Governing economic interests: Interwar road construction in Belgian Congo

Contrary to the well-recognised relation between railroad infrastructure and emerging cities in the Belgian colony, the development of the Congolese road network was more closely connected to accessing the colonial hinterland and the expanding the rural economy. This latter link remains underresearched in both Congo’s and Africa’s transportation history, even if the colonial government equally considered road infrastructure a tool of empire. This article deconstructs this super-reducing concept of tools of empire in search of a better understanding of the complex reality of how centrally-defin... Mehr ...