A Merger Based on Diversity and Compromise

Abstract

The contribution of this book is twofold. Firstly, my research fills a thematic and geographical lacuna in the historiography of Belgian Africa: the lack of attention to the Kivu in the literature.1 Moreover, on the one hand, by focusing on this region as a historical region, and on the other, by using the colonially imposed border as a mirror in order to compare the two sides of Lake Kivu, I have tried to transcend this border. Furthermore, coffee production too has been overlooked by the greater part of the historiography on Belgian Africa. While cotton and palm oil, for instance, have already received sufficient attention, literature on Belgian Africa has remained mostly silent about coffee. However, (Arabica) coffee was of major importance for the Kivu region. Hence, a study of this commodity is justified. Secondly, by supplying empirical evidence, this book has also contributed to two interrelated historical-theoretical concepts: commodity frontiers and empire. The expansion of capitalism was accompanied by the incorporation of “new” peripheral rural zones into the modern world-system. While “new” zones are being incorporated, a process of interaction takes place. Hence, frontier processes are fueled by feedback from local actors (incorporated populations, but also settlers, for example), albeit in a context of unequal power relations. Even though frontier has to be understood as a process between formerly unattached socio-economic/political/cultural systems, this process also has a spatial component, referred to as the frontier zone. While focusing on one commodity (in this case coffee), and how this commodity was produced, this book offers empirical evidence on what happened with land and labor in the Lake Kivu region throughout the process of incorporation and commodification. The development of a commodity frontier zone is backed by a territorial power (in this case Belgium), which results in unequal power relations between the incorporator and the incorporated. By applying the concept of empire to this territorial power, diversity (vital in empire-building) and the role of actors on the ground (similar to their role in frontier development, but in this case indigenous populations) within the coffee commodity frontier can be fully grasped. Empire is created out of diversity, but the concept does not necessarily make