![The Congo The Congo](https://123library.org/images/books/240038.png?w=254&h=360&fit=&c=2&assets_cache=20240420023225)
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Abstract
Since well before Henry Morgan Stanley's fabled encounter with David Livingstone on the shore on Lake Tanganyika in the late 19th century and his subsequent collaboration with King Leopold of Belgium in looting the country of its mineral wealth, the Congo's history has been one of collaboration by a minority with, and struggle by the majority against, Western intervention.
Before the colonial period, there were military struggles against annexation. During Belgian rule, charismatic religious figures emerged, promising an end to white domination; copper miners struck for higher wages; and rural workers struggled for survival. During the second half of the 20th century, the Congo's efforts at disentanglement from Belgian rule, the murder of the nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba and the long dictatorship of General Mobutu culminated in one of the bloodiest wars the world has ever seen.
At the start of a new millennium, this book argues that the West has plundered Africa to its own advantage and that unrestrained global capitalism threatens to remake the entire world, bringing violence and destruction in the name of profit. In this radical history, the authors show not only how the Congo represents and symbolises the continent's long history of subordination, but also how the determined struggle of its people has continued, against the odds, to provide the Congo and the rest of Africa with real hope for the future.
David Renton is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sunderland.
Leo Zeilig is a a researcher at the Centre for Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg.
David Seddon is Professor of Politics & Sociology School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia.
'A book which must be read by those who believe that the marginalisation of Africa is the result of its backwardness, while it is in fact the very product of its integration in the global imperialist system.'
Samir Amin
‘A brilliant guide to one of the modern world’s most atrocious cases of systematic eco-social destruction.’
Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu Natal
'...presents a history of the Congo since colonisation in the late 19th cenutry, focusing on the economic arguments for successive western interventions.'
Ducan Bowie, Chartist
'Anyone wishing to comprehend the origins of Africa's seemingly endless problems is advised to get hold of a copy of this book.'
Tribune
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
contents | v | ||
map | vii | ||
introduction | 1 | ||
1: missionaries and traders | 7 | ||
Livingstone and Stanley | 16 | ||
‘The king with ten million murders on his soul' | 21 | ||
Red rubber | 25 | ||
Resistance | 30 | ||
Who gained? | 37 | ||
Further critics | 38 | ||
The end of Léopold’s empire | 45 | ||
2: miners and planters | 49 | ||
Élisabethville | 51 | ||
The church | 56 | ||
The social wage | 57 | ||
The limits of reform | 58 | ||
Away from the cities | 61 | ||
Early independence struggles | 63 | ||
World War II | 66 | ||
The demand for freedom | 70 | ||
Preparing for power | 76 | ||
3: rebels and generals\r | 83 | ||
The passive revolution | 84 | ||
The second war of independence | 87 | ||
Resistance to secession | 90 | ||
Tshombe’s fiefdom | 92 | ||
The play of external forces | 93 | ||
US strategy | 95 | ||
The fall of Lumumba | 97 | ||
Lumumba: icon of struggle | 100 | ||
Mobutu makes his first move | 101 | ||
Efforts to build a coalition | 103 | ||
Descent into civil war | 105 | ||
Rebellion or revolution? | 107 | ||
Why the army? | 109 | ||
The all-conquering warrior | 111 | ||
Mobutu in power | 114 | ||
4: the great dictator | 116 | ||
The creation of Zaïre | 117 | ||
From boom to bust | 120 | ||
Mobutu’s first decade | 126 | ||
Wars in Angola, wars in Shaba | 129 | ||
Towards structural adjustment: the late 1970s | 131 | ||
Capitalism and class formation under Mobutu | 138 | ||
Support abroad, opposition within | 140 | ||
5: the failed ‘transition’ | 147 | ||
Economic collapse | 149 | ||
The regime challenged from below | 151 | ||
International changes and internal struggle | 154 | ||
The march of hope | 158 | ||
Resuming the ‘transition’ | 164 | ||
Frustrated transition | 168 | ||
6: speculators and thieves | 172 | ||
Understanding the east | 173 | ||
Refugees, the UN and Rwanda | 175 | ||
The first rebellion | 178 | ||
American interests | 182 | ||
Kabila | 184 | ||
Kabila in power | 186 | ||
Intervention and the second war: the case of Zimbabwe | 188 | ||
Uganda, Rwanda and the role of the military | 191 | ||
Minerals and multinationals | 194 | ||
Ituri, gold and multinational companies | 196 | ||
Negotiations | 201 | ||
The IMF, criminality and the partition of the Congo | 203 | ||
conclusion | 207 | ||
notes | 213 | ||
introduction | 213 | ||
one | 213 | ||
two | 217 | ||
three | 220 | ||
four | 222 | ||
five | 224 | ||
six | 227 | ||
conclusion | 231 | ||
index | 232 |