A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo

NANCY ROSE HUNT. A NERVOUS STATE: VIOLENCE, REMEDIES, AND REVERIE IN COLONIAL CONGO. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.With this book one receives two values for the price of one: a presentation of new historical information of events during the Congo Free State 1885-1908 and especially the Belgian Congo 1908-1960, but also an analysis of those events through the lens of recent sociological, anthropological, philosophical and especially medical insights. The emphasis is in fact on medical history. Her purview is southern Equateur Province--below the bend in the Congo River.Concerning the “nervous” of the title, the author states: “nervousness…suggests being on edge... [it] yields disorderly, jittery states.” (5) As to the “reverie”: “the appreciative wandering of the imagination…Two concepts, nervousness and reverie, anchor this [Hunt’s] historical interpretation…the aim is a new way of writing a subaltern history of health [her emphasis]” (18)And in her approach, she reveals that “this book began as a contribution to the recent spate of literature on biopolitical states, imagining it would be fruitful to marry South Asianist (Foucauldian, state-focused) and Africanist (vernacular, subaltern) approaches to medicine and empire. But the project morphed into something quite different as not only security and the carceral but also nervousness came to the fore.” (7)In her area of study, lower Equateur Province, the Free State atrocities of the concessionary companies like ABIR and SAB led to notorious declines in population, so fertility became a major concern of the Belgian Congo era. Various theories were explored to explain it, including spurious ones like race suicide, and more serious ones in addition to the atrocities, including venereal diseases. So there was a heavy input by the colonial government in creating higher birth rates. After all, more workers were needed to produce the tropical products desired by Belgium.Chapter 1 covers the Congo Free State years 1885-1908. Hunt’s approach to this era is more nuanced than the widely read King Leopold’s Ghost of Hochschild, and other sources. After briefly presenting some of those well known atrocities—the impositions of the gathering of rubber and ivory, the killing, maiming, whipping, imprisoning, raping, hostage-taking, and burning of villages—she indicates that some of that was done by “big-man networks or gangs” not under the control of King Leopold’s regime, and also that there were antecedents to the violence of the colonial regime. She states “A Nervous State aims for no heroes, no villains, and little haunting.” (3)It was revealing to see for the first time the story of how Boali lost her foot, seen in that famous photograph taken by the missionary Alice Harris and shown widely in the “magic lantern” shows in the U.S. and Great Britain during the Congo Reform Association’s campaign to end the violence. But her statement that “It is time for a fresh reading of Leopold’s Congo that moves beyond humanitarian earnestness and does not blame, publicize, or shock.”(28) is perhaps a bit too generous. The blaming should continue, but more nuance shown in exploring all the data, including new data. She brings new perspectives from early, solid sources such as Roger Casement and Françis Dhanis (of all people!)The chapter ends with the coming of Belgian territorial agents, trying to get the administration running on a more bureaucratic basis, with ID books, and demands that taxes be paid in coin, not rubber. People were labeled with various ethnic labels. A new product was now being demanded, copal, a raw, resinous substance used to make lacquers and paints in Europe. The following chapters concern the Belgian Congo era 1908-1960. Chapter 2 emphasizes the case of Maria N’koi, a healer who was arrested and exiled (Hunt uses the term “relegated” of the French “reléguée) far to the east in Uele District for inspiring an armed insurrection. It will be remembered that during World War One the Belgians and the Germans (using African troops) were fighting next door to Congo in German East Africa (Tanzania today) and in German Kamerun even closer to Equateur. Maria spoke of the Germans as ancestral spirits who would drive the Belgians out of Congo. Belgian authorities didn’t take kindly to this message. This chapter also gives insights into traditional medicine, dance, and music, and colonial literature—a novel about Maria’s life. Her relatives were also interviewed.Chapter 3 covers the 1920s and more thoroughly the era of the depression in the 1930s. There were fears in the colonial state about Communism, African-Americans, and the Garvey, Mpadist and Kimbanguist movements. The low birth rate in Equateur concerned the Belgian authorities, and causes are detailed in this medical history. Medical touring began. Corvées of food, copal, and rubber continued, as did forced portage and work on roads, bridges and other public projects. The Bushira rebellion took place. The depression hit hard—both Congolese and foreigners, including the HCB palm oil company and the Portuguese traders. The traditional healing method of Yebola, popular music, and the women’s association, Amicale, are described.Chapter 4 of the same era centers on concerns of the regime about the low birth rates, Belgian efforts to understand and deal with them, and Congolese healing movements and charms, including Likili. The detailed debates by doctors (both church and state), missionaries and administrators on the various supposed causes of the low birth rates make for fascinating reading. Hunts concludes later “I have placed the burden for frailty rather with overwork, malnutrition, poor health, disease, and perhaps sorrow.” (250) The famous Governor General Ryckmans was by this time in charge of the colony.Chapter 5 highlights two institutions: an infertility clinic at Befale and a penal colony for Kimbanguist and Kitawala exiles in Ekafera in the post World War II era. The Belgian state spent considerably funding “aimed at securing allegiance, cooperation, and smiling mothers, babies, and families.”(167) The government began encouraging crop development, stock raising, village reconstruction, and expanded medical service. Penicillin arrived in 1943.Members of the Kitawala religious movement coming primarily from Katanga, and of the Kimbanguism religious movement coming primarily from Bas Congo, were considered dangerous subversives intent on the overthrow of colonial power, and exiled (“relegated”) to the Ekafera prison camp in southern Equateur, where presumably they would be neutralized and kept from influencing their regions (which turned out to be untrue).Chapter 6 covers the last decade of colonial rule, bringing urbanization, pop music, libraries, foyers sociaux, soccer leagues, bars, higher living and standards of dress and transportation (bicycles, etc). Hunt focused on three figures: a detainee in Ekafera’s prison camp, a nurse at Befale’s FBEI hospital, and a traveling musician. In addition there is the fascinating tale of the Congo Free State officer who committed suicide in 1902, but whose memory was fresh among Congolese. This chapter for the first time includes the large town of Coquilhatville (Mbandaka today). Familiar figures such as Justin Bomboko and Graham Greene appear.The concluding chapter wraps things up of course, and the themes of this book are succinctly written in the introduction: “On the eve of Congo’s chaotic decolonization, therefore, deep in its rustic interior [i.e. her southern Equateur], the two colonial modes of presence—the securitizing [by the administration, police and army] and the medicalizing—became not only deeply knotted, but profoundly vernacularized.” (25)The author covers several of the ethnic groups of southern Equateur, including the Nkundo, Elinga, Ngombe, Boyela and Ikonda. Hunt has explored many interesting sources: interviews with Congolese following long canoe rides up rivers, plus by bicycle and foot in 2002 and 2007 (62, 239), archives in Congo, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., and novels written during the colonial period, among others. The bibliography is a formidable 33 pages, each with about twenty entries, so approximately 660 overall.Her eight pages of acknowledgements show a researcher having contacted many, many knowledgeable people across the world, especially in Congo itself. One major source was Fathers Boelaert and Hulstaert, of whom she states “these Flemish priests were linguists, anthropologists, and folklorists, with passions for history and conservation.”(21) And these in turn asked the Congolese to write down their memories, of which 170 were produced in the Lomongo language in 1954. The book also contains voluminous notes, and an index. There is no listing of the 33 figures, nor of the six maps, which are on pp. 29, 33, 37, 64, 168, and 170.The author summarizes cogently: “Belgian Africa, from the 1920s, had the most impressive, systematic, natalist, family health programs and epidemiological routines in colonial Africa…the relative prosperity of the colonized during the postwar years went with rigid racial logics and deeply hated inequalities and segregation…As Belgian Congo publicized itself as a ‘model colony,’ its glossy semiotics effaced forced labor, chains, the chicotte (whip), the color bar. This [her] analysis grapples with the efficient, machine-like ‘smoothness’ and ‘happy engineering’ of colonial Congo’s middle and late years. Partly from the 1920s, forcefully from 1945, a developmentalist machine worked with sophistication to create the unique Belgian imperial model: a skilled, stabilized labor force, the highest standard of living in sub-Saharan Africa; early, extraordinarily intense welfare capitalism fueled by pronatalism; ubiquitous clinics and maternity wards; and gestures of urbanity from modernist, high-rise buildings and air conditioning in big Kinshasa to copious bicycles almost everywhere.” (10)

Some historical key points miss in the analysis of the book to understand the problems of Congo and mainly the jealousy of the European great powers. The book answers ambient criticism without taking into account certain positive aspects brought by colonization.

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