par Fivez, Robby
Président du jury De Schepper, Hennie HDS
Promoteur Lagae, Johan;Devos, Rika
Co-Promoteur Taerwe, Luc
Publication Non publié, 2023-01-23
Thèse de doctorat
Résumé : On the 18th of October 1908, the Belgian parliament voted in favour of the Belgian take-over of the Congo Free State from the Belgian king Léopold II, who had privately owned the Congolese territory but was forced to give up ‘his’ colony after the international outcry over the well-known Congo atrocities. With this vote, the Congolese territory officially switched hands, and the Belgian rule over Congo would remain in place until 1960. The advocates of the reprise had held up prospects of great gain by referring to the enormous mineral wealth of the colony, whereas the adversaries acutely remarked that the colony would only remain profitable if Belgium would continue on the same plundering elan than their internationally condemned king. The reality-check came quickly, when one of the strongest advocates, Jules Renkin, visited the Belgian Congo in his new role as the first minister of colonies. After a five-month journey through ‘his’ colony, he realized that for the material realization of the colonial ambitions to be economically and practically feasible, a cheap, locally produced building material would be of quintessential importance. However, as the colonial presence was justified through the paternalistic image of ‘helping’ the African inhabitants on their ‘path to modernity’, this colonial building material could not be one of the existing local building materials, as these were publicly denounced for being non-durable, insalubre [unhygienic] or even puant [stinking] — although in reality they remained in use for all sorts of colonial buildings throughout Belgian colonialism. Though seemingly a deadlock, the technocrats of the Belgian Congo remarkably quickly formulated an answer to this question: Concrete. Once a local cement plant would be established —which eventually only happened in 1921 after several failed attempts— concrete would be the deus-ex-machina that could resolve the apparent contradiction between the economic necessity to use local materials on the one hand and the cultural disdain towards local materials on the other. Though all of its components —apart from the reinforcement bars— could be locally sourced, the ‘magic’ happened when in bringing these materials together, they still turned into the most ‘modern’ material on the planet.Throughout Belgian colonialism, it was concrete and its aura of ‘modernity’ that justified the presence of Belgium in Congo. It was concrete, with its constructed properties of ‘durability’—as opposed to the alleged non-durable materials— that had to confirm the racial hierarchy of Europeans over Africans. It was concrete’s ‘economy’ —with most of its components locally available— that had to make the construction of the colony affordable. And it was concrete’s on-site ‘simplicity’ that had to meet the racist objections about Congolese construction labourers being completely ‘unskilled’. In other words: the Belgian Congo was A Concrete State.This importance of concrete for the colonial state is the premise of this work. Hence, following Daniel Headrick’s seminal work —in which he argues that science and technology were the main weapons in Europe’s colonial dominance of the 19th and 20th century—, concrete is framed as a Tool of Empire, in the sense that it was a sine qua non for the physical materialization of colonial ambitions. In the two main parts of this dissertation, however, I highlight just how reductive such an interpretation is.In the first part, Constructing Materials, I question Europe’s centrality in the development of cement by looking at its Congolese biography. In doing so, I argue that the European centrality in the development of science and technology at large, which is an implicit assumption of Headrick’s Tools of Empire approach, should not be taken at face value. By looking beyond these moments of invention in European laboratories and by taking the production of cement in Congo into account, I aim to relocate cement’s history. The first chapter looks ‘forwards’, turning towards the production of cement in Congo’s first cement plant, the Cimenterie du Congo in Lukala. Through three crucial episodes in the biography of Lukala cement, the first cement produced on and from Congolese soil, I disclose how a variety of local actants —including, for instance, the resisting geological layers, ambitious geologists, disgruntled labourers, colonial administrators, local land owners or the cement kiln— all had an enormous impact on this Lukala cement, which eventually had strengths that were even well-above the Belgian requirements for High Resistance Portland Cement. It was only through all sorts of economic processes that the Lukala cement was eventually homogenized, turning it into a commodity that was highly similar to the cements imported from Belgium. Though today, with such regulating processes even more pronounced, cement became a universal commodity that is transported across the globe, this narrative showed how in the past the material had a remarkable material diversity, and that the Congolese cement had only quite little to do with the cements that developed simultaneously in Europe. The second chapter takes this ‘relocation’ of cement’s history further. Whereas the first chapter still confirms the rather central role of Europeans in the development of Congolese cement —it were Belgian investors and European engineers who set up the plant in Lukala— the second chapter challenges this European myth of origin by enlarging the temporal scope: instead of seeing cement as an absolutely new technology invented in 19th century Europe, I position cement within a much longer history of burnt lime. In doing so, once again, other localities, temporalities and actants gain primacy in cement’s history: I formulate the hypothesis that burnt lime (cement’s younger brother) was known in Congo before the arrivals of Belgian colonials thereby questioning the colonial knowledge claims over the technique. In this first part, the understanding of concrete as a tool of empire, is critically examined by adding local nuances to the history of its most important component.The second part of this dissertation, Building Ambitions, starts from the same goal: to critically understand if concrete could be interpreted as a tool of empire. Since striving for exhaustivity when studying such a ubiquitous material is impossible, I decided to focus on three case studies. All three correspond to one of the major technical innovations concrete underwent: the harbour of Ango-Ango (1925-1930) was an early reinforced concrete construction site in the Belgian Congo; in the CCC-building (1950) prestressed concrete was first applied in a building in central Africa; and, in the case of the Bata 300 factory in Kinshasa (1963-1966) the standardization and mass-production of concrete elements had to industrialize construction and relieve on-site difficulties. Through this selection, I intended to gauge how these technologies, that were only just introduced in Congo, were applied in a Congolese context. The close reading of the specific construction processes that resulted from this case-based approach however, quickly revealed that building in concrete did not always go smooth. On the contrary, the building sites were troubled by all sorts of incidents, accidents and complications. The construction of the Ango-Ango harbour, discussed in chapter 3, was perhaps the most spectacular in that sense. After building for 5 years and spending 40 million Francs, the plans for the concrete harbour were eventually left behind in favour of a steel jetty. Though the CCC-building and the Bata 300 factory, the cases developed in chapter 4 and chapter 5, can at first sight be interpreted as a success, the close reading of these ‘successful’ construction processes exposed how their execution was also far from flawless. These —quite literal— chapters of accidents, make it clear that understanding concrete as a fully mastered ‘tool’ was a far cry from reality —however keen the Concrete State was to present it as such.

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