The Belgian Congo as a Developmental State: Revisiting Colonialism

This book challenges the assumption that poor post-colonial economic performance is always a direct result of colonialism by reconsidering the Belgian Congo as a developmental state. Despite economic exploitation and extraction, brutality, excessive taxation, and inequities, the Belgian Congo achieved successes in developing the economy through investments in political stability, physical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. By adopting a more nuanced analysis of African history, the book highlights the role of state capacity and autonomy in sustaining economic growth and contrasts this with the squandering of natural resources by predatory state managers in the Congo Free State and post-colonial kleptocrats.

Format: Hardback
Length: 264 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book challenges the notion that poor post-colonial economic performance is always a direct result of colonialism by examining the Belgian Congo (1908-1959) as a developmental state. Despite the economic exploitation, brutality, excessive taxation, and inequalities imposed by colonial systems, the Belgian Congo achieved significant economic development in a relatively short period. The key to this success was the investment of higher fiscal revenue into political stability, physical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. By reconsidering the Belgian colonial state as a developmental state, this book encourages scholars to adopt a more nuanced analysis of African history. It emphasizes the importance of state capacity and state autonomy as key features of a developmental state and shows how colonial state managers in the Belgian Congo were able to provide these public goods that sustained economic growth for decades. While the book does not glorify colonialism or the atrocities committed during the Belgian occupation, it does outline how different forms of capitalism were deployed to further economic development in the country. In contrast, predatory state managers of the Congo Free State (1885-1908) and post-colonial kleptocrats (1960-2018) have squandered Congo's natural resources, leading to disastrous economic and social consequences.

Contrasting the Belgian Congo with colonies of settlement and other colonies of extraction, this book encourages researchers and students to reexamine the dominant narratives within colonial history, development, and African Studies. By highlighting the successes and challenges of the Belgian Congo, this book provides a valuable contribution to the field of colonial and post-colonial studies.

Weight: 670g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032254302