Colonial Impotence

From 1911 onward Unilever set about constructing a plantation empire in what was then Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Working with the colonial authorities, the company was allowed to choose 750,000 hectares of land within five circles, each with a sixty-kilometer radius. The concession rights that came with the land included practically exclusive rights to purchase palm products from the local population and establish palm plantations. By 1959 Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB), the Unilever subsidiary that handled its business in Belgium and Congo, was responsible for 9.2 percent of the world trade in palm oil and ranked among the largest plantation projects in the world. After independence the company repeatedly changed names and owners, but four of the five plantations remain operational to this day.Henriet's study focuses on the Lusanga/Leverville circle. Initially designated as one of the most promising locations by HCB, it was the one concession that was unable to make the transition from natural palm groves (semiwild stands of trees where the locals would collect the palm fruits and sell them to the company) to plantation palms. However, the reader soon realizes that this microstudy is less an exercise in history than a vehicle for presenting Henriet's concept of colonial impotence.One book-length historical study of the HCB was previously published by Jules Marchal in 2001 (L'histoire du Congo, 1910–1945: Travail forcé pour l'huile de palme de Lord Leverhulme). At first glance the two books appear similar. They share the same cover photo, cover practically the same period, and use much of the same archival deposits—in fact, the very same boxes and files. It is therefore peculiar that Henriet never refers to Marchal's study—neither in the text, nor the footnotes, nor the bibliography. This lack of engagement is regrettable. One would have thought that several themes picked up by Marchal could have been further developed by Henriet, including the relationship between HCB and the other important concessionary company in the area, the Compagnie du Kasai.While Henriet does explain the well-known Kilamba incident that sparked the Pende revolt and in which both companies were involved, he does not explore other questions. For instance—and considering that both companies recruited workers in the same region—were they rivals, or did they cooperate? Did they present a united front vis-à-vis the administration? Could Africans play the two companies against each other to their benefit? These questions are of more than just historical interest; they speak directly to the plausibility of Leverhulme's paternalistic ambitions in Congo, and thus to Henriet's hypothesis. A discussion of the available archival source material—how much was the author able to consult, how much remains unused—would also have been useful for other researchers interested in the subject. Unilever's other concessions in Congo and throughout Africa, and their history beyond 1945, are not examined in this book.Henriet's hypothesis of “colonial impotence” links the inability of the colonial state and companies like Unilever to impose their will on the ground to sexual impotence. Moving through six thematic chapters, the author surely and steadily builds his arguments. The fundamental tension between Lord Leverhulme's “benevolent” paternalistic vision and a for-profit company are laid out in the first chapter, where Henriet ably points out the similarities between the modus operandi of HCB and that of the blood rubber companies of the Congo Free State. The following chapter deals with the inability of agents, both colonial administrators and company men, to impose their will on the Congolese, and the agents' disregard for the laws and regulations of the colony and the company. Chapters 3 and 4 study the various responses, both physical and spiritual, of the Congolese to the arrival of the company and the violence inflicted by HCB and its agents. The last two chapters look at the all-encompassing influence of the concession on the daily lives of the Congolese—rations, forced Western health care, clothing—and the difficulty for the company of bending the natural environment around Leverville to its will.Each chapter feeds into the book's overall argument, which the author summarizes in the following terms: “Colonial impotence speaks of the gap between the virtuous and the violent guises of the Leverville project; of the refusal of Europeans in the field to conform to the behaviours and attitudes demanded from them; of the agency of indigenous communities which hampered HCB's project; and of the impossibility for the company to bend the Kwilu's environment to its designs” (169). While this reviewer can understand this conceptualization of colonial ineffectiveness, the sexual dimension of Henriet's theory is more difficult to comprehend. “Like colonialism,” he writes, “impotence is inherently relational; it manifested itself through an ‘improper’ performance during intercourse. When actors of colonialism failed to conform to expected rules, guidelines and attitudes, they displayed metaphorical forms of impotence” (69). There is no doubt that sexual contact and, more importantly, widespread sexual violence were key parts of the colonial occupation of Africa. But that is not what Henriet engages with in his book; instead, he takes that well-known fact and superimposes it on a situation where its relevance is open to doubt. To this reviewer, at least, the additional conceptual understanding gained by comparing a company agent unwilling to carry out his duties to erectile dysfunction is not immediately obvious

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