Benoît Henriet
Biographic Data
| ID | 180386 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benoît Henriet |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benoît |
| FAMILY NAME | Henriet |
| SIGNATURE | HENRIET B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5123-1664 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
An Interspecies Contact Zone: Locusts and Humans in Colonial Burundi, 1929–1941
In interwar Burundi, successive waves of gregarious locust swarms preyed on fields and grazing grounds, exacerbating the vulnerability of its (non)-human inhabitants. The locusts also constituted an acute governance issue for the Belgian colonial administration, which struggled to devise efficient modes of acridian destruction. By using locust being-in-the-world as a vantage point, this article analyses the complex interactions between insectile …
Brave men’ and ‘pampered children’: Male bodies, labour and coming of age in Belgian Congo
This article sheds light on male identities in interwar Belgian Congo by using the colony's largest palm oil concession as a case study. Based on colonial archives and oral testimonies, it shows how vernacular and colonial understandings of masculinity interplayed and keep on influencing ways to ‘be a man’ in the present. This article is divided into four parts. First, it highlights how vigorous male bodies supposedly constituted entry points in …
Archives of Military Courts in Colonial Congo: New Sources for the History of Violence and Agency in Central Africa
This article offers an overview of the recently rediscovered archives of the Conseils de Guerre—the military court—of colonial Congo (1885–1960). As a long-considered lost collection of court records encompassing seventy years of testimonies of colonial military crimes, these archives offer unparalleled insights on the complex relation between law, impunity, and armed violence in colonial Central Africa. The article first sheds light on the histo…
Decolonizing African history: Authenticité, cosmopolitanism and knowledge production in Zaire, 1971-1975
This article analyses the social and intellectual dynamisms of the Lubumbashi campus of the Université Nationale du Zaïre in the 1970s. It first highlights how Lubumbashi scholars participated in an early post-colonial attempt to radically transform the university's teaching, research and operations, at the crossroads of intellectual decolonization and cosmopolitanism. These efforts both overlapped and clashed with the official Zairian policy of …
Colonial Impotence: Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession (1911–1940)
In Colonial Impotence , Benoît Henriet studies the violent contradictions of colonial rule from the standpoint of the Leverville concession, Belgian Congo’s largest palm oil exploitation. Leverville was imagined as a benevolent tropical utopia, whose Congolese workers would be "civilized" through a paternalist machinery. However, the concession was marred by inefficiency, endemic corruption and intrinsic brutality. Colonial agents in the field co…
Colonial Impotence: Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession
Beyond Paternalism: Pluralising Copperbelt Histories
Micro-Studies of Urban Lifedecline on the Zambian Copperbelt since 1980, James Ferguson speaks of previous 'expectations of modernity' induced by copper mining, while Patience Mususa's ethnography 'There Used to Be Order' juxtaposes ZCCM policies with a neoliberal 'fending for oneself ' after privatisation. 4 On the Congolese Copperbelt, similarly, Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu examines the trajectories of 'Bana Shaba' (children of copper) who have b…
Chapter 5: The concession embodied
Across the Copperbelt: Urban & Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities
The Central African Copperbelt, encompassing the mining communities of Katanga (DR Congo) and Zambia, has been central to the study of modernisation and rapid social and political change in urban Africa. This volume expands upon earlier studies of industrial mining, male-dominated formal labour organisation and political change by examining both sides of the border from pre-colonial history to the present and encompassing a wide range of economic…
Reuben A. Loffman, Church, State and Colonialism in Southeastern Congo, 1890-1962. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
Reuben Loffman's first monograph is a welcome addition to the history of Church and state relations in colonial
We Are Left with Barely Anything’: Colonial Rule, Dependency, and the Lever Brothers in the Belgian Congo, 1911–1960
When historians have examined labour relations in the Belgian Congo, the paradigmatic image is that of rapacious, avaricious metropolitan investors oppressing helpless African communities by dint of a skeletal but violent cohort of intermediaries. Leopold II was exemplary of this trend. Having never set foot in the Congo, he drew vast profits from the territory by means of initiating a series of appalling atrocities as his employees coerced Afric…
Des ethnographes anxieux: Pratiques quotidiennes du pouvoir au Congo belge, 1930-1940
À travers trois études de cas, cet article se penche sur l'usage de techniques « ethnographiques » dans l'exercice quotidien du pouvoir au Congo belge, pendant les années 1930. Dans le Kwango-Kwilu, des fonctionnaires territoriaux tentent de retracer des généalogies claniques afin de servir de support à des déplacements forcés de population. L'enquête suivant le meurtre d'un agent de l'État fait montre du manque de connaissance des cosmogonies et…
Colonial law in the making: Sovereignty and property in the Congo Free State (1876–1908)
From its creation to the present day, jurists and historians have perceived the Congo Free State (CFS) as a special example of political sovereignty. As a ‘colony without Metropolis’ whose territorial basis was obtained through disputed treaties made in the name of geographical and philanthropic societies with almost no legal existence, it stands out at first sight as an anomaly in nineteenth century colonial State building. Yet, the Free State’s…
Elusive natives: Escaping colonial control in the Leverville oil palm concession, Belgian Congo, 1923-1941
Throughout the inter-war period, in the Belgian Congoâs largest oil palm concession, thousands of colonised workers and their families managed to escape administrative surveillance and authority through schemes of dissimulation and elusiveness. The shared nature of sovereignty imposed on this territory, distributed between private and public agents, along with a sparse territorial occupation, left extended areas unsupervised by Western actors and…
Elusive natives: Escaping colonial control in the Leverville oil palm concession, Belgian Congo, 1923-1941
Throughout the inter-war period, in the Belgian Congoâs largest oil palm concession, thousands of colonised workers and their families managed to escape administrative surveillance and authority through schemes of dissimulation and elusiveness. The shared nature of sovereignty imposed on this territory, distributed between private and public agents, along with a sparse territorial occupation, left extended areas unsupervised by Western actors and…
We Are Left with Barely Anything’: Colonial Rule, Dependency, and the Lever Brothers in the Belgian Congo, 1911–1960
When historians have examined labour relations in the Belgian Congo, the paradigmatic image is that of rapacious, avaricious metropolitan investors oppressing helpless African communities by dint of a skeletal but violent cohort of intermediaries. Leopold II was exemplary of this trend. Having never set foot in the Congo, he drew vast profits from the territory by means of initiating a series of appalling atrocities as his employees coerced Afric…
Decolonizing African history: Authenticité, cosmopolitanism and knowledge production in Zaire, 1971-1975
This article analyses the social and intellectual dynamisms of the Lubumbashi campus of the Université Nationale du Zaïre in the 1970s. It first highlights how Lubumbashi scholars participated in an early post-colonial attempt to radically transform the university's teaching, research and operations, at the crossroads of intellectual decolonization and cosmopolitanism. These efforts both overlapped and clashed with the official Zairian policy of …
Colonial law in the making: Sovereignty and property in the Congo Free State (1876–1908)
From its creation to the present day, jurists and historians have perceived the Congo Free State (CFS) as a special example of political sovereignty. As a ‘colony without Metropolis’ whose territorial basis was obtained through disputed treaties made in the name of geographical and philanthropic societies with almost no legal existence, it stands out at first sight as an anomaly in nineteenth century colonial State building. Yet, the Free State’s…
Elusive natives: Escaping colonial control in the Leverville oil palm concession, Belgian Congo, 1923-1941
Throughout the inter-war period, in the Belgian Congoâs largest oil palm concession, thousands of colonised workers and their families managed to escape administrative surveillance and authority through schemes of dissimulation and elusiveness. The shared nature of sovereignty imposed on this territory, distributed between private and public agents, along with a sparse territorial occupation, left extended areas unsupervised by Western actors and…
Des ethnographes anxieux: Pratiques quotidiennes du pouvoir au Congo belge, 1930-1940
À travers trois études de cas, cet article se penche sur l'usage de techniques « ethnographiques » dans l'exercice quotidien du pouvoir au Congo belge, pendant les années 1930. Dans le Kwango-Kwilu, des fonctionnaires territoriaux tentent de retracer des généalogies claniques afin de servir de support à des déplacements forcés de population. L'enquête suivant le meurtre d'un agent de l'État fait montre du manque de connaissance des cosmogonies et…
We Are Left with Barely Anything’: Colonial Rule, Dependency, and the Lever Brothers in the Belgian Congo, 1911–1960
When historians have examined labour relations in the Belgian Congo, the paradigmatic image is that of rapacious, avaricious metropolitan investors oppressing helpless African communities by dint of a skeletal but violent cohort of intermediaries. Leopold II was exemplary of this trend. Having never set foot in the Congo, he drew vast profits from the territory by means of initiating a series of appalling atrocities as his employees coerced Afric…
Reuben A. Loffman, Church, State and Colonialism in Southeastern Congo, 1890-1962. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
Reuben Loffman's first monograph is a welcome addition to the history of Church and state relations in colonial
Colonial Impotence: Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession (1911–1940)
In Colonial Impotence , Benoît Henriet studies the violent contradictions of colonial rule from the standpoint of the Leverville concession, Belgian Congo’s largest palm oil exploitation. Leverville was imagined as a benevolent tropical utopia, whose Congolese workers would be "civilized" through a paternalist machinery. However, the concession was marred by inefficiency, endemic corruption and intrinsic brutality. Colonial agents in the field co…
Colonial Impotence: Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession
Beyond Paternalism: Pluralising Copperbelt Histories
Micro-Studies of Urban Lifedecline on the Zambian Copperbelt since 1980, James Ferguson speaks of previous 'expectations of modernity' induced by copper mining, while Patience Mususa's ethnography 'There Used to Be Order' juxtaposes ZCCM policies with a neoliberal 'fending for oneself ' after privatisation. 4 On the Congolese Copperbelt, similarly, Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu examines the trajectories of 'Bana Shaba' (children of copper) who have b…
Chapter 5: The concession embodied
Across the Copperbelt: Urban & Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities
The Central African Copperbelt, encompassing the mining communities of Katanga (DR Congo) and Zambia, has been central to the study of modernisation and rapid social and political change in urban Africa. This volume expands upon earlier studies of industrial mining, male-dominated formal labour organisation and political change by examining both sides of the border from pre-colonial history to the present and encompassing a wide range of economic…
Decolonizing African history: Authenticité, cosmopolitanism and knowledge production in Zaire, 1971-1975
This article analyses the social and intellectual dynamisms of the Lubumbashi campus of the Université Nationale du Zaïre in the 1970s. It first highlights how Lubumbashi scholars participated in an early post-colonial attempt to radically transform the university's teaching, research and operations, at the crossroads of intellectual decolonization and cosmopolitanism. These efforts both overlapped and clashed with the official Zairian policy of …
Brave men’ and ‘pampered children’: Male bodies, labour and coming of age in Belgian Congo
This article sheds light on male identities in interwar Belgian Congo by using the colony's largest palm oil concession as a case study. Based on colonial archives and oral testimonies, it shows how vernacular and colonial understandings of masculinity interplayed and keep on influencing ways to ‘be a man’ in the present. This article is divided into four parts. First, it highlights how vigorous male bodies supposedly constituted entry points in …
Archives of Military Courts in Colonial Congo: New Sources for the History of Violence and Agency in Central Africa
This article offers an overview of the recently rediscovered archives of the Conseils de Guerre—the military court—of colonial Congo (1885–1960). As a long-considered lost collection of court records encompassing seventy years of testimonies of colonial military crimes, these archives offer unparalleled insights on the complex relation between law, impunity, and armed violence in colonial Central Africa. The article first sheds light on the histo…
An Interspecies Contact Zone: Locusts and Humans in Colonial Burundi, 1929–1941
In interwar Burundi, successive waves of gregarious locust swarms preyed on fields and grazing grounds, exacerbating the vulnerability of its (non)-human inhabitants. The locusts also constituted an acute governance issue for the Belgian colonial administration, which struggled to devise efficient modes of acridian destruction. By using locust being-in-the-world as a vantage point, this article analyses the complex interactions between insectile …
African history and culture studies (10 works) · Colonialism (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · History (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Geography (4 works)