Academic literature on the topic 'Congo (Leopoldville)'

Drawing on UN documents, materials from Russian and British archives, the author examined the evolution of the Soviet line towards the UN military operation in the Congo in 1960—1964, exposed the intentions of the Soviet leadership to employ the UN military contingent in achieving its goals in the Congo, showed how the actions of the Western powers, their Congolese allies and the UN leadership frustrated the Soviet plans. The Soviet posture regarding the UN operation in the Congo varied depending on the escalation of the Congo crisis and its main actors’ behavior. At the initial stage (July — early August 1960), Khrushchev considered the conception of Africanization of resolving the crisis, submitted by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, suitable for turning UN forces into an instrument to protect the Lumumba government and increase Soviet influence in the Congo. The Soviet representative to the UN Security Council suggested that the Congolese operation be conducted by African states, and the USSR bypassed the UN by providing its civilian planes to transport the Ghanaian contingent of UN troops from Accra to Leopoldville. Since the Blue Helmets were used in the Congo, in the opinion of the Soviet government, “inappropriately”, i.e., not against Belgian forces and the Katanga separatists, it demanded that the UN command be replaced on August 6, 1960. Lumumba tried to regain control of Katanga by his own forces, but was ousted in two coups d’état in September 1960, directly supported by UN troops. Nikita Khrushchev did not intervene militarily in the Congo and privately called Nkrumah to allocate a Ghanaian contingent of UN troops at the disposal of Lumumba’s government. This was impossible without Soviet military support, but Khrushchev did not promise it. After Lumumba’s assassination, which became known on February 13, 1961, the USSR demanded the termination of the UN operation in the Congo within a month and the removal of the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld as an “accomplice” to the Lumumba massacre. The overwhelming majority of UN members favored keeping UN troops in the Congo and Hammarskjöld as Secretary General. After the withdrawal of contingents of leftist African countries from the Congo in the winter and spring of 1961, the Soviet Union lost any ability to influence the UN operation in the Congo. It supported the military operations launched by the Blue Helmets against the Katanga separatists (December 1961 — January 1963) as being aimed at “the liquidation of the hotbed of interference of the colonial powers and their agents in Katanga”. After restoring territorial integrity of the Congo, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign for the withdrawal of UN troops and refused to participate in financing their upkeep. The Blue Helmets remained in the Congo until June 1964. The USSR failed to prevent the U.S. from turning the UN troops into a tool to combat “communist infiltration” in the Congo, and this contributed substantially to the Western victory in the battle for the “heart of Africa”.

To which extent STDs facilitated HIV-1 adaptation to humans, sparking the pandemic, is still unknown. We searched colonial medical records from 1906–1958 for Leopoldville, Belgian Congo, which was the initial epicenter of pandemic HIV-1, compiling counts of treated STD cases in both Africans and Europeans. Almost all Europeans were being treated, while for Africans, generalized treatment started only in 1929. Treated STD counts in Europeans thus reflect STD infection rates more accurately compared to counts in Africans. In Africans, the highest recorded STD treatment incidence was in 1929–1935, declining to low levels in the 1950s. In Europeans, the recorded treatment incidences were highest during the period 1910–1920, far exceeding those in Africans. Europeans were overwhelmingly male and had frequent sexual contact with African females. Consequently, high STD incidence among Europeans must have coincided with high prevalence and incidence in the city’s African population. The data strongly suggest the worst STD period was 1910–1920 for both Africans and Europeans, which coincides with the estimated origin of pandemic HIV-1. Given the strong effect of STD coinfections on HIV transmission, these new data support our hypothesis of a causal effect of STDs on the epidemic emergence of HIV-1.

Cette thèse examine les rapports entre musique et politique dans l’espace de circulations musicales s’étendant entre Sophiatown, à Johannesburg, en Afrique du Sud, et la « cité indigène » de Léopoldville (aujourd’hui Kinshasa), au Congo belge, de 1930 à 1960. L’étude envisage à la fois la fabrique musicale de ces quartiers ségrégués – l’usage des nouvelles technologies d’écoute, l’appropriation des styles afro-atlantiques, la profusion des fêtes et la vie des bars – et la formation de l’espace transcolonial de la musique congolaise moderne, mieux connue sous le nom de « rumba congolaise », à l’ère de la radio. Bien que souvent occulté, le développement précoce de l’industrie musicale sud-africaine joua un rôle important dans l’émergence et la mobilité des premières célébrités médiatiques congolaises qui parcouraient les routes transimpériales entre Léopoldville, Elisabethville (Lubumbashi), Nairobi et Johannesburg. Étudiés conjointement, l’ancrage et le déploiement de ce que nous appelons l’« urbanité sonore » permettent d’éclairer la place des célébrités et chansons transcoloniales dans l’imaginaire politique des auditeurs africains. Ces phénomènes témoignent également des nouvelles possibilités d'émancipation que l'économie des plaisirs offraient aux catégories les plus marginalisées de la ville coloniale, telles que les « femmes libres » et/ou membres des sociétés d'élégance.A la cité de Léopoldville, comme à Sophiatown, auditeurs, danseurs et musiciens contestaient la définition coloniale de l’urbanité alors que le gouvernement monopolisait la définition de « la ville », en même temps qu’il en conditionnait l’accès, symbolique et concret. Jusqu’au lendemain de l’Indépendance du Congo en 1960, la scène musicale de la cité s’établit comme le principal espace d’expression politique et d’affirmation de la place du Congo moderne dans l’Atlantique noir.L’étude considère ainsi la musique dans la continuité de l’écologie sonore de la ville afin d’« écrire le monde depuis une métropole africaine ». Il ne s’agit pas seulement de penser la musique en contexte, mais aussi comme contexte, en tant que paysage, en l’étendant au-delà de la performance pour inclure les différents jeux d’échelle qui façonnaient les mondes musicaux. Pour comprendre la dimension politique des échanges afro-atlantiques impliqués dans la création de la rumba congolaise – un style africain né de l’écoute des musiques afro-cubaines –, il importe de prendre en compte le contexte de globalisation des modes d’écoute et de l’ethnicité. A une époque où le nationalisme racialisé des États-Unis façonnait la compréhension du jazz, comment repenser l’opposition d’une « Afrique latine » à une « Afrique du jazz », dont les pôles respectifs se situeraient à Johannesburg et Léopoldville ? Cette thèse cherche à déconstruire ces représentations tout en observant la puissance d’agir de la musique noire – « sa réalité et son inexistence » – en fonction des contextes, des acteurs et des lieux
This thesis studies connections between music and politics within the space of music circulation stretching from Sophiatown, in Johannesburg, South Africa, to the cité (the “native quarters”) of Léopoldville (today Kinshasa), in the Belgian Congo, from 1930 to 1960. This study considers the music making of these segregated areas – the uses of new sound technologies, the appropriation of Afro-Atlantic styles, the profusion of festivities and nightlife – as well as the formation of the trans-colonial space of modern Congolese music—better known as “Congolese rumba”—in the age of radio. Although often overlooked, the early development of the South African record industry played an important role in the making and mobility of the first Congolese media celebrities who circulated across the trans-imperial roads between Léopoldville, Elisabethville (Lubumbashi), Nairobi and Johannesburg. Studied together, the grounding and the deployment of what I call “sonic urbanity” highlight the place of trans-colonial celebrities and songs in the political imaginary of African listeners. These phenomena also show how the economy of pleasure offered new possibilities of emancipation to the most marginalized categories such as the "free women" and members of women’s fashion associations.Both in the cité of Léopoldville and in Sophiatown, listeners, dancers and musicians challenged ideas of black exclusion to urbanity enforced by the government that conditioned symbolic and material access to “the city”. Until the day after independence in 1960, the musical scene represented the main space for political expression in the modern Congo, allowing it to claim its place in the Black Atlantic.This thesis thus conceptualizes music as part of the city’s ecology of sound in an attempt to “write the world from the African metropolis”. It does not merely think of music in context but also regards it as context and soundscape, extending it beyond performance by including the different “scale games” that shaped musical worlds. Understanding the political dimension of the AfroAtlantic exchanges involved in the creation of Congolese rumba – an African style born out of listening to Afro-Cuban music – requires a consideration of the globalisation of ways of listening and ethnicity. How can we rethink the opposition of a “Latin Africa” to an “Africa of jazz”, whose poles would be located respectively in Léopoldville and Johannesburg, at the moment when U.S. racialized nationalism shaped understandings of jazz? This thesis seeks to both deconstruct these representations and examine the power of black music to act—its “reality and non-existence”— depending on contexts, actors and places