The Guide schématique de la ligne [1957]. Tracing the infrastructure landscape along the Matadi-Kinshasa railway line (DR Congo) through a living archive

Abstract

Introduction In his book The River Congo, an 1895 travelogue of his journey to the lower reaches of the Congo River, the British scientist Harry Hamilton Johnston, used an array of tactile adjectives to describe the landscape of the Bas-Congo region, largely unknown to his audience of the late nineteenth century. In one particularly colorful passage, leaving all scientific objectivity behind, Johnston discusses the “boldly shaped hills,” the “velvety woods,” the “tiny streams” and the “soundi...