo-colonialism and the Cold War
6.3 The Katangese ideology
6.4 The return of warlordism

Chapter 7. The Rebellions of 1963–1965
7.1 From Pierre Mulele to the Simba
7.2 Internal weaknesses
7.3 Western intervention

Chapter 8. Mobutu’s Kleptocracy
8.1 “Mobutism”, “neo-patrimonialism” and “clientelism”
8.2 E economic and military crisis
8.3 Mobutu and the Cold War
8.4 The failure of the democratic transition
8.5 The collapse of the state and the new warlords

Chapter 9. The Congo and the “Great African War”
9.1 The repercussions of the Rwandan genocide and the “First Congo War”
9.2 Mzee Kabila’s Congo
9.3 The “Second Congo War”
9.4 The war economy
9.5 Military fragmentation and Mayi-Mayi

Epilogue. An Uneasy Present

Notes

Bibliography
Archives
Published primary sources
Secondary sources

Index

Giacomo Macola

Giacomo Macola is Associate Professor of African History at “La Sapienza” University of Rome. He is a corresponding member of the Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer.