By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, AI-KO
“Congo is not a country. It is a world.” With these words, Van Reybrouck opens a sprawling, narrative that transcends traditional historiography, blending oral testimony, archival rigor, and lyrical prose to craft a story as vast and turbulent as the Congo River itself.
I purchased the ebook version of “Congo: The Epic History of a People” on a whim two years ago, downloading it to my Apple iPad where it lingered, unopened, like a sealed letter from a distant land. Life, with its clutter of distractions, kept me from it until early February 2025, when an unnameable urge pulled me toward its digital pages. No headline, no recommendation, no crisis prompted me – only a quiet resolve to step beyond the narrow orbit of my own world and into the history of a place I knew only through fragmented news clips and hollow stereotypes. The Congo I’d absorbed from media soundbites – a blur of war, minerals, and “failed states” – felt incomplete, even dishonest. I craved a story that breathed.
I had never heard of David Van Reybrouck, the Belgian author, and approached his work with cautious curiosity, wary of yet another Eurocentric narrative. As with all books, I plunged in blindly, avoiding reviews or context, wanting the text to speak for itself. From the first sentence – “Congo is not a country. It is a world” – I was ensnared. The prose swallowed me whole, dragging me into what I can only describe as a sensory haunting: the damp heat of rainforests, the metallic tang of blood-soaked earth, the cacophony of colonial greed and Congolese resistance. This was no detached historical account. It was a reckoning.
For weeks, I wandered lost in what Van Reybrouck calls the “dark, mazy forest” of Congo’s past, where every chapter felt like hacking through vines of brutality and beauty. The horrors were visceral – Leopold’s rubber terror, Lumumba’s assassination, the clatter of machetes in the Rwandan genocide’s wake. Yet what shattered me were the parallels: the ways Congo’s agony mirrored the collective trauma of Africa itself – the plunder of resources, the puppet regimes, the resilience smothered beneath Western “salvation.” By the end, I had not just read a history. I had lived an epic, one that left me gasping at the scale of human cruelty and the tenacity of those who refuse to be erased.
David Van Reybrouck’s “Congo: The Epic History of a People” is a visceral, unflinching, and deeply human account of the Congo’s turbulent past, blending meticulous historical research with oral testimonies to create a narrative that feels alive with pain, resilience, and defiance. I started these notes when I read up to Chapter Having reached Chapter 4. By that point, I have already traversed the haunting pre-colonial era, the rapacious machinations of King Leopold II, and the early horrors of colonial exploitation. This essay review is my intimate overview and analysis of what makes the book so compelling thus far, anchored in its most striking passages and themes:
Van Reybrouck’s genius lies in his ability to weave grand historical arcs with intimate, breathing voices. From the opening chapters, he introduces Congolese elders whose memories stretch back to the late 19th century, grounding the narrative in lived experience. For instance, he interviews a 126-year-old man, Stefano Kaoze, whose recollections bridge pre-colonial traditions and the shock of European arrival. This oral history approach transforms the Congo from an abstract “heart of darkness” into a land of individuals whose lives were irrevocably altered by greed and violence. As Van Reybrouck writes:
“History is not just what is written down; it is also what is remembered, what is told.”
This duality – archival rigor paired with living memory – makes the brutality of Leopold’s Congo Free State (1885 – 1908) feel immediate. Chapter 3, which details Leopold’s “philanthropic” charade and the rubber terror, is particularly harrowing. Van Reybrouck doesn’t just describe the systemic amputations, forced labor, and mass killings; he forces readers to confront the human cost through chilling anecdotes, like the Congolese man who carried a basket of severed hands to a colonial officer, only to be told: “These hands are too small… These are the hands of children.”
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David Van Reybrouck’s -Congo- The Epic History of a People – A Personal Reflection
Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, AI-KO
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By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, AI-KO
“Congo is not a country. It is a world.” With these words, Van Reybrouck opens a sprawling, narrative that transcends traditional historiography, blending oral testimony, archival rigor, and lyrical prose to craft a story as vast and turbulent as the Congo River itself.
I purchased the ebook version of “Congo: The Epic History of a People” on a whim two years ago, downloading it to my Apple iPad where it lingered, unopened, like a sealed letter from a distant land. Life, with its clutter of distractions, kept me from it until early February 2025, when an unnameable urge pulled me toward its digital pages. No headline, no recommendation, no crisis prompted me – only a quiet resolve to step beyond the narrow orbit of my own world and into the history of a place I knew only through fragmented news clips and hollow stereotypes. The Congo I’d absorbed from media soundbites – a blur of war, minerals, and “failed states” – felt incomplete, even dishonest. I craved a story that breathed.
I had never heard of David Van Reybrouck, the Belgian author, and approached his work with cautious curiosity, wary of yet another Eurocentric narrative. As with all books, I plunged in blindly, avoiding reviews or context, wanting the text to speak for itself. From the first sentence – “Congo is not a country. It is a world” – I was ensnared. The prose swallowed me whole, dragging me into what I can only describe as a sensory haunting: the damp heat of rainforests, the metallic tang of blood-soaked earth, the cacophony of colonial greed and Congolese resistance. This was no detached historical account. It was a reckoning.
For weeks, I wandered lost in what Van Reybrouck calls the “dark, mazy forest” of Congo’s past, where every chapter felt like hacking through vines of brutality and beauty. The horrors were visceral – Leopold’s rubber terror, Lumumba’s assassination, the clatter of machetes in the Rwandan genocide’s wake. Yet what shattered me were the parallels: the ways Congo’s agony mirrored the collective trauma of Africa itself – the plunder of resources, the puppet regimes, the resilience smothered beneath Western “salvation.” By the end, I had not just read a history. I had lived an epic, one that left me gasping at the scale of human cruelty and the tenacity of those who refuse to be erased.
David Van Reybrouck’s “Congo: The Epic History of a People” is a visceral, unflinching, and deeply human account of the Congo’s turbulent past, blending meticulous historical research with oral testimonies to create a narrative that feels alive with pain, resilience, and defiance. I started these notes when I read up to Chapter Having reached Chapter 4. By that point, I have already traversed the haunting pre-colonial era, the rapacious machinations of King Leopold II, and the early horrors of colonial exploitation. This essay review is my intimate overview and analysis of what makes the book so compelling thus far, anchored in its most striking passages and themes:
Van Reybrouck’s genius lies in his ability to weave grand historical arcs with intimate, breathing voices. From the opening chapters, he introduces Congolese elders whose memories stretch back to the late 19th century, grounding the narrative in lived experience. For instance, he interviews a 126-year-old man, Stefano Kaoze, whose recollections bridge pre-colonial traditions and the shock of European arrival. This oral history approach transforms the Congo from an abstract “heart of darkness” into a land of individuals whose lives were irrevocably altered by greed and violence. As Van Reybrouck writes:
“History is not just what is written down; it is also what is remembered, what is told.”
This duality – archival rigor paired with living memory – makes the brutality of Leopold’s Congo Free State (1885 – 1908) feel immediate. Chapter 3, which details Leopold’s “philanthropic” charade and the rubber terror, is particularly harrowing. Van Reybrouck doesn’t just describe the systemic amputations, forced labor, and mass killings; he forces readers to confront the human cost through chilling anecdotes, like the Congolese man who carried a basket of severed hands to a colonial officer, only to be told: “These hands are too small… These are the hands of children.”
The early chapters dismantle the myth of European “civilizing” missions. Van Reybrouck exposes Leopold’s Congo as a corporate dystopia masquerading as a humanitarian project. The king’s obsession with profit – rubber, ivory, and later minerals – turned the Congo into a “gigantic open-air prison” (Chapter 2). The infamous “Force Publique”, tasked with enforcing quotas, becomes a symbol of this perversion: “The soldiers were paid in bullets, and to account for each bullet spent, they had to bring back a severed hand.”
What’s fascinating here is Van Reybrouck’s analysis of complicity. He doesn’t absolve Belgian society, noting how ordinary citizens were seduced by propaganda portraying the Congo as a “land of opportunity.” Even missionaries, ostensibly there to “save souls,” became cogs in the machine, as seen in the passage where a priest justifies forced labor: “Work is prayer… Idleness is the devil’s workshop.”
Amid the horror, the book highlights acts of defiance. Chapter 4 introduces early resistance figures like the Zanzibari slave trader Tippu Tip, who navigated the chaos of Leopold’s regime, and the Congolese communities that sabotaged rubber collections or fled into the forest. Van Reybrouck’s portrayal of the “Pende uprising” (1908) – one of many rebellions crushed with unimaginable violence – underscores a recurring theme: “the Congo’s history is not one of passive victimhood but of relentless struggle”.
A poignant moment comes when he describes how Congolese laborers subverted their oppressors through subtle acts: “They worked slowly, they feigned ignorance, they broke tools. In the archives, you find the frustration of the colonizers: ‘These people are impossible to civilize.’ But what they called ‘laziness’ was resistance.”
Van Reybrouck’s prose is both lyrical and brutal, mirroring the Congo’s contradictions. He describes the landscape as “a green hell to the Europeans, a living atlas to its inhabitants” (Chapter 1), juxtaposing colonial myopia with Indigenous knowledge. His use of present-tense vignettes – like the arrival of Henry Morton Stanley, “a man who carried maps in his head and revolvers on his hips” – creates a cinematic urgency.
The book’s greatest strength is its refusal to reduce the Congo to a monolith. Even in these early chapters, Van Reybrouck celebrates the diversity of its peoples, languages, and cultures, while showing how colonialism exploited these divisions. A passage on the Kuba Kingdom’s sophisticated art and governance (Chapter 2) starkly contrasts with Leopold’s plunder, reminding us that the Congo was never a “blank space” awaiting European “discovery.”
What’s Good and Fascinating about the book?
First, The Congo as Protagonist: The land itself – its rivers, forests, and minerals – shapes the narrative. The Congo River, “a central artery, a giver of life and a highway of death,” becomes a metaphor for the nation’s dualities.
Second, Moral Complexity: Van Reybrouck avoids simplistic villains. Leopold is a monster, but so are the Congolese collaborators, the apathetic European public, and the capitalist machinery that enabled exploitation.
Third, Echoes of the Present: The roots of modern Congo’s crises – resource extraction, ethnic fragmentation, foreign intervention – are traced to these early chapters. As you read, you sense the seeds of future tragedies.
The book for me is “a tale of cruelty and degradation” and it resonates with Van Reybrouck’s unflinching gaze. Yet, what elevates the horror into art is his compassion for the Congolese – their laughter, ingenuity, and refusal to be erased. By Chapter 4, the weight of history is palpable, but so is the resilience that carries the narrative forward. As one elder recalls: “We survived because we remembered. Even when they burned our villages, they couldn’t burn our stories.”
This is history not as a distant chronicle but as a living, bleeding entity. It’s no wonder I found it imperious – the book demands we confront the darkest corners of humanity, yet leaves room for awe at the Congo’s unyielding spirit.
Having now journeyed to the book’s end, I am left awestruck by its ambition, heartbreak, and humanity. This is not merely a history of a nation but an unflinching mirror held up to Africa’s soul – a chronicle of exploitation, resilience, and the indomitable will to survive. Below, I further dissect the book’s structure, themes, and impact, drawing from its most searing passages to explain why it is a masterpiece for the ages.
Van Reybrouck’s genius lies in his refusal to let history speak in a single voice. From pre-colonial oral traditions to the digital age, he stitches together perspectives of kings, colonists, rebels, child soldiers, artists, and everyday citizens. The book reads like a “living atlas,” as he calls it, where geography, biology, and human ambition collide. His journalistic flair shines in passages like his interview with Alphonse Maindo, a professor who reflects: “We Congolese are like the Congo River. We absorb everything – violence, greed, hope – and keep flowing.”
This polyphonic approach turns history into an intimate conversation. In Chapter 7, detailing Patrice Lumumba’s meteoric rise and brutal assassination (1961), Van Reybrouck juxtaposes CIA memos with the memories of Lumumba’s driver, who recounts the leader’s final hours: “He was calm, even when they beat him. He said, ‘History will judge them.’ But history has not been kind to Congo.”
The author’s use of present tense in pivotal moments – like Mobutu’s coup (1965) or the Rwandan genocide spilling into Congo (1994) – creates a gripping immediacy. When describing the First Congo War (1996 – 1997), he writes: “The forest is silent tonight. But in Goma, the refugees are screaming. The world is watching, but it does not see.”
Van Reybrouck demolishes the myth of pre-colonial “savagery,” celebrating the Kongo Kingdom’s diplomacy and the Kuba people’s artistic brilliance. The arrival of Henry Morton Stanley – “a man who mapped rivers with one hand and razed villages with the other” – ushers in Leopold II’s reign of terror. The rubber quotas, severed hands, and missionary hypocrisy (“We taught them to pray with their eyes closed; when they opened them, their land was gone”) lay bare colonialism’s moral bankruptcy.
The euphoria of 1960 independence curdles into chaos as Lumumba, the fiery nationalist, is toppled by Western powers and Congolese collaborators. Van Reybrouck’s account of Lumumba’s murder, aided by Belgian officers, is gut-wrenching: “They dissolved his body in acid. But you cannot dissolve a man’s legacy.”
Mobutu’s subsequent dictatorship (1965 – 1997) becomes a grotesque theater of corruption. The author’s portrait of Mobutu – “a leopard-skin hat wearing kleptocrat who built palaces in the jungle while his people starved” – exposes the tragedy of post-colonial autocracy.
The Rwandan genocide spills into Congo, igniting continental wars (1996 – 2003) that claim millions. Van Reybrouck interviews child soldiers like Béatrice, who recalls: “They gave me a gun taller than me. When I cried, they said, ‘Your tears are bullets now.’” Yet amid the horror, he finds hope: mothers rebuilding villages, doctors fighting Ebola, and musicians like Papa Wemba weaving resistance into song.
The book closes with Congo’s fragile present – Chinese mining deals, smartphone-toting youth, and the unyielding river. An elder, Mama Nkemia, summarizes the Congolese spirit: “We bury our dead, but we dance to remember they lived.”
Van Reybrouck positions Congo as a microcosm of Africa’s tragedies and triumphs:
Resource Curse: The plunder of ivory, rubber, uranium (used in Hiroshima’s bomb), and coltan (in your smartphone) mirrors Africa’s role as a “sacrifice zone” for global capitalism.
Geopolitical Vampirism: From Leopold to Cold War puppeteers, foreign powers have “loved Congo to death,” as one activist quips.
Resilience as Resistance: Congolese agency shines through: the 1958 Abako uprising, the Sapeur subculture’s sartorial defiance, and the women who rebuilt Goma after volcanic eruptions.
The book’s greatest lesson is that Congo’s story is not unique. As Van Reybrouck notes: “Every African nation has a Lumumba – a dreamer murdered too soon – and a Mobutu – a thief dressed as a savior.”
“Congo” is an antidote to what the author calls “the amnesia of the West.” It refuses to reduce its subjects to victims, celebrating their humor, ingenuity, and tenacity. When a miner tells Van Reybrouck, “You Europeans think we’re poor. But we have the earth. It’s you who are poor, chasing money like hungry ghosts,” it upends paternalistic narratives.
The prose is both poetic and punchy. Describing Kinshasa, he writes: “A city where the electricity flickers like a dying man’s breath, but the music never stops.”
The book does not offer easy solutions but insists on bearing witness. Van Reybrouck urges readers to confront the past to reimagine the future. As global demand for cobalt and copper fuels new exploitation, he warns: “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
For Africans, the book is a rallying cry to reclaim agency. For the world, it is a plea: “Learn the names of the dead. Buy fewer phones. Listen more.”
“Congo: The Epic History of a People” is a masterpiece of narrative history – a book that bruises and heals in equal measure. It is “a forest of stories,” as Van Reybrouck intended: dark, dense, and teeming with life. Read it to understand how colonialism’s ghosts haunt our present. Read it to meet the Congolese grandmothers, warlords, and poets who will linger in your mind long after the last page. Read it because, in the words of a Congolese proverb Van Reybrouck revives: “A river that forgets its source will dry up.”
This book ensures we remember. From the onset, it grounds our journey as readers within the narrative’s emotional landscape, framing the book as both personal and universal. It invites each of us to embark on their own voyage through Congo’s history while signaling the profound connections between its story and Africa’s broader struggles.
