A Technology of (Post)Colonial Rule?
The Belgian Congo Commission (2020-2022) in Historical Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51185/journals/rhca.2023.stc04Keywords:
Colonial past, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Belgium, transitional justice, public history, reparationsAbstract
This contribution considers the 2020-22 Belgian parliamentary commission on its colonial past (for which the authors served as experts) in a historical perspective, alongside two other Belgian parliamentary commissions on Congo: the 1904–5 Belgian Commission of Inquiry about the atrocities of Leopold II’s rubber regime in Congo and the 2000-2002 Belgian Commission of Investigation, which looked into the role of the Belgian state in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. After a brief introduction of the recent commission, we first reflect on the role of commission “experts”, and historians specifically. Second, we investigate to what extent these commissions function as technologies of rule that sustain rather than critique existing balances of power.
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Some rights reserved 2023 Sarah Van Beurden, Gillian Mathys; Romain Tiquet
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
