The Congo Wars

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been at the heart of the ‘greed vs grievance’ debate popular in academic and humanitarian circles in recent years. Here are two volumes to add to that discussion from Zed Books. ‘The Congo is perhaps the prime example of what happens to a territory that owns minerals wanted by the capitalist West,’ Zeilig, Seddon, and Renton declare at the outset of their book, setting the tone (p. 2). They proceed to span the Congo's modern history, from King Leopold to Joseph Kabila, elaborating on how natural resources have fuelled capitalist exploitation to the detriment of the population. Unfortunately, the narrative is often a simple juxtaposition of facts with scant argument about how exactly colonialism and multinational corporations promoted their interests in the Congo. In part, the authors’ ambition could be to blame for some of the book's insufficiencies. They try to cover two hundred years of widely varying political and economic systems in as many pages. They provide a well-sourced and readable summary of the country's history, dredging up facts and sources that even readers well versed in Congolese politics will find interesting. The reader is left wishing, however, that the authors had returned more often and with greater rigour to the challenge they had given themselves at the beginning. The colonial era, with the brutality practised by rubber and mining companies, provides the most compelling proof of capitalist predation. Even here, though, they do not explain the tensions between revenue extraction and the mission civilisatrice that led Belgium, during and after the Second World War, to invest massively in primary education and health services.

Colonialism · Democracy · Grievance · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · African Studies and Geopolitics · History · International Development and Aid · Law · Political Conflict and Governance